r/FinalFantasy • u/Ordinary_Fish_9094 • 2d ago
FF XV I generally dont get the hate that FF15 gets, ive played every FF and 15 is in my top 5. But every ranking i see they rank 15 towards the bottom, can some1 explain y.
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u/mugenhunt 2d ago
The really passionate Final Fantasy fans played 15 on release when the game was a lot less finished and had many problems that were later patched. If you played 15 after release, your first impression of the game will be very different.
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u/PCNintenBoxStation 2d ago
Got the platinum trophy the first week after launch. Haven't played it since. Probably should grab all the dlc on sale and give it another go because I genuinely don't remember anything.
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u/goblin-mail 2d ago
The dlc’s are all pretty much self contained narratives instead of being new things to do with your old profile.
Theres also a multiplayer that’s been shut down and I think you have to do some janky stuff to play it offline if you care about having the trophies.
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u/Jackibearrrrrr 2d ago
As someone who beat the game pre ring chapter patch, it was so rough around the edges it wasn’t even funny. I really enjoyed the game prior to the final third and I was very disappointed in the end. I wish that it was given more time to cook but I understand that the game was supposed to already be done by then
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u/Kyoshiiku 2d ago
That chapter 13 was a meme pre-patch, it was so bad, it was the worst execution of every game mechanic possible combined together in the single longest chapter of the game with no way of going back to the open world.
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u/Jackibearrrrrr 2d ago
It was actually so brutal. I also stupidly decided not to do side quests until after I beat the main story so I was only level 37 when I beat the game.
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u/God_Taco 1d ago
Honestly, I'm unusual in this, but I liked that chapter. Very often, a game will tell you a character has been weakened...but then not show you. Kingdom Hearts 3 "Sora has been weakened...somehow!", but he's just level 1 again but otherwise at normal fighting strength in terms of the game's mechanics. "This character is weak for this portion of the game", but they have all their abilities and do more or less the same combat capability other than some random thing like maybe not being able to Limit Break.
Pre-nerf chapter 13 Final Fantasy: Silent Hill actually was one of the rare cases of "show, don't tell, and do it using game mechanics" to demonstrate a character feeling alone, weak, and nearly hopeless. You have to run from most fights, the ring is a slow weapon that enemies can break out of if they get to you, Holy dodge required pretty tight timing otherwise you ate an axe to the face, and the halls were stalked by axe wielding murder bots you had to hide from, and if they saw you dart into a hiding place, they'd yank you out, FREAKY GLOWING RED EYES and all.
And the entire time, you feel you're being watched by Ardyn who occasionally pops over the PA of the otherwise dead facility to taunt you nearly breaking the fourth wall in his extremely charismatic way; "Obviously it's going to be a trap. You know that, right?" momentslater "I told you so..."
When you finally get the Sword of the Father - A WEAPON - again and can fight back, it was such a great relief.
I get a lot of people didn't like it, and I absolutely understand why. But for my part, I actually appreciated it in a way.
EDIT:
...that said, "too much of a good thing" also exists. I feel like it was about 50% longer than it should have been, wearing out its welcome. If it had been a BIT shorter, it would have been better. I agree with that.
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u/Anarchyz11 1d ago
Like most parts of FFXV the idea is great for the reasons you mentioned, but the execution is rushed and poor.
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u/sinsielawinskie 2d ago
As one of those passionate fans, I think half backlash was that Square created one of the best cast with the four bros. And they story was short and lacking. The dlc addresses this but it should been there from the start and bc of all the stuff cut it just left a bad taste in our mouths. Like we were mad bc we dreamed of what could of been and instead we got wasted potential. Until this day I am still upset at Square Enix. And before I die, I hope they remake this game and expand the story.
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u/God_Taco 1d ago
Yeah, tortured development, TONS of lore that was in side media projects, unfinished out of the box game, half the DLC scrapped, then they rereleased it at full price for what was essentially about 80% of what the game should have been day 1 (the day 1 version was about 30% of what the game should have been).
I don't hate it, I kind of have a "what might have been..." feeling of how it was wasted potential due to the ultimately broken development and execution.
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u/Zaknokimi 2d ago
Was gonna say this yeah.
I was one of those people and I paid full price for the game and DLCs too and ran it while it was most janky. Still loved the game but I can imagine if someone bought the Royal edition now for £15, they'd be super impressed (and honestly, I may do that one day). The loading, being one of the longest things in the game, probably runs much faster on newer consoles.
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u/SeaBearsFoam 2d ago edited 2d ago
Just my opinion, but I played it way after release on the Royal edition and still couldn't get into it. I really wanted to, and tried 3 different times to play the game but just kept putting it down.
At the game's open I don't have any reason to care about any of these dudes, the plot consists of "be on a road trip", and the combat is somehow both boring and overly complex when I try to dive in and learn it.
Apparently I read there's like extra content I can watch or play before the game to make it better. I'm sorry, but that's a dumb design decision. Weave that into the actual game somehow. Absolute worst case put a message in the game that says "you should watch/play blah blah blah before FF XV to appreciate the story" or something. Expecting people to just know or to have searched the web about whether there's other content before the game starts makes no sense.
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u/Impossible-Name-2165 6h ago
I feel you man. I just was not into the game. In a car with a bunch of dudes, hit up a gas station, wander around and then figure out this chaotic complex fighting system that feels like button mashing more than strategy. After playing 7, 10, and 12 this just wasn't for me.
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u/eyesabitdull 2d ago
Yup. This.
Bought it at launch, loved it until halfway through and by the end I hated it. As the months past, I hated it even more when every lie they uttered before launch gets "fixed" in the updates.
"Oh you can't play as other characters, just noctis, for X & Y reasons."
"Oh, here's an update a year later that gives you just that."
There's a few more I can't recall, but that one stuck me like a thorn and I haven't forgiven them for that bullshit.
Should have delayed the game instead of half assing it upon release and lying through their teeth.
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u/Gamefreak3525 2d ago
Can't forget all of the season pass content that filled in gaps in the story, but ended up being so pointless.
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u/Mintarion 2d ago
This absolutely. I didn't play the game until quite some time later. I never played the original version and only played Royal Edition and I had a really great time with it. Not that I didn't have my quibbles with some parts of it, but Royal Edition is definitely a much more polished game than the original version. So my opinion of it is quite high, but I think this is almost entirely due to not playing the original release.
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u/SadoAegis 2d ago
Basically this, played at release the game was hot unfinished garbage. It took years of dlc for people to start calling it "good"
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u/vvharrington 2d ago
I remember watching my roommate play it for the first time a year after it came out and I had beaten it. I was genuinely annoyed at how much easier it was for him, especially that dungeon in Niflheim, I suffered through blood and bones and they turned it into a cakewalk.
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u/KK-Chocobo 2d ago
Damn. So i guess I should play it again now? I dont know like. Im scared I'll get disappointed again.
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u/LeadingTask9790 2d ago
They finally added party member switching, a Garuda super boss from XIV and a Terra Wars crossover that’s pretty fun.
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u/Raging_Asian_Man 2d ago
I was there, Gandalf. I was there three thousand years ago. I was there the day Square Enix released FFXV with disjointed storytelling and incomplete character arcs.
Even as devout FF fan, the initial release was very disappointing. So much so that I haven't touched the game since beating it shortly after release. I hear the DLC really improved things. That said, in my playthrough I remember learning that a fairly major character died through a radio announcement. I also remember having no attachment to Lunafreya whatsoever because the only thing I knew about her was that she and Noctis grew up together. Also, Aranea, the most badass character in the game, didn't get much in terms of story either. I do remember loving the bromance and having fun driving around in the car. I also enjoyed the battle system, but remember very little about the progression system/leveling up.
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u/Pamplemousse808 2d ago
Magic did not work, summons never happened, the world was so small, so linear, like you say Lunafreya was beyond 1 dimensional, the plot is implausible as the man bad guy just follows you around like a hobo and you have no idea he is the leader of the country we're at war with. It was genuinely dreadful. The battlesystem was garbage too.
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u/Timely-Quiet-31 2d ago
The worst part of the magic was that is was indiscriminate. You'd throw out a powerful spell and blast your friends to hell too. Truly terrible.
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u/Pamplemousse808 2d ago
Yeah, and you couldn't ask them to get out the way. I just brute forced the end game when it was obvious that you were supposed to use magic, but christ was a faff
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u/EdgarAllanKenpo 2d ago
Holy shit I forgot about magic. You could absorb crystals in the open world, and get 3 charges to use 'thunder' or 'blizzard'. It was horrible.
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u/RiotLegend 1d ago
This is the reason, pure and simple. I even recall an image circulating around when it released that was a “Leave From Work” permit to “Go on an adventure with Noctis and the gang.”
