I hasn't been a Final Fantasy for long, but 2 years ago I decided to play XIII and I was amazed by it's story-driven game with an outstanding narrative and realistic main characters (yes, I know they start out quite as a cliche).
Through the whole of 2014 I played XIII-2 and LR XIII (the later of which is complete garbage if not for the combate mechanics) and was looking forward for future FF's (never was a fan of turn based combates and was unenthusiastic about playing older FF's, since I knew FF community had this consensus that XIII was garbage - god knows why.
A few months later came the uncovered event and I decided to watch it live to see what was going on about the next FF, which i had only seen the versus XIII into XV trailer and the TGS 2015 trailer and man... I felt in love for the game during that show.
And as such I decided to play all of the previous games from the start.
By the launch of XV I had played through I up until VII. Being VI my favourite followed by VII which had an marvellous OST and a great story but was poorly written and narrated. Even then, until a replay on XIII, I still think it's better than VII.
That's my backstory on FF and now i'll try to describe my experience on XV.
So, after the uncovered and while I was playing the other FF I was also following XV development closely, i'm an avid anime viewer and I'm used to search info about directors, writters, composers, character designers, etc...
By the time Kingsglaive was released I was already super hyped about the game and after watching Kingsglaive I could hope anything short of a masterpiece from the game, after all, 7 years of pre-production and 3 years of development should be able to give us just that - and yes, i know those 7 years weren't exactly pre-production,
However, I could not ignore the fact that due to the movie, the game now is short of an introduction and I started worrying about it's narrative.
I watched the anime and I thought it was mediocre and completly unnecessary to enjoy XV's crossmedia world and was still eager to play XV.
Then XV was finally released and I used every single free second of my life to play the game.
I played over 3 hours during the first chapter doing side content and I loved it. The world was beautiful, the characters and monsters were beautiful, the OST was awsome, the combat was fun as hell.... We all know the strong points of XV right now....
After discovering about the fall of Insomnia I still played arround Leide for another 5 hours... Yeah, I played over 8 hours in Leide only, until I couldn't do any more hunts or sidequests because I needed to go to Duscae.
Here comes the first Dungeon of the game... And boy... It's level design is just awsome, although it was quite short, but I didn't feel the need for it to be longer yet.
So I finish chapter 2 and I kill Loqi. Back then I couldn't be arsed about Loqi's death, but now looking in retrospective, I see it was the first warning about what was to come, the first chraracter to go under... no, complely undeveloped.
But yeah, I was still enjoying the game and as such I still played for over 7 hours in Duscae before continuing my Journey to Lestallum.
After this healthy amount of sidecontent I've decided to move on to Lestallum. Now i'm more into getting into the story since I've already bonded enough with my companions and went straight into the second dungeon, another awsome but short dungeon, and when I get back to Lestallum the chapter ends.
At this point in time I'm starting to worry about the game, I could understand that the first chapter was short, we were supposed to be in a relaxing trip while going to Altissa and as just I managed to have fun with my bros, but when chapter 1 ended everyone should be more worried about the kingdom of Lucii, Regis and Luna... But everyone kept playing fool.
So my plan right now is to start to move faster per chapter but doing side content between chapters, but in this chapter I'm supposed to be with Ardyn up until the Archean's dungeon. And so I did.
I played the whole chapter, start to end in 20 minutes, and I was pissed off.
Nothing seemed well anymore. Gladiolus shouts out a overreacted speech to nocto only because he was having dificulties to breath on that heavy atmosphere. The combat with Titan was nothing short of cringe, a complete mess and to add flavour to the mix, a bug that sent Noctis airbone for no reason.
And the worst thing, I was one third into the game and I had only seen under 90 minutes of main content.
At this point in time I just couldn't be arsed about the sidecontent. I wasn't feeling the pay-off of investing my time into knowing the world or into developing the main characters relationship.
I started moving forward non-stop, no more side content, let's get this shit rolling.
Chapter 5 is just a chocobo ride quest arround duscae to get Rammuh, and Chapter 6 is a freaking infiltrating mission to recover Regalia.
Another 2 chapters with barely any tangible content with underdeveloped scenes.
And here comes Chapter 7, a road trip with iris, that goes for 5 minutes and another infiltration mission just like the one in chapter 6.
Half the game gone and barely over 2 hours of maincontent played through.
This couldn't be right. I'm dreaming... I'm having a bad dream.
Chapter 8. Another single dungeon chapter, a short chapter ofc, but longer than chapter 2 and 3. And with a little bit of development for an enemy character.
Yeah, Aranea is the only single enemy character that gets some development, and yet it was completly wrong, it feels wrong. I had only had one fight with Aranea, I had only heard she speak during that fight. And now i'm supposed to work with her? Out of the blue?
And not only that, but it's so random that I find Mythril ore there....
Come on game, stop doing this to me, stop undercooking your narrative. Bring Ignis into the development team and cook their narrative...
Little had I known for what was to come.. 8 chapters into the game and I had seen the whole open world of the game, which consisted of 3 zones with 1 city total.
Yeah, you already know how was my experience for chapter 9, 10, 11 and 12...
Leviathan was another mess of a fight with little technical prowess (lol, that water arround the battlefield is so Ps2-like).
Chapter 10, while I think it was a good chapter, if the rest of the game had been good up until now, it«s just another short chapter consisting of one dungeon.
And if I think the chapter is good because I had been with my bros for over 20 hours now.
Chapter 11 is not that bad but ended up with Chapter 12 which was the most rushed chapter until now. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, the chapters actually felt more rushed the more I went into the game... It couldn't be true.
And then Chapter 13 came. At this point in time my friends had already finished the game and said Chapter 10 up until 13 are garbage so I wasn't expecting anything out of it, and... I was surprised. An actually good chapter. A long chapter. An inmersive chapter. Too bad I wasn't invested into the whole plot, I couldn't care about Ravus and I couldn't care about Ardyn.... But the chapter was actually good.
Now we have Chapter 14, another great chapter that finishes up a story that ended up to be my favourite out of the 9 FF that I played, but so poorly told that I still can't shake the feel that this FF shouldn't be praised above the pre-VI FF's.
The combat with ifrit was awsome, the combat with Ardyn was awsome, the plottwist with Ardyn being a Lucii is great, the ending was great... Hell, the post-credits scene with Nocto crying is awsome, but I couldn't be arsed about it. If the game had been well executed I would be crying right now and I'd be claiming this to be a masterpiece.
But for that the game would need to have an open world at least 150% bigger than the one we have, with 3 more cities (Tenebrae, Gralea and one more city in the Kingdom of Lucii).
We would need a game with a well developed story, with subplots and developed characters. We don't need a bigger cast. Nocto, Gladiolus, Ignis, Prompto, Regis, Cor, Iris, Cidney, Cid, Aranea, Loqi, Ravus, Verstael, Ardyn, Ideolas, Talcot.... It's a great cast, and the character design of every single character is awsome, but it's just so underdeveloped that I can't bring myself to love this game.
And it pains me that this game is getting praised for it's sidecontent. I mean, yes, the sidecontent is praiseworthy, but a final fantasy game with such a poor narrative should never be praised, yes, we can say not everything is terrible about the game, but we can't say it's a good game. It's an imbalanced mess that doesn't justify 3 years of development.