Yea, Chapter 9 had me freaking the eff out, because I was thinking "this is impossi----OH MY GOD!!!!"
The car rides are definitely not the best, I found it's a good time for bathroom breaks, sketch breaks, picking a good tune from the old FF classics, or just letting the AP stack up. +1 for chocobo riding though, just wish I could change the music. It would be epic riding the "steed" to some of the classic FF tunes.
The summons are annoyingly picky about when they come out, lol. I've gotten 1 in particular to spawn when I didn't even need it.
Excited for NG+, supposed to be the free DLC coming out in a few weeks.
I'm really impressed with how much inspiration they took from other modern games. Still wishing/hoping this ends up on PC because it really looks held back by consoles (poor anisotropic filtering, aggressive LOD and view distance, short shadow rendering distance, dithering), but is otherwise a very pretty game.
Iam glad that they decided against a full open world. the linearity maybe forces some structure and feeling of urgency on the player. It's an issue with the Witcher 3 as well as Fallout 4 or Skyrim. "you need to go there RIGHT NOW" "sure thing" then after i did other stuff for 80 hours and got back to the main story, it doesn't change a thing and just sends me to places i have been before just that i can enter them now or start a cut scene or smth.
Yeah iam expecting a PC Version around mid-end 2017 or early 2018. Eventhough they could just release the Pro version, but i guess they go for double dippers. Still iam glad that the franchise got back on it's legs, eventhough i never really hated FFXIII (for the most part...until i lost it with the fighting system).
I'm near the end (I got a prompt about "the final battle").
Holy hell, this game. It's been a fun ride, and I've been looking into the "post-game content". It's pretty intense, and I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait for the NG+ to come out, because I'm really excited to replay some of the moments in the game with the stronger weapons and abilities.
To anyone on the fence based on previous FF games (13 was the biggest offender for me personally), I highly recommend it. It renewed my faith in Square, I've been a long time fan, back since FF1.
This is the first Final Fantasy game that I finished. ^^ I think that speaks volumes, I really enjoyed it. Felt very modern but still a nostagia and throwback to the old games. Very satisfied!!
I also think it was just the right length, I think it actually comes down alot to the combat being much faster and not being turn based or controlling 10 characters at the same time. I really, really didn't like FF13.
I'm roughly 12 hours in and I'm really enjoying it. I grew up with Final Fantasy, started with 1 on the NES and played all the ones that were available here in the States (minus the online 11) until 13, where I thought the series had lost it's way. With this one, I feel like they were able to go in new directions while still having it feel like a FF game.
Granted, there is a lot of new stuff and mechanics here, but I think for the most part they all work. Combat took me a few hours to really grasp, but that was more on my end and being stubborn and not really learning it, but now I love it. Yes, you don't have direct control of anyone but Noctis, but you're still commanding your other guys constantly in battle. I don't mind the car to be honest, I just pipe in some classic FF music from the OST's available.
At first I wasn't on board with the fact that you just have the party of 4, but now I can't imagine it being any other way. The characters are all handled well and the friendship they have doesn't come off as cheesy. All in all, I'm super happy that the game came out as good as it did, it feels good to play a Final Fantasy game and get lost in the world they've created.
Just wanted to bump the thread, as FFXV is currently the Amazon Deal of the Day, at 34.99 (USD). It's available on the Canada Amazon as well, not sure about EU and others.
I'm at the end, ran out of items resing Prompto time after fucking time so I went back in time to regain some inventory to finish it.
I'm on the fence. I really like it, and i fucking abhor it. Long post.
Like:
open world feels like the world map classic FF's, from the ground instead of helicopter view
Enemies in the field ala 12, being able to escape
The combat (sometimes - more in dislike)
Day / Night, where night is meaningful and scary
The fucking AMAZINGLY RENDERED FOOD OMG - haha. better looking than the characters most of the time.
Costume design on everyone except the main heroes
Dungeons
Hunts
Sprint dash refill
Multi-part monsters and part breaking. loveeeeee how some fights feel like Monster Hunter.
