After I got to a certain level I was essentially invincible. While I like the battle system, it is deeply flawed. Not exotic fantasy names like Liebestraum. You got to make the city names easy to say. The only town I can pronoune correctly is Hammerhead. The names of the cities were too complex, thus making them not very easy to remember. Theres no large mountain ranges to traverse. Its all open and easily accessible which neutered the sense of travel and accomplishment greatly. There is no obstacles to clear to access new portions of XV's map. But more importantly they were gateways to accessing new portions of the map. The open world of XV does not offer any sense of travel, danger, or accomplishment.Ĭontrast that with the Mythril Mines 'Dungeon' in FFVII, or VII's Nibelheim mountains 'dungeon', which required climbing jumping, sliding etc. This goes a long way to providing a sense of travel, danger, and accomplishment, but it only goes so far as all the dungeons lead to dead ends. In the game's dungeons theres certain areas that require you to crawl or tight rope your way past perilous obstacles. And the areas that arent immediately accessible are not difficult to traverse. However several faults hurt the experience.įor starters, too much of the map is accessible by road. On the subject of the open world, well, its a mixed bag. Just having it given to you day 1 isnt wrong, but its far from the best way to make a game 'fun'. The open world has to feel like something you've earned, there has to be that excitement of reaching it for the first time. In Final Fantasy 7 its 5-6 hours of linear gameplay before you access the open world. If you look at Metal Gear Solid 5 - theres probably 2 hours of linear game time before you get to the open world. Why did Noctis not appear to be all that sad when is father died? As someone who knew very little of XV's backstory I found myself questioning whether or not Regis was even his father because of how little emotion he showed when hearing of the news.īacktracking just a little - but starting the player out in the open world was a rookie mistake. Its just a bunch of 'little' things like that which bothered me. Oh and therse like 2 or 3 bad guys who look real important that you get maybe 2 scenes of the entire game before they show up dead. But hes walking around everywhere and it seems nobody really notices him? If Prince William was thought to be dead, it would cause quite the stir if he showed up in a town running around.Īnd they find out about the attack on Insomnia through a newspaper? Is it 1922 in Eos? This leads me to a weird issue I've had with the game - why does nobody recognize Noctis? Him supposedly dying in the attack on Insomnia should have been big news. While this allows the game to focus more on the 4 core characters, I personally would have prefered a larger cast of characters.Īnd it may just be me, but, did anybody else feel such a group of people were totally unsuited to being friends? Each personality was so different I just cant imagine them being as close friends as they are presented in the game.
There isnt any new characters to find and add to the team during the adventure.
Unfortunately one of the big flaws in the game is the 4 party ensemble. But thanks to strong writing the interaction between the characters is quite enjoyable most of the time. With characters like this there could have been far more cringe worthy lines then there already is. However his three friends are little more then basic tropes. Perhaps by design Noctis has a 'neutral' personality to help him appeal to a wider variety of people.
He is extremely powerful, his royal lineage helps him feel special, and he gets some nice character moments towards the end of the game. Noctis I believe is a worthy star hero in the Final Fantasy franchise. But I'll start with what perhaps is the most important element of any story, the characters.Īfter disliking the foursome like most people based off of all the promotional material, the team turned out to be quite likeable. Theres so many aspects to a game like Final Fantasy XV its hard to start in any one place.