Final Fantasy XV

Please play that game you won't be dissapointed.

Also I love prompto

This was definitely the most fun I've had playing through a Final Fantasy game. Scenery-8 Story-8 Character interaction-9 Uniqueness-9 Driving-0 Don't expect the driving to be anything resembling fun. Someone should have lost their job over that bungled mess. The story progresses WAY to fast, the fun in this game was the side quests and exploring.

I saw the debut trailer for Versus XIII back in 2006 and the quality of this game was thus in question to the last minute. The director change to Tabata undeniably saved this troubled production but it's very clear that he still needed another year to complete his ambitious vision. The game is divided in 2 parts. The first half is a fun road trip that put exploration first. The ultimately large game world is a bit more fractured into closed off "arenas" than i would have liked. You will need to rely on Chocobos or teleportation to get around, as your car can only go on roads and mostly drives itself. The slightly weird battle system frankly feels like a step backwards, as even the problematic XIII trilogy had a better ones. They should have gone with a true hack and slash battle style, instead of this "tactical" Kingdom Hearts approach, yet it works fine enough. The graphics, soundtrack and voice acting are great. As long as you use the superior Japanese VAs and i noticed that the translation takes many liberties, as the subtitles are based on the English script. Characterization is where the game shines, so on to the "boyband". All 4 are some of the best characters SE ever brought to life. The story is fairly engaging too, as long as you kept up with the media-tie ins, as neither the world nor the boy's backstories are properly explained. This half of the game barely features villains and i just kept going on hunts, went fishing or hunted the royal arms. Luna, her guardian and Aranea (i cheated her into my party) are further great female characters but the mechanic Cindy turned out to be the sexist otaku bait all expected in the end. None of them are seen all that often though. I ended up spending 60 hours till my quest log was all out of missions and on i traveled to the Venice equivalent of the game. The second half took me about 10 hours to complete but i will admit that i could 1-hit-kill half my enemies at this point due to being overpowered. Most of the game's surprisingly dark story is told here and what a skeleton it turned out to be! Characters randomly show up and disappear without warning. The open world returns to the "running down corridors" design of XIII and i had to look up a fan explanations to understand what even happened. And most imploringly why it happened. Meaning that SE published a 2nd Xenogears, with the difference that this borderline broken 2nd half was still fun. My investment in the characters ultimately made me focus on the good sides, even if i rarely played less complete games. The much dreaded Chapter 13 was actually a slightly flawed highlight (your 1 weapon is a bit too weak), as enough of it is finished to understand what happens and the survival horror atmosphere was a welcomes change of pace. The game's finale is thankfully a masterpiece, so the team at least focused on landing the ending. I then returned to the open world and spend a final 20 hours on doing endgame quests and getting my Platinum. I will never deny that the game shouldn't have been shipped in this from but the devs are focused on delivering the necessary patches and content to fill in some of the blank canvas. I lastly finished all offline FF games + most spin-offs. FF XV could have been a top 5 entry if the game was done but the finished product is still a modern RPG highlight and ultimately a success, after 10 years in development hell. 8,5/10

I have played nearly every installment of the Final Fantasy series. It was one of my favorite series of role playing games, that is until they decided to go online and then release games that just did not seem all that much like a Final Fantasy game. The last one I really enjoyed a lot was the tenth edition, I even liked its sequel; however, I never did play the eleventh game due to it being exclusively an online game. Then the twelfth game came out and I was rather disappointed as it still ranks as my least favorite. Granted, I am wanting to play it again to see if I may have misjudged it and ranked it poorly unfairly. Then came part thirteen and it was pretty, fast paced and devoid of a lot of things that make a role playing game, a role playing game. I also played through XIII-2 and it had more elements of a role playing game, but the story was just so congested in it. Then there was XIII: Lightening Returns which collapsed more story on top of what was already congested and made the game a timed game and I was unable to complete it due to this as it annoyed me. Did not play the fourteenth game due to it being another online one, I really wish these were not part of the main series and just called Final Fantasy Online. The last one I played is Final Fantasy-Type 0 which had great characters and fun combat, but the story was just a bit too hard to follow. Now there is this one which is by far my favorite since the tenth game. Sure, it is not turn based like the old days which I prefer, but at least the combat is action based and not that strange combination which is not really turn, but not really action either. The type usually found in online role playing games, the twelfth game was like this. No, in this one the combat is quick and you have a nice open world to explore for the most part. My main complaint about it, is that like Type-0 the story is not easy to follow. It is easier than Type-0 as it has a well defined villain, but a lot of stuff takes place off screen or you have to watch a movie or download a DLC to get everything. I just feel a game's story should be confined to the main game and you should not be required to purchase more stuff to get the full picture. Other than this it is a very fun, albeit depressing game.

