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Final Fantasy XV - Review Thread [Second wave of reviews coming in]

I know that blacklisting a site is very much within a publisher's prerogative, but blacklisting a site because their review score was lower than the current average on Metacritic is pretty depressing, especially since a 75 score is great. Very classy, Koch Media.

At any rate, I'm really glad that XV is reviewing well, I'm enjoying it myself. Something like the above situation does feel a bit shit, though, sigh. I guess I always had hoped that kind of smackdown doesn't happen from publishers.
 
Well that's your deal for having ludicrous, completely unfounded expectations.

If I expect Halo 6 to be the greatest game ever made, it doesn't mean that the developers are now bound to that. It means I'm delusional because there's no reason whatsoever to have anything close to that expectation.

And? It's a much better game than FFXIII in my experience thus far. I hated FFXIII. This game has more personality in the first few hours than Lightning had in three whole games.

What I mean is that when it was called Versus XIII, that's what I was hoping. When Nomura stepped out and the game became what we have now, that dream died. Probably this is the best possible outcome of all this mess, we got a good but flawed game, but at least a good game.
 

maxcriden

Member
I have a similar reason. Now I'm unsure my copy of The Last Guardian will arrive on time.

Amazon frequently has issues with release day delivery. I recommend you contact them 2-3 days before release to ensure the game is still set to arrive on release day. Here's hoping they'll get it to you day one!
 
Amazon frequently has issues with release day delivery. I recommend you contact them 2-3 days before release to ensure the game is still set to arrive on release day. Here's hoping they'll get it to you day one!
God knows we have waited long enough for these games!

I really have high hopes for how FF VII remake will end up. Gameplay should be an improvement over FF XV. A real magic system and the summons, oh my god the summons! I haven't seen the ones in XV but I know they'll want to surpass them in every regard.

Nomura and Kitase have this on lock.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
God knows we have waited long enough for these games!

I really have high hopes for how FF VII remake will end up. Gameplay should be an improvement over FF XV. A real magic system and the summons, oh my god the summons! I haven't seen the ones in XV but I know they'll want to surpass them in every regard.

Nomura and Kitase have this on lock.

I personally think FF7R as a project will be a great experience for those of us who have appropriate expectations, but we could have said the same for this game, in a different way.

FF15 got out of dev hell relatively unharmed despite those looking at the expectations of a game 10 years in development.

But FF7R has to have expectations constantly managed, not by the game itself being good or bad, but what purists are looking for. Anyone who hates anything about the Compilation will likely be repelled, so i hope SE are keeping that in mind, cause i'm sure Nomura, Nojima and the rest are going full steam ahead with those aspirations.
 

Lyng

Member
Just finished chapter one. Really liking it so far.
The combat system is really good. I think only the Souls games have a better system.

About the story: I quiet like it. Then again I watched Kingsglaive first. I really feel that's a must. The story would feel like a total mess without that.
But yeah, so far the game is great.
 

ethomaz

Banned
For more good it could be there is no way FF7R will meet the expectations.

It is really near impossible to beat something that is already a masterpiece in people minds.

IMO I thing going action battle system in FF7R is a bad start already... fans wants to control all the characters like the original.
 
For more good it could be there is no way FF7R will meet the expectations.

It is really near impossible to beat something that is already a masterpiece in people minds.

IMO I thing going action battle system in FF7R is a terrible choice.

I think if they were to make FF7R and have it be a slow turn-based RPG would be a terrible choice.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
For more good it could be there is no way FF7R will meet the expectations.

It is really near impossible to beat something that is already a masterpiece in people minds.

IMO I thing going action battle system in FF7R is a bad start already... fans wants to control all the characters like the original.

It depends on what expectations you have and what you liked about the original. Its not an either or.

You can't control all characters in the original, you had 3 that you chose from. In this game you will likely have 3 characters you chose on the field and can switch between like the original, and the other 2 will have strict AI patterns when you are not controlling them
 
i love the idea of an Action RPG

Switching between those Partymembers (Vincent, Red XIII, Tifa) with a realtime action combat....Wonderful
Especially since each character brings his own movesets and therefore the variety should be huge
 
I personally think FF7R as a project will be a great experience for those of us who have appropriate expectations, but we could have said the same for this game, in a different way.

FF15 got out of dev hell relatively unharmed.

But FF7R has to have expectations constantly managed, not by the game itself, but what purists are looking for. Anyone who hates anything about the Compilation will likely be repelled, so i hope SE are keeping that in mind, cause i'm sure Nomura, Nojima and the rest are going full steam ahead with those aspirations.
They seemed focused enough. Kitase has a special interest in this game being amazing, as it's close and dear to his heart. Nomura even thought Kitase was directing since he was so hands on with the project.

They also must have learned something from the development of FF XV, and are probably keen on not making the same mistakes.

Anyways, I'm very much looking forward to FF XV. Many of my close friends are very down on it just based on what they have seen in trailers, so I want to have an opinion actually based on playing the game.
 

