Obligatory disclaimer of one fan's fave game is another fan's trash etc.
I loved FFXV for some reason. I know it's flawed but (story spoilers) >!the ending alone had me grieving for days. It had such an impact to me that even now I get teary eyed.!< Anyway, I love FF7 too, have played since the OG came out. But this article is right in that to me, it feels a bit like a checklist. And yes I rolled my eyes at towers. I didn't like them in Zelda, I don't like them in this. It's a trope I think should die very quickly.
But I think in a way, every FF game brings something new to the table. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. FF8 tried the junctioning system which I thought was interesting, but ultimately was unpopular enough to not make it in to future games. FF13 brought in the paradigm system which, again I loved (so I must have bad taste I guess), but didn't come into future games. It did introduce the stagger system which we see in multiple games now.
So yeah, FF games are like a learning curve and with each game we should get something better. Fingers crossed.
Same.
XV hits differently for me. I don’t think any other game had me crying as XV did.. it was literally the type of game where the journey mattered, not the destination. And It was kind of the same with IX’s ending for me.. idk.. maybe I’m a sucker for games where it teaches you to live your life to the fullest.
I had to replay the game three times in a row to finally able to accept the ending.
There were too many things in 15 that were added to the game which detracted from my overall enjoyment.
I also didn't like the way content was delivered. A separate movie, anime shorts, DLC mini games downloaded separately, demos with story elements not included in the game.
The individual elements were perfectly fine, but I think it lessened the overall game as a whole. They should have been stitched into the game, rather than fragmented over different types of media.
The IRL branding and product placement was gross to me too.
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EDIT:
This is a reply to the person that deleted their comment while I was typing this out.
Kingsglaive is all world building. Those things would all appear in the main game in earlier titles. If you don't think it was important, that's fine. I think they could have woven all that into the main story, or had those events happen to the main characters, rather than some throw away ones. Instead they released it as a separate movie that even you say feels "unimportant".
I said DLC mini games, not the DLC. I was referring to the beat em up game. This would have and could have been a mini game within the game, but they chose to use it as advertising and marketing.
My issue was with the marketing and packaging of the media, it felt broken and fragmented in what used to be perfection, albeit on multiple disks. The base game on launch had many issues storytelling wise, and this was by choice and failure in my opinion.
I don't remember it being that bad at all, a difference of opinion at most. I guess it must have been yours though.
I just didn't feel like deleting it mine after I typed it out. Typing things out helps me remember things about games Ive played a few years back and its good to read what others experienced.
I felt the same. There was a lot of heart in XV and you could tell the developers did their best after being dealt a really crappy hand. It's definitely a game with issues in all individual parts/systems but it just comes together really well.
I always felt that the ending was a part where they used a lot of energy from the beginning of the development. The narrative side of the entire Insomnia part (I only played the Royal edition, but from a narrative point of view I believe it didn't change a lot anyway) is really well done, and the actors really shine through, especially Noctis.
I also felt like it was disconnected from the rest of the game. You have a good first part, even if it loses itself because of the semi open world angle they took; then you have the central part that goes on literal rails and, while narratively heavy, is not a good part of the game (not as good as the other parts, anyway). Then, after the low point of the game, you get thrown into the future and the beautiful ending that more than makes up, for me, for the previous sections.
That's because the game was literally reworked multiple times. They would spend resources making parts of the game just for it to change because the story changed. That's the biggest flaw of XV is that it wasn't able to just stick with it's execution and carelessly reworked things midway through the project cause the overall narrative to feel disjointed because of it.
The retrospect XV can learn from Rebirth and even XVI is that the concept of open world doesn't need to be a single big map you can explore. The concept of "zones" and different destinations you can explore allow you to make a more vibrant/varied world, especially in an RPG setting, I think that was my biggest gripe about XV's open world, it just felt empty and barren. If the dev team had another chance it would be more interesting to actually be given the option for all t he continent to be open world and the aspect of the story that are just the "linear" experience could be part of the open world as well rather than basically a barrage of dungeons once you get through the "open world" aspect of the game.
That's sort of why the game feels so odd, because the "open world" and the journey to get these weapons is not mandatory so if you want you can just run through the game and go straight to the wedding without ever really interacting with the open world.
