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[The_Observer]

I finished recently both FF7 Remake and FF16 and I loved both so I was in the mood to start replaying XV, and man, what a time it was both before and after release.

Before XV I never really played any FF but ever since the versus XIII times I was really captivated by it. I loved the music and the tone of the original trailers but years went by and the game disappeared. But when it came back it came back big. Trailer by trailer, gameplay by gameplay I just got more and more excited and couldn’t wait to play it. I read and watched anything I could find about it on the internet and couldn’t believe and imagine playing it myself it looked that ambitious. It was around the beginning of last gen so we didn’t really know how possible it was on those machines but although a lot of content was cut, I was still satisfied with it in the end and still though as one of the most ambitious games ever released. Hype was through the roof, I remember buying a key for the Episode Duscae demo (that came with FF type 0 remaster I think) because I needed to see that this game is real and it will be running on my ps4.

So yeah, months and years went by, and we were eagerly waiting for the release date, which they finally announced on a crazy big event dedicated only to this game revealing the theme song by the otherworldy voiced Florence (from Florence+Machines), revealing an anime series and a full cgi movie as well. It was really crazy and I don’t think any publisher went this crazy for a game ever. You had to be there to understand how crazy this was.

It got quite a bit of hate upon release I think because expectations were through the roof, but for me the playthrough was one of the most memorable gaming experience ever. The music, the visuals, the animations, the story, the chacters and their interactions, they were all just insanely good, I loved it.

To get in the mood I just rewatched both the anime series and the movie. I’m not an anime fan but it’s very good, I think, because it introduces you to the characters and reveal how they became best bros.
What surprised more was the movie because as I remembered I didn’t like it that much upon release, but damn, it’s actually pretty awesome with its world building and it looks crazy good. I guess I just wanted to know more about the “bros” originally, that’s why I didn’t like it that much. And yeah, the realtime graphics of todays games are still lightyears away from that movie, it’s crazy.

But honestly the game holds up really well, even after 8 years. Actually, that’s an understatement, because animation-wise it shits on most of modern games but the visuals are still good as well and many times they look better than either FF7R or XVI. I’ll try to add gifs to demonstrate.

So yeah, I’ll just go continue playing it now, and I assume it will be quite different because I know it received a lot of upgrades since when I played plus I never played the dlcs before, so I’m in for a treat.
I recommend it to everyone to just give it a try to see if you like it in case you missed it before. I think you can get it real cheap anywhere nowadays. I bought the Royal Edition for a really small price not long ago on psn which contains all the dlc minus Ardyn (you have to buy that one seperately).

I think these gifs are made by the crazy talented SunhiLegend, got them from this thread, check it out for more: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-ffxv-gif-extravaganza-thread.1328508/

 

[cireza]

Loved the game back then, and still love it. Completed it twice.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

It was definitely something.

 

[Klosshufvud]

I really enjoyed this game (Royal Edition). I thought it was done with crazy ambitions in place and the game has so many mechanics and content going on. In many ways it was perfectly in line with those PS1 era Sakaguchi FF games. Including the feeling of incomplete corners and rushed production. The music, visuals, animations, story, combat and its progression. I loved it all. The last time a JRPG felt grand to me really.

 

[Insanemaelstrom]

I loved it. Even got the platinum for it. A really good road trip game that really captured how I imagined adveturer would go about their days. Taking on contracts, go to dangerous locations or dungeons and camp till you find and defeat the monster. Also like the visual flair and the overall fantasy feel of the game.

 

[Mister Wolf]

It was a turd. It and Phantom Pain go neck and neck for my biggest regret purchase on PS4.

 

[Lokaum D+]

I wish i had waited to play XV, but since i played Vanilla It was one of the worst FF i've ever played.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I had it about a week before the street date, so totally unpatched. I almost beat it when it launched for real. I hated it. I didn't like the gameplay, the open world, the mission structure etc. And pre patch the Leviathan fight was absolutely horrible, as was the dreaded chapter 13.

I platted it, because well, I plat most FF games. And because it was an easy platinum. I was surprised by Pitioss, it had no right to be there but it was probably the best part of that game because it didn't work (platform gameplay with these mechanics), yet it worked in a very challenging way. The rest of the game was braindead easy.

I never returned to it. I did however play Episode prompto and thought it was horrible.

Kingsglaive I actually liked, I felt characters like Luna were much better there. It went downhill once the game started. I think it could've been better if the Insomnia siege was in the game and they would cut a few dozen hours of open world padding.

