Current Events > Final Fantasy XV could have been great.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It had everything it needed:

Road trips
Epic bros
Chocobos
Amazing music
Cindy

What went wrong? D:

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It could have been great if they had likeable characters, a half assed attempt at a nonconvoluted plot, a good combat system, AI that wasn't braindead, fulfilling side quests, Nobuo Uematsu inspired soundtrack, a world that wasn't boring, an entertaining villain, and an ending that wasn't shit.

They killed yuna for shock value only then to revealed that cindy was the real princess all along

Had the best villainnof the series but the story presentation was butchered.

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I loved it.

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ShibaToken posted...

It could have been great if they had likeable characters, a half assed attempt at a nonconvoluted plot, a good combat system, AI that wasn't braindead, fulfilling side quests, Nobuo Uematsu inspired soundtrack, a world that wasn't boring, an entertaining villain, and an ending that wasn't shit.

Soundtrack honestly was fine. Better than 12

It's such a weird game. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, but looking back, there's so much baffling decisions they made in making it. I don't even remotely know where to place it in my favorites.

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The story suffered from the fact that they tried to make it this huge Universe thing and unless you followed the story from watching the movies and reading the material, you would most likely get lost in what the hell was happening. I also hated how they locked story content behind a paid DLC wall. Honestly if they implemented the gameplay from FF7Re into this game, the gameplay could've been really good. Like it would fit pretty damn well with this game considering the biggest theme in this game was brotherhood, but instead we have a game that basically plays itself: you can literally hold the circle button to attack and hold the square button to dodge, driving is basically on rails, you can't manually do summons, etc.

There's a lot more that prevents this game from being good, but even with all of my complaints I still enjoyed my 65hrs in this game. It's a guilty pleasure, but I enjoyed the brotherhood aspect of the game and being able to cruise around in a car with your homies reminds me of when I used to go on road trips with my friends.

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I feel like the pacing of the story, or the amount of story, was incomplete. Not enough of it. I liked what was there, I wanted more of it.

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they should have released a complete game to begin with, I played at release and the story was an incoherent mess

My only experience with XV is playing the demo that came out and then months later watching my friend play through the stealth segment lol
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I think it's a lot closer to being great than it's given credit for. It misses the mark, obviously, but not by as much for me as a lot of people say - a lot of it would have been easy fixes rather than deep fundamental flaws. In fact, a lot of it actually has been fixed in the various subsequent updates - Ardyn's backstory is less enigmatic now, you can control all four characters, Chapter 13 has an expanded version (albeit not integrated - another silly easy fix that could have been done), Insomnia now feels like a proper final dungeon...

I've only dipped in to these improvements a little bit, because I'd already platted the launch version and was ready to move on, but for me personally they've actually addressed most of the complaints that I had about it, and I reckon that if I were to replay it in a few years, once the slightly bitter aftertaste of the first playthough has worn off, and in all its Royal Edition glory, I'd probably really enjoy it.

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We will never to get to see episode aranea which was rumored to be the best of the dlc. Like using the Armiter to control shiva's giant body to fend off nifflem ship and what not. Shme on nomura for this.

DB_Insider posted...

We will never to get to see episode aranea which was rumored to be the best of the dlc. Like using the Armiter to control shiva's giant body to fend off nifflem ship and what not. Shme on nomura for this.

Episode Ardyn came out over 3 years after release. Most people had moved on and didn't really give a shit anymore by that point.

The character development in the DLC was actually alright, but it should have been in the base game.

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Hayame Zero posted...

Episode Ardyn came out over 3 years after release. Most people had moved on and didn't really give a shit anymore by that point.

It was just under two years and four months between FFXV and Episode Ardyn's release.

Still ridiculous, obviously, but not over three years.

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I haven't played any of the DLC, does it do the story better justice?

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i was actually looking forward to everything they showed in the rebranding e3 2013 trailer. game look lit af.

and then they just...didn't put any of that shit in the game lol.

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ShibaToken posted...

It could have been great if they had likeable characters, a half assed attempt at a nonconvoluted plot, a good combat system, AI that wasn't braindead, fulfilling side quests, Nobuo Uematsu inspired soundtrack, a world that wasn't boring, an entertaining villain, and an ending that wasn't shit.

This is mostly pure lies.

The combat was fine, the characters where great and the music was fantastic.

The plot and side quests where bad however.

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ColdOne666 posted...

The combat was fine

People always bash the combat for "hold circle to win" but imo saying the combat is bad because of that is no different then saying another games combat is bad because you can just mash the attack button.

(And more likely than not, people who say that are people who are too lazy to look deeper into that game's actual mechanics)

And the gameplay got even better when they made the other bros playable. Gladio for example plays very similarly to FF7R Cloud, except it's more responsive because you get rewarded with more damage for timing Gladio's counters

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Good combat system? I mean that's pushing it lol.

I'm sure you can find merits but RPGs nowadays are liked for how complex the strategies can become, and how easily accessible they are, with enemies that actually warrant using various strategies. FF15 combat is none of those things. FF7R was a similar system with some steps in the right direction, but in general the FF modern team has been on a constant miss in regards to real time combat

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The most I can say about the combat was that it's "not hard."
It's not really fully fleshed out and felt clunky at times, but I guess it worked?

The main thing I hated about it was that there wasn't really any sense of progression. In that Noctis didn't feel any different by the end of the game than he did at the start. Usually, you'd expect a character to feel much stronger by the end of a JRPG, but the only real difference I can feel for endgame Noctis was that he was able to stay airborne for a few seconds longer.

And the skill tree was basically just for show -- it felt like they didn't really have anything interesting to do with it, so most of the skills you unlock end up being trivial stuff they clearly slapped on at the last minute, like "get 1 extra AP for fishing," or whatever.

FF_Redux posted...

Had the best villainnof the series but the story presentation was butchered.

People always say this about Ardyn, but I never felt it. Outside of his voice actor doing an 11/10 job, Ardyn himself was barely in the plot, and almost all of his backstory was cut until DLC came out two years later. So you barely got a feel for the guy (which, honestly, could be said for every character in the game).

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FF_Redux posted...

Had the best villainnof the series

you mean a shittier version of emet selch?

Emet Selch is a shittier version of Alexander Ashford

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i didnt know he was a villain of the final fantasy series

legendarylemur posted...

Good combat system? I mean that's pushing it lol.

I'm sure you can find merits but RPGs nowadays are liked for how complex the strategies can become, and how easily accessible they are, with enemies that actually warrant using various strategies. FF15 combat is none of those things. FF7R was a similar system with some steps in the right direction, but in general the FF modern team has been on a constant miss in regards to real time combat

What rpg nowadays features complex strategies?

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Reis posted...

i didnt know he was a villain of the final fantasy series

More like hero

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KeeperOfShadows posted...

What rpg nowadays features complex strategies?

Depends if we're still talking arpg or rpgs in general

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