End sequence
Dislike
Sloppy UI / OS integration - the HUD goes off the screen. I don't know how, other than they're Squaresoft, Sony allowed this through certification. The game does not use the Playstation OS settings to adjust the screen position, and on my TV, 3-4 characters are cut off of the quest list on the right, and buff timers are not present on the screen at bottom.
Long, slow loads - in fast travel, zoning, and speaking to the Tipster in towns
Unskippable/shortcutting sequences - Ah! a new Recipeiiihh! Enter/exit vehicle, lead up to tipster UI, finish hunt UI, quest complete sizzle. I'd prefer a full screen victory screen over a transparent sizzle UI.
Slow, unresponsive X input - i must jump 3 times before picking anything up in the game, getting off Chocobo, getting on Chocobos, progressing through the camping XP menu
Prompto - seriously, fuck this guy. No, I don't care who you take a picture of, nor can we stop to take one. Dies continuously in combat despite being level 50 and lots of HP items, is crazy annoying. his only redeming factor is when he sings the battle victory song after a fight, and I like to think of him as a clone of Cloud from FF7, and this game takes place in the same world. Don't want to save your fucking pictures, eat shit and die.
Combat - Hold the Button to win "Hobutor" - for those that hated 13, but like this one, I'm pretty surprised. There are fewer options of actions to perform, its all about how to hold circle, press a direction, occasionally hit square, and triangle to zip around. 13 at least required you to choose what action to use based on the number of time slots you had (IE STRATEGY). There is a specific boss battle where you literally hold circle to watch the cinematic. Its disappointing. Bayonetta on Very Easy had this feature - and it was joked about as the "masturbation mode," yet it is the core combat control mechanic of FFXV.
Combat - iffy targetting. Warp will frequently go to a different target, especially when im aiming at a warp point w/ no target. Wait mode frequently exits swapping targets.
Combat - collision: getting swarmed and stunlocked to death is not fun
Combat - offensive spell Friendly Fire. This is a staple of FF, however it has always been the player's choice to use friendly fire. It completely destroys any value i found with crafting spells and getting creative with it by making it utterly useless in combat. maybe there is a bangle that makes you immune, but I really don't care.
Combat - item spam - I've read the phrase "Well, veteran FF players know how to take hits!" but in XV, it feels like im either not taking damage, or losing all of my HP in a single hit. Spamming potions to get out of DANGER mode is really just not fun. i sell everything and just buy Elixirs, more efficient.
Combat - unresponsive block. if multiple enemies are attacking, and only one of them has a blockable attack triggered, you can never block. Getting interrupted in the parry is also controller snappingly infuriating. It feels like they got so good at testing the game, that they forgot about new users. I generally like the Block/Parry Button Sequence thing, but it feels so randomly broken I dislike it.
Combat - skill tree for an option in the menus/Wait Mode. Ive been playing with Wait mode more and more, but i found it very strange to have a skill tree for an optional setting. Gives players of that playstyle the option, but left a sour taste
Combat - summons. There are conditions when they appear, and are super strong; which is probably a positive. However, there is NO feedback when you're holding L2 when its actually going to finish. It took me 5 minutes the first time they hvae you use it, mashing L2, looking at the controller making sure i was hitting L2 and not R2.
Camera - frequently is behind a bush in combat, or too close to character. i don't mind it otherwise, feels like a shitty monster hunter camera. No "center behind character" function sucks.
Inconsistent Fast Travel to quests. Maybe im missing something, but after having Prompto ask who to take pictures of, or to stop and take a picture for the 6th time, I either go by Chocobo, or Fast Travel. Feels inconsistent when a quest has it eligible or not, but could be missing something.
