I have a feeling a lot of people are going to look at the WRPG-ish surface of the game and assume that is what it's supposed to be. At its heart is still a JRPG that is dressed in a WRPG skin, and it could end up getting dinged for that in reviews.
What I get from all these previews is that this is going to be a great looking and fun PC game.
I have a feeling a lot of people are going to look at the WRPG-ish surface of the game and assume that is what it's supposed to be. At its heart is still a JRPG that is dressed in a WRPG skin, and it could end up getting dinged for that in reviews.
This is my worry too. A JRPG trying an open world approach and being held against TW3. CD Projekt Red did two games before that so they're not noobs.
What I get from all these previews is that this is going to be a great looking and fun PC game.
I have a feeling a lot of people are going to look at the WRPG-ish surface of the game and assume that is what it's supposed to be. At its heart is still a JRPG that is dressed in a WRPG skin, and it could end up getting dinged for that in reviews.
This is my worry too. A JRPG trying an open world approach and being held against TW3. CD Projekt Red did two games before that so they're not noobs.
Thanks Dawg, I enjoyed reading what you had to say.
I don't really want to wait so long to play this.
FFXV final build will offer steady 30 fps with 320*240 resolution.
FF has been disappointing people for about a decade in many aspects, but it had always looked cutting edge.So disappointed. A FF that looks ugly.
Graphics aside, did you have any fun ?
Those are bad screenshots. It looks great in motion.
This is absolutely 100% false. Those screenshots convey very accurately what the game actually looks like while exploring, running and driving around. This is how Final Fantasy XV's open world looks like when there's no motion blur and flashy effects from fight scenes, running on a PS4. The framerate seemed like it was a pretty steady 30fps, which is obviously a big step up from Episode Duscae and very likely the reason the game looks so much worse even compared to the demo..
What I get from all these previews is that this is going to be a great looking and fun PC game.
Almost none of the hands-on impressions have mentioned the game looking like ass. So no, it is not false. In fact, most of the impressions mention only a few visual shortcomings.
So you have conflicting information and have no experience with the Hands-On Demo we are talking about here yourself - and your first reflex is to just ignore the opinions you don't want to believe in and state the other ones as fact?
Alright then.
I'm concerned about this too. I'm stubbornly not watching either before release because I want to see how it feels without any of that outside backstory. If it doesn't stand up on its own, they've done a shoddy job.Im also worried about the movie and the anime raising the Barrier of entry to the game. The anime, at least, serves as a backstory to the main supporting cast which I imagine is pretty important if you're going to spend the entire game with them. I have no plans on watching the movie so am I going to lose out on some context? If someone skips out on everything will they get a considerably different experience?
But I still have some hope, Nomura's game and the latest game by the KH2 team is still in there somewhere and I hope it's good.
There's also going to be DLC for each of them which doesn't help out much.I'm concerned about this too. I'm stubbornly not watching either before release because I want to see how it feels without any of that outside backstory. If it doesn't stand up on its own, they've done a shoddy job.
There's also going to be DLC for each of them which doesn't help out much.
Didn't one of the 4chan rumors mention that they had almost nothing for one of the characters in game?
Yep, that's the one:For Gladiolus.
I always thought this was the engine sword
So you have conflicting information and have no experience with the Hands-On Demo we are talking about here yourself - and your first reflex is to just ignore the opinions you don't want to believe in and state the other ones as fact?
Alright then.
I know it sounds inflammatory but I have to be honest: No, I didn't. And I don't think it was because of me or because of my unwillingness to accept the game's merits, strenths and weaknesses but because several of its technical and gameplay pillars are fundamentally badly designed and thought out. I have to give one big caveat though: I skipped the cutscenes because I didn't want to spoil me too much but what I saw from the screens next to me the pre-rendered cutscenes looked fucking gorgeous. But first I really want to dispel one thing:
This is absolutely 100% false. Those screenshots convey very accurately what the game actually looks like while exploring, running and driving around. This is how Final Fantasy XV's open world looks like when there's no motion blur and flashy effects from fight scenes, running on a PS4. The framerate seemed like it was a pretty steady 30fps, which is obviously a big step up from Episode Duscae and very likely the reason the game looks so much worse even compared to the demo.