Retsudo

Member
Maybe it's because I played through Witcher 3 on the hard difficulty, but I always found the combat deep and challenging enough.

I felt the combat in witcher 3 was appaling. I played it in death march and was bored out of my mind. It might have had something to do with playing bloodborne before and then jumping it into though.

Anyway, the combat in W3 is similar to FF15, at least for me.
 
For more good it could be there is no way FF7R will meet the expectations.

It is really near impossible to beat something that is already a masterpiece in people minds.

IMO I thing going action battle system in FF7R is a bad start already... fans wants to control all the characters like the original.
Action battle doesn't necessitate losing party control. It's likely they might go that route, but it doesn't have to be that.
 

meerak

Member
I felt the combat in witcher 3 was appaling. I played it in death march and was bored out of my mind. It might have had something to do with playing bloodborne before and then jumping it into though.

Anyway, the combat in W3 is similar to FF15, at least for me.

Just to add more to this mess...

I played W3 on death march and thought it was tactical and interesting. Loved it! I haven't played Bloodborne because I'm stuck on 1-3 of Demon's Souls, and have been, since release day. I don't find the combat in W3 and FF15 *that* similar, but I do think I see what you mean. In any case neither game is a button masher, and I think are at their best / most elegant with slow, well-timed buttons (which I think is why there is so much emphasis on button holds rather than presses in this game). In FF15, this is aided by the Wait mode, which, at first was bizarre to get a handle of, but very much liking it now.
 

RainForce

Banned
I think if they were to make FF7R and have it be a slow turn-based RPG would be a terrible choice.

Turn-based doesn't have to be slow. FFX-2 certainly isn't slow.

And there's a million things they can do to spice it up anyway. Dynamic camera, illusion of movement, etc.

i love the idea of an Action RPG

Switching between those Partymembers (Vincent, Red XIII, Tifa) with a realtime action combat....Wonderful
Especially since each character brings his own movesets and therefore the variety should be huge

You'll never get the same amount of variety in moveset in an action battle system compared to a menu driven one. The hundreds of possible actions can't all be mapped to a single button, and you won't want to be scrolling through menus in a frantic action game.


This is why I have zero hope for FF7R.
 

kromeo

Member
But FF7R has to have expectations constantly managed, not by the game itself being good or bad, but what purists are looking for. Anyone who hates anything about the Compilation will likely be repelled, so i hope SE are keeping that in mind, cause i'm sure Nomura, Nojima and the rest are going full steam ahead with those aspirations.

I loved VII but thought Crisis Core was one of the worst games I've experienced and Advent Children wasn't much better. I've got no real expectations of VIIR and won;t be particularly disappointed if it's not for me
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
I loved VII but thought Crisis Core was one of the worst games I've experienced and Advent Children wasn't much better. I've got no real expectations of VIIR and won;t be particularly disappointed if it's not for me

>< See, that's what i'm talking about. Crisis core is one of my favorite games, and i really enjoyed AC in fanservicy way.

So by default people in your camp are gonna be repelled. Changing the battle system ties into that purist vibe.

We'll just have to see if many of the purists can essentially put that aside and treat FF7R as its own thing

It has some good designed bosses (basically all the added ones on FM), the battle system itself is crap.

Wat
 

ethomaz

Banned
I think if they were to make FF7R and have it be a slow turn-based RPG would be a terrible choice.
It can be fast turn-based... slow is a design choice.

Action battle doesn't necessitate losing party control. It's likely they might go that route, but it doesn't have to be that.
You lose full control from your party... you need to choose one full control at time doing commands to the others.

There is no way to full control all members.

The most I liked from a action battle system in a JRPG was Secret of Mana... you control one member and do magic commands via menu in wait mode while the physical atraca are handled automatically by AI.



PS for the thread: W3 battle system is trash and serviceable at best... FFXV is indeed better than it but serviceable too... both are not inspiring battle systems.
 
You lose full control from your party... you need to choose one full control at time doing commands to the others.

There is no way to full control all members.
To literally control every aspect of each character's every move? Sure, you obviously lose that.

But you don't need to lose all control. Tales' system of allowing you to set detailed parameters for the AI to follow is a decent way to make you feel like you still are in the driver's seat rather than completely at the mercy of a stupid AI. Character switching also goes a long way to making you feel in control of battles.

This is something I don't really enjoy about XV. Like with Prompto being terrible. There's not a whole lot that I can do to fix that issue. I can't give him detailed enough orders to fix his actions automatically, and I can't take over his character to fix it manually myself.
 

Toparaman

Banned
I've been avoiding most of the lead-up to FF:XV but I just saw that its only 20ish hours long? That is a huge positive for me. I will definitely check this game out in the future.

Ha, same. I will never understand the obsession with long play times for RPGs. The best RPG in my opinion is Chrono Trigger and it's only like 25 hours max. In that sense I kind of like that FF7R is going to be episodic, because the original FF7 was too long for my tastes.

Frankly I would've loved for Witcher 3 to have a "condensed version", though I suppose that's blasphemy to some.
 
