Final Fantasy XV

[qmish]

I dunno lol i was under impression that everyone hate and despise it

*of course that "everyone" i meant relates to actual crowd of gamers and not just everyday random buyers.

[BryanM]

"Final Fantasy XV shipped a total of 5 million copies within the first 24 hours of sales, becoming the fastest record for the series."

^ It's all about the hype and marketing brainwash these days. And people keep falling for it, so expect more of the same.

I really don't get it.

Is it like the abused wives in this thread, who bought it brand new day 1 wanting a Final Fantasy game when they knew it wasn't a Final Fantasy game?

Is it because the abused wives who bought the bi-yearly edition of a new console box need to justify their purchase to themselves?

This thing was never FF, it was a different game entirely and they just slapped the name on it after the fact. If I stuff something in a box and label it "Final Fantasy" it doesn't sell 10 million copies, so why is it different when Squeenix does it.

Atlus is the only company that occasionally puts out a jRPG for the home consoles. If you like the genre, you're getting new games for it on portable or the PC. Or hoping for the Switch to inherit the 3DS's genre support.

.... am I really the only person in this thread to never buy an FF after 7? Never had a problem borrowing the sequels from a friend. Excellent rubes, er, swell guys.

I know there's DQ XI coming but this is the one franchise trying too fucking hard being ultraconservative for massive nostalgia sales and I'm done with that too, unless they manage to make a fucking transcendental masterpice I won't bother.

I actually appreciate a bit their willingness to keep their games nearly exactly the same. Honestly DQ is at its best when there's no story at all because, good lord, are their stories worthless. The Monster series is imo better than mainline, since all you do is level up. A bit of a pity the combat system's so mindless.

There was a great fan theory on Princess Gwaelin in Dragon Quest 1: As you know, she's a love psycho who loves to love the hero immediately after he saves her. Forces him to carry her and everything. It's easy to dismiss this as the activity of a cartoon fairy tale princess. But it's extremely abnormal behavior for a normal human being.

Thus the fan theory: the princess is pregnant with the Dragon Lord's baby. Da-da-duuuum.

She forces the hero to carry her, not because of wuv, but because she can't walk far on her own. She forces herself on the hero and runs away with him, not because of wuv, but to avoid and resolve some very awkward political complications.

Unfortunately one must conclude this is all a bunch of watercooler bullshit that'd never be canon for one reason - it's far too interesting and dark for a Dragon Quest game.

But the simplicity and vagueness of the scenario at least provided the possibility of some interpretations like this.

In modern games, not so much. Now you know precisely what the hero prefers to spice up his cup ramen with and why, and there's no fan theories about that.

[qmish]

Why do you care so much then

[BIL]

Just fucking watch this one minute video. Fuck this game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD584R0P9VI

I'm going to kill myself. :[

[Sinful]

Anybody see the Clueless Gamer with Elijah Wood playing FFXV episode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXJFbsQBvLw

[drunkninja24]

aaaaaaaaaaaaand this thread descended exactly where I expected it to :/

all I'll say is I'm enjoying this game and its a massive breath of fresh air after XIII

and I'll just leave my opinion at that

[GaijinPunch]

I loved pretty much every Final Fantasy game up to and including XII. I grew up with the series and met many of my closest friends, including my wife, through the community surrounding it. What it has become is quite upsetting to me.

Same, but with games in general, here. :-/

[WelshMegalodon]

Sweet, another general Final Fantasy thread.

Remember in FF6 when you needed to go somewhere, and you'd just walk to your airship on the world map, press a button, and then quickly fly there

Explorable world maps (=/= open world) made for a huge portion of the soul of the jrpg formula back in the days, not that they all absolutely had to be built around one, but those that did provided the better 'live an adventure exploring a new world' experience.

Japanese rpg devs killed that when they started introducing 'fake' ones (basically just fancy zoomable tourist leaflets), pseudo-open worlds, or no world map at all but levels/areas maps instead, and that in every fucking new title/installment.

I remember my first big disappointment in that trend was Star Ocean III (there was FFX before but I couldn't care less about that one).
There's still some genuine world map stuff on handhelds as they say but since I've never quite got into playing rpgs on those, and home console releases stray further and further from the original jrpg formula, I've basically stopped playing rpgs at all. Yeah I'm done replaying the old ones also, fuck that.

To me this FFXV is just another screaming confirmation that the genre (or local subgenre lol) is dead.

I know there's DQ XI coming but this is the one franchise trying too fucking hard being ultraconservative for massive nostalgia sales and I'm done with that too, unless they manage to make a fucking transcendental masterpice I won't bother.

Exactly.

