This game has become quite divisive in the Final Fantasy community, with many regarding it as something that doesn't belong in the same series as its predecessors. The gameplay has taken a completely new direction, being a single character-driven, action-focused Devil May Cry-style game.
While that may be offputting to some, I myself have never been all that invested in the Final Fantasy franchise - never having completed a single entry. I've played through most of FFX, most of FFXIII and tried to play FFVII multiple times but was never able to see it through to its conclusion.
I think when seen through this lens, it becomes easy to see why this game has tended to be seen for what it isn't, rather than what it actually is. So I will try to provide that perspective and judge the game on its own merits, rather than what I was hoping it to be.
The demo that was released a few weeks prior to release was packed full of Game of Thrones-isms and a lot of moving pieces, but it actually managed to make me interested and even invested into this world of Valisthea and all its history. And as the game itself progressed, I was fully on board. While this game has received lots of complaints, I feel like the story isn't one of them.
The sheer scale of protagonist Clive's adventures keeps expanding, in an Asura's Wrath-like fashion, and you keep finding yourself fighting battles in ever increasing proportions of ridiculousness.
The combat itself falls into the category of simple to play, hard to master. I was of the opinion that it wasn't particularly that deep, and that is especially true of the Eikon battles, where you essentially turn into a kaiju to fight this game's version of the iconic Final Fantasy summons. But I've seen plenty of videos of people pulling off ridiculous never-ending combos that I myself could never hope to pull off, so I have to concede that there is a lot to play with if you put enough time and effort into it. While that was cool, the combat was never why I was playing this game to begin with, so I never mastered it in that manner.
With all that said, the main story and the combat are great and pretty good respectively, that just leaves talking about the ancillary systems and content of the game.
There is gear and crafting, though both of those systems are pretty shallow. You won't be picking up tons of different gear and comparing stats, you will mostly be crafting a new sword and some new armor after every major story beat to keep your strength on pace with the rest of the world.
There are sidequests, and I would be remiss to not mention how much I appreciated them. Sure, the actual gameplay element of the sidequests is usually completing some menial task (fetch this wooden plank, go find some flower in another zone, go clear this camp of enemies, etc), but the reward for doing them is not what you receive upon completing it, but the character dialog providing world building and context to so many small things in the world of Valisthea. I actually set a timer when doing one of the sidequests in the endgame. The ratio of gameplay to cutscene was something like 5 minutes of gameplay, 20 minutes of cutscenes. That was worthwhile to me at least, though I can certainly see why someone would hold a differing perspective.
The hunts on the other hand are what I believe to be the weakest side content in the game. There's a board in your hub area that displays monsters and gives a vague description of their location, and you go find them and kill them for some gil and renown. The rewards are barely worth it and the fights themselves are not that impressive, but I still did them all to satisfy my completionist mindset.
All in all, I spent nearly 70 hours completing the game where I did every single side quest, crafted the beast gear, did all the hunts, and finished the story. While the parts of the game that are technically gameplay fell a little short of being amazing for me, the story more than made up for it and I was definitely invested all the way through.
While that may be offputting to some, I myself have never been all that invested in the Final Fantasy franchise - never having completed a single entry. I've played through most of FFX, most of FFXIII and tried to play FFVII multiple times but was never able to see it through to its conclusion.
I think when seen through this lens, it becomes easy to see why this game has tended to be seen for what it isn't, rather than what it actually is. So I will try to provide that perspective and judge the game on its own merits, rather than what I was hoping it to be.
The demo that was released a few weeks prior to release was packed full of Game of Thrones-isms and a lot of moving pieces, but it actually managed to make me interested and even invested into this world of Valisthea and all its history. And as the game itself progressed, I was fully on board. While this game has received lots of complaints, I feel like the story isn't one of them.
The sheer scale of protagonist Clive's adventures keeps expanding, in an Asura's Wrath-like fashion, and you keep finding yourself fighting battles in ever increasing proportions of ridiculousness.
The combat itself falls into the category of simple to play, hard to master. I was of the opinion that it wasn't particularly that deep, and that is especially true of the Eikon battles, where you essentially turn into a kaiju to fight this game's version of the iconic Final Fantasy summons. But I've seen plenty of videos of people pulling off ridiculous never-ending combos that I myself could never hope to pull off, so I have to concede that there is a lot to play with if you put enough time and effort into it. While that was cool, the combat was never why I was playing this game to begin with, so I never mastered it in that manner.
With all that said, the main story and the combat are great and pretty good respectively, that just leaves talking about the ancillary systems and content of the game.
There is gear and crafting, though both of those systems are pretty shallow. You won't be picking up tons of different gear and comparing stats, you will mostly be crafting a new sword and some new armor after every major story beat to keep your strength on pace with the rest of the world.
There are sidequests, and I would be remiss to not mention how much I appreciated them. Sure, the actual gameplay element of the sidequests is usually completing some menial task (fetch this wooden plank, go find some flower in another zone, go clear this camp of enemies, etc), but the reward for doing them is not what you receive upon completing it, but the character dialog providing world building and context to so many small things in the world of Valisthea. I actually set a timer when doing one of the sidequests in the endgame. The ratio of gameplay to cutscene was something like 5 minutes of gameplay, 20 minutes of cutscenes. That was worthwhile to me at least, though I can certainly see why someone would hold a differing perspective.
The hunts on the other hand are what I believe to be the weakest side content in the game. There's a board in your hub area that displays monsters and gives a vague description of their location, and you go find them and kill them for some gil and renown. The rewards are barely worth it and the fights themselves are not that impressive, but I still did them all to satisfy my completionist mindset.
All in all, I spent nearly 70 hours completing the game where I did every single side quest, crafted the beast gear, did all the hunts, and finished the story. While the parts of the game that are technically gameplay fell a little short of being amazing for me, the story more than made up for it and I was definitely invested all the way through.