I’ve been a Final Fantasy lover for about 30 years, and was mega excited when FFXV launched… only to be massively disappointed. It felt unfinished, bland, and uninteresting.
So I kind of dreaded playing this again, ten years later. It’s been sitting in my library for a while though, taunting me, as one of few FF games I haven’t 100%ed. So it was time.
I’ve got to say I was pleasantly surprised. Much has been improved from the initial release, and DLCs help to flesh out the characters. However… it’s still among the worst in the series, in my humble opinion. The battle system has very little depth, the story leaves a few things to be desired, and it just doesn’t have that magical feeling like the older entries. While it was the first real open world game of the series, I feel it tried a bit too hard to be something it’s not.
Also, some very weird quality of life decisions lowers the score in my book.
– Why does Noctis have to stop after every single battle to look down/wipe his hands/stretch? It would be one thing if it happened before I could start running, but it’s a small but vastly irritating delay. So I start running for a second, then stop, and have to restart the running. Repeat a thousand times. It takes away the flow of the game.
– Why (at least in some areas) can I not do ANYTHING without Magitek soldiers interrupting? Can I please just finish one hunt without people dropping in?
– And for the love of Bahamut, who thought it would be a good idea with a (relatively short) stamina gauge? It’s a huge world, but exploring it by foot is extremely tedious since Noctis gets out of breath every ten seconds which grinds everything to a halt.
So, a weak 7 out of 10 seems reasonable. Still a pretty good game and worth a recommendation, but I would honestly prefer any other Final Fantasy game between at least FFIV and FFX (and probably FFXII and FFXIII as well – the others show their age a bit too much, or are non-compareable MMORPGs).
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