.... am I really the only person in this thread to never buy an FF after 7? Never had a problem borrowing the sequels from a friend. Excellent rubes, er, swell guys.

I actually had problems getting into any installment after V. Yes, that includes Final Fantasy VI. It wasn't until after I had attempted to enjoy the Dragon Quest titles from which the early Final Fantasies took their inspiration that I realized how little I actually liked the genre. Chrono Trigger is probably the only non-FF "JRPG" I can stomach. (This sentiment doesn't extend to "Tactical RPGs" or action games with experience bars a la Seiken Densetsu.)

[Strider77]

For the next Final Fantasy game......

Tim Burton's Final Fantasy 16

Burton/Square could team up and put Johnny Depp as the lead and create a 3D model of him. Then dress him up in drag as usual and throw in LOTS of glitter snow. Johnny Depp movie outfits as DLC.

Hot Topic fan girls would go insane for it.

Then do a tie in movie done with CG that tries to look like stop motion puppets. While they are at it they could do a mobile phone game based after said movie.

Then make Funko Pops for all of it.

They could follow it all up with The Kingdom of Johnny Depp's Heart.

[iconoclast]

CUP NOODLE XV

[Sumez]

Honestly the Cup Noodle quest is pretty funny, and I love how the game makes light of it, obviously lampshading the brand deal in a way that would make you think it was actually a parody of a brand deal if the Cup Noodle logo wasn't there.
They even hint pretty strongly to how lowly it is to be eating insta noodles compared to everything else you can find, even if the characters love them.

[Skykid]

Sounds completely Japanese.

[Necronopticous]

An excerpt of the main scenario of Final Fantasy XV (Spoilers thru Chapter 8, but nothing actually important):

Spoiler

1. Aranea Highwind is shown in the background of a scene where some men are talking.
2. Noctis & company stealthily infiltrate an imperial base. Getting spotted results in a game over. After this sequence, the base is put on full alert and all security systems are confronted and destroyed on the group’s way out.
3. Aranea Highwind tries to kill Noctis because she’s a mercenary hired by the empire on some sort of contractual basis. She is not contractually obligated to do more than fight for a little bit, so she leaves.
4. The prince of the world has only one option available to him to travel internationally, a broken boat. The boat can not possibly be fixed without some of the rarest and most precious metal in the land, mythril.
5. Wielding weapons crafted from mythril which the group purchased from a gas station weapon truck in the preceding days, the group sets off in search of the legendary ore which is said to be laying on the floor of a distant dungeon, guarded by a mythical beast.
6. Gladiolus leaves the party because he has an unknown task to attend to that is more important than his royal duty.
7. Aranea Highwind joins the party in their search for mythril ore and departs thereafter.
8. Before setting sail, Noctis decides to put on a space suit and slay some demons that have gotten into a power plant and are causing some trouble.
9. Gladiolus has also decided to slay the demons in the power plant, and is also wearing a space suit.
10. After the power plant is cleared, Noctis & Gladiolus remove their space suits.

[iconoclast]

Square is planning some major patches (updating chapter 13, improving the story, playable characters): http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1322843

I still haven't played this since my first post, but now it sounds like I should wait until these patches start coming out. Seems to be the story of this gen: games aren't finished until several months after they're released.

[Sumez]

"Esperiencing the story" definitely needs some heavy enhancements... It's like the game just left out half of the events that were supposed to explain why the hell the characters do what they do. It's not like it's a particularly convoluted story either.

The sequence described by Necronopticous above sums it up very well, but doesn't purvey just how random and out of context the chain of events turn out. I wouldn't comment on it yet as I haven't finished the game, and want to judge it against the full picture.

[null1024]

Wait, wait, wait.
Are we at the point where games are getting story changes after release? Like, not just bugfixes and shit, but actually working on finishing the game after it's already out? Is an actual major developer doing what is effectively early access shit?

...can I get off this ride?

CUP NOODLE XV

perfection

Lost it completely right here:

Spoiler

[gbaplayer]

Does anybody know if the European and US versions of the ultimate collector´s edition from the Square Enix store are the same?
Or does the language in the artbook depend on the region?

[BulletMagnet]

I got a chance to spend a bit more time with this, and while I'm still not far in - and am unsure if I should bother going further for awhile since they're going to be changing lots of stuff - I figure I might as well respond to a few of the previous comments and see what happens.

So what that video doesn't show is that nearly everything happening is the result of holding the circle button down. You could also just watch the Matrix and hold the circle button down on your controller.

