Final Fantasy XVI

[Val the Moofia Boss]

the director seems aware of how the teenage pretty boy protags are offputting to many in the west

The director is Hiroshi Takai, not Yoshida. Yoshida is the producer and hogs the spotlight.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I fucking wish 15 played like DD. If anything, it oddly feels like Ultima 7, in a way that you're always crusing through the countryside with banal comments from your party every so often (down to the "i'm hungry" bits) and combat is just a mess where you watch animations flailing around and everything goes back to normal.

15 doesn’t even kind of try to rip off Dragon’s Dogma’s combat. It should have, since what Dragon’s Dogma does is so much better, but it doesn’t even kind of feel like it or DMC.
...
The last decade has been full of: This game should’ve ripped off Dragon’s Dogma.

Final Fantasy XV seems as though the developers adopted the framework of Dragon's Dogma but failed at implementation in every respect. Thus, the player has a four-person party but is stuck with the same four people for the entire game, and the three that aren't controlled by the player have little versatility. Those three have a few special skills they can use in combat, but these special skills reliant on a single party-wide bar filling up and are boring in comparison with DD's myriad skills. There are many enormous monsters that can be confronted as boss fights or optional hunts, but these are largely wasted since the game lacks the climbing and other interactivity found in Dragon's Dogma (which also means combat against smaller enemies is less interesting). The player-character (Noctis) can utilize all types of weapons but regardless the player just holds down the attack button while occasionally pressing the dodge button or casting a spell. There are three elements that can be used to make spells, and items can be added for additional effects, but they all work more or less the same in combat except that certain enemies are weak to some elements and resistant to others. There is superficially a large Open World to explore, but in practice the player simply drives the party's automobile (!) to the nearest spot on a road and then runs a short distance to the destination. There are dungeons, but the ones encountered in the normal course of a game (i.e. not counting post-game content) are more linear and less well-designed than those found in base Dragon's Dogma, and I'm sure that FF XV's post-game dungeons don't hold a candle to the Bitterblack Isle megadungeon added in the Dark Arisen expansion.

 

[KIss My Ass]

Final Fagacy is shit

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I fucking wish 15 played like DD. If anything, it oddly feels like Ultima 7, in a way that you're always crusing through the countryside with banal comments from your party every so often (down to the "i'm hungry" bits) and combat is just a mess where you watch animations flailing around and everything goes back to normal.

15 doesn’t even kind of try to rip off Dragon’s Dogma’s combat. It should have, since what Dragon’s Dogma does is so much better, but it doesn’t even kind of feel like it or DMC.
...
The last decade has been full of: This game should’ve ripped off Dragon’s Dogma.

Final Fantasy XV seems as though the developers adopted the framework of Dragon's Dogma but failed at implementation in every respect. Thus, the player has a four-person party but is stuck with the same four people for the entire game, and the three that aren't controlled by the player have little versatility. Those three have a few special skills they can use in combat, but these special skills reliant on a single party-wide bar filling up and are boring in comparison with DD's myriad skills. There are many enormous monsters that can be confronted as boss fights or optional hunts, but these are largely wasted since the game lacks the climbing and other interactivity found in Dragon's Dogma (which also means combat against smaller enemies is less interesting). The player-character (Noctis) can utilize all types of weapons but regardless the player just holds down the attack button while occasionally pressing the dodge button or casting a spell. There are three elements that can be used to make spells, and items can be added for additional effects, but they all work more or less the same in combat except that certain enemies are weak to some elements and resistant to others. There is superficially a large Open World to explore, but in practice the player simply drives the party's automobile (!) to the nearest spot on a road and then runs a short distance to the destination. There are dungeons, but the ones encountered in the normal course of a game (i.e. not counting post-game content) are more linear and less well-designed than those found in base Dragon's Dogma, and I'm sure that FF XV's post-game dungeons don't hold a candle to the Bitterblack Isle megadungeon added in the Dark Arisen expansion.

And on top of that. The game has a classless system, but you still have archetypes. The game wants you to make a Red Mage (a fighter/mage, for D&D people) out of Noctis and they don't hide it. Your other party members are a tank, a rogue fighter and a ranged dude. They want you to be the spellcaster, and magic is really weird in the game on top of that.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I fucking wish 15 played like DD. If anything, it oddly feels like Ultima 7, in a way that you're always crusing through the countryside with banal comments from your party every so often (down to the "i'm hungry" bits) and combat is just a mess where you watch animations flailing around and everything goes back to normal.

