Corpse Run 794: Part of a balanced dinner
Oooooooooooooooooooook, I’m only about six hours into Final Fantasy 15 so far, but oh my goodness it has been straight trash so far.
Even FF12 was better at this point in the game.
I’m kind of sleepy right now, so I’ll type more in the morning!
OK IT’S MORNING NOW!
So this game is basically a total embarrassment to the franchise. There are so many things that it does wrong that I’m completely shocked that it got a release.
- The maps are huge, but empty. This is a similar problem that I had with Breath of the Wild. Everything requires a ton of travel, and whether it’s the car or on foot, it takes way too much time and is padding the game runtime in an unacceptable way. Sometimes, you can’t even use the car! There’s this one little town-ish area at the end of a long pier… on which you can’t drive. Soooooo… you need to run across this quarter mile pier to turn in quests or visit the town EVERY TIME.
- The car itself totally sucks too. It’s super slow and only sometimes is the player given a fast travel option. Even when you do get to fast travel, you’re forced to watch the characters take 4-6 seconds to get out of the car and close the doors. Hey SquareEnix, here’s an idea: how about when the player fast travels, the characters start OUTSIDE OF THE CAR ON ARRIVAL. It might be silly to complain about 4-6 seconds of downtime, but these moments take control away from the player in a very annoying way. I’ve fast traveled about ten times so far. Let’s say the “get out of the car” animation takes five seconds. I’ve already blown almost a minute just staring at nothing. Over the course of the whole game I imagine I’ll be fast traveling more and more, I’ll end up spending like 20-30 minutes of playtime watching this useless animation.
- The game tries as hard as possible to keep you from traveling in the car. Everytime it’s close to night, Ignis pulls the car over while we’re driving to say we should go to sleep. No. I wanted to drive, so we’re driving. Oh, it’s dangerous to drive at night? We can DRIVE AWAY FROM IT. Or we should be able to, anyway. There was one time we were on the road at night and a level thirty something or other popped up. The car automatically came to a halt, we all got out of it, and began a battle encounter. This was done without player input (or desire). Instantly one of the characters exclaimed that we should run away and I was like, “we were driving, why didn’t we just NOT GET OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE AND JUST HAVE KEPT DRIVING?” So I tried to get in the car, but apparently you can’t do that while in a fight, so I had to run away on foot to trigger the battle encounter to end, and then RUN BACK TO THE CAR TO START DRIVING AGAIN.
- I don’t hate the characters or anything, but the story seems dumb so far. Maybe not dumb, but the pacing is terrible. I’ve played for about six hours so far and only one plot point has been executed. Everything else has been turning in quests for local townies. Not even cool quests, by the way, stuff like “I want to try a new recipe, kill an animal and give me the meat” variety stuff straight out of an MMORPG.
- The leveling up is similarly terribly paced. I’ve done the available sidequests thus far, which has had the result of making any main quest action totally easy. Like, wayyyyy to easy. Like, I one-shot enemies during any main quest portions. Doing a handful of sidequests should not have this strong a result. I’ve been killing stuff six or seven levels over me on routine as it is, and the main quest folks have been the same amount of levels under my party, so… yeah.
- Product placement: Are you kidding me? This is a FINAL FANTASY. This is supposed to be an entry in the most celebrated RPG series of all time and I keep running into advertisements for Cup Noodles and Coleman camping equipment. Complete embarrassment.
How can this be real? Even FF12 was better than this. Assuming FF15 continues on the trajectory it’s on, this will go down as my least favorite FF game, and possibly one of the worst games I’ve ever played.
