I've now begun Ch. 14. I haven't finished the game, but I stopped caring around Ch 9-10, so I'm familiar with how it ends. I have some thoughts that I just want to get out there and make a post.
Final Fantasy XV is not a complete game. It is a hollow framework of a game. Almost nothing happens in the game; 90% of the title is filler.
Ch. 1~7 - Fucking nothing. "Gathering power" is not a substantial story beat. Any character in any game "gathers" power over the course of the game. I understand there is a relationship between Noctis, Luna, and the summons but those feel like added details to supplement a core story progression that doesn't exist. There is nothing substantial to push the game forward and drive interest while a wedding in the future looms over the story.
8~9 - The story abruptly begins and kills off Rem 2.0, who has had scenes cut from the game to hide the fact that she's Rem 2.0 - according to 4chan leaks. There is also a terrible Leviathan fight. Ardyn makes it known to everyone that he's the villain and kills off the female lead to prove it.
10~12 Ardyn tricks Noctis and Promto falls off a train. Gentiana reveals herself as Shiva. Almost nothing else happens during these chapters.
13 - The story finally feels like it's getting a major push again and it's one of the most substantial areas of the game, complete with Ardyn narration and plenty of story dumps. It's very moody and would be more fun if it weren't a pain. I never really got a hang of the stealth, so holy holy holy holy holy. The chapter could be good if they just removed most of the stealth element. At this point in the game, the gameplay has become constant item usage because my party is practically useless and just eats damage. "Gathering" doesn't work for me anymore. It won't show up. This is the first time int he game where I was under the impression that the story had purpose.
Then the hero sleeps for 10 years so that Square could showcase a character design more appealing to western audiences. Now that they've delivered a game devoid of any substantial story offering, they're more or less cursed to chase this audience for the foreseeable future; There was no way that this was going to be received well in Japan -
and it isn't.
I think it would be hard to say where the game ranks in the series in terms of its story. It's maybe on the level of FFI or FFIII, but I'm not sure. FFII is better. If you're curious about where I'm coming from, I'd rank them something along the lines of X > VII > VIII > IX > VI > XII > XIII > V > IV > II > III > I > XV. This is not hyperbole. I am not being dramatic. There is almost no story in the game. "Storytelling" doesn't happen for the majority of its chapters.
I understand that at one point the story had blown up to three titles and that some argue that its nature is because of the need to cram three titles into one. But that doesn't make any sense, because that would imply a title with rapid story development. Almost nothing happens in XV. The game has all the room in the world to supplement itself with something, anything. Around E3 I was concerned I wouldn't like the title as much because it would feature long periods of time between story events, given the open world nature of the game and the lack of marketing. But they didn't exist. Now, with 3-4 years of development time, the game serves almost no purpose within the context of the legacy of the series. It achieves nothing in terms of delivering a story to Final Fantasy fans.
And now we can wait a decade or so for another mainline title and hope that we hit the lottery and we get something good, even mediocre like FFXII.
