This game is a mess, which isn’t surprising considering how its development went. That doesn’t make it bad per say, but it’s definitely not as good as it could have been and even makes it frustrating in some ways.
As far as gameplay goes, Final Fantasy XV is one of the most bland game i can think of. The combat isn’t terrible per say, but it just feels so boring. Attacking is done by holding a button (you can mash it instead i don’t know if it really makes a difference tho) and you have a few different moves depending on which direction you hold your stick in but at its core it just boils down to one simple act: holding a button, there’s no timing required, and the closest thing there is to combo would be that if you’re close to an ally/behind the enemy you have a chance to unleash a move with them. Dodging works very much the same, you just hold the block button. That’s it, no timing. Unless the attack is an AoE or there’s just a lot of attacks coming from every way at once just holding a button means you’ll dodge everything. Sure there are warp strikes and different weapon kinds with different movesets etc but at its core the combat is just very weak, and it’s made worse by how easy that game is. Unless you forcefully restrain yourself, dying is quite virtually impossible because once you die you can just use a phoenix down on yourself so unless you decide to use no items you really need to try hard to die. It’s also very easy to get overleveled: since the game is an open world with a lot of sidequests and hunts, if you’re like me and decide to do virtually every single one of them you come across you’ll end up way way way overlevel, for reference i finished chapter 3 after 27 hours and at level 46 while the recommended level is like 15 or something like that.
The pacing of the game is also extremely fucked up, the end of chapter 9 marks a big turn in the game tone which i’m totally not against but… I think the way everything from this point on goes so fast goes against it by not letting you process what’s happening. Sure, i did spend way too much time doing all the sidequest before that, but even then the last 5 chapters with the exception of the last one are all in a straight line, there’s no longer any open world to explore (you can technically go back to it but there’s nothing new there so if you’ve already done everything it’s kinda useless) and except for the much dreaded chapter 13, everything goes extremely fast, you don’t really have the time to catch a breather and think about what just happened. Some might say it helps show how fucked up everything is going since neither you the player nor the characters get time to breathe, but i personally think it’d have been better to let you spend more time in those parts of the game. The ending at least was extremely good, i just feel like everything leading to it was too rushed.
The story itself is also kinda eh for me. The main characters are really good, i love the bros and their bonds between each other, and Aldyn is a funny villain (he wears a fedora). But i find the plot simply not that engaging, which is something i’m totally ok with for once because of how strong the roadtrip feeling is (this game really is about the journey) and the ending also being very good. However i really hate how parts of the story is split outside of the main game: movie (which sucks), anime (which is decent with episode 2 being really really good), DLCs, books… Like i get this game got a fucked up development cycle but come on
Another point i’m really extremely underwhelmed about is the music. Final Fantasy has always been a series with OSTs of top tier quality, and this game’s ost is… Weird? First of all, it feels like they forgot to actually use it in the game, i learned there’s supposed to be an overworld theme AFTER beating the game because it takes so long to start you’ll likely never hear it because you’ll get into a fight before that, and it also doesn’t play if you’re on a chocobo or in the car which is how you’ll spend most of the time moving around. The car also doesn’t have any theme, you just either play the radio (which is old FF games song and a few ones from the DLCs/movies) or listen to nothing. Having listened to the full ost outside of the game, some of the tracks are really strong (somnus, Valse di Fantastica, the battle themes…) but a lot of them are also just ok or like.. They’re more like a movie score, like they’re not the kind of songs i’d listen to on a regular basis and i feel like they lack identity. The good songs are really good as expected from the series, but i just feel like overall that OST is pretty disappointing by being filled with a bunch of just eh songs, and due to how poorly implemented in the game it was.