The Ring
Level Design, Gameflow, Story - Feel like they played a lot of Uncharted, Gears, God of War, Bayonetta, and wanted to make "that" game as a Final Fantasy. Lots of "Go to point A to get the thing!" then transverse back through the level past A, B, C, D, E, and F to get to the quest item at G. head back to A. Go to B, Back to G, over to A. i think 1/2 of my time played is wasted from non-combat running and long ui sequences. Can see hints of goodness in there, but also comes across like they just don't get it. There were also a few MGS4-Act3 type chapters of no gameplay, just pressing X once to go through dialog.
Cup o Noodle - rip Final Fantasy. being serious, other games have included advertisements, but never has a game had their main characters run an advertisement. Sincerely hope this does not become a trend and dies here. I know other franchises have had advertisements in them - GTA, Monster Hunter, but there was a quest chain, with spoken dialog...
Buggy dialog system. Had Gladio at one point yell at me for going too fast, then right after combat ended told me to hurry up. This happened 3 or 4 times in this sequence.
Fragmented, poorly edited, sloppy story. i think veteran FF players knew who the main villian would be from the first few hours of the game, but felt like they never committed to it. Why did the power plant sequence exist?! Sequences like this don't work well when the game is fully voice acted. Why was Chapter 13 deemed ok by the team?! When they have to boil down the chapter, or previous events in one sentence on the loading screen, and it makes more sense than the past 1-5 hours you just spent playing, that is bad.
The tie-in movie. Seemed like a poorly edited cut of all the rendered movies they made for the game, without the game exposition in between. Then when they spliced in an even sloppier edit... with no context in the game.
i could keep going but i want to try to partially enjoy doing some post game content. I'm hate-playing at this point, and super disappointed I purchased the season pass.
i love FF, long time fan and have put thousands of hours across all the titles. This game made me feel that I am no longer the target audience for these games, and won't buy another. Will buy 12 when that comes out next year, and put another 500hrs into it, just hope they don't ruin that experience too.
sometimes its best to let the old go and accept changes. I think 80% of the die hard fans compare it with previous installments and thus it minimizes their experience
I've watched a few hours of people playing side quests on Twitch and Youtube, I love Prompto's photos and the Cup o Noodle product placement, both of those are super campy, silly, and fun. They feel like Japanese quirks.
But I really hope they improve the combat, camera, and response. Hopefully the update for chapter 13 fixes more than just the ending.
This game has its ups and downs for me. I've been a massive FF fan since 7 and was also massively hyped for this one. A lot of the game definitely lives up to expectations but some parts feel very rushed.
Loved: - Riding around on chocobos in the open world is amazing. - The relationship with the main characters - Everything seems really big and epic (Summons, monsters.. etc) - Being able to listen to a load of the previous FF soundtracks. - Parts of the story were awesome
Hated: - Certain chapters were very repetetive and just become a grind - The camera during battle can get very confusing and sometimes its just easier to hold attack than to try and make sense of anything - Certain boss battles were very anti-climatic and just became a button masher. - Magic seems very limited and rarely found myself using it. - Parts of the story were pretty confusing and seemed rushed, even after watching Kingsglaive and Brotherhood. I'm assuming they're holding some of it back for DLC.
Overall a pretty good game but I got nowhere near the amount of enjoyment out of it compared to 7,8,9 or 10.
So for some reason, I can't quote your post @moose. I'll just call out certain points.
Re: chapter 10 on & the fragmented story; from leaks of supposed SQEnix employees, this is where they started slashing and burning content to hit the "deadline" (SE Higher Ups gave Tabata a "ship in 2016 or cancel it" situation). I agree; it feels raw and exposed, like they had to start making cuts and didn't have time (or try) to fix them in a meaningful way. Example, from the leaks, it sounds like chapter 11, 12, and 14 were supposed to be fully explorable areas, but they got truncated down severely to launch on time.
Tabata wants to add in some stuff to fill in these gaps (I think the story additions are a free update) it will be up to SE and the other VA's if they'll come back for the scenes though.