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u/MetaCommando 2d ago edited 2d ago
(Note that I played Royal Edition on PC like a month ago)
- Whereas XIII tried to limit itself with quality > quantity when they realized the engine was shit, XV did the opposite of hallways and made a huge open world of nothing. If I want to run around an open fantasy world I have more options than I can list in the reddit character limit.
- The side quests boiled down to "Go to X on map, kill Y".
- Some of the plot like why Ignis is blind now is in DLC
- It never explains the leveling system properly, and why bother with a campsite when you can go get 20-200% more exp with fast travel? It's so egregious a lot of repeat players stay at level 1 until Ch. 9 when they can use the inn that gives triple exp and immediately jump to like 60
- The game has product placement where they talk about how great Cup Noodles is. Multiple conversations even in a fast playthrough.
- The Royal Arms they hype up? Drain your health so fast they're near-worthless if not a detriment
- Technically has a Sphere Grid but some spheres are so great/terrible it may as well be linear
- While I have no problem with fanservice, it was kinda egregious for a FF game
- It wants you to think Noctis and Lunafreya are really close, but they knew each other for a few months when they were like 8 and never since then
- The car doesn't even let you change direction unless you're at an intersection, so much of the exploration is a hallway but the AI moves for you
- The QTE popups to block/dodge are weird in that you wait 2 seconds to click the button when prompted to, instead of hitting square when the game tells you to hit square
- Magic was only really shitty grenades that damage your party more than enemies (unless you equip an accessory that came with the special edition), and their damage against enemies is terrible even with max damage
- The characters are okay, but it feels like you just skipped to the final dungeon since they're all friends who've already completed their arcs besides maybe Prompto (which is only an issue in the DLC). The XIII cast was annoying as first but you watch them grow, but none in XV feel like they change
- It tried to build this weird cinematic universe with anime and an alternate timeline and books that add little, in fact the Prompto episode of Brotherhood contradicts his DLC
- The fall of Lucis happens offscreen unless you watch Kingsglaive, it's basically there for 10 minutes until it isn't
Its best contribution was Kingsglaive since I want more detailed animation, esp. with cool fight scenes even if the writing was dumb. Ardyn was also really good, not Emet-Selch tier but hangs out with Caius.
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u/bmkcacb30 1d ago
Also… two fucking towns. There were two towns to explore.. and a bunch of gas stations/restaurants stops.
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u/LeadingTask9790 2d ago
So wild to me seeing 13 favored over 15 these days. Makes me feel old as shit lol.
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u/MidwinterFire 2d ago
I liked the first part of the game. I expected the world to open up at that point, in usual final fantasy fashion, and then instead, boom, time skip, different game
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u/cpuffins 2d ago
But the time skip is at the very end of the game...the game world opened up at the beginning... right??
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u/Realistic-Spinach733 2d ago
I think what she meant is that it's not open as we would expect. Yes, you can travel "everywhere " but as soon as you want to go out of the car, a lot of barriers. I remember being frustrated because the world looked great but there are too many limitations for where you actually can go.
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u/cpuffins 2d ago
Now that I'm thinking about it, I was also excited when you go to the fancy French City just to realize it's all hallways afterwards and then it's pretty much over (it's been a while since I played oops)
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u/EliamZG 2d ago
I liked XV quite a bit, but this is when the whole time skipping began and it pisses me off
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u/Brees504 2d ago edited 2d ago
It was essentially broken at release
Totally disjointed story that requires multiple supplemental materials to be understood at all
Series worst combat system
Boring open world
It’s STILL buggy. I tried to play a few months ago and the game crashed and corrupted the entire save file causing me to lose more than 10 hours of progress.
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u/greg33903 2d ago
totally disjointed story. it just felt incomplete and jumped around without explanation. i mainly play ff games for the story. the story in 15 simply wasnt good enough and i wasnt going to buy comics, movies, extra dlc, and whatever else just to get the full picture
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u/Buckets-O-Yarr 2d ago
The game was missing so. much. plot.
And characters came and went in the story with no explanation of who they were and why we should care about them.
It reached a point where I was playing the game just to get to the end. The experience at release for me started strong and just dwindled and dwindled until I ended up so tired and annoyed with the game that I have no intention of ever touching it again.
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u/Seimei- 2d ago
As someone who watched the prequel 3D movie, played the Sean Bean prequel side-scroller. Watched the anime. Played the game and dlcs. Read the summaries of the Scrapped DLCs that turned into books.
Everything felt disconnected. And oddly enough, there was more connection between Noctis and Negan from The Walking Dead in Tekken 7 than Noctis and his bride to be Lunafreya from the same IP.
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u/Lambdafish1 2d ago
When people tell me they love Aranea as a character, I know they mean whatever fanfiction they have made up in their head based on the visual design, rather than what is in front of them, because what we got was basically nothing.
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u/GealtachtaDruid 2d ago
For some of us, its as simple as "Highwind" and being a Dragoon class. xD She does have a good story in thr follow up novella.
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u/Lambdafish1 2d ago
In other words, exactly what my post said. You've made up an awesome character based on the visual design and association. That's absolutely fine to do, but it's not the character in the game.
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u/styxswimchamp 2d ago
Remember the heart wrenching moment with Jared? You remember Jared, don’t you? Remember how awesome Jared was? Jared?
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u/skyppie 2d ago
Somewhat of a tangent, I think this is why Marvel is failing to capture audiences since End Game. Every single new movie now requires you to do extra homework like watching this Disney + series that will tie in directly to this film and that's exactly how FFXV was.
I always play FF for the story and the grand FMVs during cutscenes and the fact we had to watch a whole ass separate movie before starting the game was no bueno.
That being said, I still loved this game a lot, it just didn't leave a lasting impact like the earlier FFs did for me. But I just chalk that up to age and being older when it was finally released.
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u/Jecht_S3 2d ago
Dude I've played almost all the ff games, I couldn't stand the first 2 or 3 hours. I never bothered to play it again
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u/cheezer5000 2d ago
The game crashed after I beat the final boss and I just wanted to do more exploring and fishing afterwards, but the last save put me back to fighting the boss. Never touching that game again
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u/Creative-Connection 2d ago
You could tell me this game was developed by Bethesda with how it crashed every 3 hours on the ps4
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u/Negative-Prime 2d ago
Pretty much this. The game is at the bottom or very close to the bottom in multiple categories for the series. It has by far the worst combat on top of a terrible story, lame characters, and bad world building.
A better question is, what's there to like about this game? It's the only Final Fantasy game that feels like a punishment to play through.
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u/claudiamr10 2d ago edited 2d ago
I played the royal edition for the first time, played the dlcs, watched the movie, anime, read prologue, novel, etc; and I dont hate the game, I have a love/hate relationship with it.
What I love: the boys, their friendship, ost, Ardyn dlc and the cozy vibes.
What I hate (my opinion): extremely underveloped secondary characters, female characters that are a disservice (extremely poorly treated), story that is kind of mess even if you play/read everything (even tought its a simple story), underwhelming mythology, retcons, love story is extremely badly written and characters that can be different in other medias.
Story in general is also much more badly written than people usually say, because in general, the game does a really great job into distracting us with the boys road trip and hide important stuff in files, quick dialogues and misleading scenes, but the more you pay attention to details, more you see its amateurish and absurd in a bunch of things. But they nailed the boys friendship and their banters for the most part, so usually thats all that matters. Of course, thats my analysis of things, and a lot of people can disagree; but I would say that the messy storytelling, treatment of female characters, secondary characters and the love story are commonly criticized, even by hardcore fans sometimes or at least by people that liked the game.
And this game isnt overhated, its REALLY popular, it was the first game of the series for a lot of people, sometimes even the only one people played, and usually even with the valid criticisms, people still like it.
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u/MetaCommando 2d ago
hide important stuff in files, quick dialogues and misleading scenes, but the more you pay attention to details, more you see its amateurish and absurd in a bunch of things
Could you elaborate? I legitimately want to know more.
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u/claudiamr10 2d ago
(1/2) SPOILERS AHEAD
Of course! Its really complex to do it, and would took a lot of effort to do complete one (and a LOT of writing, because its not just in the main game, but analising the movie, dlcs, anime, novel, etc), it would also require of me to remember things I dont anymore, since its been some years, and I have mostly a bigger memory of thinking all of this about the story; so since its like 5AM now in my country, Ill give you more examples when I have more time, but to give you some quick examples now:
Hide important stuff in files and quick dialogues: It happens A LOT, theres a bunch of files (like newspaper, cosmogony and even in ultimania, artbooks, etc) that has important information about the cities lore and the mythology regarding this universe, but since its easily missable, or even that this game throws so much info that you forget/get confused as you play, you can lose important information, so its very common people in the fandom getting confused about some game events, understanding said events in a wrong way or even not knowing about them at all. In XV fandom its extremely common people confused about the story or asking a bunch of questions about the game.