Overall, FF15 is for me a pretty weird game. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and a lot of it is just very frustrating like you have to play a dlc released 3 years after the game to have the villain’s backstory/motivation which sounds insane to me like i’m totally fine with some things in games not being explained but in this case it’s not “not explained because they wanted to have it be a mystery up to everyone’s interpretation” it’s just not explained because they didn’t have the time to put it into the game. As I said above, this game is a big mess in a way that’s pretty frustrating, but honestly considering the development cycle it’s kinda a miracle that despite everything it’s still a decent experience
As far as gameplay goes, Final Fantasy XV is one of the most bland game i can think of. The combat isn’t terrible per say, but it just feels so boring. Attacking is done by holding a button (you can mash it instead i don’t know if it really makes a difference tho) and you have a few different moves depending on which direction you hold your stick in but at its core it just boils down to one simple act: holding a button, there’s no timing required, and the closest thing there is to combo would be that if you’re close to an ally/behind the enemy you have a chance to unleash a move with them. Dodging works very much the same, you just hold the block button. That’s it, no timing. Unless the attack is an AoE or there’s just a lot of attacks coming from every way at once just holding a button means you’ll dodge everything. Sure there are warp strikes and different weapon kinds with different movesets etc but at its core the combat is just very weak, and it’s made worse by how easy that game is. Unless you forcefully restrain yourself, dying is quite virtually impossible because once you die you can just use a phoenix down on yourself so unless you decide to use no items you really need to try hard to die. It’s also very easy to get overleveled: since the game is an open world with a lot of sidequests and hunts, if you’re like me and decide to do virtually every single one of them you come across you’ll end up way way way overlevel, for reference i finished chapter 3 after 27 hours and at level 46 while the recommended level is like 15 or something like that.
The pacing of the game is also extremely fucked up, the end of chapter 9 marks a big turn in the game tone which i’m totally not against but… I think the way everything from this point on goes so fast goes against it by not letting you process what’s happening. Sure, i did spend way too much time doing all the sidequest before that, but even then the last 5 chapters with the exception of the last one are all in a straight line, there’s no longer any open world to explore (you can technically go back to it but there’s nothing new there so if you’ve already done everything it’s kinda useless) and except for the much dreaded chapter 13, everything goes extremely fast, you don’t really have the time to catch a breather and think about what just happened. Some might say it helps show how fucked up everything is going since neither you the player nor the characters get time to breathe, but i personally think it’d have been better to let you spend more time in those parts of the game. The ending at least was extremely good, i just feel like everything leading to it was too rushed.
The story itself is also kinda eh for me. The main characters are really good, i love the bros and their bonds between each other, and Aldyn is a funny villain (he wears a fedora). But i find the plot simply not that engaging, which is something i’m totally ok with for once because of how strong the roadtrip feeling is (this game really is about the journey) and the ending also being very good. However i really hate how parts of the story is split outside of the main game: movie (which sucks), anime (which is decent with episode 2 being really really good), DLCs, books… Like i get this game got a fucked up development cycle but come on
Another point i’m really extremely underwhelmed about is the music. Final Fantasy has always been a series with OSTs of top tier quality, and this game’s ost is… Weird? First of all, it feels like they forgot to actually use it in the game, i learned there’s supposed to be an overworld theme AFTER beating the game because it takes so long to start you’ll likely never hear it because you’ll get into a fight before that, and it also doesn’t play if you’re on a chocobo or in the car which is how you’ll spend most of the time moving around. The car also doesn’t have any theme, you just either play the radio (which is old FF games song and a few ones from the DLCs/movies) or listen to nothing. Having listened to the full ost outside of the game, some of the tracks are really strong (somnus, Valse di Fantastica, the battle themes…) but a lot of them are also just ok or like.. They’re more like a movie score, like they’re not the kind of songs i’d listen to on a regular basis and i feel like they lack identity. The good songs are really good as expected from the series, but i just feel like overall that OST is pretty disappointing by being filled with a bunch of just eh songs, and due to how poorly implemented in the game it was.
Overall, FF15 is for me a pretty weird game. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and a lot of it is just very frustrating like you have to play a dlc released 3 years after the game to have the villain’s backstory/motivation which sounds insane to me like i’m totally fine with some things in games not being explained but in this case it’s not “not explained because they wanted to have it be a mystery up to everyone’s interpretation” it’s just not explained because they didn’t have the time to put it into the game. As I said above, this game is a big mess in a way that’s pretty frustrating, but honestly considering the development cycle it’s kinda a miracle that despite everything it’s still a decent experience