 

[March Climber]

To get in the mood I just rewatched both the anime series and the movie. I’m not an anime fan but it’s very good, I think, because it introduces you to the characters and reveal how they became best bros.
What surprised more was the movie because as I remembered I didn’t like it that much upon release, but damn, it’s actually pretty awesome with its world building and it looks crazy good. I guess I just wanted to know more about the “bros” originally, that’s why I didn’t like it that much. And yeah, the realtime graphics of todays games are still lightyears away from that movie, it’s crazy.

This is literally my only issue with FFXV as it suffers from a similar issue that Destiny 1 and 2 suffered from, that they didn't put this stuff in the game. The community had to make an entire guide on how to experience FFXV:

Steam Community :: Guide :: Order of All Final Fantasy XV Universe Content

Want to get the most out of Final Fantasy XV? Here's a guide for new players, with time estimates and importance rankings for media outside the main game, all listed in the order that will give the be

steamcommunity.com

And to me that just feels like a big problem. Otherwise, FFXV could have been up there as a great post-XIII experience full of storytelling and lore content.

 

[bundylove]

What a shit game it was and i platinumed it

 

[Bloobs]

 

[Chuck Berry]

Loved it. Platted it when it released.

Ive thought about revisiting several times. This thread definitely helps.

 

[Rickyiez]

It was ... terrible alright . The first half of the game was totally disjointed from the second half . The combat was mediocre . And also the boy band trip was one of the dumbest shit ever .

Like my father's kingdom was being taken over , my childhood love had gone missing ... but hey ! lets stop every once in a while , look for ingredients to cook and enjoy our camping first . Then we drive around and enjoy the breeze woohoo sightseeing so fun like we never drive in a trip before yay

I will reiterate it again

FF13 is dull and boring , but FF15 is offensively bad

 

[Muffdraul]

Never had any interest in FFvsXIII. I learned back in 2000 when Square held their "Millennium Event" and announced FFIX, FFX and FFXI all at the same time, my brain is only capable of caring about one new FF at a time. I was immediately obsessed with FFIX and didn't even think about FFX until after IX was released and I'd completed it. It happened again during E3 2006 when Squeenix announced FFXIII, FFvsXIII and FFagitoXIII all at the same time. But there was the extra layer of vsXIII looking like "Kingdom Hearts minus the Disney and general cartoonyness, which has been replaced by pretentious Shakespearean tripe," which, just... I can't think of a bigger turn off. I watched it go into development hell and couldn't have cared less. Eventually it popped back up as FFXV and supposedly being back on track, and I figured, "Eh, I s'pose I'll play it whenever it comes out and I bet it'll actually turn out to be pretty OK."

Long story short, I was right. I played FFXV when it came out, and while in many ways it was easy to see it was a project that had been fished out of a trash dumpster and spiffied up as best as they could, it was a pretty good time. But same as FFXIII... way, way, WAAAAAAAAAAY below FF standards I was used to as a fanboy from the glory days starting in 1994.

EDIT: I should have mentioned- I had all of the same assumptions about FFXVI. Every preview I saw made it seem totally unappealing to me and I wasn't looking forward to it at all. But I was sure once I started playing it and got into it, I'd enjoy it. No. NO. I couldn't stomach that crap for more than 10 hours over a weekend. It real weirds me out that any self-respecting FF fan can stand it. Just... ugh.

 

[RoboFu]

I think the bad thing about 15 was that all the systems were great. It just always felt sparse of content.

 

[The_Observer]

This is literally my only issue with FFXV as it suffers from a similar issue that Destiny 1 and 2 suffered from, that they didn't put this stuff in the game. The community had to make an entire guide on how to experience FFXV:

Steam Community :: Guide :: Order of All Final Fantasy XV Universe Content

Want to get the most out of Final Fantasy XV? Here's a guide for new players, with time estimates and importance rankings for media outside the main game, all listed in the order that will give the be

steamcommunity.com

And to me that just feels like a big problem. Otherwise, FFXV could have been up there as a great post-XIII experience full of storytelling and lore content.

Wow, I have to check this out. Yeah, it’s not ideal, but I guess the game would have took another decade to be finished so they went heavy with cutting content

 

[Chuck Berry]

Man I love how divisive it is

That's how you know it's a good game

 

[Bruno_Arrais85]

if only the combat wasn't so dogshit

 

[West Texas CEO]

This thread makes me miss D.Final .

 

[Little Chicken]

I completed it closely after launch in it's clearly unfinished state. I had a lot of fun exploring in the first half of the game, though it was very light in actual content.

Some of the design decisions were appalling; a fantasy world dotted with 1950's diners and atrocious looking npcs...

I enjoyed it a lot more than I did briefly wading through FFXVI's excrement.

 

[PeteBull]

Amazing entry in the series, and i play them from the time of ff4.

