I was extremely dubious with the news of Final Fantasy 15. They'd talked at length about tying it to 13 and how it was supposed to be another title altogether but they sacked off the development team and went back to the drawing board to see what else they could salvage from the wreckage.
I felt like this was probably Square Enix's last chance to sell a game to me before I wrote them off as a bunch of crooks living off of the former glories of someone else's hard work.
Arguably you could make a case for saying this game was still not a patch on older instalments but it marked a clear turning point in their approach to Final Fantasy games that I pray comes through to Final Fantasy 16 and beyond, even further.
First off, whilst Noctis is still a slightly brooding and slightly whining teenager.
They've finally decided that they don't have to make the main antagonists moody reluctant leaders anymore. Yes we all liked Squall in FF8 but they've spent half of the games since then trying to replicate him.
The other half they've gone for a whiney brat like Tidus or Vaan with a thick layer of slimy American surfer dude thrown in.
Noctis comes across as regal when he wants to, as one of the guys when he's relaxed, and as a proper human being for most of the game. He gets scared, he gets brave, he wants to find his way.
There were some typical complaints about this being a bro-down with the 4 main characters being men on a road-trip across the world. But it was a very good premise. They're almost on a pre-wedding Stag Do adventure, without all the beer chugging and so forth.
It didn't feel like they purposefully limited women into background roles, but I do wonder if they'd realised that they in modern times they kind of suck at writing female characters.
On record, I loved Final Fantasy X-2 and thought it was a really clever and fun game.
Since then many people who are resentful of there ever being a Final Fantasy X-2 - have moaned it was 'trash' because they had a dancer 'type' and some other 'girly' features to the game.
As a result since then it feels like Final Fantasy has struggled massively to write female characters.
Opting for a Playboy Bunny in FF12 and just giving Cloud and Squall a sex change for the rather basic Final Fantasy 13.
In this story they instead opted for writing maybe four or five girls into the story, one being the fiancée of Noctis who didn't really get the game time that the games 'summary' insinuates she receives (the Wikipedia page for example calls hero one of the two main characters, laughable!)
Iris, the sister of one of the 4 main guys who make up your party, plays more of a part than other women in the game, and her character seems more 'realistic' in that she is a typical little sister who is friends with the team and can take care of business when needed.
There's a great anti-hero called Aranea who kicked their back sides a few times throughout the game.
It felt quite balanced despite the main party being men only. Cindy was the main bone of contention for me because it was hard to decide whether the expert mechanic was cool and clever or a bit dodgy with her boobs pushed out front and centre in every scene.
I guess what I'm trying to say this time is it felt like they were just making a game again. They weren't trying to write a story and then say 'how can we be politically correct' - they just didn't abuse or marginalize people unfairly and made a game that could slip through without causing a major argument.
As far as stories go the plot of FF15 isn't exactly iron clad.
It has a strict A-B feel to it with many obstacles to overcome and a few twists.
It isn't particularly memorable and I don't yearn to replay it, but that could be a matter of the amount of time and energy I have these days when it comes to gaming. I'd rather play something new than replay the same old story.
That said I can't tell whether I really saw everything that FF15 had to offer. Like there were plenty of side missions and jobs to do - including cooking, fishing, item finding and photography - but beyond that there were collection missions, hunting missions, and then my favourite part - going through fortresses and taking them down as part of a covert mission.
I felt like these were all quite peripheral though. As I mentioned above, the characters are meant to be heading off to find Noctis' fiancée. They are also fleeing an attack on Noctis' kingdom.
There's no logical reason why the King of Lucis would want to stop every so often to fish, or why his protectors would insist on furthering their cooking and photography careers.
There's also no reason why the four of them would think it wise to stop off and take down the odd fortress or become master hunts men. I know that RPGs are always a bit mad like that, but the urgency of the game went against what it allowed you to do.
I appreciate that there's little reason for the characters in previous games to stop off and play cards while the world ends around them either but still!
People talk about this map being the biggest, but I didn't really feel as though I could wander through it at great length. Most of the game was locked away depending on at what stage you were and there was a weird time traveling system towards the end that I didn't make much use of because it didn't fit with the story.
I remember getting a booklet with my copy as it was a review - and it mentioned that towards the end of the game it was designed to limit your choices and force you down a railed linear path.
But Final Fantasy usually 'takes off' at that small line where you have the ability to explore the entire world and go on a huge array of wild goose chases, or go and defeat the final boss.
In all of the previous instalments I spent more time in this space than I did playing the entire main quest, and I'm sure you're no different. Games like Skyrim live in that area too.
It felt like I didn't really have a chance to do that in 15 though. I remember coming across a demon wall and trying to kill it, but since Noctis was on his own at this point the battle was virtually impossible.
When I regained my party we were locked in an area we couldn't leave. So presumably I was meant to try to level up strong enough to beat it alone, but that seemed like hassle when I can and did kill everything else the game threw at me along the route to the final boss.
It wouldn't be a Final Fantasy write-up if I didn't mention vehicles.
Having The Regalia - a sports car - rather than a flying machine was pretty clever to be honest. I liked that a lot.
The game had hundreds of airships in it too, and I wish you got to control one, but being able to blitz around the world in my car with the radio on was perfectly fitting for the story, and the game was very clever in how it created small talk for the characters that made them feel real.
They'd cover all of the sorts of topics that lads would discuss on a journey together, and lots of quirky bits too like singing the Chocobo song to themselves to break the silence on long journeys.
I think Square Enix suffer from the plague of DLC that many other game companies suffer from these days.
They chose to have each character disappear for a portion of the story before returning, and then ask you to buy the story of where they got to for a tenner if you care enough to do so.
You could easily end up paying double for the game, just to find out why they chose to write a character out for a length of time. I'm so tired of companies doing this, it's a disgraceful practice and treats us like absolute mugs. Obviously I can choose whether or not to buy the DLC and I opted not to - but consider this:
Can a game like this ever really be top-notch if they purposefully cut themselves back to eek out a few quid more from buyers? They're already charging plenty for their story - and they made record profits form this game.
I think if 15 had included these parts and beefed up the story a little more than they'd have a pretty perfect story. Imagine if FF7 had charged us to do the parts of the game where Cloud goes missing, or Aries.
Or if the reactor missions became pay to play side quests. The Battle Arena would've been a paid arena to collect credits - these are all things they'd probably do in the FF7 remake to kill it, whereas they were value adds to make a perfect game back in the 90s.
I feel like 15 is as good as we will get in a world where DLC, Tie in apps, and sequels are part and parcel of every single IP that comes out - but who knows?
Maybe we'll wise up in a few years and refuse to buy games unless they're 100% finished at day of release.
I rank 15 highly on my list. I think writing this has convinced me that my order would go 6 8 7 9 10 15 - I mentioned in my review of 10 that if they had airships and a few more tweaks it would've ranked higher. Well I guess if 15 had been complete on release, like the 5 games listed before it, then I'd rank it higher.
What are your thoughts? Nobody replied to my one asking for folk to talk, so if you fancy sharing some thoughts they'd be welcome, it's getting a bit rubbish writing these with no comments!