One of the strangest experiences I’ve had with a game where it was rare that I would say I was having a bad time or finding it a slog to get through, yet I’d also rarely say I was having a great time.

The only time I died in this game (playing on normal difficulty.) was during a train defence mission, and yet I frequently felt like I must have been ignoring some fundamental aspects of combat and levelling.

The battle system means that you would have to be deliberately negligent to have your whole team KO. If you’re well stocked on healing items it should never be a problem because eventually, you’ll chip away and win. It is an incredibly forgiving system that breeds bad habits in me because there’s no pushback against playing badly. The game hasn’t given me an incentive to be more optimal and improve my build, and it doesn't do a good job explaining some of your options. Also the AP needed for upgrades is bafflingly expensive, and while the game is very generous with XP. Very strange balancing.

Much has been said about how incoherent the story is. Interesting that a game originally called “Final Fantasy Versus XIII” seem to have all the opposite strengths and weaknesses to Final Fantasy XIII.

XIII starts linear and opens up, XV starts open and then (figuratively and literally) puts you on rails for the 2nd half.

In XIII there’s so much mythos and lore that’s told to you, yet you barely explore the world and see what a society shaped by these deities looks like.
In XV you explore a world that not dissimilar to our own that feels at odds with the fantasy elements that the game insists did shape it.

I almost found myself wishing this did still have the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos attached because at least some shared proper nouns would have helped connect certain things.

It’s all frustrating because the open world does have some smart systems, even though the sidequests and hunts are all fine but dull, (the finding 5 frog type missions are very bad.)

The loop of doing these simple tasks, fighting monsters, banking XP, picking up ingredients that you can make meals that gives you additional boosts for doing more hunts all syncs up pretty well. In some ways it’s a more considered open world than seen in FF7 Rebirth. The world feels like a more natural believable space.

There’s more dynamic dialogue between the boys, so you can at least enjoy that while doing some of these activities, something that was sorely lacking in FF7 Rebirth and could have elevated that open world a long way.

Although ultimately it leads to tedium because the novelty of driving around soon wears thin, and you're left with a clunky fast travel system to circumvent it.

The thing most people love about this game is the boys camping road trip and bonding, and while I did like it, I can’t say that I felt as much for these boys as most other FF casts. I think because most of the game’s content is in its open world, the interactions that happen feel less meaningful.

The critical path is less than half the length typical of other Final Fantasy game. In some ways I can’t complain it’s briefness means I got through it without much issue, but Final Fantasy is where I want these huge sprawling stories, and in FFXV… well it might have been there in the design document but it wasn’t apparent to me playing it. When this stuff this does come into the story more I didn’t understand or know what anyone was talking about. Which just meant that all it’s biggest moments don’t really hit. And there are some good choices made at the end that feel wasted.

Ardyn was a great villain though, I’ll give him that.

This was my first Insomniac Spider-Man, and it was a little overwhelming at first as it definitely assumes familiarity with the first game despite being a standalone release.

Personally fine with it being a shorter game, as I think I'd get bored if it lasted much longer and it's open world didn't seem to offer much variety to make me want to dig into it's content. Obviously, the main appeal is its traversal which is fun but because it’s so simple It’s a bit shallow.

You can see the inspiration from the Arkham games in the combat, but I find it strange how much the game pushes you towards stealth, because I don’t think it’s as much fun as the venom combat and the game seems to punish you not using stealth even if it’s not essential.

The little puzzle sections I generally wasn’t in love with, they often felt a bit unintuitive over what your goal is.

Ultimately, I’m not really the Sony AAA cinematic/open world guy. So, I knew going in a lot of these things would be issues to me and the story wouldn’t be very engaging as I’m not a Spider-Man guy. But I still got a fair amount of enjoyment out of my time with this, as a sort of free if you have PS Plus game, so I don’t regret playing it.

I enjoyed this a lot, but if I was writing some kind of reviewer’s tagline it’d be something like “The Sea is beautiful but not very deep.”

The game wears it’s influences on its sleeve, openly a tribute to classic SNES JRPG’s, so when it’s evoking the vibes of those games it’s all very nice and pleasant, but what that means is that by design the story, world, and characters, feel like they’re written that way to most emulate the feel of other games that you might have played in the past and liked.

If the starting point is “I want to make something that’s like this other thing.” Well then, it’s just not going to be as interesting as the more original work.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical and presuming too much about the writers’ goals, but it certainly feels that way, particularly when they’re putting in meta-jokes about JRPG tropes… you don’t need to undermine the reality of your own world with trite observations.

What all that means is moment, I’m enjoying the story, I’m liking the characters, but I also have this vague feeling that it’s mainly because it’s very deliberately like other things that I’ve also liked.

The Combat then – again enjoyable, it’s a good take on turn-based combat, it’s probably getting the “lock” mechanic from something else too although I haven’t played whatever game that is. I do sometimes find it irritating that enemies would suddenly go.

“Here prick, break 12 locks of every damage type in one turn!”

And I’m like

“Doesn’t seem fair?????.”

It is fine though, you can’t 100% break the lock every time by, but it can feel odd and like you might be missing something sometimes.

I do think if the game were any longer the lack of complexity would have started to be a big problem. There isn’t much you can do with character progression or builds in this game. When you level up you simply choose between what stats you want built up.

That’s fine, the combat is more puzzle and decision based, but I got through this entire game without dying (I did die once on a simple random encounter because I’d completely forgotten to heal after the battle before, and I’m absolutely cursing myself for this) There are relics you can turn on to make the game harder (and easier) and that’s all fine, and I’m not saying introducing lots more mechanics and character build variety would necessarily work in this game, it would probably just create other problems. But I think it’s a system that feels like it never quite gets out of third gear.

I feel like I’ve spent this whole time criticizing a game I really enjoyed and had very few complaints about, but that’s the thing. It doesn’t do much wrong, but doesn’t do much that’s amazing either… although that one bit where you traverse to a new area for the final third of the game, wow!

I think this game has a very strange premise for an open-world RPG, which if I oversimplify is – You have a few weeks to live and are trying to find a cure.

Now obviously it doesn’t really matter, you have as much time as you need to explore, but in my head, I’m thinking “Well if I’m V, and I’m in this situation, why would I fuck around doing odd jobs when I’m on borrowed time?”
I know that’s only really a problem in my head, and it’s besides the point because I tend to mainline these things, only doing a fairly small amount of side-content anyway, but that story really doesn’t help me want to explore.

The game and story are solid, sitting in this interesting middle ground between GTA and Deus EX. Though I would say the game seems to have a lot of systems and choices you could tinker with to make your character stronger or do different things… but they aren’t especially important if you’re playing on Normal as I was. Rare was it that I had any difficulty with any extended combat sections, and considering I wasn’t doing much side-content I would have thought I’d been a little weak. One of those situations where I’m torn between thinking I’m glad I wasn’t getting frustrated, but I feel like on normal I should be getting challenged and having to actually engage with the games many RPG systems a little more thoughtfully.

One other minor quibble – weird issue where quest steps involve waiting for characters to call you – but they do not for ages until I messed around trying various things. This was a mostly glitch-free experience for me playing it today, but that was a little strange.

Overall, though, the story and characters, and the basic gameplay loops propelled me along, even though I wouldn’t say it’s doing much that’s groundbreaking.