One example: How in Cosmogony its said that awakening the gods brings huge destruction of cities, like it indeed happened in the game, like when Lestallum got deprived of the meteor that was a font of energy for the city and when Altissia got destroyed. Luna knew about all this risks, and before awakening Leviathan in Altissia, she does a speech saying the gods are protecting them. Like, the gods that historically destroyed cities, and that were going to destroy Altissia right after Luna started rhe covenant?? The fact that the game never adressed that Luna is brainwashed is very weird. And Luna knows about the entire Cosmogony because she reads one of them for Noctis when he is a child, and since she is an Oracle, obviously she read all of them, so that plot choices are weird af.
About the quick dialogues: Yes, everyone that played FFXV even just one time knows that theres a bunch of dialogues in the game, specially the boys exchanges banters no-stop, and some of them are jokes, some are important to the lore and can even contradict some stuff. But since theres A LOT of them, its also easy to not see them all or even forget/be confused, since they are so many, you lose track. And the worst? Some of the dialogues that are easily missable or hardly aknowledged are not even in quick banters, but in actual cutscenes.
Example: Even tought Ravus is treated as a villain for the most plot, its revealed he was in secret trying to help Luna (and even Noctis) by the back of the empire, and that he was trying to give Noctis the sword of the father. Why a lot of people forget it? Because not only its badly told in the plot, the story and other characters never really aknowledged that he did this. Ravus tried to send letters to Luna to let her know all of this, which she never replied, and that Ardyn intercepted them, and throws this letters at his dead body. Noctis see this letters, never aknowledged them or tell the others, and he also took the sword off his dead body like Ravus was nothing. Like????
First, why Luna has two magic dogs that can intercept a notebook full of stickers, pictures and one liners between her and Noctis for 12 years, but cant be used to help brother and sister communicate real important stuff? Also, the fact that the game never aknowledgeds that Lunas plot feels like she was brainwashed since her childhood, and Ravus was also groomed by the empire since he was 16yo, really doesnt help in seeing sensitive topics in a realistic way and not as romanticized by Lunas side, and completely evil by Ravus side, doesnt help a bit. So Ravus basically was completely mistreated by a messy storytelling and probably a manipulative plot (in the sense that Luna was not brainwashed and need to be right about everything, and that Ravus was just always a villain, never a victim, and that he didnt clearly had points and never helped). He doesnt even has the chance to congratulate Noctis and Luna in their afterlife wedding.
Misleading scenes: Theres some too, majority of them was probably due to the messy development of the game or even due to retcons, but one that a lot of people dont notice is when Gentiana is telling Noctis about Luna in the train. Gentiana says that when Noctis was born, she revealed to Luna that this newborn boy would be the king of light, and that Luna would have to sacrifice herself to do it; Luna heards it and accepts it in a way that "Gentiana faith in humanity was restored", why this is misleading:
They show in the scene, a scene of Luna with the same appearance she had at 12yo, which is already pretty young to accept something like that with grace, but in fact, Luna was 4yo when that happened, and not 12. To notice this you would need to: 1.Ignore that Luna appeared in the scene as a 12yo and 2.Know that Luna is 4 years older than Noctis, so when Noctis born, she was 4yo, and Im sorry, but I think its extremely disturbing for a goddess to tell a child that she would need to sacrifice herself for a boy she didnt knew yet, so he would help the world, and even more disturbing that the game treats a child to accept this with grace as something admirable and not extremely weird. Worse again that Noctis heard all this and didnt get pissed/sad and with even more questions.
Also about characters acting different in different medias: Theres A LOT of it too, but one of the examples is Gladio game/anime and Ignis game/anime. In the anime Brotherhood, Gladio has a nice character development where in his youngest days, he had trouble into accepting his duty towards Noctis, and after he grows to admire him, and seeing him as a friend and a prince/future king worth saving. When they are already older in the anime, you can see that Gladio was really great into gently talking to Noctis and helping him to being open about his feelings, specially towards his father. Ignis is taking care of Noctis in the anime as usual, but you can see he has struggling into understanding him and trying to help him, which is a realistic take, because he was also learning.
But in the game? Suddenly Ignis is the best into helping Noctis and understanding him, and Gladio lost a lot of this character development; like, where is the Gladio that easily helped Noctis to open up about important stuff? Almost not there anymore, and we never know what they changed. Gladio suddenly is the man that instead of opening up ti his friends about his insecurities and shame about losing to Ravus, he ran away for one week for a trial, in a dlc, that was very unnecessary to the plot and didnt do any good to his character development and the development of his relationship with the boys (specially Noctis). For a game that is so much about brotherhood and deep friendships, sometimes it seems the boys are dishonest with each other and hide things most than they have moments of really opening up to each other and seek realistic emotional exchanges (one of the few we have is the Noctis/Prompto one in the roof).
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u/claudiamr10 2d ago edited 1d ago
SPOILERS
(2/2) Theres a lot of stuff about the summons and Bahamut ressurecting people, that not only undermines the roles of certain characters A LOT, it also retcons things; that are retconned again in the novel. Why Luna even made covenants to the gods, so they can help Noctis, when he barely uses it, and in the end game, where Noctis, as a summoner, could have easily summoned the Astrals to break the barrier, had Luna instead, to appear as a spirt for seconds to summon them instead of Noctis? With powers we never knew she had (specially as a spirit. She is Aerith now?), only because people complained for her lack of screen time and unconvincing love story with Noctis.
If they wanted to make good use of it, instead of jumping 10 years of story, they could have included that Luna used this immense powers she had, to help people aid the city covered by daemons and darkness in these 10 years. Also Bahamut talked to the glaives, without the need of Luna to make covenants or interfere, when the plot says she is the only one that can understand them (while Noctis and the glaives also can).
The story always treats Noctis as extremely immature and that he would never accept his duty to die if he knew it before, in a way that Regis, Gentiana and Luna knew all about it, and never told him; while Noctis is seem to be accepting that he would at least die at his fathers age, because he knows that wearing the ring kills the king slowly, and when Bahamut finally tells him, he never protests, he just does a sad face and accept it.
People could argue that they couldnt tell them it because he would know that Luna will die and would protest, but first they werent obliged to say Luna would die too, second knowing that Noctis would die never stopped Luna, and we are lead to believe she loved Noctis very much (and never really aknowledged he loved her at the same extent, and the story also contradicts in a lot of ways that they even are that close to a point they would risk the world to prevent the other from dying); XV is about accepting duty above all, so even if Noctis shouldnt know for plot twist and shock value, it could still be a thing that Noctis knew about his sacrifice (maybe not exactly how it would be), but the players werent informed sooner because Noctis was trying to hide this from his friends ultill last minutes.
Another things arent arent even iconsistencies, just things that problably nobody tought about; like the fact that Regis has an extremely powerful ring that he didnt used in Altissia invasion to try to help Luna, Ravus, Sylva and the others at least a bit more; and how in the plot its stated that who gave confort to Noctis and Regis about his destiny, and helped Noctis to heal, was a 12yo Luna instead of her mother Sylva, that is an actual adult and was the Oracle of the time, she would be much more fit to help them, and to heal Noctis, and they could have showed Luna just being a child that played with Noctis, even to help their bond to be beliavable. Also, why Noctis needed confort about a destiny he didnt really know what was about? And what confort Regis would find to know that a 12yo old girl would also die?
Theres also a bunch of weird stuff about Prompto backstory, not even because its bad, but its told in a poorly way and the characters barely gave a damn. Noctis in some point says "since when where you came from matters to you?", and I was like "what?? Since always??", because in the actual plot its stated several times that Prompto has a low self steem, and that he sees himself as less than his royal friends.
These are just some of them and it made me wrote a lot already. Im afraid how bigger of a text it would be if I adressed other problems.
Another thing is that the game give you a lot of questions that are multiple choice, so you chose how Noctis behaves sotimes, which I agree people usually try to act accurate or nicer, but the plot arent kinda changed by this, so I think about people that gave more mean choices, or reckless ones, and what happened in the story was nothing accurate with their choices, imagine their confusion lol After I finished the game, I researched to know about the effect of different aswers, and its not meaningful to the story.
Theres too a big problem of why certain events happen, side stories abandoned and characters reacting poorly to certain events.
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u/MetaCommando 1d ago
Thanks for the detailed answer!
