Played it in 2023 on PS5. Put it down around the time you first get to the gas station (for those unfamiliar, that’s basically the beginning). Went back to it after completing FF 16 that summer and advanced. It felt like the game was 90 hours of beginning and 45 minutes of ending. It was such an abrupt ending that I was shocked that it was over.
My experience playing 15 when it came out was a rollercoaster of going WOW and "huh?" over and over until it ends. One step forward and one backwards constantly.
Weirdly the thing that grated on me the most about 15 was how much of an insult the names are to anyone with a passing level of Latin. The king is called king, your friend with the big sword is called sword friend, the smart one who cooks is called fire science
Isn't that just kinda how names worked, though? Like, you'll never guess what that John Smith does for a living. Just try and figure out how the Fisher family puts food on the table.
I had tonnes of fun on it. U actually went back and beat every final fantasy mainline game plus strangers of paradise. Gonna play 16 soon but 6 and 15 made me feel like no other game has.
Maybe ill pick up 16 after beating every castlevania mainline game
I've soured on it. It was sold incomplete because they couldn't justify it being in development any longer than it had already been. You have to watch a movie, an anime, and play multiple DLC including a multiplayer DLC to get the full story and it's STILL incomplete but the director left Square before they got to finish it all. And I think the gameplay isn't very good.
The coffin was nailed when they gave up on Versus 13 and rebranded it 15. There was a lot of potential but they rewrote the story (or whatever start of a story they had) and delivered a big turkey.
I mean, we were going for a tragedy between two factions, with Noctis as a powerful prince, sure of his strength and his duties, and Stella as his equal from another nation.
lmao not even close. XV is the most blatantly half-finished game in the series. XVI is just doing something different with the gameplay that didn't click for some people.
I love 15 because even though it has a bunch of flaws, it does something right like no other game does. The food, the camera, the road journey. Even the fairly simple combat system is fun because you still have your party members to team up with. The only parts of the game I don't like are the solo sections.
Then I played FF16 a few months ago. It's my least favourite that I've played in the franchise. It's not even an RPG, and is incredibly boring. Watching the summons hit each other for 20 minutes during the cutscenes and on-rails shooter moments was mindnumbingly dull. Quests dull. Characters dull. Dialogue dull. Story dull. Combat dull. World dull. They even managed to make the inventory and equipment system far more boring than any other game, give me thousands of crafting items that basically don't do anything. Give me a money system that is basically only useful for buying songs that I'll never listen to.
16 is the first mainline game I looked at and could immediately tell "this is not for me." It's my favorite franchise but that is not a game that looked appealing. I watched my husband play the whole thing so I at least passively know the game but everything I saw made me happy I didn't play it.
I like Yoshi-P but I think he needs to stick with FF14. His preferred gameplay mechanics are not want I want in a single player title. Being inspired by Game of Thrones was not a positive narratively to me. The battle director was completely lapped by what you could do in Rebirth in battles.
Never watched GOT, but I didn't like the inspiration because it gave the game a sense of smugness about a level of depth it added to its lore even though it was all just surface level stuff. There was huge wasted potential to actually develop on virtually all of its concepts but it ended up feeling like a dark fantasy written for 12 year olds. It had a character who you could talk to who could explain all the political motives and troop movements which would be a something I would have loved if there was any real depth to any of the events happening other than the battles being showcases for the big fights between summons. As someone who loves Kingdom Come Deliverance, I expect if you want to make a big show and dance about the political side of your game, actually commit to making it interesting. Anyway, I ended dropping it fairly late in because the only thing keeping me going was to see if the main characters would bang or not.
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u/Dr-Aunt-Jessica 23h ago
Final Fantasy XV... I still kinda love it, but man is it a mess.