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Into the Light - Final Fantasy XV Review - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Into the Light - Final Fantasy XV Review - MMORPG.com
10 years were spent creating this latest opus by Square Enix. Did they hit the mark? Read on for Rob’s thoughts in his review.
Comments
"A review copy of Final Fantasy XV was provided by Square Enix's North American PR team"
i hope they filled your pocket because last time i read of a site badmouthing ff15, they got permabanned from squreenix marketing. Give it a real score like 7.5 of 10- and it would been the last time u ever recived support from that company.
The problem is not the score itself, the game isnt bad, but its certainly not a final fantasy. So i think as somehting ells it might have a score of 9.0, but as a final fantasy game 7.5 is more realistic. Seems like they tried to copy to much of Witcher 3.
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Sorry, just wishing out loud.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Grab a quest to get an item. Watch the car drive itself for 3-6 minutes. Get item and return it.
That Ascension grid is also easily the worst progression system in a Final Fantasy series bar none.
In my opinion the game is all style and no substance. I would say the game deserves a 7 at most.
Lets be honest nice graphics and music on an rpg doesnt make up for an average story with horrible subquests.
If this game didnt have plastered FF XV on it would be valued much lower by every game critic which is kinda hypocrithal
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I don't agree with you on that. Final Fantasy XIII had the same name plastered on it and still did horrible in reviews. While you cannot guarantee that every review is unbiased, you shouldn't doubt it right away either.
Its a spin off , they just took so fuckin long making this game they thought "fuck it lets just call this ff15"
I bought this game last week and played it for 2 days then took it back to the shop and traded it in , its NOT A final fantasy game, dont care what anyone says , ive played final fantasy since 90s and this isnt one, if this is the future for final fantasy then the franchise is dead for me doesnt even feel like the same genre , no magic dealers , 99% mele , drive around in a car by holding r2 for minutes at a time... no proper summons , boring emo characters you cant even control them either , since when is final fantasy a 1 character game... the game is dog shit only kids born in the last decade or adults that never liked the other final fantasys would think this is a ff game,
will final fantasy 7 remake be any better ? pfft no doubt they will ruin that too ps. can someone link me a proper review which isnt full of promoting, all i seem to read is how wonderful the game is and most the comments say opposite so their must be a review that tells it how it is , i foolishly read articals like this one and was fooled into buying this pos , maybe a real review can save someone the nuisance of buying something labelled final fantasy which is really a poor clone of witcher 3
1. It was made by Square Enix.
2. It is a new unique world just like every game in the series before it.
3. It has a plethora of references to older Final Fantasy games.
It's a Final Fantasy game.
It's funny how you anti-fanbois always show your faces whenever a new Final Fantasy comes out, spouting all these crappy reasons not to even try to be objective.
What is the honest truth about the series so far? With every game, from the very first, the developers have tried to change the way it plays. They tried to change the way it looks, the way it functions, and the way it influences the genre.
New combat systems, new summon systems, new leveling systems, new, new new.
Final Fantasy HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT A SPECIFIC STANDARD. They would have made games like this one 20 damn years ago if there weren't the technical limitations back then.
It is seriously time to stop letting your nostalgia dictate your opinion on everything. New is not bad, and since SQUARE ENIX has kept the same track record as SQUARESOFT, you can expect the next Final Fantasy to be different as well. P.S. I'm not saying I like this game. But at least I'm not so pathetic and petty as to claim that this isn't a Final Fantasy game just because it doesn't play like games did years ago.
For me the last truly great FF to have it all was IX and now this one comes along which almost, but not completely, matches it. Like I said, it has heart, it has soul, mechanics have never been the strong parts of JRPGs. I think the 9 is well deserved. The game is an absolute beast, a rough, unrefined, exciting diamond, it is the anti FF13 game that I've been praying for.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Not that there is really anything wrong with a game being enjoyable, easy (i.e. not too difficult), and short (i.e. not wearing out it's welcome), but if you are looking for / expecting something deeper, more challenging, or with a longer run time (all of which the FF series has been known for at various points) then you are likely to be disapointed by such games.
