My fantasy-loving soul cries out and bleeds.
BLEEDS, I tell you.
Got my hands on Final Fantasy 15, and no joke it took like 15 hours to get the story rolling and finally get to the FANTASY.
I freaking knew it.
The Demo misleads you by being set in Duscae – a pretty, forested area
which is actually the second major section you get access to in the
full game.
The megafauna here is super cool – the little tyke and I had fun messing with
the catoblepas, and there’s DEADEYE
and those big ole giraffe things and the chocobos (which are absolutely adorable thank you GOD cuz FF13′s chocobos looked like wildlife from Chernobyl).
And chocobos can SWIM now! O_O It’s the cutest thing ever. :3
So far Duscae’s been my favorite place to visit – I only just passed Lestallum, so that’s 5 Chapters deep, and a forest is my favorite place. NOT GOOD, SquareEnix!
But yeah, the full game starts you off in bumf*k crusty dusty Hammerhead (aka Arizona /Nevada wasteland inspired desert gas station depot),
which they dump you in right at the beginning of the game with your car The Regalia still broken down from the demo, and PRINCE Noctis flat broke. I’m
like…wtf? You’re a PRINCE. WHY don’t you have any money? WHY has your boss-ride broken down in the first place, even?! How long has it been since y’all took a bath? Why haven’t y’all passed out from heat stroke wearing all that black leather in the desert heat? Jfc, just get me out of heeeere! >o<
So you’re stuck in the desert with this THIRSTY-A&& flat-a** greasemonkey heifer flashing her tits at you and molesting your car, taking on stupid menial labor tasks as the story goes absolutely nowhere, and neither do you.
I don’t like the setting and I don’t like the super slow story.
I mean, FF7 was straight up cyberpunk with a side-dish of wilderness fantasy, and
starts you off
in the military attacking corrupt corporations doing eugenics or whatever in a scifi metropolis – DOPE. (My #3 favorite FF game, btw.)
FF8 starts at a really cool fantasy-
future military academy, and pitches you directly into a rescue
mission in the medieval city being attacked. (SPOILER ALERT: We don’t even get close to Insomnia in FF15! >_<)
FF9 was 100% traditional medieval/steampunk fantasy, and you’re literally kidnapping a princess from the city of Alexandria. It had THE most colorful cast of characters I feel, and you really feel like you’re in a fanciful world – Kingdom Hearts reminds me a lot of FF9, just with…you know…more Disney references. 😛
FF10 bounces between future-punk and Pacific Island fantasy, and you’re whisked all over the freaking world of Spira right from the start, trying to figure out what the heck Sin is and what it’s got to do with you and where and when you even are. (My #1 favorite FF game!)
FF12 was a mash of Middle Eastern medieval future/steampunk, and even though you start out with the world’s most annoyingly useless/pointless protagonist ever (*cough* Vaan *cough*) and literally spending your time killing rats in the sewers to learn the battle system, at least the world of Ivalice was #Gorgeous and the 8 zillion miniquests actually led up to the main quest. (My #2 favorite FF game.)
FF13 was hyper scifi, and super pretty. Snow and Fang and Sahz were cool characters. and it could have been really good – but the gameplay was WAY TOO LINEAR and I felt like I had ZERO control over anything going on and the way they split the party in two and switched party/plot perspectives every frikkin second got on my daggone nerves and I can’t stand that bitter wench Lightning I wish she and Serah’s places had been reversed I love Serah. I hated FF13, moving on. I don’t care how pretty Cocoon’s cities are, leave me alone.
FF15
is Arizona. Like…retro/retro-punk Arizona, at that. TF. By the time
you finally get out of Hammerhead and Duscae, a good 15+ hours of gameplay
has gone by, and you hit Lestallum, your first city, which I kid you not is
dieselpunk Cuba. Just random as all getout, but pretty cool. (I was so thoroughly sick of Galdin Quay by this point that entering Lestallum was the highlight of my FF15 gameplay thus far.)
I don’t even understand why we’re here, tbh. I don’t even understand the plot. Noctis is trying to meet up with Lunafreya so they can get married and unite their kingdoms (which we’ve barely seen at all), yet he’s busy driving around going on random quests for locals too lazy to do anything for themselves, doing treasure hunts for magic swords that eat your HP why do you even bother, and taking photo-ops and camping in the woods meanwhile the empire’s destroying cities and killing people and sending robot assassin squads after him. 
It’s like one expanded excuse for scenery porn, but it’s not fanciful scenery porn! 😦 The tombs of the ancient kings are cool, I guess. But nowhere near as creative or original as FF12′s, which had a similar vibe/premise.
FF15 is just feeling a bit TOO realistic for me. Sometimes it’s cute, like driving our hotrod car The Regalia, and eating Cup Noodles soup at foodtrucks we can buy food at, but other times I’m like these people spent TEN YEARS just to give us the real world?
I’m bored. Even the people are boring – this is the first time I have ever played an FF game where there were NO NON-HUMANS to be seen. Not even in the main party!
There’s Carbuncle in the very beginning, walking you through the combat system, but it’s basically a fennec fox that doesn’t really speak, so no.
FF7 had Red and Cait Sidhe. FF8 had lots of colorful fantasy monsters to
kill, and there was Edea, which has to count for something, cuz she was
cool. FF9 was choc full of fantasy, moving on (VIVI! ^0^). FF10 had
Kimahri and an effton of fiends to kill. FF12 had the Viera, not to mention all
the non-human NPCs absolutely everywhere. FF13 was a bit
different, cuz you had the l’Cie, so your characters were like gradually
turning into zombies or whatever and it was super gross and creepy.
I have not seen one single fanciful sentient creature in Final Fantasy 15 YET. 15 hours. 5 chapters. 3 main sections. Not ONE. Where are the Moogles? And no, I don’t mean this ugly thing, the hell is that even.
The closest I’ve come is Titan, and I don’t know WHAT the eff is up with that dude, that boss fight was a heart attack in the making, I was so scared! XD
The combat system is fine. It’s like a mix between FF12, FF13, and Kingdom Hearts, what with the open world and fighting fiends freely, without the random encounters battle arena of previous FF games. I like it. And I like the main party, even if the fanservice is a bit heavy-handed.
Honestly? I wish we had the option of playing from Lunafreya’s side or Noctis’ side instead. All we see of her so far is in flashbacks and hearing her voice on the radios. 😦
I’d LOVE to play as Lunafreya and be some fancy white mage Oracle summoner witch lady princess, with her magic dogs, and her spirit familiar lady Gentiana, fighting Niflheim and wandering the land healing people, sorta like Yuna in FFX.
C’est la vie. U_U
So. Yeah.
As of right now I’m grading FF15 at 3/5, because even though my first impression’s not that great so far, I already like it way more than FF13 (which I give a steaming 1/5 to). The story looks like it’s picking up from where I left off in Chapter 5, even though once a-frikkin-gain my car’s gone and I’m stranded in the frikkin wilderness doing silly scavenger quests. I’m tired of this, honestly.
Is it just me?
The Faery's Gifts 