Now, that might sound like hyperbole, but when I judge the quality of a game my expectations (and whether or not they were met) factor into my judgement. Given the state of the franchise over the last decade I didn’t necessarily have high hopes for this title, but given the degree to which this game falls on its face it’s somehow disappointing me in ways I didn’t think possible.
it doesnt improve much to be honest …basically ff15 is overhyped absurdly medicore game
I’m sorry, but—and this is coming from an old fan—most of the iterations have been overhyped and absurdly mediocre. Each iteration has had one or two phenomenal aspects to it, but the rest of the game just wasn’t up to par. And, sadly, when they do find something that’s amazing, it doesn’t return in the future. I’m pretty sure that’s why the ATB lasted so long. It was bad enough that it was allowed to stay.
I’m sorry that you’re not enjoying the game so far. FFXV is probably one of my favorite FFs, mainly for the way it tells the story of the four friends. It has it’s warts, but I hope the experience improves for you. To that end, I wanted to respond to your comments.
1) & 1a) In general, I went on foot or by chocobo as much as I could, and I rarely fast travelled. There are lots of items scattered around, from ingredients to potions to minerals to accessories, and you miss those if you’re in the car. I feel like you also get to overhear more of the conversation between the friends if you’re on foot. I found it helpful to unlock as many quests at a time, and go knock off the ones that were in a similar area all at once. Between the quests, searching structures for items on the way, and the battles in between, I felt like I had a good little trip, and then was able to teleport back to the car (which I left near the quest drop-off point). Best of all, the teleport back has no animation.
Honestly, and I know you tried to pre-empt this, but I think your expectations might be part of the problem. I don’t understand how you can say that Breath of the Wild was empty. There’s literally something around every corner in that game, and even if you’ve been through an area six times, you’ll probably find something new on the seventh. And it’s not like Final Fantasies are not known for long walks on map screen. All the way back to FF1, a long hike to a cave or castle has been pretty standard operating procedure. FF8 had me running all around SeeD academy way more than I ever wanted to.
But, you’re right that they could have made the game much stronger by making the travel less tedious. The car should drive faster (and you do get the chance to upgrade it to do so later), the load times for fast travelling or teleporting are far longer than they should be, and that pier is really annoying.
1b) There are actually important plot reasons why everyone is afraid to travel at night. The game is, in its heavy handed way, trying to instill in you that same dread of nighttime that everyone in this world has. It could have been executed better to avoid the problem you mentioned (say, the bad guys popping up on both sides of you, so it’s obvious you can’t just beat an easy escape)
2 & 3) Not sure where you are in the game, but if you’ve been mainly doing side quests, my guess is you’re still in the desert area, or just out of it. To that, I’d say that the plot goes as fast or as slow as you want it. You can grind it to a halt by just doing sidequests/your own thing, or you can speed through by just following the main plot points. For you, I’d recommend focusing on the main plot more than you have been, since you seem to be bored. The sidequests will get repetitive if you binge them, but they’re decently fun if you sprinkle them here and there. You’ll be travelling back to these areas as the game progresses, so there’s no need to do all the quests now. That’ll help with your overleveling problem and the plot pacing problem. FFXV was built to have content remaining after you completed the main game, and if you do all the sidequests before moving on from an area, you will be insanely overlevelled.
That said, there are some places were the seams show on the plot. The parts that focus on the four friends are solid, but other elements don’t receive nearly enough development.
4) You have better eyes than me. I finished the game and never noticed the Coleman camping placement. As for Cup of Noodles, well, just because it’s one of the most celebrated RPG series doesn’t mean it’s one of the most dignified. Remember Domino and Hutt from FF7 (or anything in the Honey Bee Inn sequence)? How much Zell randomly loved hot dogs in FF8? The FF9 Coke commercials? Anything Quina in FF9? This isn’t a franchise that’s afraid to be silly, and a bunch of college age guys obsessing over Ramen isn’t the silliest it’s been. Yeah, the brand placement isn’t a good addition, but it didn’t really bother me either.
Anyway, hope my way-too-long post helps you enjoy your purchase more. Sometimes, it’s about being in the right mood for the game. I recognize that Super Mario Odyssey is a great game, but at the time I was playing it, I just wasn’t in the mood for all the moon hunting. When I was playing FFXV, the lazy bro-road trip just resonated with me, and I hope you can get the same enjoyment from it.