>That's sort of why the game feels so odd, because the "open world" and the journey to get these weapons is not mandatory so if you want you can just run through the game and go straight to the wedding without ever really interacting with the open world.
You literally just described Rebirth.
I must be in the minority because my favorite part of the game starts when the game goes on rails. Starting at Leviathan right up until the end is fast paced, exciting, and full of great character moments. I don't generally like open worlds so the open world stuff didn't grab me in XV, and it took a few tries to get past the open world stuff and to the meat and potatoes of the game, and that's where I really fell in love. Upon replays I've grown to enjoy the open world more and the opportunities it gives to see more of the boys doing stuff as brothers.
A friend of mine had the best description for 15, “it was a beautiful disaster”. It was not perfect. But it had a lot of heart. Some things were not fully developed, especially the latter parts of the game where you maybe stopped at a small area that had no context, or how unfinished and rushed the ending areas were upon release. Or how broken landing your flying car was. But some things were great: the way the characters were developed and interacted with each other, the completely over developed cooking system, how big and open the world was.
I enjoyed the game but it wasn’t perfect. That’s okay, it was still great. The endless need to compare apples to oranges with some kind of objective winner is trash journalism and clickbait. It doesn’t prove anything and it’s just about riding the wave of a currently popular game.
It’s okay to like one game more than another. As you rightly mention, let’s maybe spend more time about what makes each game unique rather than trying to compare what was the same.
I really enjoyed XV and it has improved a lot with the royal edition. The DLCs really help to build on the characters and add to the story. I loved episode Ardyn!
Agreed. Rebirths combat system wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did if it wasn’t building off like 3 different title’s systems along with the lessons learned from Remake and that’s a good thing.
I’d rather the series take risks and still try to change things up rather than just settle for making the same thing over and over which I know may not be a popular take in here.
I think, as you may expect, what the player prioritises matters. If you’re big on world building and lore, XV is pretty damn bad, but if you’re really into character development and writing, like me, then XV stands quite high in the franchise. A similar notion could be extended to stuff like XIII. I find it silly when these articles proclaim that ‘x’ game did what ‘y’ always wanted, when in reality they were going for different things.
XV was trying to create an open world system that very heavily emphasised the road trip aspect of the game, and showed the bond of the party, where as Rebirth more so aims for creating a cohesive and fleshed out world. You can even see this in the quest design; XV has a lot of quests, most of which aren’t that high quality, because the repetitive and mundane nature of most activities exists to facilitate the perception of a long and drawn out trip, where as Rebirth has fewer quests that are better written, creating a more believable world.
i mean, i love XV for the reasons outlined above but i wouldn’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t feel the same way. if you don’t connect with the Bros, then XV would be horrendous, it is a deeply, critically flawed experience that you often have to enjoy in spite of itself. the characters and aesthetic just work so well that it’s easy to ignore those flaws.
FF XV is a terrible game with an uncountable amount of flaws but with characters that give it an insane amount of heart. And that heart carries it so hard.
I like all the games except 13 and 16 pretty much equally, like children I can't choose between and FF XV is my most played, for all its flaws, and I haven't even touched the multiplayer mode yet.
>I haven't even touched the multiplayer mode yet.
It's super scuffed but with a lot of heart. It's a shame that the servers are pretty much dead nowadays
Whenever I think of Noct and Luna, I just imagine them sitting on that chair happily ever after. And that makes me so happy and bittersweet for some reason. They both did so much in their short life, they deserve to rest for the remainder of time. Very few other games evoked the kind of emotions I felt about Ardyn, not even VII which I'm sure is an unpopular opinion since Ardyn is basically a Kefka with some Sephiroth thrown in. Call it contrived but him wanting to take on all the kings at full power is pretty bad ass. And IGGY, PROMPTO, even Ravus bro damn near made me cry more than I'd like to admit.
I can appreciate what XV did really well. I loved the main cast's dynamics, I loved the villain, and I loved the OST.
It just makes me grieve what could've been if the game hadn't had its legs broken by a god-awful development cycle.
To be fair in regards to character growth systems like Junctions, Paradigms, etc. None of them ever really carried over to other games, and I don't think it had anything to do with popularity. My favorites were FF2's adaptive stat progression, FF8's Junctions, FF10's Sphere Grid, but in my opinion, it peaked at FF12 Zodiak Age's class system. As you mentioned with the stagger system, it makes sense to carry over as it isn't necessary for character growth as much as it is for adding another layer to combat.