I was a bit puzzled that the combat toned down the timing-based elements found in Lightning Returns; they're still there, but oddly mostly on the defensive end, especially once you've unlocked a couple of extra perks. I also agree that the camera can be a pain in the rear, even when set to "far"; crowds of enemies can be a bear to keep track of, though thankfully stronger attacks tend to be better-telegraphed and you regain your health after battle (some might disagree, but I prefer less emphasis on trial-and-error resource management), so a lot of the cheap hits are more annoyances than anything else.

On the bright side, being able to run, jump and teleport all over the place looking for prime opportunities to strike (but not overdoing it because you want a good time rating) lends the process some zip, but more importantly I'm so far extremely thankful that your AI allies seem pretty capable of taking care of themselves, since I absolutely hate having to deal with incompetent computer partners (which is why half the Tales series and pretty much everything Level5 has done are all but dead to me). I also like being able to switch up nearly everything right in the middle of battle, so you never get any "every enemy in this dungeon uses ice spells so you equip ice armor, then the boss suddenly uses all fire stuff and insta-kills you unless your nose in stuffed into a guide" garbage as long as you're generally prepared; I do wish there was a one-button shortcut between "active" and "wait" mode, since there are certain things you can only do in one or the other.

If you want to go somewhere, you have to walk slowly up to your car, activate it, go through a menu, and then watch your boyband drive whereever. It takes forever.

I should note that there IS "genuine" fast travel in the game, though obviously only for places you've been to; if you're out wandering someplace you can select to instantly (well, minus a bit of load time) return to either the last place you camped/rested or wherever your car's parked without losing any in-game time. It's also possible to insta-travel when in the car, though for some reason it costs you a paltry amount of money to do.

That all being said, yeah, this definitely isn't a "get to the point already" kind of game - if you're the type who insists that every last bit of fat be cut out from your gaming experience, stay a million miles away from this thing. Speaking for myself, though, I should note that I really haven't played many (any?) "open world" games before this one, and thus don't have much to compare it to (or fatigue to account for), but I will attest that it scratches a subliminal itch I had back when I was a kid (and, apparently, still do to some extent). Basically, I'm talking about the urge to, the second you happen to catch sight of something or someplace potentially interesting, stop everything and jog over, clamber over climbable outcroppings, poke around nooks and crannies, and just experience a spot of the world you haven't before (and, since this is a video game and not real life, occasionally actually find something notable, as opposed to a trespassing violation). I guess I'm just too easily amused, but I love being able to say "hey, pull the car over, I want to check out that big rock over there!" at my leisure. And yeah, the fact that most everything looks pretty darn good helps too.

Off to the side, I'm also surprised at how tolerable I've found the characters so far - yeah, Noctis is "the brooding guy", who I was already rolling my eyes at by the time Squall came around, but he at least has a palpable, dry sense of humor to break things up, not to mention I'll always love watching him do the same "magical swoosh" motion as with his sword when he makes his fishing rod appear out of thin air. His fellow bros are archetypes like he is, but the voice actors seem to be having a pretty good time delivering their lines, and it comes through; heck, the fashion-challenged lady mechanic is even one of the few "females with a drawl" who doesn't pour it on so thick that I have to switch the language track over. Yeah, the random dialogue doesn't take long to start repeating with all the wandering around you're likely to be doing, but every once in awhile something will happen that prompts an outburst you haven't heard before, and most every time it's happened I find myself chuckling "heh, gotta give 'em credit, they even recorded a specific sample for that."

Again, I'm not too far in, but that covers most of my major thoughts about this thing so far; for what a disaster it might have been considering what it went through (and is still going through) to get here, and with how it's definitely not going to appeal to everyone, at least early on it doesn't seem to have turned out too badly.

[Leandro]

That all being said, yeah, this definitely isn't a "get to the point already" kind of game - if you're the type who insists that every last bit of fat be cut out from your gaming experience, stay a million miles away from this thing. Speaking for myself, though, I should note that I really haven't played many (any?) "open world" games before this one, and thus don't have much to compare it to (or fatigue to account for), but I will attest that it scratches a subliminal itch I had back when I was a kid (and, apparently, still do to some extent). Basically, I'm talking about the urge to, the second you happen to catch sight of something or someplace potentially interesting, stop everything and jog over, clamber over climbable outcroppings, poke around nooks and crannies, and just experience a spot of the world you haven't before (and, since this is a video game and not real life, occasionally actually find something notable, as opposed to a trespassing violation). I guess I'm just too easily amused, but I love being able to say "hey, pull the car over, I want to check out that big rock over there!" at my leisure. And yeah, the fact that most everything looks pretty darn good helps too.

Thanks for the analysis Bullet, I also don't have fatigue for open world game yet and have that same itch.

The main characters look really loathsome though. I sympathize with with NTSC-J. I've never seen these Shinjuku losers but only by reading the description I already hate them