15 doesn’t even kind of try to rip off Dragon’s Dogma’s combat. It should have, since what Dragon’s Dogma does is so much better, but it doesn’t even kind of feel like it or DMC.
...
The last decade has been full of: This game should’ve ripped off Dragon’s Dogma.

Final Fantasy XV seems as though the developers adopted the framework of Dragon's Dogma but failed at implementation in every respect. Thus, the player has a four-person party but is stuck with the same four people for the entire game, and the three that aren't controlled by the player have little versatility. Those three have a few special skills they can use in combat, but these special skills reliant on a single party-wide bar filling up and are boring in comparison with DD's myriad skills. There are many enormous monsters that can be confronted as boss fights or optional hunts, but these are largely wasted since the game lacks the climbing and other interactivity found in Dragon's Dogma (which also means combat against smaller enemies is less interesting). The player-character (Noctis) can utilize all types of weapons but regardless the player just holds down the attack button while occasionally pressing the dodge button or casting a spell. There are three elements that can be used to make spells, and items can be added for additional effects, but they all work more or less the same in combat except that certain enemies are weak to some elements and resistant to others. There is superficially a large Open World to explore, but in practice the player simply drives the party's automobile (!) to the nearest spot on a road and then runs a short distance to the destination. There are dungeons, but the ones encountered in the normal course of a game (i.e. not counting post-game content) are more linear and less well-designed than those found in base Dragon's Dogma, and I'm sure that FF XV's post-game dungeons don't hold a candle to the Bitterblack Isle megadungeon added in the Dark Arisen expansion.

I don’t see it. Final Fantasy 15 doesn’t even really feel like an action game, it’s in real time, you see the game and you’d expect it to maybe play something like Dragon’s Dogma or some other action game, but it doesn’t really feel like one from what I remember. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 was like that too; it looked like an action game in trailers, but when you’re actually playing it, it doesn’t really feel like one.

I haven’t played a Kingdom Hearts game, but my understanding of Final Fantasy 15 is it’s jumping off that series. I really doubt Dragon’s Dogma had any kind of influence on 15 at all, the game was in development for so long we saw the combat back when in was called Final Fantasy Versus 13 the year before Dragon’s Dogma even came out.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake however I wouldn’t be surprised if that was influenced by Dragon's Dogma. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was influenced by Dragon’s Dogma either. 7 Remake feels like Square Enix throwing their hat in the action ring for Final Fantasy in a way the previous action looking real-time one’s really didn’t. The remake of 7 still makes some odd choices that aren’t like Dragon’s Dogma, which hampers things. Like the lack of aiming seems like an odd omission given Barret; (Barret essentially being a class build around ranged attacks) I could get it if you could miss ranged attacks based on stats, but you don’t. Then again, I really wouldn’t be surprised if a some point in FF7R’s development combat didn’t take place in a third person view, and that’s why there’s lock-on, you auto attack air enemies, and there’s no jump. Functionally the Final Fantasy 7 remake combat is set up more like it was meant to be isometric and fixed camera angles, want it’s doing would be right at home in some Diablo game made specifically for consoles, or some new Marvel Ultimate Alliance game or whatever. Thinking about it now, and some of the game’s texture problems on release, I almost wonder if it being third person was a choice they made mid development or something.

It does look nice with fixed camera angles...

 

[scytheavatar]

the director seems aware of how the teenage pretty boy protags are offputting to many in the west

The director is Hiroshi Takai, not Yoshida. Yoshida is the producer and hogs the spotlight.

Producers in Japan are known to have a lot more power than the Western counterparts, often they are more or less the defacto directors. You can be sure that a control freak like Yoshida has his hand at deciding every major decision of the game.

 

[scytheavatar]

Thoughts?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

In 15, you get health and MP back after combat, but your total available HP can decrease. I'm ambivalent. In FF inventory management just reduces to hoarding shit like Elixirs more than anything else.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Thoughts?

Classic Final Fantasy games were about preparing your battle strategy and stocking up in town ahead of time, and managing your party and your resources while enduring the attrition of 2 hour long dungeons. But this isn't a Final Fantasy game, it's a slasher/beat-em up where the only thing that matters is your twitch reflexes and your muscle memory to pull off combos.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I don’t see it. Final Fantasy 15 doesn’t even really feel like an action game, it’s in real time, you see the game and you’d expect it to maybe play something like Dragon’s Dogma or some other action game, but it doesn’t really feel like one from what I remember.