On XV specifically (yes, I refuse to call if Final Fantasy), I'm wondering, for those that enjoyed it, in another 10 years do you think you will look back on it as a classic that you want to re-play? Or was it just an enjoyable time while it lasted?
15 deserves a run for me. From what I have read and seen, it still seems to be more in the vein 12 than that of 10 or 13, where you can "get off the rails" and progress your characters. It does seem like it lacks 12's masterpiece progression system, and the lack of magic is a bit off putting. But it also seems to lack the character swapping, which means less grind overall, which might not be that bad actually.
9 in an honest review from a critic I tend to appreciate the opinion of is a good motivator. I may wait a few months for the price to drop a bit, or find a used copy, but I really do look forward to playing this game.
"I still find the responsiveness of the controls in combat at times a bit sluggish but overall I’m still impressed."
"Sure it’s not the turn based combat I grew up on but change is good. I do hope they go back to a turn based style in a future entry though."
"I never thought I’d find myself caring about a boy band before but by the time this story reached its end I was truly touched by the outcome. The story was shorter than what most have come to expect from a Final Fantasy game."
"I don’t feel the need for a game to have an overly complex and lengthy story to be a great game. I would have liked for Square Enix to spend more time developing some of the secondary characters though."
"I’ve seen Kingsglaive and between that movie and the game I had no idea why Ravus took the path that he did. What he did in the game seemed almost the exact opposite of who he was in the movie. I do feel the main narrative was developed enough though I understood why the main characters made the decisions they did and understood why the game resolved the way it did."
"The world of Eos is huge and beautiful and full of things to do. What the game is lacking in a main story it feels the developers tried to compensate with other things to fill the void."
"There is a ton crammed into the world. A lot of it feels like it was made to be completed after you finish the main story"
"For the first 8 chapters you can roam the world and do pretty much whatever you can get away with depending on what level you are. Towards the end you start getting funneled towards the final climax and once you jump on the track you are uniformly pushed forward towards your goal."
"While I found a lot of the hunts rather mundane, and a lot of quests seem like glorified fetch, or FedEx quests, some of the hunts are spectacular."
"Final Fantasy XV is by no means a perfect game. There is a lot of potential and some of it does feel squandered but even with it’s shortcomings I truly enjoyed the adventure."
"The developers took risks and some of them paid off while others feel a little flat."
I mean, I guess the final paragraph finally starts to sound something like what someone rating the game a 9 would say, but otherwise, this review is probably the most topsy-turvy review I've ever seen. Granted, that's likely more due to the game than the reviewer considering that the fanbase itself is going topsy turvy over this one due to it's obvious polarizing nature.
Should it be rated a 9 that is up to every person to decide themselves. For me it is closer to an 8 or maybe 7.5. A lot of the side quest are generic and seam tacked on. The car was a horrible idea that is just a time waster IMO. The story is written very well as is to be expected in the series. I rather enjoy the take on magic this time with the way the system works. Not a huge fan of the ascension leveling even though it is a different approach. I do like the resting to gain levels though.
The best part of this game for me right now is the fact that the developers have already decided that they will keep adding to the game, a lot of it will be free updates, some of them look really interesting. So in that respect it will be better than the older games as it will be updated and have more content added to it as time goes on.
The biggest issue I have ran across in the game as of now is a bug where the game will crash if I select to do auto driving to a quest. I have just started to save before I drive every time to avoid losing any progress. I have had this happen 4 times within 15 hours of playtime.
FFXV is nowhere near the perfect game but it is definitely going in a great direction. There are so many more possibilities to explore with the new battle mechanics, etc, imagine being able to play multiplayer with friends over the PSN or Xbox networks each person controlling a key character in the new FF universe, able to drop in and out easily and continue to progress offline and online all the same. Who knows what will happen next, only Square will be able to tell us that but I really hope they get out of their comfort zone(s) and really push the envelope in terms of battle mechanics, story telling and definitely level design (this one needs some much needed improvement). Remember risks are where it's at, the company in it's darkest hour was nearly bankrupt and put out one final game, the big risk taker which made Square it is today. They need to continue pushing their games.
I for one give FFXV an 8.5/10.
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mmorpg junkie since 1999
pErgoProxyDecay said: Less features? I thought 13 was awfully restricted with very little to do, I find this game to have tons and tons of features, more then most FF games actually, with its open world part having much more activities then those.