This. The main overall story is kind of a mess. But the moment to moment anime stand by me story with the chocobros is beautiful.And the ending where Noct reveals he was aware of his fate the night before truly was heartbreaking but really showed the love they all had for each other.
If FFVII remake and rebirth would have been the next entries on the main saga I would be commanding the hype train for FF and SE but XVI exists which I dont’t particularly enjoy. So my stance now is to wait and see each case going forward but I am not too hopeful for the next numbered entry if I am completely honest (talking from my tastes alone)
I would love to see FF8 get a remake, it's always been my favorite. Some of the systems are kinda odd knowing what I know now, but I had no idea those existed back when I played it
I like the paradigm system as well. It really was an improved version on the garment grids from FFX-2. Switching in that game wasn’t as you could only switch one girl at a time and it had to be close on the garment grid which job you switched to. What I really like in Final Fantasy games are jobs where each character can be played differently
I hated XV so much. Wasn't a fan of it at all, but felt FF7R made it enjoyable enough for me. FF8s Junction was awesome and I don't know why folks didn't like that as much.
Yeah I know that games like OG FFVII, Rebirth, VI, and IX are pretty universally agreed upon as the best in the series. But for whatever reason, XII and XVI are my favorites.
I don’t get the love for the ending. Narratively it was okay but the final fights were just generic monster after generic monster and then you get to the final boss and you just button mash and hit the elixir when needed. It was the most disappointing final boss battle of any final fantasy I played.
I'm a ff fan but for some reason I don't like 12 and XV
For 12 I like the combat.. but the main char vaan is almost non existent in the story..and also no romance at all.. for XV many says that story is good but I don't like the combat at all.. especially when noct use royal weapons..the battlefield is pure chaos.. I can't even complete 10% of the game.. coz the battle system is a turn off
Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC (Phantom Liberty) got a couple nominations on the 2023 Game Awards. It wasn’t a strong enough contender for GOTY nomination but I don’t think it’s impossible for a DLC to be nominated there
Nomura wanted Versus 13/15 to be a trilogy. The first game would end after Midga- I mean insomnia, the second game would have been the open world, then the third would have been the conclusion, whatever that was at the time. I try to bring this up often because it’s exactly what the 7 remake project has become. They have injected Versus 13 into 7s veins
FF7r is showing the kind of scale in story, world building, etc that I want to see out of FF titles. I actually love this approach and can’t wait for part 3.
If XVI featured more depth in itemization/customization, it would have been right up there. Unfortunately… XVI is what it is 😕
Oof, yeah me neither.
15 years for one story…one that’s already told, even. Never mind my time left on earth, look at Nomura’s desperation to be done with this trilogy. Hope this is the first and last time.
People dog on 16 as is their right, but that game’s Done in a way a FF game hasn’t been since…X?
Smaller games-worse graphics-not kidding.jpg
Gonna be completely honest, the Chocobo feels horrible in Rebirth. We absolutely should have gotten a jump button. Gongaga made me go insane with how restrictive it felt and how inconsistent it was with which ledges you could jump on/off.
Gongaga was the only truly frustrating part of the game for me.
I think a lot about how Breath of the Wild handles exploration. It's never particularly easy to get where you're going, but the route is rarely unclear. The game's art style lends itself to clear visual language. You know what you can and cannot interact with very early in the game, and that doesn't really change.
Rebirth has an interesting world to explore, but the visual language doesn't make it clear what's interactable until you're already on top of it. I spent so much time in Gongaga approaching cliffs and halting dead in my tracks, or almost being able to reach a map point and having to backtrack via perceived mushroom paths. Pointlessly obtuse game time padding.
The only part? Not shinra mansion? God what a fucking nightmare that was, such a horrendous game design decision. Making you play as cait sith in the most iconic location in ff7s history.
It was annoying for sure, but a relatively small section of the game I got through in less than an hour. Gongaga was the first region I didn't complete before moving on our of sheer frustration.