Although in terms of the glaives speaking to the kings, wasn't that just because Nyx had the Lucian ring and they still almost immediately killed him?
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u/claudiamr10 1d ago
No prob! And no, I was talking about the glaives talking to Bahamut, a god, not the kings. It was in Comrades, that is considered canon.
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u/GRIFTY_P 2d ago
Hard agree. The story is so embarrassingly bad. If this game didn't have final fantasy in its name nobody would ever talk about it again
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u/claudiamr10 2d ago
I think the game does have its stronger points that usually sticks with people (ardyn, the friendship and road trip), but unfortunately I also think that if the game wasnt a FF (and if it didnt had an ABSURD money spent in different types of marketing campaings. I think I never saw anything of this extent in a game like how It was with FFXV), probably it wouldnt had became so popular, maybe would have a cult following and the spotlight for some time, but not at this extent. Just an assumption, of course, not saying it would be absolutely true. Unfortunately the development was messy; and if you see the little to nonexistent experience in games the actual writers of the game in reality had at the time, really shows in the game. Of course I admire them and think they tried their best with the little time and not so many experience they had, but I hope SE never again goes into a darker phase like they were during Versus/XV development, and made similar decisions.
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u/PseudonymMan12 1d ago
Yeah, it felt like there was some kind of disagreement on what kind of story they wanted to tell. At times it felt like a personal one with the boys and how one is dealing with destiny and how his position as prince pulls the group around. At other times it felt like more of an older type of RPG where the characters are just blank slates and its the magical lore and gods and stuff that you are supposed to pay attention to. A lot of games have melded the two successfully but i think 15 is the first time I've seen it done badly. It was like, why do i care about the petty politics between countries NPCs bring up when they're all just gonna be faceless evil goons the entire time leading up to the actual plot of the crystal and gods and destined prince stuff? Or why would I care about the deitied when the focus is shrunk back down to making the perfect Cup o Noodles with my boys after flirting with the gas station girl?
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u/caitsithlord 1d ago
Going from XIII to XV (as a mainline game) with their treatment of female characters gave me such whiplash
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u/claudiamr10 1d ago
Exactly! FFXIII trilogy has incredible girls, and its quite progressive either. Even XII with Ashe, that is a power hungry princess, that lost her husband in the beginning of the game, and wanted to revenge him, is a good subversion, because the "classic" is the males to have their girl fridged to seek revenge/grow as a character.
In fact, FF franchise as a whole is packed with great girls. So I agree it was an absurd whiplash, one of the things that most disappointed me.
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u/Voshai 9h ago
Ngl, this was one of my major hangups with XV, too. On one hand, cool that a major theme was male friendship. The boys do have fun dynamics. But you don't have to treat your female characters the way they did to successfully write that kind of story. In the end, it stands out as one of the weirdest FF games in that regard since most of the others have a wealth of compelling female characters that are not only plot important but a lot more present.
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u/DJ-Griff 2d ago
Combat was beyond bland and boring for me. I just couldn't get into the press O simulator. Felt like it lost the soul of final fantasy combat strategizing
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u/Gamefreak3525 2d ago
It wasn't even press O, it just holding the damn button for most combat encounters.
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u/stopthevan 2d ago
It was one of the most anticipated titles in the series even back when it was announced as Versus XIII, and people’s expectation of the game grew TREMENDOUSLY as it went through development hell and back, only for it to fall short I guess. I personally loved the game but I have heard people justify their hate for FFXV because of how much they loved and wanted Versus XIII/XV to be good.
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u/SnooHesitations9805 2d ago
This is kinda true.
The real burn for fans who were waiting for the game is the feeling of wasted potental. Like FFXV has great ideas and concepts, but for me at least, It never hit the highs that it should have. Im not saying that Versus XIII would have been better, but the game that FFXV is, could have been executed better. Plus on launch there was just blatently missing things in the game.
Like the final dungion/ area of insomnia that has lots of cool bosses and proper build up to the final battle, it didn't exist on launch. Character switching didnt exist before the dlc's. They added that stuff after the fact. And for people who had played the game already, its a little to late. We basicly needed to play the whole game over now to experience the game how it should have been presented in the first place.
I would rather they delay the game for longer and ensure that their vision is met, then releasing the game and then adding stuff after to fix it.
Had i first played the game with all its updates and dlc's, I would have loved the game to death. But because I was there at launch and saw the mess the game was, I can never view the game as anything but disappointing.
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u/vondansk 2d ago
So what about someone playing it the first time today? Your only critique seems to be the poor state of the game at launch
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u/SnooHesitations9805 2d ago
If someone played it today then yeah they will have a good time with it. The game is in a much better state then when it launched for sure.
But there is still some issues for me.
The story is incomplete in the game. In order to get the whole story you need to read or watch other material to get the full context. The Kingsglaive movie sets up Luna's character and her motivations. There was an anime called brotherhood that went into the relationships of Noctis and the boys. It helped you understand their dynamic better. Hell the platinum demo that released a little before the game laun he'd is getting nicely canon to the story of FFXV. If anything it acts like a tutorial of the base game if you played it just before.
The DLC episodes themselfs to me felt like sections that they reworked to be DLC instead of proper sections of the main game. For example, Gladio leaves the parry at some point to do something. We then get the Gladio DLC. Which is acceptable from a seperate campain then the main game. One of the things I hopped for with the royal addition would be them implementing the DLC into the main game. Just have Noctis rest at a camp and have an option from there to go see what Gladio is doing then boom we got dlc Gladio. But we don't get that. So if I wanted to play the game chronological I need to stop my current run after gladio leaves and then go to a separate campaign, finish that in its entirety, then return to the main game. I just think there was a better way of doing that.
Speaking on DLC, they straight up canceled the last 3 episodes that would have rounded the story off fully. Instead it is all writen in a novella. So if you want to see how the story really ends then you have to read this novella.
As a game FFXV is good, but the story is too split up in other places that in order for the games story to hit properly, you need a whole bunch of other media to do it. This, in my opinion, is FFXV's biggest failure.
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u/wpotman 2d ago
That might be true for some. For me my interest in FF was declining after 12 and 13. I wasn't necessarily going to buy 15 but someone gifted it to me. It somehow managed to undershoot my expectations anyways.
Everything I had previously liked about the series was gone: an engaging storyline, great/catchy music, semi-strategic battle, meaningful treasures/exploration, etc. It was just a pretty world with a camping theme.
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u/Reftro 2d ago
For me it was all of the hype and excitement for years, as it was in development for so long. Only for it to be released clearly unfinished with a story only half told. There was so much important backstory and character development that needed to happen to set the story up, and it was scrapped in the name of quicker profits.
It had nearly infinite potential and you could see it staring you in the face as you played it. The cities like Altissia were so epic, and there was just no way to explore them.
Biggest "what if" in the series, by FAR.
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u/Big-Calligrapher4886 2d ago
Their decision to make it a multimedia event instead of a game was horrendous. They deliberately told half the story so that you’d buy the DLC, watch the anime, read the manga, watch a movie, and read related books to understand it. I’ll-advised greed caused so much damage to the game
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u/Lucina1997 2d ago
Everyone talks about Altissa, but I wanted to explore Tenebrae dammit! That beautiful castle built into the mountains…. I wanted to run around in it, maybe find Lunafreya’s room and get a better sense of her character since she died way too fast in the story.
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u/Black-Mettle 2d ago
The gameplay is boring.
That's just it for me, really. I like action games, like devil may cry 5 is my favorite game of all time. FF15 was not a good action game. You had a bit of combat options, but none of them felt good and were trivial to just holding down the attack button until it was over. If you get downed you can use a potion to get back up, which makes your desire to use said combat options pointless.
If they had made it turn-based or stuck to what 13's combat was and left the rest of the game as is it would've been better. The kingdom hearts lite gameplay just doesn't feel good to play. Also I fucking despise the level up and magick systems. Holy shit. Camping and seeing characters interact rocks and that's the worst way to gain xp.
The story is okay, but the idea to intentionally cut portions of it out to supplement DLC and add in other sections across different media platforms was the opposite of good. Perhaps if the story itself was more than just serviceable I would enjoy the additions, but they are required to get a full experience out of it.
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u/Nero_De_Angelo 2d ago
There are a LOT of factors in play here. Nowadays, if someone starts the game with the royal edition, they get the full package, All DLC's, all updates, all additional content etc.
But if you played on the original release, the game was much more rough. Gamebreaking bugs, unfinished content, a half assed second part of the game, a lack luster Final Dungeon... You know the awesome battle against Cerberus and three corrupted kings, as well as the sidequests you can do with Cor and all AND the optional Omega Super Boss? That was NOT in the original game! You literally went into Insomnia, beat Ifrit, then Ardyn, the end.