FF XV doesn't feel like an action game because the player can literally hold down the attack button during combat to repeatedly and automatically attack enemies, as I mentioned in my previous post. The developers completely bungled implementation of Dragon's Dogma-style combat, but I'm convinced that this was the model selected by the new team that salvaged a releasable game from the wreckage of development hell.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Look, the combat for Final Fantasy 15 was already shown off back in 2011 before Dragon’s Dogma was even revealed. They didn’t even kind of copy the combat from Dragon’s Dogma. And like you already said, the combat in FF15 doesn’t even kind of operate like Dragon’s Dogma.

This trailer is from January 26, 2011. The Dragon’s Dogma reveal trailer comes out April 12, 2011. You can see the combat of Final Fantasy 15 was already there when the game was Final Fantasy Versus 13 back in 2011.



The combat of FF15 seems like it’s coming from a totally different place than Dragon’s Dogma. Just holding a button to auto attack functionally has more in common with like a Diablo game where you click on an enemy and your character automatically walks over and attacks than it does Dragon’s Dogma. What FF15 (originally FFV13) is doing feels like it’s trying to be a more flashy version of something like the combat in Final Fantasy 12; (and KotOR) they didn’t do this in FF15, but the way combat works in that game they could’ve had missed attacks like a regular RPG would.

 

[Duraframe300]

In 15, you get health and MP back after combat, but your total available HP can decrease. I'm ambivalent. In FF inventory management just reduces to hoarding shit like Elixirs more than anything else.

In most cases you also got enough money fast enough that you were running around with 99 Potions constantly.

I‘m ambivalent as well though. How well this works very much depends on execution. 13 heals your party and I consider some of its postgame content a highlight in FF ATB combat. It‘s failings beforehand have also more to do with not opening up the battle system early/encounter design rather than lack of inventory management.

 

[Anonona]

The combat in that trailer looks very similar to Kingdom Hearts combat, which would make sense as Nomura was still in the lead. You can even see the little action menu in the lower left corner of the screen, similar to KH. It was Tanaka decision to change the combat system to being just holding one button because he was getting old.

https://nichegamer.com/final-fantasy-xv-director-wants-the-game-more-casual-with-1-button-combat/

Thoughts?

Not worried and probably the right decision. The game is pretty much DMC final fantasy edition, and DMC's combat is all about freedom and letting you be creative. Besides there is already cooldown management, adding MP management over it in an action game feels like it would make the combat too clunky, maybe if it was RTWP o TB, and even then I'm not quite sure. Also depending on how that Limit Break mechanic works, it can be actually another resource similar of how in DMC you wanted to go in and out of devil trigger to maximize your power and open more combo routes during long fights or levels.

 

[KirbyGotenksabsorbed]

Yoshi-P coming out as a bigger westaboo cuck than even Tabata.

 

[Duraframe300]

Yoshi-P coming out as a bigger westaboo cuck than even Tabata.

Not really. It's just butthurt about perceived notions, not actual conviction that x is better.

Here's some quotes of his also related to this

“This is not an argument of what is good or bad,

As I said, I believe I know the fun of command system RPGs, and I want to continue developing them,

In addition just look at the game, they went Action Based combat, but instead of actually looking at western game they went the Devil May Cry route, and as someone else pointed out there's still mostly jrpg typical features the game has. They would have most likely stayed with Open World as well as that's still Nr.1. There's a ton of other contradictions as well.

What he's spouting is wishy washy BS you probably shouldn't take too seriously.

 

[scytheavatar]

The combat in that trailer looks very similar to Kingdom Hearts combat, which would make sense as Nomura was still in the lead. You can even see the little action menu in the lower left corner of the screen, similar to KH. It was Tanaka decision to change the combat system to being just holding one button because he was getting old.

https://nichegamer.com/final-fantasy-xv-director-wants-the-game-more-casual-with-1-button-combat/

Thoughts?