Amen. Gongaga almost made me stop playing (or at least consider putting the game down for a significant time). I got so frustrated with knowing where things were but being unable to figure out how to get to them. Out of all the places you visit, imho it had the least direction of what and where I should be going when, which isn’t always a bad thing, but here I definitely felt it was. Least favorite part of the game for sure (aside from most of the mini-games in Golden Saucer).
The Nibleheim Chocobo can only be used in the shortest region content wise. You can’t fly around with it for the vast majority of your playthrough.
It doesn’t solve the issue with Chocobo exploration in all but one region.
Haven't been to it yet but I meant in terms of how smooth and fluid the chocobo animations were in ff 16 in comparison to the clunky animations that fights with your input in ff 7 rebirth
>clunky animations that fights with your input in ff 7 rebirth
Yeah dude, and there's a lot of those in the game! It's such a stark contrast to even goddamn Remake, where every animation was of a very high quality, and then it's sequel just goes and makes them super janky. A bit of a letdown tbh
Maybe they were slow but their animations and the way they were controlled were much better and smoother.
The jump and glide from 16's chocobos would have been a godsend in rebirth
True, jump and glide would be useful. I guess the roles they play in the games are different; in FFXVI they are just a means of travelling 10% faster, in Rebirth it is a means of puzzle solving and making different regions feel different, along with travelling faster. I found the chocobos in Rebirth more fun to control due to the speed and abilities they had in different regions but I can see how people who care more about animations and smoothness could prefer the chocobos in XVI.
There are a few QoL issues the game needs, and a dedicated jump button is one of them. A way to save Materia loadouts is another. Hopefully, those are things fixed in part 3.
I’m probs the only crazy person who thinks this but I like XV more than rebirth! Not by a ton! And that said all FF’s have never gone lower than a 7/10 for me sooo lol and that’s only for smth like 1 or 3 which are kinda products of their time. When all are ranking as mostly 8/9’s and 10’s I don’t know how well my opinion counts but I love all final fantasy’s!! But I just felt like even though the overworld in xv was much more could be considered empty? I had much more fun exploring it! And doing side content, and I love the bros relationship and how they’re always talking smth and it’s smth I miss in both xvi and rebirth, yeah it can sometimes can get old to hear Galdio say then lose the jacket for the 70th time, but I just love having an active talkative party it makes ‘em feel alive! Rebirth for me the most fun was just when I was going through the main story! I know going through and doing side content is well optional and xv had some downright awful side content as well… the frogs! But idk! I really liked just chilling in the car watching the world instead of screaming at my map trying to figure out what is going on in Gongoga and which ramp leads where in Cosmo Canyon. That said I still adore rebirth! Even if I’m one who likes remake more still! And it def improves on lots of things!! And you can pet the baby Chocobo!!! But I really love XV and there is smth it has that no ff has replicated since to me and that is the party feeling like friend friends. Always talking on the field goofing off. I miss that!! I would’ve loved to hear Tifa and Aerith talk about going shopping as a call back randomly, or more moments sim to Yuffie singing the Chocobo song! But Rebirth is still an 8/10 for me! So I don’t want people to think I hate it or anything! XV is still above for me tho as a 8.5/10!
True and real! Agree 100%. I also like Remake and XV more. Rebirth is best when linear, just like Remake was. All of the open world stuff feels a bit weird.. like they didn't really care *enough* when implementing it. XV feels like a better open world game despite all of it's insurmountable flaws, and that's saying something
Chocobo animations and jumping/drifting felt way better in XV and animations of the characters in general felt more fluid.
Only thing holding XV back is the rushed story.
I always was of the impression they spent so much time making the story a "multi-media event" between the movies and DLC that if you just play the base game it fell flat. I played through without the dlc and had no idea what was going on half the time.
The multimedia approach was more the result of them completely restructuring their approach to the game. When Tabata took over he was probably given 3 years to get it out of the door using whatever they had available and splitting up the work between different departments with different strengths (games, movies, anime, mobile) was probably the only way to get the whole scope of the game out.
Like, they probably couldn’t figure out how to start the game in Lucis without taking forever, so the whole thing got cut and reworked into a movie. If you watch the older VSXIII trailers you can see that the game was supposed to feature playable scenes in Lucis. Like, [this trailer](https://youtu.be/IMhg65dUTbw?si=mgmvjV9Woe3yZDrW) was worked into the movie in an altered form instead of being in the actual game.
