I think you went a little too far saying "no optional dungeons." But some of those dungeons should have been better integrated.
Why do you believe people are "rushing through" the main story? It's not very long to begin with if you follow it, so how is it a player's fault if they do the story and felt it lacking? They aren't "robbing themselves." The game was designed that way. The quest is big, bright red text and tells you to follow it. What if endless, uninspired fetch quests and hunts aren't really something a person wants to do because they find them not very good? You mention cooking, fishing and photography skills to level. Do any of these truly matter? They are simply tacked on things. Bars to level. Is there an ultimate weapon uncovered by Prompto's pictures? Secrets? Anything?
You mention the game's theme. What is it? A Road Trip? Well, the game really betrays that. The story of the game is NOT a road trip story. It's a story of The Chosen One who must gain the power to save the world. That doesn't really jive with "Road Trip." So, can you blame players for being a little conflicted when the game tells you two things that directly oppose the other?
Sorry if this feels like I'm attacking you. It's more like my own thoughts while playing through mixing in. Everything in the game is undercooked. Every single aspect I have played so far. Yeah, I'm having fun with it, but I have fun with every Final Fantasy. I'll grind through to 100% because I do it with all of them. However, so far, I wouldn't really call this a good game yet. The main cast is the bright spot, but the western type open world is at its worst here and the story is...well, something.
It's no one's "fault". You don't have to experience all of the game's content. I know I don't for a lot of games I play. But it's nice to have a lot to explore when I love the game.
I feel like they are robbing themselves from the experience because to me these things are at the core of it. If you disagree, that's fine too. I just don't agree with this notion of "it's such a shame that people will miss it, it shouldn't be missable". I think that's very counterproductive to good game design. Let them miss it. If they end up disliking a game they would otherwise like, that's ok too. I don't need to protect the game from people not liking it. It's fine that people who just go through the story (I didn't mean "rush" as necessarily negative, I just meant "ignoring anything but the main story") may not like it as much. What's wrong with that?
And I definitely do think it matters. There are very few themes that scream "journey > destination" more than a roadtrip. It also weirds me out to see people bothered that the post game content doesn't have trophies. I understand if someone thinks it's not worth doing it if there isn't one, but then don't do it and move on, what's the problem with that?
It feels like most of the complaints about content being optional come from either people who wanted to experience it but didn't want to bother going after it, and wanted everything served to them, or people who did experience it but can't deal with people who didn't not knowing how good it is. It's fine that people have difference experiences. This is not an issue to be fixed.
And I absolutely do stand by my statement that the road trip is at the core of the game and its overarching theme. I don't think the plot goes actually goes against it, but even if it did. There's much more to the game than its plot, and just the way traversal, camping optional party quests and stuff like that works, it's very obvious that this is the framework for the game. And again, I don't think there's anyone to blame, it's not anyone's fault, they just don't agree with me, and it's ok. Unlike people shitting on the game, I'm not trying to say that my feelings torwards it are the objective truth. You can think everything I wrote the last few pages is complete bullshit. It's just my opinion.
Don't worry about it, it didn't feel like a personal attack at all. You're just talking about the game. And you don't like it nearly as much as I do, if at all, but that's not an uncommon opinion. You'll see plenty of people sharing your thoughts throughout both of the OTs.
Do you guys have any tips for getting the most out of the battle system? I feel like battles are just coming and going without much strategy on my part. I still seem to get mostly As on all my battle report cards but I don't feel like I am doing much other than holding the attack button.
And when I do encounter the odd fight where my party seems to be in trouble...I can't really put my finger on what I am doing wrong that put me in this position to begin with. I am conscious of the enemies level and dodge/parry when I am prompted.
I just have that feeling that I am not playing the game properly and it's sort of nagging at my enjoyment of it.
Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqsihozZRY
Can you understand what's going on at all? If you can, then I don't think there's any particular mechanic I could tell you about, you probably just don't like it.
If you can't really follow what he's doing, then you should look into some of the basic combat ascension grid skills, like Airstep and Blink, and experiment with the directional modifiers to your combos.
I guess I need to further clarify that.
I didn't mean I would magically like it more than I do now if it were a spinoff. I actually meant it would be easier to forgive massive shortcomings if the budget were cut much like a spinoff. I don't think it's crazy to say something like FFXIII-2 or Lightning Returns had a drastically lower budget. So there are some things that will get skipped. This being a full budgeted AAA part of the series does mean that these skipped things raise some really big concerns. The camera is awful. The targeting system is shit. There are no options to use control any of what 3 out of 4 of my team is doing at any given time. It's a chaotic fucking mess. It's not just bad for a Final Fantasy, it's bad for any non-Bethesda RPG system.
Obviously in a long running series there are some expectations and comparisons going in. One of the reasons I love Final Fantasy is because of those experimentations so don't try and paint me as someone that is heavily against that. I'm not. I want them to experiment. I loved FFXII's battle system and I fucking loved XIII's. I loved X's and I loved IX's. I loved them all. In this case, though, it doesn't feel fresh, new, or unique like something like XIII or any of its spinoffs did to me. It feels stale and bad. It feels like they aped some other action RPGs and threw in a few twists, didn't balance anything and called it a day.
My biggest complaint, though, is that there's no real control over my party members. That's part of my big complaint because it is literally the reason that I've been playing Final Fantasy games all these years and not Tales. It's the reason I didn't like the Star Ocean games as much. The thing is that even those games had vastly more control over your party members. This is plain unacceptable to me as a Final Fantasy game.
You may be going into FFXVI saying "I hope they surprise me," but I'm just thinking "I hope they surprise me by making a fully thought out, complete game... finally."
Ooooh ok, I did understand you wrong. I get what you're saying.
