Final Fantasy XV - Review @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer reviewed the PC version of Final Fantasy XV:

Final Fantasy 15 is a flawed epic that makes the series relevant again

Singleplayer Final Fantasy games needed a shot in the arm.

What's cool about seeing my PC Gamer colleagues pick up Final Fantasy 15 now is how they talk about the things I loved about the game 15 months ago, when I first played it on console. That is, the damn tasty-looking food that always makes my stomach roar with hunger, which Tyler wrote about yesterday, and the in-game photography feature, which provides you with snapshots of the characters' journey that they'll comment on at the end of each day. Both are elements that were new to Final Fantasy with the fifteenth entry—but they got people talking about the game more than anything else, by being laser-targeted at players who love to share screenshots online.

Both features speak to the game's earnest and goofy charm. Final Fantasy 15 is not the best RPG in the series—not in any traditional sense, when it comes to combat, progression, and that sort of thing. But the actual journey through its world is among the series' most enjoyable. It dials in on that specific feeling of travelling with a party in an RPG and makes that the entire game. In older FFs, you mostly walked silently through gorgeous surroundings with your party off-screen, and the sense of journey would be conveyed through cutscenes and occasional in-battle dialogue. Here, all four members of your party are on-screen at all times, and they constantly interact with each other—it makes a hell of an impact.

"There were three key words we had on the board when we started out development of the game: comrades, car, journey," FF15's game development manager Kenichi Shida told me in London a few weeks ago. It shows. I couldn't tell you much about the main story of Final Fantasy 15—the kingdom of Lucis falls, Noctis is getting married to someone you see about four times in the whole game, a seemingly immortal guy called Ardyn is the villain—but that's because the game is bad at traditional RPG save-the-world stuff. Anything that isn't about the four main characters is incoherent and rarely that interesting.
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More information.

Eh? That article is hadly a review.

Just from what is quoted above, it seems as though they have not played many other PC RPGs in which party members talk with each other.

How many of them are there? BioWare did it superbly but they are fading. Elder Scrolls just has one companion, if I remember right, unless you put mods in. The Witcher runs alone. Dragon's Dogma really does NOT count as conversation. Expeditions: Viking tried but didn't do so well. I don't think there was much, if any, in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Gimme a break, if the repetitive:
- Ngggh
- Headache again?
- This is not normal.

If it impressed PC Gamer then I can only question their sanity. Or perhaps not, designs that are trying to bore me to death with repetitiveness, those designs PC Gamer adores.

I can't say I dislike hearing sidekicks calling the protagonist "Nockto" here and there, but it's only thanks to the brilliant japanese voiceover where I've fallen in love with tone and style of those voices.
The content of random sidekicks banter however is okay at best, it's nothing to write home about. If someone mods it out of the game, you won't think you're missing anything.

Did some other partybased game had it better? At least one did: Berseria.
Sure, the banter in there is not random and to hear it you need to stop doing what you're doing and enjoy stills show, but that way you're concentrated on the banter itself - it's not housewife's TV where they pretty much ignore what's going on, where it's only the buzz from speakers that matters.
And believe it or not, Berseria banter while being optional adds to the story and characters. It is not complaining on a headache 100 times during your playthrough.

Final Fantasy games are a huge turnoff to me after the latest installments. Seems each sequel deviated from what the series started out as. It's a damn shame it is.

An actual PCG review appeared:
https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-15-pc-review/

When running Final Fantasy 15 off of an SSD, the game ran without problems, although when running off of a regular HDD, loading screens would sometimes take multiple minutes, and the game would occasionally stutter at the start of combat.
…
The visual improvements here show that the Windows Edition is the definitive version of Final Fantasy 15: it has never looked better, and mod support suggests an exciting future ahead for the game. It's a shame that FF15 doesn't recapture the depth of the series’ past entries, and games like The Witcher 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 really highlight the weaknesses in the sidequests here.
…
78%

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See, I care very little about how a game looks, but a great deal about how it really plays. Based on that alone, this particular Final Fantasy offering sounds like an unmitigated disaster to me.

It's easy to say that you don't care about looks and then you start the game, play it's boring and grindy "Hinterlads" that look absolutely spectacular, then after 50+ hours of fetchquests and other design crimes proceed to the town at sea and then you just can't say you don't care any more. I refuse to share spoiler screenshots, you have to experience it yourself.
Eyecandy games that got close to TW3 do exist (examples are RotTR, WD2, ACO and recent KCD) yet it took a port from consoles to reach TW3's level only thanks to PC hardware capabilities.