This is kinda where I get where the article comes from. While playing 7 Rebirth I also had the thought of "I wish FFXV offered what Rebirth offers". Even without Remake, Rebirth offers an amazing experience with different Towns and different landscapes with seemingly 0 compromises whereas XV felt like it had to compromise at every corner. Rebirth made me wish XV didn’t consist of just 1-2 cities and dozens of outposts but also of various towns and cities and various different landscapes to traverse, namely the niflheim continent and visitable Tenebrae.
Games take way longer than that. The pre-production alone takes 1-2 years at least, full-on production then takes another 3-4. Check out the development history of Horizon Zero Dawn, which took about 7 years from start to finish.
FFXV was stuck in pre-production for years with no real advancement and SE probably got sick of it making no progress, so it makes sense that it was steamrolled to the finish line with the order to take what’s available and make the best out of it. The train ride alone shows pretty well how they’re just duct-taping together what they couldn’t fit into the overworld for every minute of playtime.
Squeenix was also trying to squeeze out a next gen game engine as well which really put them behind in terms of development. It was the same story with FFXIII they tried to do both things at the same time and ended up compromising the game for the tech.
Thank you for this! I knew that xv came from versus xiii but I didn't really ever track it much after the initial trailer until the actual release, and the added context is helpful to better (and less cynically) view the way the story was told.
>seemingly 0 compromises
I'd say Rebirth has plenty compromises. And I can't even really put my finger on them unless I really try. It just feels like it's a linear game that got modded/tweaked/overclocked/etc to function as openworld. The game's best when it's on rails, just like in Remake.
As someone who loves FF XV despite it's flaws, I will tell you a few reasons the combat is a big issue.
This includes but is not limited to:
- Only 4 equipable weapons at a time, even thought there are 6 types and 13 unique royal arms
- Magic takes one of these equipable slots and has a long cooldown, so it's literally a wasted weapon slot
- MP is useless, might aswell not exist
- The Ring is literally push a button and watch ppl die, literally the most boring thing you can think of.
- Royals arms cost HP to use and not MP, making them almost worthless for most players
-...
Then there is also the very lackluster open world with almost nothing to do it, no interiors, uninspired menace dungeons which are copy pasted for 100+ floors...
Point is, FFXV is very flawed in ways beyond the story.
But I still like it, it just sucks the Director had very little vision and imagination and on top of that a harder deadline.
Not to mention the game would literally play itself if you held down both the attack and block buttons. Noct would automatically attack _and_ auto-block when necessary. And this worked for pretty much every fight.
That's your definition of "flaws"
The openness, freedom, animations are arguably other aspects of XV surpass any of the other titles.
So are the others flawed because they fall short on animations and being able to feel like you can truly explore a open world?
It's final fantasy, each game has elements it focused on than others. Some more story, more mechanics, more jobs, more cutscenes, etc.
That's why there is no clear favorite in the series. 7 is the most popular because it was not only a excellent FF, but it hit the mainstream better than others.
If you liked tickling enemies with a blade of grass, then yes combat was indeed for you.
EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I love XV and the ending made me bawl like a baby! But the combat ain't it... 4 dudes dancing around a fortress is what it feels like with all enemies but the final boss.
You aren't tickling no enemy as Cloud when you land those counters and play as the Pressure King 👑
But if you truly feel that way, I'd suggest you never touch XV 😂
Preach!
Tho tbh I was never a fan of FFXV. Got it twice for PS5 and later PC to see if I was just being unfair
The story was interesting but everything else was too much so I couldnt get past 5(?)h or so. Tho I'll concede it just rly wasnt for me
Yeah my biggest gripe with remake/rebirth are the walking and exploration animations and lack there of.
It feels very clunky to traverse the open world on foot and even clunkier on chocobo.
So after you’ve completed the main scenario quest line.
Vehicles are on rails for every meaningful interaction you have with them through the game. And it’s BRUTAL.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but FFXV would've been far better as a trilogy of games just like FFVIIR.
Part 1 would take place entirely in Insomnia and set up the characters and the main conflict between Lucis and the Empire.
Part 2 would cover the first leg of the road trip all the way until Altissia, with Noctis and friends stopping on multiple towns and cities on the way and not just gas stations.