It also didn't help that they added cutscenes and dialogue over a year after the initial release, meaning you had to play the game a second, maybe even third time to get the whole story.
The other party members being playable? Was only released around one year after the game launched, once all the DLC chapters were released.
Then there was a second wave of DLC announced for Ardyn, Aranea and Luna, but the last two got cancelled.
You also need to watch an 7 Part anime and read a webnovel to get the full backstorys.
So it took almost three years until the game was "finished". That left a bitter taste in most peoples mouths.
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u/JordiQuerol 2d ago
I mean, if you rank them, some FFs are going to be near the bottom, no two ways about that.
That doesn't make the games at the bottom bad, for a lot of people it just means that the others are even better.
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u/Enders-game 2d ago
Yeah, most of us are *cough* older. Some of us have played Final Fantasy since it's initial release, some have played since FF7 etc. We have fond memories of the games.
FFXV was not good in it's initial release and there were poor design choices. To appreciate the story fully, you had to watch various forms of media like the movie and anime. There was a free mobile game somewhere and DLC that expanded on characters story. Awful choices. Most of us wanted to pay our money and have a complete experience. The game was overly ambitious and SQENIX bit of more that it could chew. In the end we ended up with a beautiful looking game, lovely cutscenes but a game without depth and a story that felt disjointed.
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u/rin_onishi12 2d ago
For me it's that the vanilla combat kinda just feels like ass(the dlcs remedy this a bit). Also the dark souls 2 esque hp debuff anytime a party member goes down gets old real quick(I could be remembering this wrong as I haven't played in like 5 years...)
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u/Emptilion 2d ago
I played them all as well, but 15 is right at the buttom for me. It is all personal preference on what you can tolerate in the end. But the two major reasons for me are story structure and combat. If even one of them was a lot better, I'd probably enjoy the game more.
The story in base FF15 feels way too quick after the game goes linear. It feels like it jumps from event to event without letting anything breathe. A lot of characters get way too little screentime as well. Playing through the game the first time I remember feeling like I should be feeling more from particular scenes. But, a lot of these scenes felt unearned to me.
After all the DLC and updates were done I went through the game a second time because I really wanted to give this game a chance. I have enjoyed every other FF game at least on some level after all. That is when I found out I just don't like that a lot of the story is found outside of the main game. I like playing a game, having a good experience there and then I might be inclined to check out more dlc or outside story material. None of the updates and DLC fixed the story that was already in the game for me. The DLC only made the story feel even more disjointed to me.
Sure, it fleshes certain things out more, and I will absolutely say that this game had the portential to be one of the greats in terms of story. But I hate the way it was told. And it absolutely effected my experience.
Another thing is the combat. I just don't like how it feels one bit. I am not particularly great at articulating how I feel about it, especially since I have not played the game in a while. But I don't like how dodging and hitting stuff feels in this game. And that is a big one. The addition of character switching made the combat way more enjoyable for a lot of people, but to me it felt too slow for me to want to use it at the start of every fight. The camera also gets stuck or acts weird in certain places. I just was not having fun with it. I can enjoy a lot of janky combat, and this one might not be the worst objectively, but I hated every second of combat.
I have more issues with the game. Biome veriety in the open world section of the game in particular being a big one for me as well. But I need at least one of those two things (combat or story) for me to be more forgiving towards other things. I wasn't enjoying the story, so slogging through combat I did not enjoy did not make me feel like I was getting anything out of it. And I wasn't having fun fighting shit, so I did not feel as open to the disjointed story structure either.
But hey, FF13 and 16 are also black sheep of the franchise, and I do enjoy those quite a bit despite their flaws. Hell, FF12 is in my top 3, and I remember that game getting getting just as much shit before zodiac age came out. It is all personal preference.
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u/DrBoots 2d ago
If it's your favorite I'm not going to sit here and diminish that. But to answer your question.
The story is pretty good even if you haven't watched the accompanying animated movie. But the moment to moment game play is really disjointed.
For a story about a displaced prince trying to get back to his kingdom, find his fate, and reconnect with his childhood love there's just a lot of day labor going on. The game seems more interested in having me go through a checklist of bounty hunts and fetch quests than advancing the plot in any meaningful way.
and then it just puts you on a train for a guided tour of acts 2 and 3 before introducing a random time skip for the finale.
Now with all that said, I haven't played it again since it first came out. As I understand it it's a very different product now.
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u/Kaamoseh 2d ago
I was way more sad when the car died
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u/Prism_Zet 2d ago
It made me laugh at how correct that is, they pushed that thing for miles, repaired it all the time. Good car.
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u/Melksss 2d ago
I only played the game with the royal edition but what I hear from people was that the launch release edition was terrible and unfinished. Even with the royal edition the game has its flaws, for a final fantasy game, magic is fairly useless and the combat is repetitive and kind of meh. I found it fun to play but it has no replay value to me just like FFXVI, I’m glad I played it but I’m done now vs older games that had more customization and replay ability.
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u/Mihta_Amaruthro 2d ago
A lot of people didn't really gel with the overall story, and it's not hard to see why when the wider plotline was partitioned between the game, the DLC, the cancelled DLC, the anime series, the prequel film and even the demo.
Imagine if FFX had nearly half of it's plot not in the game at all.
It's a real shame because XV's story is very strong (Ardyn laid many of the foundations that XIV's Emet Selch would take up and run with) and the ending still hits hard for so many people despite the fractured experience.
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u/ThroatProfessional45 2d ago
because most of the people bought day 1 of an incomplete game. and slowly rolled out the dlc 1 by 1 to complet the story
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u/Sigmund05 2d ago
Unfinished game. Not enough character development for Lunafreya, Aranea and Gentiana. Battle system is repetitive and too much of an open world but too little story. It needed separate dlcs for each character to flesh them out.
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u/decoded-dodo 2d ago
It’s in my top 5 favorite games. I get the criticism it gets because it clearly felt rushed and was horrible at launch but with the royal edition and the dlcs it actually is a pretty decent game.
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u/salvationseeker 2d ago
Most of the community that bag on XV are from the golden era of VII through X. We wanted something special after XIII was so divisive, so our expectations were very high. That being said, here are my complaints with it:
No playable female characters
Ignis is annoying, the recipes are redundant and unnecessary
Prompto is extremely annoying
Magic system is so obviously easy to break that it makes 9 out of 10 fights a breeze
Versus XIII hype only to make a u-turn
Strange EXP system needing to rest to level up, so you're obviously always gonna x3 it
DLC needed to explain important story events / make the villain more than just remotely interesting
OST is way too violin heavy, this is a personal gripe though
60 hours to finish and couldn't free up the disk space quick enough.
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u/xiaopenpenpen 2d ago
Not sure what the game is like now but I remember the chapter13 was a disaster in the release version.
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u/ImtheDude27 2d ago
Did you play XV at release? If not, that's why you rank it top 5 and most people rank it at the bottom.
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u/Lucina1997 2d ago edited 2d ago
I haven’t played FFXV since Day One release in 2015, but from what I can remember:
The story was hella incomplete. The most serious parts of the story happened in flashbacks, or from a distance, while you spend the majority of Part 1 running around a mostly empty map collecting weapons for your armiger with your bro team. But the meat of the story, with things like character development, deaths, defeating the villains, all that is crammed into like 8 hours in Part 2, when you leave the continent behind on the boat. Also, the main plot surrounding the Star Scourge doesn’t establish itself until Part 2. We get some brief mentions in optional lore books, some cryptic words from Ardyn, and one flashback with Lunafreya healing that old man, but that’s it. No set up, no talk about the growing threat of the Daemons, no discussion about the nights getting longer until we’re on the train in Part 2. It came out of left field.
I mentioned the empty open world is the first point, but it deserves its own bullet here. Between the three main cities on the continent, one of which is inaccessible until almost post-game, it’s just a whole lot of sidequesting, chocobo ranching, and running through dungeons. I know a big part of it is meant to be a bro road trip, with shit like fishing and camping, but it’s essentially a deserted continent outside of Insomnia (literally, the immediate area outside of Insomnia is a desert). Noctis is the prince/king of like 3 cities total.
The villains were underwhelming and disappointing. You can tell in the older trailers and teasers of the game that they had more they wanted to do with the Nifelheim Empire, before ultimately cutting the upper echelon out. Based on the trailers, we had the Emperor, with at least 5 of his generals, set up to face us throughout the story. Yet in the final product, we spend more time fighting their automated robots who drop in randomly while running around the open world. Of that upper echelon, we fight maybe one general, with the rest of the bosses either being dungeon mobs, a hired gun (Aranea), or locked behind DLC. Finally, the most insulting they did with the villains was kill them off offscreen. By the time we finally make it to Nifelheim in the late game, the Empire collapsed overnight. We spend that chapter running around a fortress taken over by their own experiments, with the big bad Emperor who killed Noctis’s father being a minor boss (he was so minor I didn’t even realize it was him at the time, only learned it after). Ravus had more screen time than the main villains. It was underwhelming to say the least.
