Final Fantasy 15
How is it like Final Fantasy? The game sets you up with 4 people in your party. You explore the world filled with beasts of unknown origin and meet characters trying to live out their lives. Cities get torn apart as people looking for power tear down the governments trying to hold for peace. You are able to ride chocobos to get across the area faster and use elements to exploit the enemies' weaknesses. This all sounds like Final Fantasy!
In reality, the game sets you up with 4 male characters on their way to a wedding in their sports car. Yes, sports car. The wedding was only a smokescreen so the empire could come in and take out the king. So now instead of having a fun trip, you now have to face the pressure of becoming king and fighting off militarists that can drop on top of you at any moment. And I hate that. I've had a group drop on top of me while fighting another difficult group of monsters several times. Once, I had them drop 3 consecutive times in the same area! I've had a couple times where I was overlapped with monsters and the Empire. I was once stopped in my car, left, called for my car, and they dropped another squad forcing me to ride my Chocobo a second time.
Combat is a completely different story. It isn't exactly fun until you learn the proper reaction techniques. In other words, the game can get very hard very fast unless you learn how to fight. You can't just go around swinging your sword like in Kingdom Hearts. You have the potential to do ten times the damage in a single swing if you hold down the X button and press B to parry a strike. Why? I'm not sure exactly. The guys can use the elements by absorbing their essence from a mineral deposit into a magic flask and releasing it to the enemy. Interestingly enough, you can mix these elements with ordinary items to make some very interesting concoctions. However since you don't use any mana, you are penalized with a substantial cooldown between each "cast". The magic abilities are nothing more than rudimentary grenades that have to be gathered, built, created, equipped, and used with a cooldown between each use. It wasn't fun at all.
The health system is a little weird too. Some enemies can strike at you and bring your health down all the way in one blow. Others can only be defeated by deflecting their blows. At first I thought I could deflect their blows with every weapon. That is not true. For the most part, I can only deflect with a sword "in use" which makes things awkward when you are carrying a pistol and four enemies charge at you. The weird thing is that the game follows a sort of Street Fighter health-lost system. Your main health bar can be replenished using potions. If you run out of health, then the maximum amount of health you can regain is lowered and can only be regained very slowly outside a dungeon or by resting at an inn. If that reaches 0, then you die for good. Honestly, I wish they would have just kept it the old-fashion way with just one health bar.
Quests had its own fair share of problems too. Certain quests would only open up when you do a specific task. The fast travel to the car, to the rest stop, and automatic traveling to previous rest stops all made it tolerable. But there was a time where I was trying to find Iris and I looked all over the place I was told to look within the narration. I even went to the inn where I was supposed to meet her. It wasn't until I went to the exact spot where the quest marker was that it progressed to the next stop. Oh, and all the market quests popped up the moment I met her too.
That wasn't the only time it did this. There was a time where I was heading to a base and thought it would be wise to camp for the night. Once I got there, the quest proceeded to tell me "hey we should camp for the night." I was so angry. Then a search light peered at me and I had no idea what to do. It was only then my companion said to watch out for them. As immersion breaking as Nier Automata telling me what to avoid after they happen.
One other thing I have to bring out is that the map interface for quests was terrible. I think I counted four separate sub-menus: car-travel routes, quest routes, map marker, and generic map. So I found myself wanting to go to a specific spot only to find out I accidentally chose a gas station on the other side of the map. Sometimes I wanted to put a marker on the map only to find myself selecting a quest I didn't want to do in the first place. Quest and Talk are separate. Why? Either hand in the quest to an npc or throw it on a bulletin board!
The campaign was wonderful. It made you feel like you were really interacting with something grand with all the unique creatures and lore of the land... well, up to about Chapter 9 that is. I found it brilliant how the areas light up on your map as you progress through the land. But the side-quests were the worst of the worst. I couldn't take another "collect 5 frogs of a random color" or "gather a random-colored gem that will only show up as a yellow dot" for so long. Treasure, mineral, and food spots all replenish. But honestly, I felt like I did with Dynasty Warriors 9 running around looking for action.
What did I love about the game? There is a delicate balance between leveling up your hobbies and leveling up your characters. Fishing can get addicting. Your companion can learn how to cook better when you read recipe books or buy items from diners. Even as simple as resting at an inn can give you additional dialogue among the guys. I also liked the jokes. The puns. The humor. Taking screenshots with your camera makes the whole experience memorable and fun. I only wish you could take more than 200 photos. Ansel Mode was kind of interesting. It lets you play around a specific scene in an interactive 3D interface. I also liked the simple things like how your car emergency lights come on when you park or how the rain falls on your windshield.
What did I hate about the game?
- The game suffers from obligatory fan service. Cindy, Cid's grand-daughter, has her clothes wide open because, and I quote, "she does that for her personality as a messy mechanic". Sound familiar? You might also have heard the same reasoning for the woman from Metal Gear Solid of "the lack of clothes lets her excel as a hunter". I'm not buying that one bit.
- You don't get to keep new "guest" members with you. As you progress in the story, certain members will join your party but will not stay with you
- The skill system was rather limited. Sure I probably wouldn't want another node system like the one I remember from Final Fantasy X. Yet, I can't help but feel like half of the so-called "skill boosters" are simply there for you to spend points in. I think I remember seeing a "gain AP points for fishing" for 333 AP. Isn't that counterproductive?
- Invisible boundaries separate each individual "zone". You might see a base but have to run all the way out to the main road and back in because of a giant fence surrounding the area. You have to follow the road around down to the abyss because there is a very thick line of trees that block your way. That one area you wish to visit is encased in giant rocks except for one entrance down to the south. This gets annoying really fast.
What do I recommend? I played about 35 hours, up to the point of visiting the "water city" as I'm calling it. I was level 45 doing the main campaign (recommended level 25 at that point) and still being destroyed because I could never quite nail down the combat system. I was completely broke because I couldn't figure out what or even when I was supposed to buy/sell items. The whole story was depressing for you start off going to a wedding and then you lose your city, your father dies, military is after you, your fiance dies, your friend's eyesight is torn to shreds, the world fades into darkness in the hands of a villain while you rot inside a crystal for 10 years, then you kill yourself without ever knowing what happens to your pals. I didn't even try the DLCs since they all sort of occur after the point I stopped. The 5 episode anime was decent enough to watch but I didn't try the movie. There was also a demo but I wouldn't recommend it. Pull up a video of someone else playing it and you'll see it is just a glorified tech video. The game runs heavy on your hard drive with anywhere from 75GB to 200GB depending on what you want to see. Everything was pretty to look at but the story was a mess. In a word: It is underdeveloped. If that doesn't satisfy your curiosity, you can always check out other reviews like Zero Punctuation or Game Sins for more problems of the game.
6-28-2018