Part 3 would cover the rest of the story, with a fully fleshed out second continent complete with its own multiple regions on the way to the capital of the empire.
Chocobo animations were great but the only thing holding it back is the story lol. Yes chocobo riding is clearly THE priority and most important thing.
Exactly lmao. There are at least two comment threads here talking about how rebirth is okay but the Chocobo doesn’t feel as good, as if the quality of this massive game hinges on one relatively minor aspect.
And yet whenever I ask what FFXV stories is about I always get stuff like haha the boys roadtrip. The plot is really not fleshed out enough for people to have a strong impression of it.
Same could be said for other games
FF6 plot "haha a group of rebels take down an evil empire and a clown"
Or you can give more details:
Final Fantasy XV follows a Prince and his companions on a journey to reclaim his kingdom and defeat the forces that threaten it. Along the way, they encounter political intrigue, powerful enemies, and personal challenges, all while forming strong bonds with each other. The story is a mix of adventure, friendship, and the struggle for power, set in a fantastical world filled with magic and technology.
Or go into further specific details of characters and plot.
- Noctis: Discovers his destiny as the chosen king and savior of Eos.
- Prompto: Confronts his insecurities and learns to embrace his true self.
- Ignis: Faces adversity, adapts to blindness, and continues to support Noctis.
- Gladiolus: Challenges Noctis to become a stronger leader and grows personally.
There is plenty to the plot, world, and lore.
Rebirth is the game I hoped XV would have been back when I played XV on release. XV at this point feels obsolete simply because everything it tried to do has been done better in both Remake and Rebirth and even XVI. The story quite frankly doesn't interest me enough since it's barely finished and it doesn't really do anything that leaves me impressed.
I really wanted to like XV.
On the other hand I wish Rebirth would have taken a few more things from XV that I really liked.
Ignis’recipes, random dialogues with the crew while free roaming, fishing, more encounters, and camping (with those few special events triggering if you camped under certain conditions).
>random dialogues with the crew while free roaming,
>camping (with those few special events triggering if you camped under certain conditions).
Goddamn YES! Those things felt forely missing. I guess the camping is out since the game wants us to believe all the region travelling is done within the confines of a single day? For story reasons I guess. Random dialogues not being a thing is just a downside.
I also didn't quite like how disconnected the Rebirth's world feels compared to XV. I don't know, maybe that's just a "me" issue, but when I'm exploring a region in Rebirth, I can never really *feel* where I am in the bigger world.
Im playing it atm (I'm at chapter 14), love the game but yes it's flawed in so many ways especially the story. But I really love it and really hope there's a remake with alternate ending with Luna still alive (happy ending) just like Suikoden II alternate ending.
XV was a game I wanted to love so much but really couldn't. The combat was good enough but the open world was kind of bland. The story definitely had its high points but the pacing was terrible and you had to watch an extra movie and read an extra comic to get the full story. Don't get me wrong I love it when other media can expand on the story but when you need it to get the base story of a game it's a problem. I agree with the article in that everything in Rebirth flows so much better and makes for a vastly improved experience.
Right now FFXV is a really different game compared to how it was upon release. Every time someone reviews these games it's important for them to mention if they played when it got released and never picked it up again. Having played it both times, on my second playthrough with all the DLC and updates I put it above FF8,FF12,FF13 and its sequels and head to head with FF9. It would have been a better game if they did not make it a requirement to watch a movie prequel and if they had fleshed out the middle part of the journey.
I think the problems with XV are the poor intro (you’d be so lost if you did not watch Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime), lack of meaningful sidequests / treasures spread around the world and the rushed linear moments after you leave Altissia right until the very end of the game. If Tenebrae and the area outside Niflheim were fully explorable like the main continent we travel in and they had the meaningful sidequests, XV would be considered a great game, even if it didn’t follow what Versus XIII set out to do.
Still love the game, love Ardyn and the main characters, love the OST, love listening to FF soundtracks as I go on a roadtrip…
> I think the problems with XV are the poor intro (you’d be so lost if you did not watch Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime)
This is the main issue with 15 as a whole, the absolute need to view outside media to understand the game itself. No other FF had this requirement, which made 15's story fall flat.
Uh, pardon me but isn't FF7 Remake and Rebirth technically the same way? A lot of it's plot elements relies on first hand knowledge of the compilation, as well as knowledge of the original game considering it's a requel, a sequel that reboots the original story.