Not worried and probably the right decision. The game is pretty much DMC final fantasy edition, and DMC's combat is all about freedom and letting you be creative. Besides there is already cooldown management, adding MP management over it in an action game feels like it would make the combat too clunky, maybe if it was RTWP o TB, and even then I'm not quite sure. Also depending on how that Limit Break mechanic works, it can be actually another resource similar of how in DMC you wanted to go in and out of devil trigger to maximize your power and open more combo routes during long fights or levels.

DMC games are brain dead button mashers unless you play in the hardest difficulties. Stop thinking mashing buttons is any deeper than holding down one button.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

It does look nice with fixed camera angles...

This does look pretty good
They could've easily made the whole game like this (except for combat sections), bet it would've saved them alot of money too

Why did this game take so long to release?
This early prototype seems mostly identical to the final version...

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why did this game take so long to release?

No real work was accomplished during the first 3 years because Crystal Tools had to be fixed and FF13 had to be shipped. Then devs had to be transferred over to help ship FFXIV 1.0. Then Square decided to create another inhouse engine, so the devs had to stop to relearn a new engine and rebuild the game in that. Nomura was also preoccupied with working on multiple other projects, such as Kingdom Hearts 3 and the FF7 remake. Eventually Square realized that they were half way into a decade and still hadn't realized a mainline Final Fantasy title, nor had one in development. They looked through the projects they had in the works and decided to rebrand Versus XIII as a mainline title and rush it out the door as quickly as possible. So Nomura was replaced and told to focus his efforts on KH3 and FF7R, and Tabata was given the impossible task of making a fun enough game on a busted engine in only 2 years. Tabata had planned to continue improving the game in post launch updates, but Square decided that was a waste of money and cancelled the second wave of DLC, and that was the end of FF15.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

... and then they decided to cancel the DLCs to include everything (plus, the ending stages of the game) in a novel.

 

[Duraframe300]

Why did this game take so long to release?

No real work was accomplished during the first 3 years because Crystal Tools had to be fixed and FF13 had to be shipped. Then devs had to be transferred over to help ship FFXIV 1.0. Then Square decided to create another inhouse engine, so the devs had to stop to relearn a new engine and rebuild the game in that. Nomura was also preoccupied with working on multiple other projects, such as Kingdom Hearts 3 and the FF7 remake. Eventually Square realized that they were half way into a decade and still hadn't realized a mainline Final Fantasy title, nor had one in development. They looked through the projects they had in the works and decided to rebrand Versus XIII as a mainline title and rush it out the door as quickly as possible. So Nomura was replaced and told to focus his efforts on KH3 and FF7R, and Tabata was given the impossible task of making a fun enough game on a busted engine in only 2 years. Tabata had planned to continue improving the game in post launch updates, but Square decided that was a waste of money and cancelled the second wave of DLC, and that was the end of FF15.

... and then they decided to cancel the DLCs to include everything (plus, the ending stages of the game) in a novel.

Yeah, but thank fuck they cancelled that second wave of DLC.

Fail to see how retconning everything would have made the game better when it still had so many other holes. It wasn't actually finishing the story as much as changing it into something else. (Though the general plot of the Aranea segment is salvagable, minus the stupid child) If anything it would have made the story worse in my opinion.

Tabata isn't faultless either. Open World, the entire media offensive is on him as well (Development time that could have been spent better elsewhere). Additionally, sooooooo many things happening in FFXV off-screen he's at least partly also responsible for, because it's his MO. It happened in 3rd Birthday, it happened in Final Fantasy Type-0 (Even more hilariously). It's a storytelling trope with him

Not that he doesn't have his positives as well and it was a difficult job of course.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Wow
What an utter shitshow of a development

 

[Rafidur]

it happened in Final Fantasy Type-0

After the game ends, you go to the wiki to check if you missed 50% of the cutscenes somehow, then read a sypnopsis of the plot and basically what the fuck are these people talking about?

 

[vibehunter]

I was one of the people who actually really liked the initial concept of Versus XIII (dark "modern" fantasy metropolis setting). The countryside road trip that it eventually turned into was a huge slap in the face. But I hate Nomura, so maybe Versus XIII would have been shit too.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

Now I have to buy a fucking PS5, because there is no way I am waiting another two years to play this on Steam.

I am actually HYPED for a Final Fantasy game. Incredible.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Me too, I can't wait to press forward to walk down some linear hallways with voice-over as an excuse for plot / character development, watch a couple of days' worth of cinematics, and hold down my triangle button to do awesome combos.