Final Fantasy VII. I love the franchise, but never got far into VII. Played through it so I could have an opinion on it, so I could see what I was missing. I ended up very disappointed.
I like XVI A LOT. Everything leading up to the game was awful and uninspiring. The demo was the only reason I ended up buying it. I can see why though. The whole game is pretty much just spoilers after spoilers. And that’s all of the interesting stuff.
Even showing some of the abilities (the fun part of combat) is spoilery.
I was so excited for XV and it just killed my excitement for the franchise. I almost skipped over XVI because it just looked so uninspired. XVI has really revitalized that excitement for the franchise though. I’m loving this game.
I plan on getting a buddy and going through Strangers of Paradise next. I had played through the demo with a friend and it was a blast.
The game has a lot going for it. It just has a hard time sticking the landing in a lot of ways. Once you get to Altissa the entire story goes at breakneck speed (because apparently they expect you to put dramatic sequences on hold to mill around in the open world that you already left). There’s a lot of really cool story bits that just aren’t given the respect they deserve.
Lunafreya and Prompto are two that really stick out to me that should be huge moments that the game just skims past. (I didn’t play the DLC, so maybe Prompto’s DLC helps this. I also didn’t watch Brotherhood.)
Having said that, I liked the combat mostly. I like the magic system mostly. I like the summons mostly. I like the traversing mostly. Also, I meant to mention that I’m pretty sure you can drive the car despite what the other poster said. Playing the entire FF music catalog in the car was cool. I like the characters mostly.
It’s a mostly good game that could have been amazing with some better choices.
FFXV isn’t the worst game I’ve ever played. It’s not even my least favorite Final Fantasy. But it’s probably the biggest lost opportunity of any game I’ve ever played by a wide margin. The combat is almost a lot of fun. The magic is really neat. The summons would be awesome if they were more controllable (some summons you will rarely see because of location criteria). The open world is cool, but mostly empty and completely removed from the EXTREMELY linear story.
But the worst offender is all of the story beats that are devoid of context or follow up. Apparently all of the backstory is spread out between the movie, a cartoon, and the DLC. But playing through blind it’s just random stuff happening. The game had potential to be the most epic story if they could have stuck the execution of it.
You think they’d call it the Switch 2? No, it’ll be way more vague about being a successor vs an upgraded console. New Switch, SwitchU, 3Dwitch, Switch Swatch, Sandwitch, SwitchPlus, Switch Yellow, Switch One. I’d bet on any of those.
It was a discussion. And XBox Live was a significantly better experience than PSN. A lot of people were happy to have the premium online experience on PS4 vs the barebones PS3 experience.
To be clear, I had PS Plus on the PS3 when it was just unlocked (free-ish) games and extra discounts. And most of my favorite playstation multiplayer was on the PS3. So I was mostly indifferent to the change.
Just a note, it’s not $100 difference. It’s $200 difference ($300 vs $500). Having said that, the only reason I got the SS was because I couldn’t get the SX. I tried and failed. I would have preferred a $400 digital version of the SX even. Settled for the SS. Had to get an SSD expansion card, feature parity is apparently not a thing, had to rebuy a couple games digitally.
I thought feature parity was always the expectation for the Series series. This is both interesting and once again making me regret getting the SS. I wish they had just made a digital SX like Playstation did the PS5.