Re: summons. Yea, I can't disagree, I wish the summons were on a "cooldown" rather than conditional, with the cooldown being maybe influenced by conditions (i.e. "oh, this battle is taking a LONG time" or "you're getting OWNED, reset cooldown on set summon").
Re: friendly fire. Yea, I wasn't keen on that either, I didn't use magic for quite a bit of the game because of that. I was able to get some items to mitigate the fall out (reduced elemental damage accessory) and it sounds like the DLC Holiday pack will have an option to turn this off (OFF forever).
Re: taking damage/always in danger. Yea, this SUCKED in the post game content, noctis felt like he was ALWAYS dying and I was like.....the eff.
Re: Prompto, so, I personally like prompto. I definitely didn't have him dying as much as it sounds like you are though. In regards to his camera quests, you can say no, and the quest will just be there as an option going forward.
Re: the dialog chapters. Yea, I hated these, and hate when games do this to "add chapters". Just combine them into a longer chapter, I'm fine playing less chapters if they're actually chapters and not "press x to listen, chapter end."
Haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. Too busy with work so I watched the whole playthrough on youtube. To be honest,quite disappointed. I know they must have worked very hard on it but I feel they should have tried to have set goals and work towards achieving them rather than trying to be overambitious and trying to cramp every genre into one game. I am beginning to notice that games being made now lack a certain charm, uniqueness and innovative stride that games back in the ps1 and ps2 era had. I think what games are about now is graphics and photorealism and what games are selling the most and how to copy that rather than what makes a game great to play and enjoy. Maybe that's why Nintendo games still have that charm and are great to play because they have stuck to what they have always done. I am not saying change isn't a good thing but if its to be done. It should be done right. For me, ffxv falls really flat on the story and level design side, combat was really solid. Another thing I have come to notice about ff stories since ff12 is how convoluted and complicated they have made their stories/lore and how inter-entwined they are. There is so much going on with the stories that you need an encyclopedia to fully understand it. What happened to simplicity and being straight forward? I remember the director mentioning how Luna was a strong character and how different she was going to be from previous titles. I didn't see that in Kingsglaive. So I assumed they wanted to keep Luna's powers under wrap for the game. She still wasn't the strong character I was looking forward to.
FF10 is still the best ff for me. That ending was every satisfying and I am yet to get that from any new ff game. Final fantasy has always been about the story. FFX was a straight forward story. Sometimes simplicity is best rather that trying to add too many details.
Same thing with Uncharted- 2 and 3 were great. For some reason, Uncharted 4 seems off.
If I was to direct this game, the Luna vs somebody scene would have been epic. Yes, there would have been a fight between the two where we get to see Luna's powers in full display and since that someone is a powerful antagonist, Gentiana will have to come in to help. Another thing we didn't get to see is Luna and Gentiana's relationship/friendship. There was nothing about that.
I just finished it last night, and while I can't argue with some of the negative aspects, all in all, I loved my time with it. It's weird, and parts seem to be missing, and/or broken, but I still really enjoyed it, and most of that is from the relationship of the group (particularly at the end).
I'm a bit envious of people that play it in a year or so when they've added a few new cutscenes and such though.
I finished it a couple of days ago. I feel like it's a step in the right direction. Though I felt like the story itself could've been better, it didn't really feel like this grand adventure/mission. Most of the time I had no clue what was happening, there was no sense of urgency in the game which made it feel weird to me. Overall I really liked it, I don't really mind the grinding but they could totally work on making the grinding fighting missions a bit more interesting.
Im 24 hours in, I've always prefered action RPGs so this FF is so much fun. Combat looks and feels great! The art is all over the place but since its a huge world with dynamic time of day it is easy to look past.
Replies
Yea, Chapter 9 had me freaking the eff out, because I was thinking "this is impossi----OH MY GOD!!!!"
The car rides are definitely not the best, I found it's a good time for bathroom breaks, sketch breaks, picking a good tune from the old FF classics, or just letting the AP stack up. +1 for chocobo riding though, just wish I could change the music. It would be epic riding the "steed" to some of the classic FF tunes.
