I didn't play other FF yet, but XV I was enjoying just at the begin and, as the time and history roll on, I just wanna finish soon as possible. To understand all the content that game delivery you will need to watch the movie made explaining the history before the game tell his own history. The game show us a open world and many boring side quests to do, but when the game is in the middle It become extremely linear. The history and characters didn't get me and the RPG combat can be useless if you make side quests and buy good itens like armor and weapons.

Final Fantasy XV is the absolute epitome of a mixed bag. There are some great touches around an otherwise mediocre and unfocused game, to a point that it's very clear to the player this it suffered a long period of development hell.

The story is the skeleton of a standard JRPG - you are a stylish teenager who is destined to save the world from a generic evil. Unfortunately, there's very little else on top of that to really flesh it out. The vast majority of the plot happens in the 2nd half of the game and feels like a treadmill of events and characters that you don't really know or have any connection to. In fact, the 2nd half does away with the open world altogether and makes me wonder if it was developed by an entirely different team.

Through the game you visit a number of locations, but even just a few months after finishing the game I wasn't able to describe any of them in more detail than "the truck stop with a garage" or "a coastal town."

Every location is just a five-minute drive away, making the whole world feel very small. Normally I'd be okay with this, but the story takes an apocalyptic turn later on (because of course it does) and I can't tell if the entire world is under threat or just this tiny area that I'm limited to. That being said, the open world looks absolutely gorgeous and it's satisfying to just drive slowly to your next location to take in the scenery and maybe snap a few photos along the way.

Speaking of photos, that's probably the one feature that I can unreservedly praise. One of your travel buddies, Prompto, will take snaps throughout your adventure - always during the main story beats but often just in the middle of a random encounter or while exploring the world. At the end of each chapter, or when you give your party a rest at a campfire, you can look over all the photos taken during the last session and keep your favourites. It doesn't sound like much, but it is a surprisingly effective way of creating fond memories of your travels, be it a beautiful landscape or the very first time you fought a Morbol and had to run away. Somehow, I was getting nostalgic looking at photographs of an adventure that I wasn't even invested in while it was happening.

All this makes me sound like I hated the game, but I didn't - or at least I don't think I did. Final Fantasy XV is, admittedly, less than the sum of its parts - but there was just something about it that made me root for the game to be better than it was. I can't explain why I have fond feelings towards Final Fantasy XV, despite not having fond memories of it. There's some alternate universe out there where this game was completed smoothly and was able to fulfil the vision that it's going for.

If there's any game that deserves a "re-imagining" in five years' time, it's this.

BOI, I have so much to say about this game that the only thing I'm going to say is that this game had SO much potencial. And it's a shame that with a game this big, their characters and plot don't follow it. DLC for characters that never came to be (god why u had to cancel the Lunafreya one) and plot holes with poor DLC to fill them (the only one that gat me excited was Ignis', and maybe Gladio's, but Prompto, for me, was a bit boring).

And, even with all that flaws, I've enjoyed it. Its a journey that I've enjoyed, and I can't judge it. I get so attached to this game since the release of Versus XIII's anouncement that is a part of my "nostalgia bucket", and is a game that, ever with all it's contras, I like. I like FFXV. Good bye.

An enjoyable game with lots of potential, that was too ambitious for its own good. Final Fantasy XV is a (mostly) open world ARPG that spread itself too thin by trying to do too many things, affecting every part of the game.

For an action RPG, the combat is pretty shallow, being mostly button-mashing circle to execute an attack and triangle to warp to the next enemy. There are various set pieces, especially near the latter half of the game. While they are mostly visually nice to see, they force you through some patronizing quick time events. At those points I'd rather just put the controller down and let the set pieces play out.

The worlds that the game crafts are stunning, though fairly barren as it has a handful of large maps, which are the main open world, several multi-floor dungeons, and the two cities that appear in the final chapters. And as vast as these worlds may be, they are equally overly restrictive. Some small ledges you can't hop over or drop down, forcing you to walk all the way around. In cities and some select segments, you are forced to move at a light jog, making it feel like it takes forever to get from one point to another.

As for traversing the open world, initially driving is very restrictive, being forced to stay on the main road, making you have to run (with limited running stamina) if its in the middle of a field. Thankfully, after some side quests, chocobos are unlocked to make that travel a bit easier, as well as an upgrade to the car that allows you to drive almost anywhere.

Button prompts throughout the game though are a nightmare. With jumping being tied to the same button as the action button, it is a terrible time trying to pick stuff up / activating some objects. Additionally, picking stuff up also takes way too long. You can only pick items up one at a time, and it has to play the entire animation with some additional load time right after before you can pick up the next thing.

The story crafted needs too much backstory for all of its characters, most of which are supplemented through DLCs or by other means such as movies and novels. As such, only playing the game will leave you with many questions like what are the motives, rules of the world, or why you're even doing what you're asked to.

SPOILER SECTION:
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The best parts of the game revolve around the open world, but once it gets to the latter 2/3rd of the game, it takes a big nose dive until the final chapter.

Chapters 10 through 13, a section which drags on for far too long, forces you to traverse Niflheim, with all of it being just narrow corridors into small rooms. Prior to this though, Noctis is separated from Gladiolus and Ignis, and without warning, the game forces you to decide between two paths. At least they added the option to play the alternate path in the main menu.

The game completely flips on its head by making this the most restrictive section of the game, and completely changing tone into a weak horror game. The corridors are littered with repetitive jump scares and loud music. It definitely overstayed its welcome.
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