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well, it took four years, but I now have conclusive and detailed thoughts about FFXV
first, the negatives
this story is good, but it's not good at telling it. this is largely due to the fact that you have to watch (2) animes, a movie, play a game, and play 5 DLCs to actually capture it all
It feels a lot like the people in charge of lots of this stuff only occasionally checked in with each other. In Kingsglaive, this crazy war is going on, but in the game you're going on a gnarly fun road trip. The inconsistencies are not great.
Some absolutely baffling choices were made all around. One that still blows my mind is that jumping and interacting with things is the same button. There's probably some video game design logic behind that somewhere, but it's not ideal.
Another problem is this game has *extremely cool* characters and *extremely boring* characters. You occasionally bump into the extremely cool looking characters (Ravus, Aranea, Ardyn) but spend most of the time dealing with people who look like people out grocery shopping
that is, Monica, Jared, Dustin, etc. Nothing is cool about them. Cor is also boring as shit (and actually looks exactly like Trevor Bauer, which is weird). it's wild that in a world with super cool aesthetic stuff, you mostly hang out with completely boring looking characters
Kingsglaive looks extremely cool. General Glauca is extremely fucking cool. But then they throw in a very badly convoluted backstory to him and the other KG dudes betraying Lucis for no reason and this Galahd place is very important but also you never hear about it again.
Ardyn is a really great character. You have to play his DLC to know that AND watch an anime I didn't even know existed to find that out. Stuff like this is not great, but I do really like XV and always wanted to get the full experience and I'm glad I did.
I imagine making video games these days is an endlessly complicated process. It's not like the PS2 era anymore where changing a line of dialogue meant a few people editing a line of text. I get why this episodic stuff happened. I hope they don't try this model again though.
that said, FFXV as a very fun game. I am somewhere around 101 hours into the whole thing now and still doing endgame stuff. I really like the main characters and think they were good even before the DLC made them even better.
Lots of little things about it are really great and unqiue. Camping and getting food buffs is fun mechanic. Driving around is actually great, especially with the other FF soundtracks as CDs. The open world looks amazing. Hunts are really fun.
Noctis is one of my favorite protagonists in FF (probably second behind Cloud). Prompto is actually a really great character and I stand by that because you find out that he's always been trying really hard to be liked. Ignis and Gladio are great characters too.
The DLC for each of them is mostly good, but very short. Gladio's is the worst one, but Prompto and Ignis have very good ones imo. This content that shows you how much more interesting they are should have always been in the main game.
Ardyn is a really great and very tragic character. You'd never know that from the original content, which is a shame. His DLC backstory also should have been in the main narrative too.
All of the stuff with it gods is still epic as shit, even in a game that's now 4 years old. The music is extremely good. The big epic moments are really great. The entire ending (especially in the Royal Edition) is excellent I think.
Comrades is a pretty interesting game and I get what they planned on doing there now, but it's kind of empty at the same time. The dark world is still a big missed opportunity, but the Royal Edition at least made Insomnia a place with things to do.
It seems like SE learned some of their lessons with this game and took that to FF7R. I would MUCH rather have a 40 hour game that's tightly put together than a game I can play for 80 hours with an incomplete story.
From a business point of view I get why video game companies see the DLC strategy as a good idea. You get a wave of revenue from the initial game that will fund the next parts you couldn't fit in the first time around.
but, it seems like all the best games I've played on PS4 didn't follow that concept. HZD is a brilliant self contained game with one expansion. Nier Automata is a brilliant self contained game with one small expansion. 7R is a self contained game.
I'd much rather see 7R make several different full games than fuck around with DLC. And given how huge that game is and how hard modern games are to make, I was never scared or bothered by the episodic full game approach. It's what they have to do and should do.
The open world stuff in XV translated into 7R's next parts is going to be extremely great too.
7R also really gave me a ton of confidence that SE is going to continue doing it right. I am in no way bothered by the ending and like that they want to deviate from the script a bit because I can handle things not being strictly purist. Surprise me and get weird.
Overall though, FFXV is a game I really really like that is also absolutely flawed. It's a lot of fun, has a great story (if you hunt for it), characters that are really memorable, and some really cool aesthetic new stuff in it.
If I'm ranking my fav FF games, I think right now I'm going with something like this:
7
10
Tactics
6
15
12
7
10
Tactics
6
15
12
I have not played 8 or 9 recently enough to have a proper opinion since I last played those in high school. I also only played 13 once and did actually enjoy it a lot. I don't know if I'd put it ahead of 12 though. I'm not including 14 because it's an MMO.
I really really like 12 a lot too. It's a game that I think has a really excellent setting and had a really cool battle system for its time. I also literally played thru it 2 years ago and don't even remember what it's about entirely. It's not a memorable story, but I like it.
Also I don't think it's possible to put 7R in a ranking. That game is its own transcendent category. It was maybe the best experience I've ever had playing a video game.