The story is a bit complicated when looked at as a whole; however, the main portion is about a prince and his three friends traveling the world in order for the prince to reclaim his thrown by gaining the powers of the former kings and the summons. The characters are what makes this one so fun as they are just a group of friends and they have funny conversations and remarks during the adventure. Your group travels everywhere in search of the power to expel the empire from the city of Insomnia; however, there is something far more sinister than a mere invasion as the days are getting shorter and during the night powerful creatures known as daemons appear to terrorize the populace. Soon Prince Noctis heads to a city where he was to be married and at this point the game does get rather depressing.

The game play features combat that is action based. During the game you only control Prince Noctis, but despite this it is still rather fun. The summons in this game are awesome as they usually wipe everything out! The first portion of the game is an open world where you travel here and there in search of the King's tombs and do other things such as side quests to gain experience. This one also does things a bit differently as you do not get experience upon defeating the enemies, but rather when you either camp or stay at a hotel or rest stop. You generally get more experience for staying at a hotel or rest stop; however, you can eat a meal when camping that provides buffs to your party. The game becomes a bit more straight forward though when you go to the city of Altissa which looks like Venice. After this the game's mood darkens significantly, but there is a rather cool portion of the game that features a train. Always enjoy trains in role playing games.

So, this game was my personal favorite Final Fantasy since the tenth game. I would have ranked it higher, but the story was a bit hard to follow at times due to the incessant need these days of games to have DLC packs and such. I also wish the tone of the game did not darken so much after the group left for Altissa as my life is at the lowest point imaginable and it really just caused me to feel worse. I was also disappointed that you are pretty much done with the open world once you leave for Altissa as I was thinking you would get more time to finish quests and such. I think you can go back in time or something and do it, but I just did not think that fit so I just went straight ahead. The game took me just over 60 hours to complete making it a relatively short game by today's standards and I completed a lot of side quests too so if you play straight through I imagine you could probably finish the game between 40 and 50 hours. So not as great as the Final Fantasy games back in the day, but better than all the recent ones.

This is a tough one. I've loved the FF series through its highs and lows and I've actually come to really appreciate this entry over time. I first got it when released in 2016 and it was clear that it was unfinished. The plot was choppy and confusing, some of the mechanics were sloppy, and the level of polish really varied throughout the game. However, the relationship between Noct and the boys has always been compelling.

Many of these issues have been addressed over time with DLCs, the spin-off anime, and the CGI film. I've seen them all because I always felt there was some interesting source material here worth exploring and watching them really does elucidate a lot. The problem is, people shouldn't be asked to do that. FF7, for example, still had a confusing narrative, but the plot was intact and all the spin-offs served to enrich the story, not complete it.

In terms of the technical issues, the development was clearly an ironically epic journey. This game was ambitious, and I'm surprised how good it looked at times in 2016. Patches and 60 fps updates makes it run much more beautifully now but the variability in polish during different game areas and occasional sloppy combat is still present. However all this being said, they aimed for the stars and I'm sure took notes on what worked and what didn't.

In the end, this is a unique entry with heart but it just wasn't fully fleshed out. There's a rich lore that unfortunately demands an unreasonable amount of time and money for fans to be able to fully appreciate it. However, Square Enix has shown consistent evidence of listening to their fans (example, making this an open world entry after the feedback that FFXIII was too linear). I have hope that this will lay the groundwork for future entries to be technically better but hopefully also more cohesive from a plot standpoint.