Dig the response and appreciate that you took the time to write this out. I’ll try to address the points to the best of my ability.
The areas feel empty because they are populated with the same couple of items repeated ad nauseam. Each area has a couple of camping locations, a few elemental draw points, a few mining/foraging points, and a few enemies, that’s it. Beautiful landscapes can only take a game so far and keep a player engaged for so long. Breath of the Wild had the same issue; sure, there was a large amount of things to see and discover, but it choose quantity over quality. The Korok seed puzzles only have a few different varieties, the shrines are very samey (especially the tests of strength), it felt like a copy paste job and quickly became repetitive and boring.
Yes, there was plenty of running around in older Final Fantasy titles, but that never felt boring to me due to the fact that the plot was engaging and the music really inspired a sense of adventure. In FFXV, the music is literally throwbacks on the radio to make old time fans smile for a moment and new fans wonder why everything sounds so old.
If the game is attempting to instill a sense of dread while traveling at night, then it completely missed the mark, I’ve only felt annoyance. There are nighttime only hunts that the player can do right from the outset of the game, which I completed without issue and am surprised to hear that the player is supposed to be afraid of traveling at night. The better way to do this would be to just have a super powerful enemy out at night that has a high chance of killing you in you encounter it. No talking about it either, it’s just out there and the player will learn. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 do this perfectly by having insanely high leveled monsters in the starting areas, forcing the player to be careful when traveling. They didn’t outright hold the player’s hand and mention them either, they were just there and it’s up to the player to figure out what to do and use fear of death as a motivating force.
I get that the plot can go as fast or slow as I please, but if the sidequests are boring, then they’re just boring, there’s just no two ways about that. Quality sidequests are not mutually exclusive to a quality main story. Boring sidequests are boring, whether I do them the moment they become available or if I come back to them later. They’re fetch quests and have zero substance so far.
There’s a difference between silly gags/characters liking a particular food and outright product placement. Zell loved hot dogs sure, but it’s not like he was showing off Nathan’s wrappers. I wasn’t aware of FF9 doing Coke commercials, but let’s be real, that wasn’t in the game itself so I don’t think it’s a relevant argument to FFXV situation. If the FFXV crew wants to eat ramen, go for it, just not a recognizable brand that pulls the player out of the experience. What’s the “fantasy” of seeing a brand that I can get at my local grocery store?
It’s true that my expectations can get in the way of having a good experience, but when there’s a new entry in one of the most celebrated and high quality game series of all time, anything less than greatness feels incomplete. Unfortunately for FFXV, my first six hours haven’t even been “less than greatness”, they’ve be god-awful.
Hope it gets better though!
Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed response and agree with some of your points (like the super high level monsters at night). However, based on your comments regarding Breath of the Wild, I think we just see games differently. Even so, hope your experience with FFXV gets better.
The entire series has been trash since 10. 10 managed to get the perfect combination of absolutely everything right, everything from the battle system to the story to the beautiful world… Even Tidus’s cringey fake laughter felt right in place.
Alex, open world segments with those boring sidequests are the second best part of this game. The best parts are 2 dates with Iris(which are a bit creepy). Once game remembers it’s FF and it should be telling a story you’ll be thrown into some of the worst ever linear locations. Also, you’ll encounter infamous chapter 13 taking the prize as worst thing in AAA games in this century(be sure to follow Ignis, not Noctis there, as you won’t miss anything, except pain). It’s amazing when story segments in FF game make you miss terrible open world.
Least favorite?
You havent played 13 trilogy or even 14 1.0 i guess
In my opinion, the only FF games that count for that distinction are traditional, numbered FF games that aren’t MMOs. 11 and 14 had no business being called a numbered FF. Sequels don’t count either.