But to get to my more important points:
I feel like there are three big pillars to this game:
1) Driving around (The Road Trip pillar)
2) Fighting (The Final Fantasy & Action Game pillar)
3) Exploring, Questing, Looting (The Open World pillar)
I have huge problems with each one. Let's start with my biggest disappointemnt from this demo:
1) The Driving feels bad, lacks interactivity and betrays what a road trip is about
When I think of the concept of a road trip I think about freedom. About driving around unshackled from any boundaries and obligations, about exploring unknown territory, about going out of your comfort zone. In contrast to all of these concepts FF XV takes all control away from you when you drive. Even when you choose to control the game "manually" you:
-can't leave the road
-can't turn the wheel more than a few cm, while you snap back to your previous position the second you let go from the analogue stick
-can't drive fast
-can't exit the car wherever you want (kinda, but not exactly)
-can't take corners the way you want, the game automatically breaks, even if you pull the Gas button as far as you can
You are basically on a fixed track and you have to hold R2 to keep on driving on that fixed track. Whenever an intersection comes up you hold in the direction you want to drive and the game does the rest for you. When you want to make a U-Turn you just press Square and the game automatically does a U-Turn for you. There is no way for you to do this yourself since you can't actually steer away from the road in front of you. Even if there's a huge, long, endless straight in front of you Noctis will not drive with more than what feels like 15 mp/h, no matter how much you just want to race to your next waypoint. This means that driving long distances takes WAY too long with no way to skip to the end (at least in the demo I played), even in Automatic mode. When I hold X to exit the car, they don't immediatly do it but instead drive a few meters further to a predetermint point where the game allows me to stop. After that, the screen turns black and I stand outside of the car.
Nothing works as you'd expect it to work, nothing feels good, you are never in control and the black screen seems completely unnecessary and betrays the seamless transition they were going for originally.
Your Number 1 method of transportation feels like garbage and isn't fun in the slightest.
2) The Fighting System couples the action of Character Action games with the control responsiveness of JRPGs. It doesn't go well.
The controls are incredibly sluggish and unresponsiv, even at a steady framerate. Since you have to hold the circle button to attack you can't accurately control each strike. It's not intuitively noticable when one attack started or the next one ended. You never know 100% if you already queued up the next hit or not.
At the same time the fast paced fighting demands the accuracy of a Character Action game. You should not attack enemies when they block you, you should block when enemies attack you. Since you do not have complete control over your character and instead just tell him which NPD to attack instead of actively attacking him yourself, this demanded accuracy seems unnecessarily frustrating to achieve.
The developers also didn't think about several fundamentals of the Action game genre and instead had to work around them with stopgap solutions. The biggest example to me is the utter lack of noticable enemy tells. The best character action games achieve a perfect balance of letting the player know when and how an enemies is about to attack while also demanding great reflexes and the knowledge of how to counter said attack. An obvious example would be the red flashe some enemies in Metal Gear Rising display shortly before attacking. This red flash always means the same and is an established part of the ruleset.
In FFXV everything explodes in effects and characters since 3 of your companions share the screen with you most of the time while you often fight against 3, 4 or 5 small enemies at the same time, making it utterly impossible to actually notice any tells from any of the enemie NPCs. So what did Square Enix do?
The put a Huge "GUARD! USE SQUARE!" tooltip up everytime an enemie attacks with an attack you could parry. Instead of actually working on the issue the built a ugly workaround, removing any learning curve and finesse inherent in actually learning an enemie's behaviour. With big enemies there comes a new problem of actually not knowing what is an attack and what's just movement. You don't really know what hurts you and what doesn't.
And don't even get me started on their solution to "Oh Jesus, no one knows what's going on during these battles, what should we do?" Just PAUSE them? Are you serious? That's like building a terrible shooter where no one hits anything and instead of working on the AI or the controls you just tell your players to pause the game and move the crosshair over your enemie's head in that time.
3.) Exploring the open world is tedious and straight-up not fun
I could go on and on about this point (oh my god using the car is seriously such a fucking chore) but this post is already way too long so I just want to give you one perfect example of how badly thought out almost every aspect of this game is:
I drove on a street when I heard a scream from somewhere and a new side quest popped up. A hunter needed help! I wanted to help him...but the game didn't actually tell me where I should go to do that. The game registered the side quest. It marked it in my Quest Log. And I could even get a waypoint! But not just like that - I had to put in some work. And, honestly? This feels so obviously unintuitive and easy to fix that I think I probably missed a button here. If that's the case, please correct me and I will quote you as soon as I see it. But I tried and tried and didn't find a way. So what did I have to do?
Well, I was driving in my car - and while driving I couldn't access my Skill Menu or Quest Log anymore. The options were gone from the Start Menu. I could only open my map. I had to get out of the car to be able to access the Quest Log. This was the process:
- Getting the sidequest notification
- Holding X to stop the Car
- Waiting for the Car to stop further down the road for no discernible reason
- Getting a Black Screen while my characters left the car.
- Accessing the Quest Log
- Marking the Side Quest as active
- Leaving the Quest Log
- Getting back in the car
- Turning around
- Slooowly accelerating and driving back to the point where I got the notification and go from there
For whatever reason I could only ever track one quest on my mini map. This sounds like a small thing but in an open world game where such notifications hit by the minute, making me leave me car slooooowly only to be able to tell the game to allow me to approach the activity while I could have done so way easier while actually already sitting in my car is a completely unnecessary obstacle between me and my desire to explore the world.
