[Megathread] Final Fantasy XV

[dope_danny]

17 hours in and just beat the behemoth and found my 3rd royal tomb while exploring with a lvl.23 party. So far my only huge complaint remains the lack of a lock on toggle and wait ability to skip to nighttime being missing. Other than that this feels more and more like it is to FF7 what MGSV is to MGS. Which might sound strange but thats exactly how it feels when playing. Right down to the font uses for some things right out of ground zeroes.

I also really like the FFV/VIII style way you can be exploring the world and you can follow the next breadcrumb for the story or bugger off for a 40+ minute trek into some area completely unrelated to the plot to find a dungeon or hamlet that leads to treasure or upgrades. God i've been missing that since FFIX.

[Jtbrig7390]

I just got one thing to say.

[Graeham]

Oye... I knew it would be painfully simple. Thanks

From chapter 3 and beyond once you're in the car open up the shop menu from within the Regalia and purchase the music player key item. It allows you to play music outside of the car too - though the core game's music is pretty great already so I'll likely be using that feature on subsequent save games.

You might know that already though.

One thing I hope we get through a future patch/DLC is a 'hard' mode. I'm playing on normal but I'm overleveled due to side quests.

[KrazyK923]

How is the entire series selling over 11 million "nearly destroying" it? That would be a success in my book especially for sequel games. They even stated 13 alone was the fastest selling title in the franchises history.

How many people really enjoyed 13's franchise? How many people talk positively about it? How many people were exceptionally wary about 15 DUE to 13? Why did SE fall over itself to bring back the old FF crew and talk about how its different from the previous 3 installments?

Or are we going to do this song and dance about how the only thing that matters is sales numbers again. Its not like Cataclysm isn't seen as one of the worst expansions despite hitting the peak subscription wise, even though I personally liked it. I could insert plenty of games into Cataclysm's place, such as Mass Effect 3 or Skyward Sword, which also sold like mad but the majority of the community disliked -- and, most indicatively -- the company itself sought to distance themselves from after its launch.

Outside of Japan (And even then I think that's a meme that gets repeated with no actual proof), who actually liked the FF13 trilogy? The idea that FF13 didn't damage the FF brand is pretty silly.

Some people just want to bitch and moan.

[Eleccybubb]

How many people really enjoyed 13's franchise? How many people talk positively about it? How many people were exceptionally wary about 15 DUE to 13? Why did SE fall over itself to bring back the old FF crew and talk about how its different from the previous 3 installments?

Or are we going to do this song and dance about how the only thing that matters is sales numbers again. Its not like Cataclysm isn't seen as one of the worst expansions despite hitting the peak subscription wise, even though I personally liked it. I could insert plenty of games into Cataclysm's place, such as Mass Effect 3 or Skyward Sword, which also sold like mad but the majority of the community disliked -- and, most indicatively -- the company itself sought to distance themselves from after its launch.

Outside of Japan (And even then I think that's a meme that gets repeated with no actual proof), who actually liked the FF13 trilogy? The idea that FF13 didn't damage the FF brand is pretty silly.

Well commercially sales do kind of matter. FF13 was a commercial success and well received in a lot of reviews. As for personal taste well I hear a mixture of dislike and like for the game. Me personally I liked 13, thought 13-2 was alright but Lightning Returns wasn't anything special. Seems like you are just throwing a paddy for the sake of it to be honest.

[Tech614]

How many people really enjoyed 13's franchise? How many people talk positively about it? How many people were exceptionally wary about 15 DUE to 13? Why did SE fall over itself to bring back the old FF crew and talk about how its different from the previous 3 installments?

Brought back the old crew by moving the majority of the Lightning Trilogy dev team to BD2 to start full development on XV? lol kay.

Or are we going to do this song and dance about how the only thing that matters is sales numbers again. Its not like Cataclysm isn't seen as one of the worst expansions despite hitting the peak subscription wise, even though I personally liked it.

Profit margin means everything, not sales numbers. The fact Square has never come out and said XIII was a failure says it all(they have been pretty open as a publisher doing this in the past when games failed to meet their targets) The fact they made 2 fucking sequels says it all.

Outside of Japan (And even then I think that's a meme that gets repeated with no actual proof), who actually liked the FF13 trilogy?

Probably a lot of people. Go read amazon product reviews of anything, what are you going to see? A bunch of low reviews for terrible experiances and high reviews for amazing experiences. Almost never anything in the middle. People merely satisfied with something and not feeling overly strong in one direction or the other rarely are going to lash out to defend or trash talk something. There is a reason the FFXIII forums on gamespot where just a circle jerk between people who love it and an opposite circle jerk between people who hate it. It was pretty even split tbh. The people in the middle who probably felt the game was okay never bothered to enter these foolish debates as it's not worth their time.

Anyways the burden of proof is on you. If XIII wasn't a successful en devour for square prove it in some form of metric. The best you seem to be able to do is talk about how it was polarizing on the internet. You have no evidence one way or the other.

[KrazyK923]

I'm sure SE appreciates the white knighting of 13 guys.

Jesus christ these forums lol.

[Poppincaps]

I enjoyed 13. I'd say it's a solid 7.5/10.

[Tech614]

I'm sure SE appreciates the white knighting of 13 guys.

Great counter point. You should win an award for this surely?

If this post had a metacritic rating do you think it would be above or below that of XIII?

