Final Fantasy XV (2016)

What a confused mess of a game.

Loved some of the open-world elements and how pretty the game is but ultimately the world is not that big, there's little at the heart of the story (which keeps doing things to pull you out of it) and it really lacks the sense of adventure that is central to most Final Fantasy games.

Capsule thoughts here, full review link at the end of the text.

Not going to be coy here. Final Fantasy XV is not only the worst mainline Final Fantasy game, it's one of the worst video games I've played.

An hour in and the passive-aggressive wrestling against every fiber of this damn thing started driving me mad. I'd be passing through dense foliage just fine but completely unable to jump over a small bush in town. Conversations tied with the jump button tied with getting into the bland Regalia turned every pit stop into a bewildering nightmare of making the game do what I needed or wanted it to do. Wafer thin and about as durable characters were not the charming boy band advertised but instead a stoic cook, a stoic brute, a stoic prince, and that kid who takes good photos sometimes.

Combat is a barely interactive cutscene filled with janky movements more interested in wrestling control away from me than allowing a better degree of interaction. Dialogue triggers in odd and counterintuitive ways where information introduced hours earlier comes as a total surprise. Hell, FFXV seems so deadset on you -not- playing it that it invites you to listen to music from other FF games to compensate for the all encompassing void of personality at its center.

The only saving grace is Ardyn, a magical mysterious murder hobo with damn good reason to want to destroy the world and a fashion sense that's part Doctor Who and part Doctor Hannibal Lecter. Some time after I finished FFXV many friends, the same friends who praised this broken garbage, said that multiple DLC packs fleshed out the missing spots and introduced some fun.

I buy a game, I expect a complete experience on the game's terms. The wealth of behind-the-scenes problems plaguing FFXV's development do not excuse the massive INSERT SCENE AND/OR COMBAT HERE LATER holes that kept it from even providing a complete experience in and of itself.

Between this and my full review this will hopefully be the last time I ever write about this wretched experience for more than a Tweet.

http://www.cantstopthemovies.com/2017/07/final-fantasy-xv-2016/

Some thoughts as I clock in around 60 hours so far:

• I am quite enjoying the music. I made a quip about the FFXV lacking memorable music due to the fact that it is drowned out by every other FF soundtrack to date, playable via the Regalia’s soundsystem. I take that statement back. The music is quite good and I’ve caught myself humming it on more than one occasion.
• On two seperate occasions the game has warned me that I’m about to leave the main open world space of the game and that I won’t be able to return for some time. On both occasions the game immeadiatly allowed be to return to the open world area. What are you playing at SE?
• Why did it take me 55 hours to think to put a moogle decal on my car? Shameful
• The game AI has no business being as good a photographer as it is
• Prompto really likes Chocobos
• I hate Magitech troopers, especially when they drop on top of my hunt. I once had two hunts that overlapped each other and they overlapped a third set of mobs. Half way through the fight two seperate groups of troopers dropped on top of me. There were five seperate red circles on the mini-map representing the five seperate groups I was fighting. And since this game completely threw the idea of crowd control out the window, it was not so much challenging as it was purely annoying
• x to jump and to interact? Aaaaaahhhhh!!!!

I feel that when I am eventually done with FFXV, none of the music will remain with me, which will be a first for a Final fantasy game. Why? Because you spend enough time driving around in your car listening to the soundtracks to the previous fourteen games, that those soundtracks utterly drown out any of the music composed for this game.

And don’t get me started on the fact that the soundtrack to FF Tactics wasn’t included. I don’t know how you leave out the best FF music ever written, but that’s what they did.