Final Fantasy XV

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GameHED
10000 words or your money back!
10000 words or your money back!
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Final Fantasy XV

Post by GameHED »

Thinking of playing this one soon as it is an open world rpg with realtime combat.

Heard its shit but better than previous games.

I don't have high expectations for it, but as a fan of the open world rpg genre I have interest in this particular one as it looks like a more western approach to exploration.

random dude 3489374 is warning me not to bother as the dungeons design is crap like skyrim* but given that I have less time this works in my favour these days.

Anyone else considering playing this after they are done with their pile of shame? (still got to get through Trails of Cold Steel 1+2 so I have to divide attention between multiple games)

One thing that has scared me about Square Enix is don't let us customise the characters and create characters and the cold hard fact is if I don't want to be a boy band member I can't choose NOT to be that. If Square really wanted to appeal to the WRPG fans they should do what they let us do from the FF MMO games and let us create the characters. (eg why can't I be a black guy with giant minigun attached to his arm like the guy in FF7?) Part of Role Playing is creating the character you wish to be an then decide on how you interact with npc and the environment based on the abilities you have/chose/ are granted by the character you made.

Anyway I hope the next major game does this and the more traditional JRPG style is used for portables. (where the game designer tells you who you are and what you can do and how you interact and linear gameplay works to the strengths of the hardware limits of handheld games)

*random dickhead says its shit and I tend to agree (because all next gen rpg are generally shit because they do not like freedom which is why new Dues Ex games are not as good as the original, and why you never have the option to shit even though you can eat and sleep in these modern rpg games. Shitting, peeing, resting, sex, and eating should all contribute to health boost along with showering and grooming so you don't look like a homeless guy - but do modern games put these sim-like elements in games even though its easy and animal crossing does life sim stuff like that? No. They need to have different types of health: mental health, if you don't entertain yourself you go crazy and lose sanity from being overworked) hygiene which is related to diseases based on food you ate, who you slept with, and frequency of showering, physical health which is related to combat damage, and spiritual health which is whether you believe in your chosen god or deity whose virtues you ignored and now this affects how effective the spells work because you are not loyal to the teachings of that deity who requires sacrifices and prayers and donations to keep them happy. If you don't maintain mental health, physical health, hygiene you can go crazy, you will bleed to death, or you get diseases from infections or poor immune system when you travel to islands where diseases are spreading)
As graphics have gotten more realistic so too should the systems of role playing where characters can get depressed and sad so you can't get them to work fast, but if you cheer them up they stop feeling sorry for themselves and you get bonus in the way they behave (eg acting more risky in battle to break the spirit of the enemy and overcompensate in performance by going the extra mile to win. (like the desperation attack in previous gams but it's desperation to succeed and not just to survive a tough battle when near death) These systems would not be hard to implement and create more memorable moments in a boring predictable game genre. Like one guy is busy shitting and during this time a monster apears and he can't help you fight it because he is halfway through pooing in the bush so you always have to time your breaks at regular intervals to avoid this problem. ie one watches over the campfire, the other shits and pees, and the other guy goes to sleep and you have to rotate shifts so each member is equally well-rested.
Dec 5, 2016 at 8:07 AM
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Okay so let's get some things going from 19 hours and 42 minutes of gameplay:

- The "amazing" dungeons are extremely linear affairs that remind me of Skyrim's Dungeons. Zero flavoring whatsoever, each one is a single linear path straight to the finish with a bunch of mobs jumping out at you. The positive is that most of the areas are different, so unlike skyrim each dungeon is unique from a visual perspective and enemy perspective. But most of them are linear as fuck - and they mostly just require your retardo ass to get to the end to get the treasure, which, like the dragon shouts, is part of your mystical power that you get due to being the Chosen One or whatever. Although I've found 8/13 Armiger weapons and I can't tell if that actually makes me more powerful or not, unlike the Dragon Shouts from skyrim which usually either improved or gave you a new ability. So it's not awesome.

I've completed 40+ sidequests and the overwhelming majority of them are shitty as all hell. They're boring as fuck and almost all of them are fetch quests. There's a few neat ones, such as the fishing quests, but most of them are terrible deliveryman quests. Hunts are better, but you can break the game by making supernukes REALLY EARLY ON and turn most of them into a joke. Doubly so when you get summons. Shit, I was doing FINE against a boss when suddenly Ramuh started being summonable.

Summons - You can't control them, you cant decide to use them, you need to unlock them by doing a thing, which is usually being beat to shit, and then the summon you use is based off location. Titan shows up on wide open fields, Leviathan shows up near water, Ramuh shows up everywhere, including indoors. They do seem to mix it up attack animation wise, because Ramuh just did adifferent attack to a boss, it was cool.

So what I'm noticing is there is a hilarious amount of invisible walls. Noct has a shitty jump but Chocobos can get great speed and impressive air...so when you clear a barrier by 12 feet and you just stop mid air and slide down off of nothing you start to wonder how Open this Open World is. Its not really an open world, it's actually, oddly enough, a better stop in open world design in some areas. When Todd Howard says you can climb any mountain in skyrim you can but its usually just an extremely underwhelming experience that fucking sucks a cock. Hooray. When you climb the mountain in FFXV, its actually a massive trek, a dungeon with respawning areas and a climbing section which involves you leveraging use of stamind to climb higher.

So it's a mixed bag.

When the game does shit right, its just so god damn enjoyable I find myself smiling.

And then when the game fucks up, I almost want to stop playing.

Story is a fucking joke so far. I haven't completed too many chapters, I just found out who Ardyn was and he closed down all of the imperial bases....thanks I guess!

It's definitely the best of the post FF9 FFs. So whatever that means to you.
One thing I hope happens is Square goes back to making smaller titles that are low budget but offer better depth with memorable characters who have interesting personalities. The JRPG genre is flooded with the same stuff. They should aim to make masterpieces not mediocre games with a big budget. (the franchise is going to suffer what I call the EA effect where people lose interest in buying the same shit each time due to forgettable experiences and lose passion for the new game unless it tops the older one in quality story, characters, combat systems etc One of the reasons bethesda fails at interesting characters is they don't have the magic of Obsidian and only good at world building so most npc you encounter are forgettable fucks whose names don't matter. A low budget Square Enix game with good writing and no expensive voice acting, means writers can make the RPG game interesting again. If you can't make me cry because the character dies (but due to not being of any importance I am indifferent) then you fail at making good RPGs and I may as well play a Strategy war simulation instead where it's only about numbers. It's not "cool" only being able to be a inexperienced boy band member with skinny body type anymore. Why can't these guys at Square please take some inspiration from Anime's like Berserk or the Dark Souls games instead of boy bands argh... If they used ONLY realtime cutscenes and not pre-rendered shit, your character would always appear as you created them in flashbacks and stuff like that, but nooooo... they want to create merchandise like prequel anime tv series and other things instead of player freedom, so that means they have to tell you what you are. It's not the 90s anymore and prerendered stuff only restricts gameplay)
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
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