What I mean is that when it was called Versus XIII, that's what I was hoping. When Nomura stepped out and the game became what we have now, that dream died. Probably this is the best possible outcome of all this mess, we got a good but flawed game, but at least a good game.
Didn't Tabata say that in essence Versus 13=FFXV
So either way it likely wouldve ended up similarly.
 

sappyday

Member
I've been avoiding most of the lead-up to FF:XV but I just saw that its only 20ish hours long? That is a huge positive for me. I will definitely check this game out in the future.

It's just that director said it would take 40-50 hours to do the main quest alone. That's a lie. It's half that time even with some of the side quests included. And the story is very sparse during the first half and the story is very rushed during the second half that it all falls apart. The ending is good but it could have been way more effective imo, and a longer story could have maybe solved that.

Didn't Tabata say that in essence Versus 13=FFXV
So either way it likely wouldve ended up similarly.

He said that when just got the role of director. Earlier last year he said the game has changed a lot from when it was Versus. It's no secret that Nomura wanted to make this game a trilogy and that Square wanted to push this out to get it over with. It's like with Metal Gear Solid V but if Kojima did chapter 3 in like a month.
 

ethomaz

Banned
To literally control every aspect of each character's every move? Sure, you obviously lose that.

But you don't need to lose all control. Tales' system of allowing you to set detailed parameters for the AI to follow is a decent way to make you feel like you still are in the driver's seat rather than completely at the mercy of a stupid AI. Character switching also goes a long way to making you feel in control of battles.

This is something I don't really enjoy about XV. Like with Prompto being terrible. There's not a whole lot that I can do to fix that issue. I can't give him detailed enough orders to fix his actions automatically, and I can't take over his character to fix it manually myself.
I don't like Tales system... it is exactly the type of battle system I don't like because you only kill everything with one char not giving a shit about the AI ones.

What you describe is something like FFXII battle system with these gambits.

Edit - I like action battle system when you are a single character and not a party like W3, BB, Kain, Musashi, Vagrant Story, etc.
 

dc89

Member
I'll be updating the OP later on today (afternoon GMT) drop me a PM If you want a particular review in the OP. Already received a few requests for IGN Italy and others - bare with me, I need sleep for now!
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Didn't Tabata say that in essence Versus 13=FFXV
So either way it likely wouldve ended up similarly.

As said, he said that in order to cover for the transition of directors.

But its obvious that things had changed significantly in scope and direction based on some kind of fallout that occurred. Hell a lot of the footage seen when Tabata was in charge is not in the game, describing a frenetic editing and development pace that generally left no time for nuance.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
I don't know man....I think dropping the menu based battle system is a play to appeal to a wider audience. Which is fine by me. I happen to like the Action oriented RPGs.

While there is nothing wrong with menu based combat, in terms of MASS appeal, it should probably be developed for the niche.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I don't know man....I think dropping the menu based battle system is a play to appeal to a wider audience. Which is fine by me. I happen to like the Action oriented RPGs.

While there is nothing wrong with menu based combat, in terms of MASS appeal, it should probably be developed for the niche.
I get that... let's see if it works.

Persona is following another path and it is starting to become big in western... I won't call that niche.
 
1 point above XIII? I expected XV to have better score, not that is a bad one, it must be that I didn't liked XIII that much.

Though it's great to hear that the mechanics are a plus.
 

Lynx_7

Member
Is it cheating to bring up Pokemon? People always complain about that because *insert excuses*.

At any case, I'm not against FF7 being action based, just a little saddened because I really wanted to see a new, high budget FF game trying something new within the genre and FF7 would've been the perfect opportunity for that, what with the original being a turn based game and all that. I would've liked for them to expand on the Materia system of the original and see a modern take on the ATB, though it's still gonna be interesting to see how they translate Materias to an Action system. There's always DQ XI to satiate my thirst for a high budget turn-based game I guess, though with DQ you already know what to expect so there's little in the way of surprises or innovation.

I'm betting 7R's battle system will be stronger than XV's at least. Not having to deal with the same development baggage that XV had to certainly helps.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
I think anything above 80 counts as a win on Metacritic purely because a lot of reviewers score on an integer 5 star system and a least a few are likely to be leery of awarding 5/5 lest it be interpreted as a "perfect" score.
 

farisr

Member
1 point above XIII? I expected XV to have better score, not that is a bad one, it must be that I didn't liked XIII that much.

Though it's great to hear that the mechanics are a plus.
It's not a good idea to compare metacritic score of games in different generations. Reviewers are far more strict on scoring and use a lot more of the scale now compared to past generations. Many games that would've scored in the low 90s in previous gens would get a mid to low 80 these days with current scoring standards/scale being used.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I think anything above 80 counts as a win on Metacritic purely because a lot of reviewers score on an integer 5 star system and a least a few are likely to be leery of awarding 5/5 lest it be interpreted as a "perfect" score.
Reviewers give 5/5 for not perfect games... 5/5 doesn't mean perfect...
 
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