I'm 25 hours in and have been just been doing the sidequests/hunts and not the main story. I'm level 40 and the only hard enemies have been the aerial ones. The most frustrating thing about this game is the fact you can only track 1 quest at a time. This makes the long travel times even more annoying.

When will Ignis layoff on the night driving dangers? Do I have to hear him complain every time I want to drive at night? I got the notification that he thinks I'm strong enough to drive at night but he still warns me about it every day.

The delay every time a quest updates or you when get out of the car is super annoying as well.

Other than that I am enjoying the game as a single player MMO and only playing it when I get bored of my other games.

Also Iris is #FinalFantasyXVBestgirl

So I'm about 45 hours in (probably 35ish if you subtract the afk time) and while I've been enjoying the open world stuff up til now, I'm starting to feel like the game's story is completely unfinished. I still don't have any sense of what the conflict between Lucis and the Empire even is. I've been told that its in that movie, but I think that having to watch a movie is a shitty way to get the backstory of a game.

I'm not sure if this is considered spoilers, but its about what I think of the characters at this point of the story so I'll spoiler it anyways. I wish I had a bit more backstory on Noctis and his life before the game started, for example how did he even meet Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis? We get some with Luna, but I feel like she's doing a bunch of important stuff concurrently with the game and we don't see any of it. I feel like Prompto has an interesting backstory that we aren't going to get to hear. The scene that gave me this idea wasn't even part of the main quest or a sidequest so I doubt it goes anywhere. I think Gladiolus and his sister are the only characters I feel like have been established enough for me to care a little bit about. But even then they don't have much going on yet. Ignis is a complete mystery to me still. The only things I know about him are he wears glasses and likes to cook. I have no idea who the villain is. I guess its the emperor that we saw in a cutscene for like 30 seconds? I just feel like I don't even care about these characters yet, which after 45 hours is a little disappointing. I mean after 45 hours of FF6-10 I cared about the characters (most of them anyways). Hell I even cared about a couple of the main bad guys in those games. Everyone loves it when you complain about a game by comparing it to others, but I can't help it in this case.

Overall I just feel like there used to be a lot more story to this game, but they cut a lot of it out. The sidequests have all the personality of an MMO questline so they don't make up for what feels like is missing. Maybe its all in the second half? I have heard something about the director wanting the first half to be like an open world game and the second half to be more like a traditional FF game.

On another note, (or maybe not since it could have alleviated the above issues a lot), there is not enough dialogue recorded for this game. There's like 10 voice lines total for each character when you're just running around/driving around/etc the world. You'll hear stuff like "Its hot", "then lose the jacket" a million times while playing this game. While you're in the car the characters almost never say anything interesting, which is a huge missed opportunity in my opinion. Games like the tales of series have super basic stories, but they often have pretty great characters. One way they accomplish that is by these skits that are basically small conversations among the characters about food, their hometowns, something they saw in the town, etc. They were always small things, but added so much personality to the characters by the end of the game. In FF15 they could have done something similar in the car. There's basically no conversations unless you just did a quest or are on the way to a quest is a missed opportunity to inject a lot of needed personality to the characters.

Gameplay-wise its fine. The game is pretty fun as long as you aren't just warp striking back and forth constantly and kinda reminds me of Dark Souls in a way. The best way to deal damage is the get around the back of the enemy and stab them. I wish magic was more than just grenades though.

Well that's my rant about FF15.

Well, I've spent more time with it. around 40 hours now. And it's pretty glitchy. On a standard PS4. Nothing game-breaking, just a bit jarring.

So far I've had an invisible character. Bit weird seeing a floating Camera following you around. I've also had battle music playing constantly long after said battle, and I've also had battles end (i.e. the Results screen comes up) when I'm still in the middle of a battle and haven't left the 'arena'. The latter two glitches seem to happen more often as I've gotten further into the game.

@kerse: There actually is a lot of character building dialogue, but they're almost unique lines that do not repeat randomly as you explore. Every dungeon has its own set of character banter, as does characters driving nearby major landmarks like the Disc.

There are actually also a number of side quests that does a great deal to help develop the relationship between Noctis and his friends, but strangely, they are all hidden quests called "Tours", only activating if you rest at a specific campfire or hotel. (Noctis catching a giant fish and Gladio literally jumping into the lake to carry it back to camp is one of my favorite moments.) The quests with actual markers are definitely mostly soulless affairs aside from a few like the Cup Noodles.

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It feels like this game suffers MGSV syndrome, where the game is mechanically new and exciting in a different way from previous games of the franchise, but the story is a rushed affair from chapters 11 onwards. I didn't have that much of a problem a lot of it, even appreciating how the entire thing is a story told from Noctis's perspective and thus lacks information he specifically would not know.

The setting of Eos itself felt really unique with regards to how it juxtaposes the fantastical with the every day and natural. This is particularly true when you think of the relationship between the world at large and the 6 gods, where simultaneously the deific status of the latter is very much recognized but the world also treats them as naturally existing beings instead of something grandly supernatural.

The villain is one of the best in the franchise, with some fantastic lines of dialogue with the below exchange being my absolute favorite.

Ardyn: The throne brings you here. It seats only one.

Noctis: Off my chair jester. The king sits there.

All said and done, 70 hours in, I really enjoyed the game even despite all its visible flaws.

Thinking about picking this up, but I am sick of the generic "open world" game and this seems to be at its core one of those. But is the formula different enough to make it interesting? I've lost interest in all the open world games i have played besides maybe sleeping dogs , saints row 3 ,and the early assassins creeds games. I can't even force myself through gta v which is maybe the best playing gta so far.