The summons are annoyingly picky about when they come out, lol. I've gotten 1 in particular to spawn when I didn't even need it.
Excited for NG+, supposed to be the free DLC coming out in a few weeks.
Yeah iam expecting a PC Version around mid-end 2017 or early 2018. Eventhough they could just release the Pro version, but i guess they go for double dippers.
Still iam glad that the franchise got back on it's legs, eventhough i never really hated FFXIII (for the most part...until i lost it with the fighting system).
Holy hell, this game. It's been a fun ride, and I've been looking into the "post-game content". It's pretty intense, and I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait for the NG+ to come out, because I'm really excited to replay some of the moments in the game with the stronger weapons and abilities.
To anyone on the fence based on previous FF games (13 was the biggest offender for me personally), I highly recommend it. It renewed my faith in Square, I've been a long time fan, back since FF1.
I also think it was just the right length, I think it actually comes down alot to the combat being much faster and not being turn based or controlling 10 characters at the same time. I really, really didn't like FF13.
Awesome game, really happy with it!
Granted, there is a lot of new stuff and mechanics here, but I think for the most part they all work. Combat took me a few hours to really grasp, but that was more on my end and being stubborn and not really learning it, but now I love it. Yes, you don't have direct control of anyone but Noctis, but you're still commanding your other guys constantly in battle. I don't mind the car to be honest, I just pipe in some classic FF music from the OST's available.
At first I wasn't on board with the fact that you just have the party of 4, but now I can't imagine it being any other way. The characters are all handled well and the friendship they have doesn't come off as cheesy. All in all, I'm super happy that the game came out as good as it did, it feels good to play a Final Fantasy game and get lost in the world they've created.
I'm on the fence. I really like it, and i fucking abhor it. Long post.
Like:
Dislike
- Sloppy UI / OS integration - the HUD goes off the screen. I don't know how, other than they're Squaresoft, Sony allowed this through certification. The game does not use the Playstation OS settings to adjust the screen position, and on my TV, 3-4 characters are cut off of the quest list on the right, and buff timers are not present on the screen at bottom.
- Long, slow loads - in fast travel, zoning, and speaking to the Tipster in towns
- Unskippable/shortcutting sequences - Ah! a new Recipeiiihh! Enter/exit vehicle, lead up to tipster UI, finish hunt UI, quest complete sizzle. I'd prefer a full screen victory screen over a transparent sizzle UI.
- Slow, unresponsive X input - i must jump 3 times before picking anything up in the game, getting off Chocobo, getting on Chocobos, progressing through the camping XP menu
- Prompto - seriously, fuck this guy. No, I don't care who you take a picture of, nor can we stop to take one. Dies continuously in combat despite being level 50 and lots of HP items, is crazy annoying. his only redeming factor is when he sings the battle victory song after a fight, and I like to think of him as a clone of Cloud from FF7, and this game takes place in the same world. Don't want to save your fucking pictures, eat shit and die.
- Combat - Hold the Button to win "Hobutor" - for those that hated 13, but like this one, I'm pretty surprised. There are fewer options of actions to perform, its all about how to hold circle, press a direction, occasionally hit square, and triangle to zip around. 13 at least required you to choose what action to use based on the number of time slots you had (IE STRATEGY). There is a specific boss battle where you literally hold circle to watch the cinematic. Its disappointing. Bayonetta on Very Easy had this feature - and it was joked about as the "masturbation mode," yet it is the core combat control mechanic of FFXV.
- Combat - iffy targetting. Warp will frequently go to a different target, especially when im aiming at a warp point w/ no target. Wait mode frequently exits swapping targets.
- Combat - collision: getting swarmed and stunlocked to death is not fun
- Combat - offensive spell Friendly Fire. This is a staple of FF, however it has always been the player's choice to use friendly fire. It completely destroys any value i found with crafting spells and getting creative with it by making it utterly useless in combat. maybe there is a bangle that makes you immune, but I really don't care.