I would go in further detail but just imagine a really ugly Dragon Age: Inquisition and you got the picture.
Not trying to come across as discrediting your opinion or any other hands on previews opinion, but many times we've seen people get a bad or wrong impression based upon their play time. I remember many hands on super mario maker impressions and gaf posters saying "each game has its unique physics" while other hands on or people who analysed the video said "no its nsmb physics for all" and there was a lot of round and round drama until nintendo confirmed physics were all the same. Your impression is just as valid as the others, but you're by far the most negative that I've read which is why some are gonna see you as an outlier.
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nah, I think they changed that sword as well. If you check out the current swords used by Noctis and co. They have similar designs but the hilt of the sword no longer has an engine. But I might be wrong, and it could be still in the game under the engine sword category.
Capcom did the same and created a masterpiece on first try
I expect even more from SE and FF
Oh yeah, I forgot about the DLC. You're right that probably won't help much.There's also going to be DLC for each of them which doesn't help out much.
Didn't one of the 4chan rumors mention that they had almost nothing for one of the characters in game?
As for the car, tons of people have been telling me "BUT WE KNEW IT WAS ON RAILS AND THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE ROAD". Well, yeah. I get you. But that doesn't change the fact it feels like a very cheap/ancient way to drive a car in a blockbuster 2016 title. I'd rather have no car than a halfassed car. It just doesn't feel natural. It feels very sloppy and restricted. I don't get the feeling I'm driving a car. Maybe they'll get it right before the game releases. Who knows. I'm just commenting on what I played right now and I didn't like it that much.
I think a bigger worry might be the slow feeling, I'm curious how accurate that is.It's news to me that it's on rails. This sounds awful. Does the flight addition mitigate this? Surely the first rule of a large open world game is to make traversal fun or at least interesting. That car sounds shite.
The engine sword is a smaller version, but the big sword I'm talking about is still in. Guess I was wrong for the past 10 years lol
You need a road to take off and land. You just can't land anywhere you please like GTA. However, there's specific areas that you can only access once you get the upgrade to fly. It's been known for awhile but I don't blame people being shocked if they don't follow every little detail.It's news to me that it's on rails. This sounds awful. Does the flight addition mitigate this? Surely the first rule of a large open world game is to make traversal fun or at least interesting. That car sounds shite.
I think a bigger worry might be the slow feeling, I'm curious how accurate that is.
Like thinking about riding Roach in TW3, I kind of hated doing it, but at least it got me places quick enough. If the traversal is not fun, not interesting and slow, that's a pretty bad combination.
Ya, I know. You're talking about the smaller one. That one as "Chozen" has pointed is still in the game. But the big one, I think has been re-designed if you look back at the recent gameplay. You can see the big broad sword with similar "hollowed" out design. As I said before, I could be wrong and that huge engine broad sword might be still in the game under the Engine Sword category. Assuming Tabata didn't Kingsglaive the shit out of the Sword designs.
I'm positive the Engine Greatsword is in. It seems like Square spared no assets from even Versus XIII, the Wyverns back then are still in today.
Also not sure if anyone notice a cool little detail but every time you draw out the Engine Blade it makes a revving sound, badass.
I'm positive the Engine Greatsword is in. It seems like Square spared no assets from even Versus XIII, the Wyverns back then are still in today.
Also not sure if anyone notice a cool little detail but every time you draw out the Engine Blade it makes a revving sound, badass.
When it comes to fun, offroad traversal, FFXV has the Chocobos. That's more than enough for me.
The car is just some sort of auto-pilot when you don't want to move from one place to the next by yourself, and just want to admire the scenery. But people seem to forget it is not the only way of traversing the open world.
Pls be true. That was truly great and unique design. #believe
The only reason why I doubt it was in was because I was always under the impression that this sword (illustrated below) had replaced the engine greatsword due to its similarity in design:
Oh I despised Roach. Stupid create would get stuck on shit, not jump properly, wedge into corners and was overall fairly annoying. But like I said, the stupid horse did usually get me where I wanted to go in a fairly efficient manner. Running on foot felt awful, but I don't remember ever really having a complaint with Roach's speed.Until our car can fly. That may help but...stupid Roach. I hated that horse so much.
Seems strange to mitigate the entire roadtrip dynamic by creating an on-rails vehicle.When it comes to fun, offroad traversal, FFXV has the Chocobos. That's more than enough for me.
The car is just some sort of auto-pilot when you don't want to move from one place to the next by yourself, and just want to admire the scenery. But people seem to forget it is not the only way of traversing the open world.
No thats not it, noctis also has a short sword similar to that greatsword design, so I'm better the Engine theme weapons are a set.
I'm sure that sword will become one of the most iconic in the franchise. Personally I love the design.
I'm sure that sword will become one of the most iconic in the franchise. Personally I love the design.
If it's doing a poor imitation of a sister genre (or poorly incorporating it's elements), it should be.