 

[diffusionx]

I just wish it had a real combat system, same as FFXVI (but I think FF15 is a better game even if you take out the combat system)

 

[March Climber]

if only the combat wasn't so dogshit

I just wish it had a real combat system, same as FFXVI (but I think FF15 is a better game even if you take out the combat system)

Here:

FFXV HARD MODE ULTIMATE EDITION (UPDATE 1.02)

HARD MODE ULTIMATE EDITION seeks to offer the best game experience for FFXV, significantly increasing the difficulty of the game, challenging the player to experiment with more weapons, magic and adva

www.nexusmods.com

 

[Deft Beck]

Yes, most people would rather play something else.

 

[diffusionx]

Here:

FFXV HARD MODE ULTIMATE EDITION (UPDATE 1.02)

HARD MODE ULTIMATE EDITION seeks to offer the best game experience for FFXV, significantly increasing the difficulty of the game, challenging the player to experiment with more weapons, magic and adva

www.nexusmods.com

The problem isn't just difficulty, but I wish it had a combat system more like the old games.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Tried it once, fell asleep while driving a car.

 

[GymWolf]

Turd of a game.

Chocobo music was fire tho.

 

[Fbh]

I only played the $60 Early Access version (a.k.a the game at launch) and didn't really like it, though there were a few highlight moments and the visuals and music still hold up really well.
The best part of the game was the really cool though somewhat janky end game puzzle dungeon

I still think whoever was in charge of designing that should have been given a small team and some AA tier budget to make a full on puzzle game.

 

[diffusionx]

Tried it once, fell asleep while driving a car.

Stop playing videogames while you're driving, it's not safe

 

[EviLore]

Despite being a half-finished game I still enjoyed it more than 16.

 

[Puscifer]

It was ... terrible alright . The first half of the game was totally disjointed from the second half . The combat was mediocre . And also the boy band trip was one of the dumbest shit ever .

Like my father's kingdom was being taken over , my childhood love had gone missing ... but hey ! lets stop every once in a while , looks for ingredients to cook and enjoy our camping first . Then we drive around and enjoy the breeze woohoo sightseeing so fun like we never drive in a trip before yay

I will reiterate it again

FF13 is dull and boring , but FF15 is offensively bad

So question, how is this a bad thing?

Morrowind actually encouraged you at times to go see the world outside the main quest and I LOVED that about Ragnarok even if I had my issues with it where the game asked you to see more of the world

 

[StueyDuck]

I finished recently both FF7 Remake and FF16 and I loved both so I was in the mood to start replaying XV, and man, what a time it was both before and after release.

Before XV I never really played any FF but ever since the versus XIII times I was really captivated by it. I loved the music and the tone of the original trailers but years went by and the game disappeared. But when it came back it came back big. Trailer by trailer, gameplay by gameplay I just got more and more excited and couldn’t wait to play it. I read and watched anything I could find about it on the internet and couldn’t believe and imagine playing it myself it looked that ambitious. It was around the beginning of last gen so we didn’t really know how possible it was on those machines but although a lot of content was cut, I was still satisfied with it in the end and still though as one of the most ambitious games ever released. Hype was through the roof, I remember buying a key for the Episode Duscae demo (that came with FF type 0 remaster I think) because I needed to see that this game is real and it will be running on my ps4.

So yeah, months and years went by, and we were eagerly waiting for the release date, which they finally announced on a crazy big event dedicated only to this game revealing the theme song by the otherworldy voiced Florence (from Florence+Machines), revealing an anime series and a full cgi movie as well. It was really crazy and I don’t think any publisher went this crazy for a game ever. You had to be there to understand how crazy this was.

It got quite a bit of hate upon release I think because expectations were through the roof, but for me the playthrough was one of the most memorable gaming experience ever. The music, the visuals, the animations, the story, the chacters and their interactions, they were all just insanely good, I loved it.

To get in the mood I just rewatched both the anime series and the movie. I’m not an anime fan but it’s very good, I think, because it introduces you to the characters and reveal how they became best bros.
What surprised more was the movie because as I remembered I didn’t like it that much upon release, but damn, it’s actually pretty awesome with its world building and it looks crazy good. I guess I just wanted to know more about the “bros” originally, that’s why I didn’t like it that much. And yeah, the realtime graphics of todays games are still lightyears away from that movie, it’s crazy.

But honestly the game holds up really well, even after 8 years. Actually, that’s an understatement, because animation-wise it shits on most of modern games but the visuals are still good as well and many times they look better than either FF7R or XVI. I’ll try to add gifs to demonstrate.

So yeah, I’ll just go continue playing it now, and I assume it will be quite different because I know it received a lot of upgrades since when I played plus I never played the dlcs before, so I’m in for a treat.
I recommend it to everyone to just give it a try to see if you like it in case you missed it before. I think you can get it real cheap anywhere nowadays. I bought the Royal Edition for a really small price not long ago on psn which contains all the dlc minus Ardyn (you have to buy that one seperately).