What do you mean by how it plays? It plays smooth on i5 with one decent GPU, somehow not so smooth on i7 and SLI perversions. Don't ask me why, I don't care much about stuff pushed by journalist shills. I mean i7, SLI and game on HDD? Spent so much $ on i7 so they didn't have enough to buy SSD in year 2018?
The game does crash to desktop occassionally (if you play it constantly for cca 10 hours), but compared to FO3 that crashed on me every 10 mins on release that's nothing I'd call a disaster.

For those who are playing this game a suggestion. Do not leave "Hinterlands". Just as with praised by critics DA3, only that way you'll see a whole picture and only that way you'll understand why IMO PCGamer's 78% is being too generous.

By how it plays I mean the actual gameplay, the combat, the MEAT of any game that I'm interested in. I would hope that it would remain true to Final Fantasy in this regard, but I seriously doubt it. I would quickly jump on replaying an older FF game, or Might and Magic game, or Wizardry product, or Bard's tale (first three iterations only!) rather than give a penny to a type of game that I simply abhor, which this looks to be.

That is what I mean when I mention how little I care for the look of a game, when products twenty to thirty years of age are far more appealing to me than some of today's offerings. It isn't even a close thing.

Combat?
In my opinion gameplay is not combat.
I mean tetris has gameplay too.

But whatever. Combat you say?

- There is combat tutorial and I suggest doing it first not because it'll show you something of crucial value but just so you learn horrible key mappings.

- Earlygame the combat is no brainer, against easy trashmobs is basically holding left mouse button and moving around those trashmobs with wasd. It's FF13 all over again where a blind person wins and combat autoexecutes.

- You can't do that against bosses though, nor against high level trashmobs. For that there is so-called warp ability. It's actually blink from Dishonored that can instakill low HP trashmobs you "teleport" on or low quality mechs while in infiltration sections (these can happen during both main story and in sidequests). In other cases you'll youst fo some damage and can continue attacking with leftclick or do another warp.

- How does the blink, sorry, warp, work in FF15? Visually you throw a weapon on a "point of interest" then teleport on your weapon and proceed with an action. Practically it means hold shift to lock on a trashmob then press F to teleport on it. Or if you're moving away from hostiles then just F on a ledge which is a point of interest.
Points of interest are predetermined and work only in combat. Low trashmobs have just one PoI, bosses have a few so you can aim the one that'll cripple them. You'll usually do shift+F a few times on a boss, then F to a distant position to avoid their attack then CTRL+F back, rince repeat.
You cannot see points of interest outside of combat, okay? No, this is not Dishonored and you have to crawl through a dungeon to reach some high spot although if there was any logic you should be able to blink, sorry, warp there.

- Block does exist and you're prompted to press and hold right mouse when you can block something (you can't block everything). When you successfully block you can hit back and this is the only way to kill some bosses. Rightmouse click without holding will make you roll as if this was the stupid Dark Souls, I wish there was a mod to remove useless and idiotic dodging. But I guess Square Enix wanted to suck up to Dark Souls fans. Well, I'm not one of them!

- Some trashmob groups and bosses are too tough and you can't just go shift+F, F, rightclick "strategy". You'll need special attacks (techniques) your sidekicks can do. Gladio for example can do a decent AoE with this initial spec ability creating you a warp spot where sometimes you'll manage to hit the trashmob from behind which will make bonus damage. Ignus' Overwhelm ability is an absolute musthave: all 4 party members will hit the trashmob in a coreographed sequence and while it's happening your HP and MP slightly regenerate. When against dozens of hostiles, Prompto has a MElike singularity that pulls a group of trashmobs at one spot… Just examples.
This is the start of horror show. To use these abilities you need to press CTRL+A (Prompto), CTRL+W (Ignis) or CTRL+D (Gladius).
Wait it's WAD. Where's S? Yea, a few times in the game you get a guest partymember and when you're a party of 5 then their special ability is triggered by CTRL+S.
I mean, WTF?!

- Okay so you'll remap them on 1-4, right? My condolences. 1-4 is used to switch weapons equipped on the protagonist. 1-2 is also used on the map screen to hide/show menu or icons. Another WTF, right? You can also cycle weapons with mousewheel.

- That's not all what's to say about combat. Eventually you'll get a certain party move called armiger (G on the keyboard, yet another WTF), a bit later you get an ability to summon overpowered beings (Alt on the keyboard, OMG fire Square Enix UI designers already!)

