Maybe a little late to the party here but I got FF15 as a Christmas present and have been slowly working my way through the game to the point were I am now a few moments away from the Final boss fight. So firstly let's make this clear, chances are this post will have spoilers of some sort or another and second I am by no means a game reviewer or a writer these are just the thoughts of a long time FF fan who left the series and gave this game a chance because it actually looked pretty good.
So here goes.
Final Fantasy 15 came so close to being good, I would even say a great FF game but having gotten to the end of the game I can now say that this game is a serious swing and a miss for the series. Now my history with the games started with FF7 and went through all of them, two sometimes even three playthroughs right up until I gave up half way through FF13. I returned to the series when it looked like FF15 was actually going to be really really good and my god does it come close and until around the 30 - 40 hour mark I was pretty much sold on this new game.
Open world, real time combat, this was a far removal from the turn based random encounters I loved so much in those early FF games, but it's something that Square have been moving towards slowly but surely with the last 3 FF games; FF12, 13 and 15. The thing is I don't hate the combat, it's alright, not poor, just alright. Save the camera being an utter arse the combat is pretty fun and not to bad to look at but fuck me if it isn't shallow and lacking in any real complexity.
All battles can be summed up as warp to enemy, dodge roll, spam hi potion, rinse repeat and this simplicity in combat extends to all aspects of the game. Character development is simple lacking in any complexity or strategy in character setup, remember choosing the Tank, the curer, the black mage, setting up characters to enhance and capitalize on their abilities, yeah nothing even close to that here. Max HP, Max Attack that's you sorted, it's not that the enemies don't have weaknesses or that you can make strategies to help you in comabt it's that the basic combat move of warp strike, dodge, hi potion spam works so effectively and the things like enemies induced status effects are so ineffective, proving nothing more than an announce than a proper fight turning event, that their is no point in working on deep strategy.
Remember this is a game series that had players working through any number of complex materia, weapon and armour setups in FF7 trying to find the most efficient method to allow people to spam Knights of the Round, FF15 has nothing even close to this level of strategy. This is evident when it turns out their are only four magics in the entire game and that magic, like status effects and unique and involved character setup takes a serious backseat, and that seat is marked 'it's in here but you can ignore me if you want.'
So the story, development of and game structure. The story is crap, I got to the final chapter and only by then did I finally have a general idea what the hell was going on and even then I still couldn't work out WHY the main antagonist is doing what he is doing, I get the impression that somewhere along the line Iam suppossed to have gotten in to all this additional material that has been launched to explain the back story to FF15 but here's the thing none of the other FF games had this, they had structured well told stories that told the player what was going on and why via the game so you started the game knowing nothing and ended knowing who the bad guy was, who the good guy was and why the bad guy was the bad guy.
I suspect that part of this issue with the story is the way in which it s told, the main quest only develops when the player does main quest missions the problem lies in that an awful lot of the first 30 or so hours I spent doing side missions to help level my characters and this is another area where the game fails. Previous FF games had side missions but they always felt as part and parcel of the greater story, you encountered them on the path of the main story and usually had them wrapped up by the time you moved on from your current area to the next area. At one point I spent ten hours in FF15 just monster hunting fliting back and forth between locations. IN previous FF games this would have been an objective to complete before moving on to the final boss encounter but in this game most of the side quests just seemed to be distractions from the main quest.
So the main quest itself, looking back retrospectively, crap, lacking in any granduer what so ever. Again previous FF games looking back you end up thinking my god I travelled all over this world, visited all these places, did all this stuff, built a party of utter gods and went and fucked up the bad guy. This game feels like you could blow through the main quest in a few hours if you chose to ignore most if not all the daft side missions, the thing is I suspect you would struggle with not being quite a high enough level in the latter half of the game, which leads me on to the final big issue with the games story and structure.
Up till Chapter 8 you have free reign of this massive world, you then get on the boat to go meet Lunaferya and from that point onwards you are railroaded in to a linear world that takes you straight to the final boss fight, with the last three chapters being tedious, boring and actually containing quick time jump scares. Every other game you had free access to the hub world until you went to a specific location and you knew that when you went to this location you would be on a tough path that would end with you fighting the big bad. When I jumped on that boat at the half way point of the game I had no idea that I would be on a straight line course through some of the dullest easiest most tedious gameplay that would eventually lead me to the big bad. I suspect that part way through development someone put their hand up and said 'uh what if the player isn't a high enough level to progress, what do they do then?' Well they use a stupid time travel mechanic accessed through a fucking Dog that allows them to return to the hub world.
Chapter 9 onwards is where FF15 fell apart for me with Chapter 13 sealing the 'miss' verdict.