- Combat - item spam - I've read the phrase "Well, veteran FF players know how to take hits!" but in XV, it feels like im either not taking damage, or losing all of my HP in a single hit. Spamming potions to get out of DANGER mode is really just not fun. i sell everything and just buy Elixirs, more efficient.
- Combat - unresponsive block. if multiple enemies are attacking, and only one of them has a blockable attack triggered, you can never block. Getting interrupted in the parry is also controller snappingly infuriating. It feels like they got so good at testing the game, that they forgot about new users. I generally like the Block/Parry Button Sequence thing, but it feels so randomly broken I dislike it.
- Combat - skill tree for an option in the menus/Wait Mode. Ive been playing with Wait mode more and more, but i found it very strange to have a skill tree for an optional setting. Gives players of that playstyle the option, but left a sour taste
- Combat - summons. There are conditions when they appear, and are super strong; which is probably a positive. However, there is NO feedback when you're holding L2 when its actually going to finish. It took me 5 minutes the first time they hvae you use it, mashing L2, looking at the controller making sure i was hitting L2 and not R2.
- Camera - frequently is behind a bush in combat, or too close to character. i don't mind it otherwise, feels like a shitty monster hunter camera. No "center behind character" function sucks.
- Inconsistent Fast Travel to quests. Maybe im missing something, but after having Prompto ask who to take pictures of, or to stop and take a picture for the 6th time, I either go by Chocobo, or Fast Travel. Feels inconsistent when a quest has it eligible or not, but could be missing something.
- The Ring
- Level Design, Gameflow, Story - Feel like they played a lot of Uncharted, Gears, God of War, Bayonetta, and wanted to make "that" game as a Final Fantasy. Lots of "Go to point A to get the thing!" then transverse back through the level past A, B, C, D, E, and F to get to the quest item at G. head back to A. Go to B, Back to G, over to A. i think 1/2 of my time played is wasted from non-combat running and long ui sequences. Can see hints of goodness in there, but also comes across like they just don't get it. There were also a few MGS4-Act3 type chapters of no gameplay, just pressing X once to go through dialog.
- Cup o Noodle - rip Final Fantasy. being serious, other games have included advertisements, but never has a game had their main characters run an advertisement. Sincerely hope this does not become a trend and dies here. I know other franchises have had advertisements in them - GTA, Monster Hunter, but there was a quest chain, with spoken dialog...
- Buggy dialog system. Had Gladio at one point yell at me for going too fast, then right after combat ended told me to hurry up. This happened 3 or 4 times in this sequence.
- Fragmented, poorly edited, sloppy story. i think veteran FF players knew who the main villian would be from the first few hours of the game, but felt like they never committed to it. Why did the power plant sequence exist?! Sequences like this don't work well when the game is fully voice acted. Why was Chapter 13 deemed ok by the team?! When they have to boil down the chapter, or previous events in one sentence on the loading screen, and it makes more sense than the past 1-5 hours you just spent playing, that is bad.
- The tie-in movie. Seemed like a poorly edited cut of all the rendered movies they made for the game, without the game exposition in between. Then when they spliced in an even sloppier edit... with no context in the game.
i could keep going but i want to try to partially enjoy doing some post game content. I'm hate-playing at this point, and super disappointed I purchased the season pass.i love FF, long time fan and have put thousands of hours across all the titles. This game made me feel that I am no longer the target audience for these games, and won't buy another. Will buy 12 when that comes out next year, and put another 500hrs into it, just hope they don't ruin that experience too.
But I really hope they improve the combat, camera, and response. Hopefully the update for chapter 13 fixes more than just the ending.
Loved:
- Riding around on chocobos in the open world is amazing.
- The relationship with the main characters
- Everything seems really big and epic (Summons, monsters.. etc)
- Being able to listen to a load of the previous FF soundtracks.