I was a huge fan of final fantasy from 7 to 12 and fell off at 13.

@oursin_360: You might not want to pick it up then. The open world is by far the best portion of the game. Once you get to the linear back half things sort of fall apart, both narratively and mechanically.

Yeah, I just got to the more narrative-driven part of the game, and....I don't know man. I really wish the story and presentation of this game was more cohesive. It feels almost slapdash in it's disjointed-ness. There's so much potential to this game and I enjoy parts of it quite a bit, but it makes so many baffling design decisions and the story is just a mess. It does remind me of MGSV in that regard, though I think MGSV is far and away a better game (apples to oranges, etc. etc.).

Only a bit over 15 hours into it (just got to Lestallum) and I'm really enjoying it aside from one rather consistently annoying thing.

Driving around and just doing stuff around the world with the group is fun. The conversation they all have in certain places, or after accepting a quest from someone and walking a bit away, are cool little things. I enjoy the combat fairly well, and magic is always fun to use.

The annoying thing though, possible minor chapter 2 gameplay spoilers, are the fucking imperial transport ships that always appear every time I get out of the damn car. Smallish rant in the spoiler block below.

That rant over, I do enjoy the game, but man is that one particular thing annoying. Not enough to stop me from continuing on though.

Edit: Also Chocobos are adorable. Promto got a picture of me hugging one at the ranch.

Loving it so far. It helps that it's actually a Final Fantasy game unlike the '13' games were.

I just got done with it yesterday. My feelings are . . . complicated? I think I like it, but it could have been so much better than it was. The open world part is really enjoyable, but the back half/third of the game is such an unbelievable mess that it makes MGSVs story look coherent by comparison.

I think that if FFXIII was a nastily worded and spiteful breakup letter from the devs to the fans of the series, then XV is a love poem written by an idiot - despite being rife with spelling and grammar errors and having no understanding of poetic structure, it is innocent and well-intentioned. It's just objectively not all that great.

Probably about seven hours in and I love it. I'm a huge Ubisoft games fan, I think they are very relaxing games when I'm just looking to keep myself busy with a hobby and are perfect for when you have so many games to play you get that "I want to play everything and nothing at the same time" paralysis. Anybody else get that?

Running around doing hunts and side quests is enjoyable, and I personally dig the characters and story, which shocked me. I know it's lame to do this, but I can't recommend watching the movie and short anime enough. They made me intrigued by the world and characters, and I am excited to see where the story goes. I thought Kingsglaive was a genuinely good and entertaining movie, but I also totally dig Spirits Within, so maybe don't believe anything I say haha.

The combat is fun, and when I get in the groove it feels very rewarding. You can just half-ass your way through battles, but it seems you can definitely master the combat in a way that makes it more fun and rewarding. One thing I LOVED about FFXIII was the combat system. I don't care what anybody says, you could not just button mash your way through that game, critics who said that flat out lied. And when you mastered that combat system, you could pull off insanely powerful moves and rewarding fights. I don't think the fighting in XV has that same depth, but we will see.

So yeah, I was expecting to hate the movie, universe, and characters, but actually totally ended up changing my tune and I am optimistic now. Last I saw the game was $20 off, and I got Kingsglaive on sale for like $8 or so on Amazon if you're interested. And again, I acknowledge I may be insane, and am still early on.

I like it quite a bit, but man, it's a really weird game. Also, it feels straight-up unfinished, at least from a narrative standpoint. I think once these story patches and the DLC come out, it will feel much more like a real story. As of right now, it's crazy messy. I definitely see potential, however.

When I finished the game I had 98 hours on the game clock...went back and played another 10 and got the platinum trophy.

It is rough around the edges in some ways but it is my favorite FF since FF9.

I think the open world part of the game is super good, enough that I erased the sour taste the story left in my mouth after beating the game by going back and doing hunts and side quests. I don't think it's enough to get me through all the postgame dungeons (especially because both me and the game have crashed and caused progress to be lost, in quick succession), but I enjoyed most of my time with the game despite the shortcomings.

No hyperbole, I think the game would need at least double the story it has now to justify all the deadend plot threads and character arcs/motivations. And that's including the movie they used to set up the world state that they did nothing with regardless. I don't really see them fixing it with what they've announced, especially after how shoddily the Kingsglaive/trailer CGIs were added in.

@teddie: That's fair. The Omen/Kingslgaive add-ins were...questionable. However, my only hope is that the DLCs might be of at least decent length, and also they are taking a lot longer to put the extra cutscenes out compared to the aforementioned quick fixes. I think those were more to just fix an immediate problems. The other updates (I would hope) seem like they might be more substantial. You are correct though, they do need quite a bit of extra meat to make the story work properly. Here's to hoping.

How much of that 10 hours was the fight with Adamantoise? God damn what a boring slog. I really enjoyed the game too and honestly as bad as the story is it's not that much worse than your average FF post VII. (I havent played the earlier ones)

I'm curious what the supposed DLC will be but if it's as lazy as those end game dungeons (the ones that require a key) I think i'm done at this point. It was fun while it lasted (which was a good 93 hours for me), and nice not to have a super melodramatic (at least during the open world portions) Final Fantasy.

@boozak:

2 hours on adamantoise lol.

I actually don't think the story is bad it is just minimalistic like a souls game. There is a lot of incidental dialogue and radio announcements and magazines and newspapers you find that add to it.

I also don't care if it is bullshit watching the anime and movie helped me enjoy the story.