So anyone new to FF given this a try, what did you think, better yet for the vets of the series would you agree that this was a FF for fans new and old? As an old fan I would say no it wasn't.
So here goes.
Final Fantasy 15 came so close to being good, I would even say a great FF game but having gotten to the end of the game I can now say that this game is a serious swing and a miss for the series. Now my history with the games started with FF7 and went through all of them, two sometimes even three playthroughs right up until I gave up half way through FF13. I returned to the series when it looked like FF15 was actually going to be really really good and my god does it come close and until around the 30 - 40 hour mark I was pretty much sold on this new game.
Open world, real time combat, this was a far removal from the turn based random encounters I loved so much in those early FF games, but it's something that Square have been moving towards slowly but surely with the last 3 FF games; FF12, 13 and 15. The thing is I don't hate the combat, it's alright, not poor, just alright. Save the camera being an utter arse the combat is pretty fun and not to bad to look at but fuck me if it isn't shallow and lacking in any real complexity.
All battles can be summed up as warp to enemy, dodge roll, spam hi potion, rinse repeat and this simplicity in combat extends to all aspects of the game. Character development is simple lacking in any complexity or strategy in character setup, remember choosing the Tank, the curer, the black mage, setting up characters to enhance and capitalize on their abilities, yeah nothing even close to that here. Max HP, Max Attack that's you sorted, it's not that the enemies don't have weaknesses or that you can make strategies to help you in comabt it's that the basic combat move of warp strike, dodge, hi potion spam works so effectively and the things like enemies induced status effects are so ineffective, proving nothing more than an announce than a proper fight turning event, that their is no point in working on deep strategy.
Remember this is a game series that had players working through any number of complex materia, weapon and armour setups in FF7 trying to find the most efficient method to allow people to spam Knights of the Round, FF15 has nothing even close to this level of strategy. This is evident when it turns out their are only four magics in the entire game and that magic, like status effects and unique and involved character setup takes a serious backseat, and that seat is marked 'it's in here but you can ignore me if you want.'
So the story, development of and game structure. The story is crap, I got to the final chapter and only by then did I finally have a general idea what the hell was going on and even then I still couldn't work out WHY the main antagonist is doing what he is doing, I get the impression that somewhere along the line Iam suppossed to have gotten in to all this additional material that has been launched to explain the back story to FF15 but here's the thing none of the other FF games had this, they had structured well told stories that told the player what was going on and why via the game so you started the game knowing nothing and ended knowing who the bad guy was, who the good guy was and why the bad guy was the bad guy.
I suspect that part of this issue with the story is the way in which it s told, the main quest only develops when the player does main quest missions the problem lies in that an awful lot of the first 30 or so hours I spent doing side missions to help level my characters and this is another area where the game fails. Previous FF games had side missions but they always felt as part and parcel of the greater story, you encountered them on the path of the main story and usually had them wrapped up by the time you moved on from your current area to the next area. At one point I spent ten hours in FF15 just monster hunting fliting back and forth between locations. IN previous FF games this would have been an objective to complete before moving on to the final boss encounter but in this game most of the side quests just seemed to be distractions from the main quest.
So the main quest itself, looking back retrospectively, crap, lacking in any granduer what so ever. Again previous FF games looking back you end up thinking my god I travelled all over this world, visited all these places, did all this stuff, built a party of utter gods and went and fucked up the bad guy. This game feels like you could blow through the main quest in a few hours if you chose to ignore most if not all the daft side missions, the thing is I suspect you would struggle with not being quite a high enough level in the latter half of the game, which leads me on to the final big issue with the games story and structure.
Up till Chapter 8 you have free reign of this massive world, you then get on the boat to go meet Lunaferya and from that point onwards you are railroaded in to a linear world that takes you straight to the final boss fight, with the last three chapters being tedious, boring and actually containing quick time jump scares. Every other game you had free access to the hub world until you went to a specific location and you knew that when you went to this location you would be on a tough path that would end with you fighting the big bad. When I jumped on that boat at the half way point of the game I had no idea that I would be on a straight line course through some of the dullest easiest most tedious gameplay that would eventually lead me to the big bad. I suspect that part way through development someone put their hand up and said 'uh what if the player isn't a high enough level to progress, what do they do then?' Well they use a stupid time travel mechanic accessed through a fucking Dog that allows them to return to the hub world.
Chapter 9 onwards is where FF15 fell apart for me with Chapter 13 sealing the 'miss' verdict.
So anyone new to FF given this a try, what did you think, better yet for the vets of the series would you agree that this was a FF for fans new and old? As an old fan I would say no it wasn't.