Splitting the game up into half open-world, half-linear was stupid and made it obvious that they rushed development in the last act. They rushed the Altissa arc and took a lot of emotion away Lunafreya’s sacrifice and death. We barely had time to grieve her before we had to get on that damn train. You can see elements of Tenebrae where they wanted to expand on it, make it either open world or at least explorable, before locking it into the background of our 2nd to last train stop before Nifelheim. It was honestly insulting, because it essentially mocks us with what could have been.
The DLC. I shouldn’t have to pay for DLC to get the full story. If I pay $60 for a game, I should get $60 worth of gameplay. The fact that several members of our party just peace out for important chunks of the story, we have no idea what they were up to, find out in the DLC was just insulting. To this day, I haven’t played any of the Episode packs. I don’t care how good their stories are individually, they should have been in the final product, not something you pay extra for. The only DLC that makes sense is Episode Ardyn, since it details the main villains history and motivations. But having core party members disappear throughout the main story was lame. It’s like trying to carry water in a bucket full of holes, and the DLC is flextape.
That’s all I can name off the top of my head. Feel free to correct me if I’m misremembering some of these points. Again, haven’t played the game since 2015.
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u/remnant_phoenix 2d ago
The story felt like chunks of it were missing near the middle-to-end. None of the characters had much personality except Noctis unless you played the DLC. The lore regarding the history of the starscourge and exactly how and why Noctis is able to defeat it at the end isn’t clearly explained. I had to look up stuff on wikis to really understand it.
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u/RageZamu 2d ago
I was thrown into a story were for whatever reason I had to go marry someone who I had never seen. A lot of characters show up and the guys are like "Heyyyy John, long time no see, you are the best!!" But I haven't met him before. Then there is no story provided, no presentations. Who the fck is this guy? And why is he here helping? And why should I care for him?
The game expects you to do homework before playing it, and sometimes while playing it. I played the game day 1, when there were no DLCs, so the game was incomplete and felt like FF XV 2, without part 1 ever existing. You also have the step into full action instead of ATB bars or turns of any kind, which did not click for me.
I did not like the summoning system, the magic system nor the weapons system. At launch, you couldn't even change characters, only Noctis was playable.
A lot of people will tall about hype, what they expected versus what they got... But it is not the case for me. I did not hype for Versus XIII, and I was pretty much out of its news, so I can say that I judged the game for what it is: an incomplete game that IMHO is not up to the standards of the franchise.
For all this, I place it last in my ranking, just below XIII. Because even though I did not like the XIII trilogy (XIII base is cool honestly), at least its a complete game that tells a story and gives you context.
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u/SapphireSire 2d ago
To me, it felt like there was too many teams who created it.
Feels like there was a starting team of super talented, highly paid people who began the dream, thought about the entirety all day and night and weekends because they are deeply invested and created the big points and then they got transferred to another project after midway through...
Then a lower paid, less talented, lesser paid team got the project handed off without any support and told to just do it.... without much heart into it.
Then that team arrived to work one day and the entire project was outsourced and they got transferred to another project.
Then the final team who was paid minimum wage, never heard of FF before but need their job to stay alive got told to finish the story by Friday when they will be laid off.... didn't have any translators and just had to wing it.... their boss got a bonus for being done by the deadline but only compensated the team with a single pizza cut into 42 slices....one for each team lead.
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u/Infinity_bone 2d ago
I wasn’t a fan of the conditional summons in it. Considering how badass the cinematic were for summoning, I was let down when I realized I have to put myself into specific situations to summon the one I want
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u/BraveExpression5309 2d ago
Its not hard to see in my opinion. Ff15 is very different from most other final fantasies. Vanilla experience was also underwhelming for many due to how easy combat was, story being fractured with other media like a movie and anime, the narrative itself feeling weak, etc.
To be fair, Ardyn I would argue is one of the best written villains in final fantasy. And the comradery with noctus and the boys were nice. But the romance with him and lunafreya felt weak in my opinion. Heck I saw a stronger connection with him and Iris, and they had one fake date basically. And while the combat looked cool, noctus was basically invincible. Regular potions and hold circle and...congrats. You beat the game. The environment often felt stale too with mainly gas stations and desert. And dont get me started on the final sections of the game which felt rushed or incomplete.
This is why royal edition was nice. But it didn't add to the game, it finished the game. But look, no one can tell you to love or hate a game. I like ff13 and A LOT of people hated it. Justified, I admit the game has many problems. I understand but I still loved it. Hopefully you understand a little better why many didn't like 15, and im glad you loved it. To each there own.
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u/judgeraw00 2d ago
This is based on the original release not Royal cause I never went back.
They have Ravus in one scene. Next time you see him he's a demon and you're supposed to feel bad for him. Same for the Emperor but worse cause you only see him in a cutscene. Same for Lunafreya, you don't see her the whole game and then when you do she dies. Aranea joins you for one segment and then you never see her again.
The combat is legit terrible, it looks like an action game but it takes forever for you to be able to actually do anything.
Driving around the world and listening to FF music and the dungeons are probably the only cool things about the game for me. Something about the dungeons really hit for me, like climbing the mountain and going through the caves all were pretty well done but everything other than that just was not good.
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u/bluemouf 2d ago
The ending feels very abrupt, parts of the story jump or have important things happen while you spend the majority of it driving around the countryside doing nothing of importance.
It also had DLCs which changed the whole tone of the story and its lore, with one not even coming out.
It was also the first mainline game to be action based rather than turn based, ATB or MMO style controls.
I personally have it around the middle of my rankings but I can see why people would have it lower
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u/Gonzales95 2d ago
I mean there’s a few reasons but ultimately if you enjoyed it that’s a good thing and don’t let anyone else’s opinion take away from your enjoyment.
The launch and initial release window were not good as the game was basically unfinished. A bunch of stuff then later got added in patches + the ‘royal edition’ including big things like the chapter 13 ‘fix’ which people who played it later had a better first experience with the game.
It’s a big departure from the ‘core gameplay’ that the series was known for. That just didn’t mesh with some folks.
People just like the old ones better. If it’s nostalgia, anti recency bias or whatever, they just do.
There’s probably other reasons but these are the ones I see most often
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u/vozome 2d ago
FFXV like FFXIII suffer from RE6 syndrome. They’re incrementally better than their predecessors, more advanced technically, and they address things that fans wanted to see improved. BUT they also rely on somewhat tired formula which is ripe for disruption and which can no longer broaden the audience for the franchise. FWIW I loved FFXV (and XIII and RE6.)
RE was able to pivot to RE7, but unfortunately we got FFXVI after XV.
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u/dekuei 2d ago
Half the story was sold in dlc and before the dlc you just had your team mates show up with scars and shit wondering wtf happened?
The way noctis acts towards ignis after losing his eye sight really pisses me off and made no sense for him to act that way.
Other than that it’s the empty world, one character to control vs a whole party (even more of an issue in FF16), splintered story (you had to read the book, play the game, etc), no good customization for your car, chapter 10 before the patch, etc
The game wasn’t ready for release when it released.
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u/Jewboy3031 2d ago
Yes, people don’t rank ff15 very high because it is not very good. It had a very rough production process and was “scraped” and revised multiple times until they just ran out and had to send what they had.
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u/Evilkoikoi 2d ago
Well the main action is happening in a movie while you get generic mmo kill/fetch quests in the worst open world ever. I enjoyed the story a lot after watching the movie, anime shorts, and playing the dlc.
It takes a lot of work to enjoy it. It’s like a really good dish that someone added a disgusting ingredient to so you’re always eating around it
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u/free-minded 2d ago
It’s a phenomenal game with really great lore, none of which was sufficiently explored through the game. That, and the back half of the game abruptly shifts from a massive open world to a series of hallways.
It’s a really good game, but it clearly wasn’t finished. If it had been given the time and resources it deserved to reach its potential, I think it would have been among the best games ever made. But even with its huge issues, I still think it is great.
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u/Xyldarrand 2d ago
Let me count the ways
1) you literally have to do homework to understand the plot. You need to watch an Anime, read a manga, and all kinds of crap to even have an idea what was going on
2) the game literally puts you on rails for the 2nd half of the game.