The game isn't perfect at all and is quite rough around the edges. But it is exciting, refreshing and doing new stuff, it has heart and soul aplenty. That is what the FF series stands for for me, not its battle mechanics or other technical stuff, just a heart and a soul.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I'll just comment on a few points:
The strong points of the game are the size of some enemies and chocobos. The fishing mini game is also the best I've played in an rpg/mmo. That's really it though.
Combat is ok against one big enemy, but tedious and frustrating against multiple mobs. At any rate its nowhere near as good as say Dragon's Dogma combat. The "open world" is not actually open and is full off invisible walls- not to mention the world itself makes no sense, has no internal consistency.
The npcs just stand in one spot repeating the same comment over and over. You can't interact with the world like you can in say Skyrim- it feels like a painting you move around in rather than a living breathing world. In fact, basically you can't interact with anything.
You will spend much time in loading screens and watching your car drive to the next quest hub. It has a "dangerous" night, but where is the realism? When it is night or in a cave Noctus emits this big light in front of him- he is not holding a torch or anything, its just weird. And you can just easily run away from monsters anyway: talking of which the mobs are on a ridiculously short leash- if you move away a few meters to reposition the end of combat "results" screen pops up.
And talking of mobs- they spawn almost like in an mmo: you know just standing around in an area for no reason waiting to get slaughtered by a passing adventurer? In good open world games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dragons Dogma etc you get some sense of reason behind why a mob exists: also in good games the mobs have intelligence far beyond just rotating through attack patterns.
There is so much more that is basically just mediocre about this game: from the mindbogglingly boring start, the party mechanics, almost total lack of visual character customization (weapons, armor etc), the terrible music particularly in the early zones, the lackluster magic system, uninspired quests, lack of meaningful choices, it goes on and on.
And probably the most damning issue is that it lacks a sense of "fantasy". The game is so terribly mundane and it feels like monsters have been just randomly tossed into the mix and for the most part don't seem to mesh.
Everything works "ok" and there are some memorable moments so if you are a fan of final fantasy and rpgs its worth a buy, but there is nothing exceptional or brilliant about it that could classify it as a classic.
Different strokes for different folks. Just one thing that stuck out, I have seen NO game that does combat as good as Dragons Dogma does it, NONE. Especially not games like Skyrim or Witcher 3 in which I find combat to be the weakest point. I also vastly prefer FF 15 to these two, Dragons Dogma is amazing though
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
And yeah, your point about different strokes is right: probably if this were in the same world as FF14 with all the cool armor/weapons lore etc it would be much more appealing to me.
9 out of 10 though? That's near perfect. That's saying an entire chapter of the game isn't being re-designed because it was complete ass. That's saying the combat was overly shallow with weak spell system that was dominated by warp-strike. That's saying that main antagonist had proper motivation. That's saying that the ending wasn't the most tripe and lazy final fantasy ending to date. That's saying the Bahamut's and Ifirit's FFXV incarnations are not the worst in the series, and if you think this is nitpicking, imagine if they made Chocobo's in to New York taxi-cabs instead. That's saying the final battle was worth the wait, that the final battle wasn't one of the most anti-climactic final battles in FF history. That's saying that there isn't a fuckton of content that was cut and will be resold to the players as DLC in order to make up giant 9:1 deficit that created in this game's development cycle.
Giving this game a 9/10 is simply doing a disservice to what readers still come to this site. It's definitely a 7.5 at best. Personally I'd give it a 7 for the simple audacity to consider itself a Final Fantasy game.
Rob answered more nicely than I probably would have. If you discredit a review because it was provided by a publisher, you should stop reading professional reviews period. It has worked that way for years. The insinuation that Rob was paid off is just silly. Since all of us work normal day jobs, you can rest assured we're not getting rich writing game reviews. And seriously, if Square was going to pay anyone off, it wouldn't be a comparatively modest site like ours.
I respect people who disagree with review scores until it gets rude with implications that the reviewer was paid off because their opinion disagrees with yours. We can have a discussion without becoming so arrogant that our opinion is the only valid one. That is exactly what makes people think the gaming community is toxic.