Final Fantasy XV has arrived towards the end of last year and the general consensus seems
to be; that it's awesome.
It's a very pretty and most importantly, a functional game.
While this isn't a negative statement, this description wouldn't have been any different
in 2009, talking about Final Fantasy XIII.
Before I go further into this, please take note of the following: This is my personal opinion!
I said in the description of my Platinum Trophy GET video, that I would go into more detail
why I found Final Fantasy XV a little disappointing, so here it is.
It's mainly the gameplay that let me down, but gameplay is also by far the most important
aspect of a game for me.
Unlike any other entertainment medium, this is what sets video games apart from books
and movies.
It includes everything that you actively do in a game.
Combat, exploration, mini games, customisation, literally everything that You.
Do.
Actively.
Yet, I don't think Final Fantasy XV lets you actually do all that much.
Visually speaking combat looks pretty cool in Final Fantasy XV.
It checks all the boxes, it's flashy, all over the place, pretty hectic and apparently
requires reaction based inputs.
Sadly enough, that's only the case when you're watching trailers or gameplay footage.
When you're playing, you're not really doing all that much and neither is the rest
of your party.
They kind of do whatever the hell they want anyway and the only input you get on that
is to set up their sub weapons… dependent on how you progress through the game, it's
no later than chapter 3 that you might realise that it doesn't matter if they're there
or not.
The gambit system in Final Fantasy XII, as busted as it was, still did this the best
in my opinion.
You set up the rules and the AI will follow your pre-determined instructions.
Final Fantasy XIII dumbed this process down by quite a bit, but the Optima Change system
still gave you a lot of control over what your party members are supposed to do for
you.
In 15 you don't get any such input, you can however use link attacks, if you attack
an enemy from the back, within the vicinity of your party members, which grants damage
multipliers and even allows for break damage limits.
There's no real incentive for doing that though, which is what leads me to the most
glaring issue.
Noctis is invincible.
I've played the game on the normal difficulty setting in active mode and did everything
there is to do in the game, yet I didn't see the game over screen a single time.
This isn't bragging, this is a huge problem in my opinion, as I never had to re-do anything,
never had to change my approach and I never had to think.
Noctis is simply way too powerful.
Everything about him, is completely unbalanced.
For one, he and he alone, can wield any weapon of any class available, which furthermore
underlines the question, what Ignis and co. are even there for?
His warp strikes do way too much damage… which doesn't even take the break modifiers
into account.
And to top it all off, his phase shift is by far the most broken mechanic I've ever
come across in any game I've played.
It's his phase shift that essentially turned combat into a snoozefest for me.
Overpowered moves and or mechanics in single player games, aren't a bad thing actually.
They should be amazing!
What makes them fun is the sense of being able to use them at the right time, and in
well designed games they usually come with a set of restrictions.
That's not to say that these games didn't allow you to completely break whatever the
restrictions were, intentionally or not.
Final Fantasy VII required you take damage in order to fill up your Limit Break, VIII
required you to be on about 25% health, Final Fantasy X had a million different ways to
set up how you gain your overdrive gauge and in XIII you had to break an opponent to go
full ham on them.
If we take this to other franchises, just look how complicated it can be to get certain
Hi-Ougi in the Tales series to come out.
Or the cost of turning into a dragon in the Breath of Fire series.
Now as I said before, most of these examples could actually be exploited to hell and back,
but for one, this usually isn't possible until late game and secondly you had to figure
out how to do it as well.
Going back to Final Fantasy XV, you are invincible from the moment you take control of Noctis,
simply by holding the square button.
Which takes care of everything and the only thing you're looking out for now, is to
press the circle button, when a parry, automatically, occurs.
Yes it drains MP… at a snail's pace!
Hell, it even recovers faster than it drains.
You're likely never going to run out of MP ever unless you spam warp strikes.
Let's assume you do somehow manage to get Noctis' HP smacked out of him, you still
have his Max HP gauge decreasing, very, sloooowly and you can use any old potion to get Noctis
back on his feet again.
Assuming your Max HP reaches Zero, you can still use a Phoenix Down, yourself, on yourself.
It is by design and not by the players ingenuity, that you cannot fail and if you cannot fail,
there's no sense of an accomplishment to be had.
So what about strategy?
Let's take low level challenges, while it's a bit of an acquired taste, I really like
no levelling, or if that's not possible, low level challenges, NSG in Final Fantasy
X being one of my absolute favourite challenge runs out there.
Challenge runs are fun, because you've already exhausted the game you're playing and it
allows you to get more out of it, taking a completely different approach to the game.
Square Enix knows this, and so they added the Level Stopper Accessory a few weeks after
Final Fantasy XV's initial release.
Here's the problem though, I went through the Naglfar fight, a level 120 Boss Battle,
at around level 40, without any problems, not doing anything but holding the square
button, just reviving myself where necessary.
Later on, after the level stopper accessory was added, I watched Kouli's Level 1 fight
against that same boss.
Funnily enough, it looked exactly the same, it just took him a little bit longer.
If the meta doesn't change, if I don't have to come up with some plan to get through
something, on a low level character, it doesn't really extend the playability, nothing has
changed, which means it's still the exact same experience I had the first time around.
As for Boss Battles… the majority of them feel like standard encounters, underwhelming
at best.
The big boss battles, Titan, Leviathan, Ifrit and so on, they could've been amazing.
They sure as hell look amazing, but once again you're not doing anything.
All major boss battles require less input than a God of War boss battle does on its
lowest difficulty setting and that's pretty much what they look like, God of War Boss
battles…
QTE and all.
Unless you're putting the controller aside, it's impossible to lose… and honestly
even then, I am not positive that you can actually lose.
I was expecting some deeper combat mechanics in the full game, things that weren't already
shown in the demos.
I was expecting character development, as they did condense it to a 4 man team, but
nothing really happened there.
I was expecting a vast world to be explored, which there is, but it's kind of empty.
I was expecting some really cool end game dungeons, but the seal dungeons… no!
Those things aren't dungeons, they're mind numbing, repetitive, battle arenas!
Character customisation seems to be getting more sparse as the series trots along.
Mini-Games like the Chocobo Races, which are fun, don't yield any real rewards, or they
do give great rewards, but are long and boring, like Justice Monster 5.
The story of the game I found to be rather flat as well, then again I didn't bother
watching Brotherhood or Kingsglaive, so maybe it gets better with that…
I didn't have to watch anything for Final Fantasy X or XII to enjoy it though, and I
love the plot in those two games, just saying.
When all's said and done, my expectations were heavily let down and I guess that's
fine, I know other people are really happy with the game.
I do wonder though, if Final Fantasy XIII wasn't as bad as it was and if it didn't
have that negative stigma, would people really be all that content with Final Fantasy XV?
A game that was announced 10 years ago and delivered in the state it is now?
Sure, a lack of content can be patched up in post, Street Fighter V was my most played
game of 2016 and it's probably not going to change in 2017… although Monster Hunter
XX is coming which…
nevermind, my point is; if you check my video on SFV, it's not like I went easy on that
one either, so I don't think that I am being unfair here.
I do have the season pass for Final Fantasy XV so I will be checking out the DLC and who
knows, maybe there is some absolutely amazing stuff coming down the pipeline, but as it
stands now, I have no intention of starting up another run through the game.
I got my platinum trophy and finished up every dungeon and quest available even after that,
so I really have had my fill.
As mentioned in the beginning, this is my personal opinion, if you enjoy the game, that's
fantastic.
Be sure to let me know in the comments what you enjoyed and what you disliked about the
game, I'd be more than happy to see more individual takes.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!
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