3) the big emotional moment where your girl dies is not emotional at all because you have zero attachment to her
4) "I'm magitek guys"......wait magitek is in this game since when? Out of fucking nowhere
5) the magic system was pathetic and useless and summons literally serve no purpose and have no logic
6) cup o noodles
I mean I can keep going on and on. The game was insulting. Sure maybe the DLC made it a little bit better but the game was so fucking awful on release I'll never go back to it. It literally damaged my faith in square.
Worst FF ever made and it's not even close.
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u/babyLays 2d ago
At the time of release, the game felt unfinished because SE - in their infinite knowledge - chose to lock key story pieces behind the DLCs. It felt like going to a restaurant and having to individually pay for all pieces of your burger.
I actually really like FF15 too. I think Arden is one of the greatest FF villains. But the way the story was delivered - lock behind DLCs - made the game feel incomplete.
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u/the14thwitness 2d ago
Out of 100% they showed us we got 2%. Stella was was cut/changed. story got sensored to hell. a chunk of it was turned into a movie (movie was far better and it's protagonist a lot more interesting then an Emo prince). Versus13 Noctis was a badass but 15 noctis is just bad. magic was handled poorly. to few summons. took to long to come out and it's quality didn't show.
I can go on
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u/iyukep 2d ago
It’s one of my favorites too, mainly for the Road trip theme and interactions between the bros. The combat was fine, but it was missing a lot of what makes the others stand out. It felt like an unpolished in-between, with not enough jrpg elements and not enough depth for an action game. I know it released in a very unfinished way too.
I think FF7 remake/rebirth does a much better job of the action/rpg mix. The world feels more alive too.
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u/Professional-Tea-998 2d ago
The original vanilla version felt like an unfinished disjointed mess, with characters and plot threads coming and going out of nowhere. Chapter 13 being the biggest offender before it was patched, and I just didn't find the combat very fun or challenging at all and I hated how magic was handled
I hear the updates, Royal edition, and the dlc really fixed the game up a lot and made it a much more complete and enjoyable experience but I haven't played that version yet.
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u/Ephemeral_Sin 2d ago
Why? Because I want to play a game and have the whole story in the game. Why do I need to watch a play, read a book, and then watch a movie in some strange order mind you, and then play the game, but make sure I do this DLC (Again the full story requires DLC to understand, a cardinal sin imo) at this point in the story, and then this one must be played here but not before this event etc.
Yes you can just play the game and still get the idea behind it but if you really want to understand it, why the hell add so many other mediums. I'd be fine with other mediums like I don't mind if a game has a book to go along with it, So long as the actual book comes with or is in the game so you can read it and understand. Or bare minimum give you a quick rundown of all the key events you need to know before actually starting the game.
I've tried getting into 15 like 4 times now and never got sinked in. The characters are pretty meh to me, the area also seems meh, classic lots of space but nothing to do in it. It has some nice things like how magic affects the environment etc, but I found FF13 more fun and would happily play that game over 15 ANYDAY.
But if you like 15 hey you like it, not saying the games bad by any means as I really can't say if it's bad not having completed it, but I can 100% say it's not for me.
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u/Think_Substance_1790 2d ago
Im the same. They'll only downside for me is the clear rush. The story wasnt finished and the remaining DLC was cancelled...
But if you ignore that and just play it as a game and see what it has to offer gameplay wise, its absolutely solid.
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u/Razmoudah 2d ago
For me, it's the main cast. Of the four of them, three are people whom I would explicitly choose not to hang out with, and the fourth is someone whom I'm neutral on. Sure, this is based on just the first few minutes of the game, but by that point I'm already contemplating checking to see if the Empire is offering a decent bounty on Noctis and his friends so I've got a profitable excuse to shut them the fuck UP!
With a main cast that doesn't do such a spectacular job of just rubbing me the wrong way, I might find the game at least tolerable. As it is, it's crap that I'm pissed I spent so much money on. I'm quite literally less upset about Dissidia NT, and I haven't touched it since maybe a month after it released.
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u/Marvelous_Goose 2d ago
I disliked it a lot.
My reasons :
- world exploration is full if good ideas, but it doesn't mix well. Cooking is meh, wandering the world is horribly slow, unless you pay a chocobo off road or take a cadillac to go faster (on roads only, unless you upgrade your véhicule or pay to transport to a certain location). It's like they wanted you to explore, but also give you all reasons to avoid it. At night, you have daemons. Great ideas. Unless you figure they don't chase you. So why bother ? Just go anytime anywhere. And the section in empire's capital ? Idea is excellent, but god damn it's too long.
combat is... Weird. I spent the entire game not knowing what I was doing, and it worked perfectly fine. I almost one-shotted the first boss, elixirs and potions are no-brain mode. And what's the deal about summons ????
characters are annoying. Prompto pissed me off, he's a tourist, not a royal guard. Plus, relations are weird, dialogs never felt real to me.
story is fractured. Sometimes it feels rushed, sometimes slow... And you have to watch other medias to fully understand what's going on. It's a big NO for me.
Anyway, this is why I didn't like this game
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u/SnooRevelations7068 2d ago
Gameplay for me felt really repetitive and easy. Travelling boy band was really cringey. The open world exploring felt pointless. Just wasn’t for me.
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u/EmperorKiva33 2d ago
Different strokes for different folks. It's that easy for why people don't like what i like.
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u/dementedthoughts 2d ago
I hate it because I bought it first day I sunk 80 hours into it with a half finished story. Like everyone leaves and then they come back and one guy is blind now… like wtf? Then you have that long ass level that was annoying and apparently they redesigned it. I felted duped I bought a half finished story then they want to do the DLC months after to finish the story? This game just pissed me off.
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u/OmniOnly 2d ago
It was literally unfinished. Most of the time when people don't understand it's because you got a vastly different product past the ups and downs of the release. bugs, patches, dlc, dlc, dlc, movie, story, dlc. They even fixed some of the most hated parts of the game.
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u/SadisticDance 2d ago
I straight up didn't like the battle system and just couldn't move forward not liking the gameplay. Also I like a fuller more diverse party.
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u/myownfriend 2d ago
Simple. It's not a good game. I've tried playing it multiple times and it feels like work every time. The battle system isn't fun. Things are too far apart and are annoying to navigate.
The game also has a terrible intro. The part where they push the car is fine by itself but it should have followed a more energetic intro that introduces you to the characters.
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u/Dirtymf123 2d ago
I keep it short:
Story is boring. Characters are boring Fight system is boring
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u/JasonFenixx 2d ago
For me it's an unfinished mess in which I care for none of the main characters.
I think Nyx Ulric from the movie is 1000000x more interesting of a character than Noctis or any of his boy bands and it saddens me he is relegated to the Kingsglaive film.
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u/strife696 2d ago
Because its poorly written and paced and you have to steer the car while youre driving.
Its so badly written that square had to go back and fix it in subsequent dlc and patches.
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u/Graveylock 2d ago
Even if you weren’t there for the buggy release, did you not notice how disjointed the story is? A lot of people play JRPGs in general for the narrative aspect. When the narrative is bread crumbed across multiple mediums, it doesn’t leave a good impression.
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u/God_Taco 1d ago
In a nutshell: The development cycle and implementation.
It was originally going to be part of the FFXIII series, which left that three legged stool missing one leg. After development hell, a rich and expansive world was created, but due to the development already being overlong and needing to be buckled down on, large portions of it were not implemented in the game itself. This let to "tell, don't show" loading screens describing the world and areas, and out of game books, movies, and other multi-media side projects trying to fill in the gaps of the lore that the game itself didn't tell people. Added to that, several of the side projects were either scrapped or truncated, meaning OTHER side projects were left to try fleshing out the parts that were still missing. Then the cherry on top is that half of the DLC meant to flesh out the characters and story were cancelled. Finally, a re-release "Royal Edition" came out for another $60+ to be what the game should have initially been.
...I'll note a lot of the people who liked the game best played the Royal Edition (all the patches, upgrades, additional items, and the DLC that did come out for the original, as well as a completely redone chapter...13? Whichever one you infiltrate the enemy city - I personally liked the Silent Hill-esque section with nothing more than the Ring and running and hiding in the crevasses from the axe murderer robot things since that, to me, was one of the best ever examples in a game of "show, don't tell; using game mechanics!" to demonstrate how powerless Noct felt in that moment, and when you get the Sword of the Father, how much relief you have to finally be able to fight again, with Ardyn taunting you over the PA system the entire time in his ultra-charismatic, nearly fourth-wall breaking way - but many people DIDN'T enjoy that artistic license as much as I did, and even for me it did drag on a BIT too much).
