Frustrating. So many good ideas in such a mediocre package. Some of the most interesting landmarks I’ve ever seen but scattered throughout an empty boring world. Amazing lore and world that can only be read about in books rather than told through the game. A wildly interesting antagonist but only becomes interesting once you do your own background research because the game doesn’t present it to you. A variety of ways to level up your party and vary play, but given to the player as a skill tree with like 10 categories and hundreds of options immediately on opening the game and with no explanation. There is so so much to love about this game, but almost every positive has an equally as potent negative.

Let’s start with what tends to be the most memorable things in a JRPG, the characters and story. I need to start with saying that I really like this main cast. The brotherhood they share is remarkable, and through their journey, their quiet moments, their fights with each other, their triumphs and their personal struggles, you can really feel the love they share for eachother. I especially adore Noctis. His character, his design, his arc, his relatability- this is a character I’ll be thinking about for a long time. On the other hand you’ve got the villains and side characters. Apart from the major antagonist, pretty undercooked and disappointing. Some show real potential, like Aranea, Luna, and Ravus, but these moments are inconsistent. However, they are much better than some of the other villains that they clearly had no idea what to do with. I will say though, every single one of these characters can dress! I really loved the fashion in this game. Not an aspect I’d ever bring up in a review, but this game is special. From the main casts all black gear by Roen, to Luna’s dresses by Vivienne Westwood, to other characters original fits like Ardyn and Iris - these characters might be nearing an apocalypse, but they’re still slaying. As for the story, very inconsistent and weird pacing, but it has extreme highs. As mentioned earlier, disappointing the game doesn’t explain the workings of its lore and history to the player though.

As for the gameplay, combat is very basic but it’s also not boring. It’s very simple and easy, but it won’t have you avoiding battles to avoid tedium like other games would. Fun when it’s fun, and not painful when it’s not fun, so I can’t complain, just wish for a little more here.

Due to the nature of my completionst play style, the game started off extremely slow to me. The game offers you a ton of side quests to do and I ate them up. However, I actually started to have fun once i stopped doing all these awful side quests and just focused on the story. Please don’t bother if you play this game, there is absolutely nothing to them - just go here and get beans or catch frogs or kill some rabbits or something and then come back. it feels like a 2010 open world cosplaying as a 2016 one.

Now for exploration, unfortunately the game has what I like to call obligated open world syndrome. So many games in the 2010s felt the need to create an explorable open world, just because that was the trend in design at the time, when in reality a focused game would be much better, and FFXV is a prime example. The world is just big for the sake of being big. Offering very cool places to visit but stretches of nothing in between. It results in these long sequences of automatic driving between your destinations, in which you can do nothing but watch the distance meter gradually fall as you wait to arrive. There is just simply very little reason to go off the beaten path in this game, just stick to the map locations. Almost humorously, at least the game knows. Halfway through, FFXV takes you out if it’s open world and onto a linear experience to actual tell the story it wants to. In this second half you see far more interesting things in a focused way, and I can’t help but imagine if this game just did this for its entire duration that it might be better.

Another common complaint with this game is its messy multimedia story telling , with its anime and movie. I have to admit though, I’m kind of a sucker for this stuff, and i genuinely enjoyed both. In fact it makes me wish every future Final Fantasy game has a full length feature film to show you it’s world, characters and combat through a different form of media. Just me?

Lastly, music is phenomenal. Yoko Shimomura really never misses, huh?

Unfortunately, you can just tell this is unfinished and bogged down in dev politics. I had fun and loved a lot of it, but I WISH so badly that I lived in the alternate universe where I could play the Final Fantasy XV that the developers actually envisioned. A masterpiece I should have loved but instead, a complete mess I found joy in.

I played this game with zero expectations and turned down that I enjoyed it.

I can see clearly why some FF fans hate this one. The car trips are, in most part, super boring, the combat, despite being good, it got so simplistic that can get repetitive in a certain point of the campaign.

The characters and story are well made. Ardyn is a cool villian, he is not as good as Sephiroth for example, but still a good character.

In general, I enjoyed this game, but it could have been even better. You can see clearly that this game went through delevopment hell. Royal edition fix many of its problems, but no every single one of them.