wait…..even after all those updates ;;
hi
You can't patch a game that was clearly stuck in development hell for over half a decade into a good game, Alastor.
It's incredible just how much of a mess this game is. From a narrative perspective it's as much, if not more, of a car crash as any Final Fantasy game.
Really important, pivotal plot beats happen off screen and in an anime, and simply aren't addressed in the game because it was apparently decided that this was too difficult. I reached the end of Chapter 5 last night and it introduced a new character; some guy in white with a sword that made Noct and his pals look like utter chumps. The supposed shields of the prince got fucking clowned on by this guy in less than a second and then he just kind of stopped because reasons? The characters are all suffering from some major multiple personality disorder. Also there's a dog delivery system. I've been playing DQ11 at the same time, and for some reason when it goes 'ah! The Knights of Heliodor! They're bastards!' or whatever I go "okay, that is a thing from the world that I now know and can expect to show up later-" whereas when this goes 'the archaea is responsible for holding up the meteor and this is an important factor in our worship' I can just put that idea in the fucking bin because that's where it came from/where it belongs.
The fanservice stuff makes my fucking skin crawl.
It has no idea what it wants its identity to be. Is it an Advent Children cyberpunk-ish futuristic story, with power plants, drop-troopers and dudes in black clothing? Is it medieval European, with kings and knights and swords? Is it Monster Hunter?
There are 5 maps, all of which show the same information, none of which show the information you want, and none of them have quick travel.
There are so many system that don't line up with anything else and don't seem like they were thought through in a meaningful way. In Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, there's a thing called an Inspiration Die. Inspiration is different from Bardic Inspiration, even though it kind of does the same thing. Inspiration is something the GM can give to a player as a booster for an action they're going to take. It appears on every official character sheet. It has 3 paragraphs of text explaining what it is in the PHB and that's it. It is never used anywhere else, it doesn't tie into anything, and the developers of 5th edition have said that it was an idea they came up with, kind of liked, didn't know what to do with, didn't want to get rid of it in case they wanted to do something with it later, and it just kind of stuck around.
That is pretty much everything about Final Fantasy 15. Just different ideas that someone went 'oh man, that'd be cool' and then half implemented a half thought out idea in a half assed way leaving us with one eighth of a shit game system. Maybe it's having to press three buttons to collect a material node. Maybe it's the fact Prompto can take photographs of things in a fight but you never actually would do that. Maybe it's the way you have to rent chocobos from a vendor, call them with a whistle, get on them. Maybe it's that there's a chocobo levelling system that apparently means it can help you in a fight. Or it's the way that the chocobos sprint button and jump buttons are different from your sprint and jump button. Or maybe it's just how deep the chocobo customisation thing is.
All of that shit leads into the concept of 'chocobo' but that's a total dead end.
And the Regalia. Fuck me, this car is just awful. It's slow, ugly and sounds dreadful. More than that, it's absolutely no fun to drive. I hit a bit where they game said 'you may now control the Regalia!' and I was like 'oh, fuck, did this game just give me my Mass Effect Mako is it about to get fun?' Tabata then leant over my shoulder and went 'hahah no, no, friend.'
The control you have over it is 'you can turn it 90 degrees at intersections' and 'you can swerve a bit in your lane' but otherwise that's your lot.
I have no idea how but it's like everything from GTA3 onwards simply didn't happen to the people that made this game. Like, the idea of player freedom, or of things having any degree of consistency, is such an alien concept that it was excised with all the grace of an axe murderer excising my head from my shoulders.
The absolute worst thing about this - the thing that stands head and shoulders above it all - is how when I play it, I stop and think to myself 'holy shit this would have been such a better game if Ubisoft made it.' That might be the most damning thing I can say about it.
3/10.