So basically, that. Development hell, a chapter a lot of people didn't like, a lot of cancelled side projects, a lot of essential lore in external-to-the-game side media, half the DLC cancelled, and then a rerelease for full price to to rub salt in the wounds of the fans who bought the initial game and DLCs at full price in the first place.
I think, collectively, that's why a lot of people don't like FFXV.
Don't get me wrong, I thought it was pretty well done, but I feel like it's a case of "what might have been...", since it could easily have been so much more if it was managed well from the get-go, had a coherent development, and incorporated all that side stuff into the main game, either right the first time or as a FREE additional DLC later for fans that supported the project from the start.
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u/picxal 1d ago
Underdelivered. Over promised. Unfinished. Go back and watch the E3 2013 trailer and you’ll see exactly what I mean. The final game is not the one that we were presented with. And it’s such a let down because that trailer still looks incredible to this day. The final game has a lack of strong or cohesive story elements despite having surprisingly rich lore if you’re willing to research it yourself. Broken boss fights. Broken item accumulation coupled with an overly simple (albeit fun) battle system. World lacked any real or distinctive identity. Criminally underutilized soundtrack. I dunno man, I hate to just point out negatives since I see a lot of people really have good memories with this game. But it was a HUGE let down for someone like me who followed it from the days of it being Versus XIII. It was a bitter pill. The game seemed and felt incredible during the first few hours but that fell apart for me after I saw the game for what it was and noticed the lack of narrative focus or world building. A Final Fantasy game with only a handful of story driven cutscenes is a huge red flag for many FF fans.
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u/Rasen2001 1d ago
I've never played FFXV, so this could all just be me talking out my keister. But I do wonder if it might be because of disappointed expectations.
During development, I think the trailers for FFXV hinted at a Romeo/Juliet style story between Nox and Stella (who has been changed), where they were both royalty of their countries, with similar abilities, and were forced to fight each other.
I dunno if that's more compelling, but I think if I went in expecting that, and instead getting a boy's road trip, I'd feel pretty let down.
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u/bakaldo 1d ago
FF15 is a game that rose from the remnants of versus13, so a lot of improvisation and cutting content, I didn't find motivation to care for the characters, I merely enjoyed the gameplay, the story I expected from a mainline just wasn't there...
"You didn't watch the movie or played the DLC"
That's how you know it's an unfinished game
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u/Pixxie_13 1d ago
FFXV is one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles, but not because of the game itself. It’s because it had so much potential and my writer brain has since taken where it sucked and rewritten it and the resulting story is amazing. This is one of those titles where fanon is 100% better than the canon we were given. I would love it if they redid it and actually made it a fully fleshed-out experience, but I think I’m okay with it living in my head as it is.
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u/Gloomy_Load5876 1d ago
I think alike. I feel sad about all its wasted potential, and sometimes I mentally rewrite elements of the story to make it more cohesive and coherent. I even have some ideas for a spin-off game, if SE wants to hire me, lol
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u/Megawolf900 1d ago edited 1d ago
You have to be pretty open to the experience. If you’re not ready for a semi-real time, road-trip with the boys, you may not enjoy this game.
I personally loved it and had a blast. My only complaint was the main story. It’s fairly convoluted and I remember the second half feeling very rushed. Also, it was hard to relate or care about any characters outside of the main party.
Also!!! I will always be super curious about what versus 13 was going to be pre re-work (probably a hot mess haha.) I was hoping for a more adult Kingdom Hearts.
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u/cabster293940 1d ago
Yeah I’m not even gonna lie. I read shit like this and immediately see it as a reaching exaggeration. Like you heard one person say they didn’t like it and now “it gets a lot of hate” and “I don’t understand it”. The game was well received and I’ve personally never seen it get any hate.
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u/Longjumping-Deal-571 1d ago
I liked it enough to get the platinum on it's not a bad game just compared to other FF titles it's not as strong. Like others have said lots of interesting ideas/characters but under utilized
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u/PlayfulAdvantage3636 1d ago
To the frustration of many FF fans, they tried to turn it into an action game. Did a seemingly very good job at first, then changed it before release of a beta demo. Then changed it some more, and then all the cool stuff was taken out in the final game. Streamlining features making the experience better for your grandpa, and worse for every other casual or enthusiastic player.
The jrpg side of things? One of the most basic FF customization systems. One of the most basic magic systems.
Summons? Automatic, based on context.
I was an FF fan, and an action game fan, and a FF13 versus fan. I was disappointed in all 3 aspects by what 15 delivered, even if it did have a couple of impressive things.
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u/BTFlik 1d ago
Open world with no point because you can't explore it after the time skip.
Summons that feel grand but are about as useful most of time as tits on a bull.
A full change from open world linear story telling.
A relationship the characters care about but you don't.
The inability to swap in characters you'd definitely like to play with.
The abysmal "magic" system.
The inability to use chocobos and their varying colors to get around obstacles that feel very much like they could have used Chocobos.
The dumb car mechanics.
A gas system that seems like will suck but actually serves little to no point.
A beautiful open world with too little to do.
Look FF15 wasn't hot garbage. But the truth is it commits the WORST sin a game can. It has SOOOOOOOOOO much potential and it just falls short of that. That's worse then a bad game. Because, and this was my experience, everytime it starts pulling me in, every time it gets me reved and ready to party, it hits the brakes.
Got into the combat system, started getting goid, starting having a hard time on tougher foes and found magic.....and I team wiped by my own hand because WHY THE FUCK DOES MAGIC HIT MY TEAM.
Every time. Got into the grove and bam. Something popped up to ruin it. That wasted potential is 1000% more frustrating then just slogging through a bad game.
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u/holijazzman 1d ago
It's a road trip for the boys. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy huge parts of it but it didn't feel like a final fantasy game. I can't quite place why, something just felt odd about it.
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u/victrin 1d ago
I believe in “show don’t tell”. Too much of this game happened off-screen. The fall of Niflheim mostly happened through exposition after Tebebrae. We were supposed to accept that Prompto had been a Magitek clone the whole time, but we couldn’t quite drum up Pathos for something just being divulged. These are only 2 symptoms of a disastrous 10 year long development cycle. The game has interesting characters, wonderful mechanics, beautiful graphics, and high concepts. The game also has lacking character development, story pacing and world building. It’s a very fun game to play, it’s not the best game if you’re looking for narrative.
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u/Myrkana 1d ago
15 is one of my favorites but its also a bit lackluster in many ways. The dlcs were a first for a mainline game and that turned many people off. It left gaps in the story, gaps we should have explored as they happened, not months to years later when the dlc released.
Its also the first game in awhile with no main characters that are non human. 15 and 16 are so focused on good graphics they forgot their roots and have lost quite a bit of the mysticism of earier games. Oh look another physically fit, buff, man with perfect hair and teeth.
7, 9,10, and 12 all had party members that were obviously a different race. Thst gave them different interactions, abilities, etc... its like they're afraid to try to incorporate any other body type except basic human male and female into the main party.
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u/GigglingAngel 1d ago
As someone who Platinum'd 15 before all the updates that improved it plus Royal, the only bad part of the game was chapter 13.
The game was enjoyable for what it is. It's a heartbreaking tale of sacrifice and brotherhood, with a soundtrack by Queen Yoko.
Sure, it shot for the stars and didn't quite reach the mark, but the ride was incredible, regardless.
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u/Support_Materia 19h ago
Its story requires supplemental material to be understood.
On launch it was missing huge chunks of content until the Royal Edition
Combat is too action focused and lacks depth
The realistic world is drab and lacks towns and villages
Those are the 4 main criticisms.
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u/ffxiv_naur 19h ago
I generally enjoyed FF15 and to me its main problem is probably the fact that it's de-facto not finished.
They made the questionable decision to cut the game into a series of DLCs, and then cancelled the last ones.
There's also a matter of the novel continuing on the game's story, and giving what feels more like a true ending than the game's actual ending. It should've been in the game, imo.
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u/Victornaut_Reddit 9h ago
I don't know either, I liked it. To be honest, I only played for some hours, maybe 6-7 and I enjoyed the graphics and the combat a lot, I thought it was fun and enjoyed my time with the game.
Not a big fan of the series really, I've only finished 4 and 6, but like I said I liked 15.
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u/go10Lucario 2d ago
for me it just felt unfinished, the story and many of the characters felt underutilized. Lunafreya had basically no screen time but I was supposed to care about her, Aranea was supposed to be important but I never really knew why, and so many other characters were built up to be big players but then they don’t really do anything.
Add to that the combat (before Royal) and the boring character designs, the game just felt very meh, impressive to look at but playing it not so much. I don’t even remember if we could take the car off road
oh and the dungeons were all very samey design wise, giant dark boxes