- Parts of the story were awesome
Hated:
- Certain chapters were very repetetive and just become a grind
- The camera during battle can get very confusing and sometimes its just easier to hold attack than to try and make sense of anything
- Certain boss battles were very anti-climatic and just became a button masher.
- Magic seems very limited and rarely found myself using it.
- Parts of the story were pretty confusing and seemed rushed, even after watching Kingsglaive and Brotherhood. I'm assuming they're holding some of it back for DLC.
Overall a pretty good game but I got nowhere near the amount of enjoyment out of it compared to 7,8,9 or 10.
Re: chapter 10 on & the fragmented story; from leaks of supposed SQEnix employees, this is where they started slashing and burning content to hit the "deadline" (SE Higher Ups gave Tabata a "ship in 2016 or cancel it" situation). I agree; it feels raw and exposed, like they had to start making cuts and didn't have time (or try) to fix them in a meaningful way. Example, from the leaks, it sounds like chapter 11, 12, and 14 were supposed to be fully explorable areas, but they got truncated down severely to launch on time.
Tabata wants to add in some stuff to fill in these gaps (I think the story additions are a free update) it will be up to SE and the other VA's if they'll come back for the scenes though.
Re: summons. Yea, I can't disagree, I wish the summons were on a "cooldown" rather than conditional, with the cooldown being maybe influenced by conditions (i.e. "oh, this battle is taking a LONG time" or "you're getting OWNED, reset cooldown on set summon").
Re: friendly fire. Yea, I wasn't keen on that either, I didn't use magic for quite a bit of the game because of that. I was able to get some items to mitigate the fall out (reduced elemental damage accessory) and it sounds like the DLC Holiday pack will have an option to turn this off (OFF forever).
Re: taking damage/always in danger. Yea, this SUCKED in the post game content, noctis felt like he was ALWAYS dying and I was like.....the eff.
Re: Prompto, so, I personally like prompto. I definitely didn't have him dying as much as it sounds like you are though. In regards to his camera quests, you can say no, and the quest will just be there as an option going forward.
Re: the dialog chapters. Yea, I hated these, and hate when games do this to "add chapters". Just combine them into a longer chapter, I'm fine playing less chapters if they're actually chapters and not "press x to listen, chapter end."
I am beginning to notice that games being made now lack a certain charm, uniqueness and innovative stride that games back in the ps1 and ps2 era had. I think what games are about now is graphics and photorealism and what games are selling the most and how to copy that rather than what makes a game great to play and enjoy. Maybe that's why Nintendo games still have that charm and are great to play because they have stuck to what they have always done.
I am not saying change isn't a good thing but if its to be done. It should be done right. For me, ffxv falls really flat on the story and level design side, combat was really solid. Another thing I have come to notice about ff stories since ff12 is how convoluted and complicated they have made their stories/lore and how inter-entwined they are. There is so much going on with the stories that you need an encyclopedia to fully understand it. What happened to simplicity and being straight forward?
I remember the director mentioning how Luna was a strong character and how different she was going to be from previous titles. I didn't see that in Kingsglaive. So I assumed they wanted to keep Luna's powers under wrap for the game. She still wasn't the strong character I was looking forward to.
FF10 is still the best ff for me. That ending was every satisfying and I am yet to get that from any new ff game. Final fantasy has always been about the story. FFX was a straight forward story. Sometimes simplicity is best rather that trying to add too many details.
Same thing with Uncharted- 2 and 3 were great. For some reason, Uncharted 4 seems off.
If I was to direct this game, the Luna vs somebody scene would have been epic. Yes, there would have been a fight between the two where we get to see Luna's powers in full display and since that someone is a powerful antagonist, Gentiana will have to come in to help. Another thing we didn't get to see is Luna and Gentiana's relationship/friendship. There was nothing about that.
I'm a bit envious of people that play it in a year or so when they've added a few new cutscenes and such though.
Overall I really liked it, I don't really mind the grinding but they could totally work on making the grinding fighting missions a bit more interesting.