[Eleccybubb]

I'm sure SE appreciates the white knighting of 13 guys.

Jesus christ these forums lol.

Yes because debating your points is white knighting as you put it. By that logic you defending something like Cata which was largely disliked is you white knighting Blizzard yes? Nice to see you have no actual argument and are just intent on belittling people because they disagree with your opinions or debate them.

- - - Updated - - -

I enjoyed 13. I'd say it's a solid 7.5/10.

I'd give 13 an 8, 13-2 a 7 and Lightning Returns a 4 personally.

[Tech614]

I'd give 13 an 8, 13-2 a 7 and Lightning Returns a 4 personally.

I give LR an 8.5/10 for the combat system and a 2/10 for everything else. The only reason I could stomach to platinum that game is the combat was indeed fun, challenging and rewarding.

[Eleccybubb]

I give LR an 8.5/10 for the combat system and a 2/10 for everything else. The only reason I could stomach to platinum that game is the combat was indeed fun, challenging and rewarding.

I could just never get into it personally. For me in 13-2 though after the story the Coliseum DLC actually kept me a bit busy.

[Eleccybubb]

I was actually talking to a few people today who were introduced to the series by 13. They enjoyed it quite a bit. It wasn't really a great series for people already entrenched in the series, but it didn't hurt anything. There have always been games that fans of the series disliked. See FF8 for more information.

I disliked 8 mainly because it was too easy. The Junction system just broke the game because you could access the best magic too quickly. Oh just buy some Tents after learning Life Magic RF and then boom you have a buttload of HP, Spirit or Magic early on because Curaga about an hour or two in. Just an example. Apart from that it was a decent game. I get it was trying to do something new but it went overboard.

[Eleccybubb]

The entire game failed to get me interested in it. My brother seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, but I think part of that was him being able to play a FF game for the first time before me thanks to me being more interested in UO and the impending release of EQ.

I like it still and I'd rate it in my top 10 but it's definitely on the lower part of the list. I remember listing them on here if I recall I said my top 3 were 5, 7 and 10.

[Eleccybubb]

My top 10 FF games would probably see it just outside the list. Depends on how you define the category I suppose.

Personal enjoyment basically. For me I absolutely loved 5 so hence why it's the top of my list.

[Edge-]

How many people really enjoyed 13's franchise? How many people talk positively about it?

*raises hand*

Haven't played Lightning Returns yet, but outside of the aggressively stupid story in XIII/XIII-2 and some of the usual gripes like the insanely slow start to XIII, I think they're bloody brilliant games from a gameplay perspective. The paradigm system is the most interesting combat system the FF series has seen to date, and I love the hell out of it.

It definitely hurt the brand to have those be the only proper FF games last generation (well, technically FFXIV but it's MMO and all) and they were not received as well as the series usually is, but I still think that they're vastly underrated games.

[Eleccybubb]

I kind of wish 12 had been that gen.

Vibe I get from 12 is that it feels like a single player version of 11. Which is alright tbh. Yiazmat is arguably one of the best superbosses ever.

[Tech614]

I kind of wish 12 had been that gen.

It basically was. PS2 was very much alive and getting massive support from Japanese devs into 2008, games like XII or Persona 3/4, Nocturne etc where very much games on a 6th gen console but 7th gen releases time line wise.

Hell XII had 1080i and widescreen support.

[Jtbrig7390]

I'm sure SE appreciates the white knighting of 13 guys.

Jesus christ these forums lol.

So asking you to defend ur claim with fact's is white knighting? I personally didn't like XIII and I have no opinion of XIII-2 & Lighting Returns since I didn't play ether. Still doesn't change the fact its the quickest sold final fantasy atm and it made Square Enix a fuck ton of money. Also doesn't change the fact that it was clearly liked enough to have two sequels.

Learn the different between White Knighting and Stating facts.

Hell I even admit if they do a trilogy bundle for Ps4 ill buy it just to give it another chance.

[Deleted]

Eh... I think 13 (I didn't play the "add-ons") was horrible.

I really suffered throughout the whole story because the english VA was so hard for me to listen too (I don't even know if the original is better).
It was really a lot of cutscene-talk that were slow and uneventful (and I was actually eager to get some info about the world I'm in).. and I really couldn't care less about half the characters.
On top of that, the game is extremely restricting up until the point where you can roam for the first time. No squad building possible, you always had to go with what was avaialbe, even if you didn't like the characters. The worst thing was, you didn't even have a full team most of the time.
The story itself had it's moments, but wasn't anything worth writing about. (and it really only had it's moments, it wasn't binding me to it in any way)

In the end, I couldn't stand it enough to even bother with the true endgame.. which I watched on youtube - and ya, that looked fun, at least the big stuff.
But until then? No... not even a 60/100 tbh.

As for FF8, that game had at least stuff and optional enemies/areas to explore and beat throughout the *whole* game. When I first played it, I didn't even fully understand the junction/draw/GF turn X into Y stuff, but it became awfully easy once you did - yeah. Overall however: music, *world building*, the "awe" moments... so much more than FF13 ever had to offer.

I'm going to admit, I'm not really sure-footed in the FF lore, I know they are connected somehow, at least some of them (like FFXIV and FF3 etc.) but FF8 was a better "stand alone" game than FF13 in that regard too. I really felt like I was missing a lot of background information while playing through FF13.