- Running around and hanging on a ledge takes stamina. Once it's depleted you can't run for a while nor hang indefinetly. Because of that idiocy in an openworld you'll equip endless stamina ring on Nockto. Yea you have it since the game start, thank god for that.

- Another thing you get at the game start is a sword called Ragnarok. It's not the highest damage weapon by no means. But it has bonus damage on warp. And that bonus is overpowered. At level cca 20 you'll do 9999 damage on almost anything by warping and your game wili turn into spamming SHIFT+F all the time. You read it right. Although it's low damage sword, you'll keep it till lategame and maybe even in endgame (didn't reach that part yet).

- Except quests/sidequests bosses, trashmobs respawn endlessly. So you may say nice, I'll SHIFT+F them all and use party techniques when needed.
No. I started the game on normal but I got sick and tired of grind over respawns so I dropped it on easy. True, normal difficulty is actually easy, but I'm sick of wasting time on respawns so gimme a break and make trashmob health lower.
Some trashmobs respawn less than a minute after you clear them, some respawn after you sleep somewhere, some appear out of nowhere and some thankfully spawn only if you trigger hunts on them.
Wanna do all sidequests? Oh you will grind, man, you will. An example, you need to get a griffin feather. Okay, go for griffin hunt, save the game, kill it, it didn't drop, load the game on that spot and kill it again, etc. It dropped when I killed it the 5th time. Note that I used savescum as I didn't want to waste time on sleeping or getting a contract so it respawns back.
Openworld exploration? Not a chance. I do not want to grind over and over all the same rubbishmobs! Yes I know there are nice items to be found, well, screw it.

- No I'm not done yet! There is also so called wait mode (enable it in options). If enabled, when you don't move Noctis a certain amount of time you can use to "strategize" and prepare yourself to do something. It turns the combat basically into RTwP system, only the pause is not infinite, it has a timer.
The question is do you seriously want to waste even more time by having a pause in fights? As you may guess, I don't use wait mode at all.

- Finally chocobo. You may train them to join fights on your side and kick some trashmob arse or provide you some buffs. Fun to see once. Do you need that generally? No. I wish I could turn them into food instead. I mean, food provides you combat buffs in this game.

If I wasn't clear enough, do ask, I'll post more details. My point is that I'm seeing annoying Hinterlands again. If you loved DA3 Hinterlands' bears, you'll adore FF15. If you just can't stand respawns like me, the cure is easy difficulty and to hell with tedious grind. Just as in DA3, remember to revert it back to normal when you're doing the main quest.
Please don't ask about postgame bosses. I have no idea how those that appear only when you finish the main story behave, all I know is their HP is like total of every trashmobs in the game before you finish it. AKA more grind.
Also I can't answer on combat as Gladio, Ignis and Prompto. Apparently you're supposed to do their spinoff DLC after completing the game (their level, skills, techniques and equips are transferred into DLC and then what you learn and unlock there is transferred back into the game). But I know they cannot warp. Here's hope trashmobs don't respawn in spinoff DLCs.

I have no idea what you mean by using the term hinterlands, other than it usually referring to a patch of land beyond a coastal area, but this version of Final Fantasy just sounds awful. Thanks for saving me some cash!

Hinterlands is openworld area in Dragon Age Inquisiton where every single trashmob endlessly respawns and on some (bears) you need to waste too much time to kill. Over and over for no reason. Only to stall your actual progress.

This Final Fantasy is not awful. It's just a missed opportunity. It could have been a masterpiece but Square Enix was not brave enough to make one - it's a fillerbased world dumbed down with repetitiveness and possibly the worst sidequests in past decade.

Did I mention that items you can loot in openworld also respawn (not in dungeons!)? Well, they do. Wanna earn some cash? Spot where you found some weapon and just visit that spot frequently then sell all of it. Of course you actually won't do that as, hell, do they really lack of ideas so they just had to put so many different grind rubbish inside this game?

And you ask about combat? In a game full of design crimes? Man…

Still I say buy it. It does have it's moments.
For example, sorry for spoiler, you have a car. Eventually you'll upgrade it and OMG there are carraces even in this game, , Imma commit a suicide, etc.
Well, don't. The upgrade turns the car into Mako! And those races are actually bump-o-ramas and not stupid Need4Speed crap from GTA5. In this game those few (3) "carraces" are fun! I can't believe I'm saying there is a game with racing that's fun, but one finally appeared.

Henriquejr spotted PC Gamer's real review.