I think these gifs are made by the crazy talented SunhiLegend, got them from this thread, check it out for more: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-ffxv-gif-extravaganza-thread.1328508/

It's a game that was hurt by everyone who didn't make it... if that makes sense.

As in the whole versus 13 then the troubled development before they took over, it's actually impressive we even got a functioning game out of it to be honest.

The dlcs were ok for what they were. Mp was weird

 

[mayham2199]

I thought the game was really bad especially the combat. Man that combat was so bad. You can't even really get off a full combat without being hit and staggered. I finished it but I kind of regret it and should have just put it down and moved on.

 

[Ultros]

I wish i had waited to play XV, but since i played Vanilla It was one of the worst FF i've ever played.

I played it on release and got the platinum. Later on I picked up the Royal Edition. Can you tell me what changed since the vanilla release, or how it's different now? Because lately I have this itch to play it again

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I thought it was good but not great. I enjoyed the hell out of it but it’s very flawed and incomplete.

I would take XV over XVI ANY DAY

 

[Sooner]

It was something else alright.

While most of the rest of the series are good games, FFXV is "something else".

 

[March Climber]

The problem isn't just difficulty, but I wish it had a combat system more like the old games.

There's probably a mod out there, but honestly I'd recommend any turn-based FF fan to try out Persona or DQ instead at this point. The series has left traditional turn based combat behind for almost a decade.

The best thing they can do at this point is add more strategy to the real-time combat to make it less 'attack-button-spam' and more like...well Mass Effect-ish or something (just without the shooting).

 

[Hrk69]

Never finished it and probably never will

The amount of traveling / running without anything happening was absurd

 

[The_Observer]

Despite being a half-finished game I still enjoyed it more than 16.

I enjoyed it more too generally, but XVI also had its moments and the story was good. What I hated is the neverending combat sequences, chipping away the health for minutes of the smallest foes even sometimes.

 

[adamsapple]

10/10 just for the amazing detail they put into these little throwaway food rendering bits.

 

[Reaseru]

Final Fantasy XV (known as Versus XIII) had the potential to probably become the most beautiful story of the franchise, but it failed to achieve that.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Final Fantasy XV (known as Versus XIII) had the potential to probably become the most beautiful story of the franchise, but it failed to achieve that.

I think this is where I stand with it. The initial pitch, concept and plan captured my imagination more than any other gaming project ever has and it was a big disappointment for me how undercooked the final game was.

But that said a "bad" FF game still has plenty of merits and overall I look back at the game we got with some fondness. I enjoyed the 2nd half of the game much more than the 1st and felt something at the end. Overall XVI the VIIR series I feel are a return to form in many respects and I hope we get one more mainline entry with FFXVII and a remake of X before the series may sign off.

From a technical standpoint XV's animations are still ridiculous to look at and only bested by VIIR's which also has some of the best game animations I've come across in the combat (the acrobatics, the smoothness of transitions, team attacks etc..).

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

It’s the only game I’ve played where I could take a picture of Cup Noodle with me into the afterlife.

 

[Tarnpanzer]

The Bromance was what carried the game. Everything else was mid at best.

 

[adamsapple]

It’s the only game I’ve played where I could take a picture of Cup Noodle with me into the afterlife.

Or on your head for that matter.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Wish we got the rest of the DLC content. The second continent really would've added so much more to the game.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Wish we got the rest of the DLC content. The second continent really would've added so much more to the game.

The amount of what appears to 50-75% complete content that was cut from the final game is quite staggering:

FFXV's cut content volume is worth bringing up again.

Summary vid below, athough doesn't show the 2nd world map much. Insomnia, originally set to be the games opening locale, before venturing out into the open world. Essentially completely cut and relegated to a barebones dungeon: Altissia, whilst you get to explore it, they clearly developed...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Celcius]

Ff 15 is one of my favs in the series. Holds up really well.

 

[Judge Magister]

I own the Royal Edition for PS4 but ended up playing the PC version.
I used the Magitek Exosuits and didn't bother with combat system.

The story itself is a mess and short. Noctis-Lunafreya interaction ends up being nothing. DLCs are a mixed bag. Then you have the movie, anime, beat'em up and pocket edition.
The game has huge lore, awesome soundtrack, pretty scenery and some cool characters like Regis, Ardyn or Aranea. Wasted Potential!

 

[Ebrietas]

Played it for a bit, got bored of it and never went back.

That has basically been my experience with every FF game post-XII. XV was the only one that actually disappointed me however, since I spent so many years looking forward to Versus XIII.