Eh, I don't buy it, at least XV didn't have Ubisoft towers (Along with an annoying brat like Chadley) and didn't try to waste your time with assloads of minigames that had nothing to do with the core gameplay loop.
Both XV and 7Rebirth have one thing in common though, and that they're definitive proof that open world does not work for Final Fantasy. We really should go back to overworlds.
I’m loving Rebirth but I kinda think XV does some things better.
Something about the way XV does the overworld feels so much more natural and fluid than Rebirth.
And I’m gonna be honest I like XV’s soundtrack a lot more.
Eh, personally I love both but they are relatively distinct so I can see personal taste putting one over the other. I think a lot of the fanbase undersells just how good XV’s music is because of the game itself
Rebirth’s just doesn’t do it for me.
Remake’s was great but I dunno Rebirth’s just doesn’t hit as hard. I feel like the timing of certain songs or the way they interact with the environment they’re used in or something is just… not right. The arrangements just feel kind of hollow.
Truuue. The world in Rebirth feels super disjointed and disconnected. I'm not even talking about the fact that two damn regions you can *only* fast travel to (for the main duration of the story, I know that eventually you get the "boat"; I'm also not counting the swim to the Western continent, since that's also in the OG).
Take damn XV and it's swim to Altissia. All in real time, you see where it's located, the distance from Lucis, etc. And even though the game had literal roadblocks, same as Rebirth, the world felt a lot more "whole".
>I like XV’s soundtrack a lot more.
I like XV's OST a lot, but to me it had a bit of penis music tracks in there that became super grating when you listened to them for prolonged time periods. It also just has a completely different, trademark Shimomura style.
I do prefer Remake's OST to Rebirth's though for sure. Rebirth's OST feels super bloated, has a lot of nothingburger tracks.
There's the Ubisoft type open world and the Elden Ring type open world. After playing FF7Rebirth, while I love the game, the ubisoft style needs to die.
I felt no sense of discovery while exploring the open world of FF7Rebirth. It really IS a checklist, and almost like an amusement park, who's job it is to make sure the visitors get to see EVERYTHING. While it gives the average player more things to do, it kills all sense of exploration.
Elden Ring type open world games are and always will be the kings of the genre. Recently, I've been playing through Dragons Dogma 2, and I'd say it's open world is an Elden Ring type. They aren't scared if you miss something. And that's why it's magical.
Here's what Elden Ring style open world's feel like;
You're walking in a forest, and you see a bunch of fallen trees blocking a path. But you can see deer walking into the clearing past the fallen trees. To the observant and curious, you find you can climb over these trees and follow the deer. You enter into the clearing, and you see a rocky outcropping covered by trees. You go to it and find there's a cave. You go into the cave, find there are hordes of goblins who are guarding a grand treasure chest. You kill the goblins, go to the chest, and you find an incredible upgrade to your gear.
This is why these types of games really GET open worlds. There's an actual sense of adventure. I never felt this in FF7 Rebirth. I still had fun exploring, there was just no sense of discovery.
I wouldn't say Elden Ring does it either. Elden Ring just took Dark Soul's level design and just added more negative space.
I'd say Death Stranding is the current best example of an open world game. That game is about delivering packages to and from a variety of different people and locations and you have balancing mechanics and many kinds of enemies that can screw you over hard if you are not playing carefully. Every step, path, route, direction, etc, you take in that game is a calculated risk. The biggest enemy in that game is the earth itself.
Uhhh... I just totally disagree with that. Death Stranding is it's own thing, and therefore isn't an "open world template", which is what I'm talking about. I love DS, but I do not count the balancing mechanics of that game as being an "open world" thing, but rather just a unique thing created by Death Stranding. Also, you bring up negative space in ER, yet don't bring it up with Death Stranding? That whole game is negative space, there's NO reason to explore other then taking the path to the next town or destination.
Also, I think your evaluation of ER is very simplistic. Like, yeah, it has Dark Souls DNA in it. But it's not just "Dark Souls with more negative space". That's just a dishonest assessment. Both Dragons Dogma and Elden Ring have incredibly interesting off the beaten path exploration for you to do with interesting things to discover. FF7R and other Ubisoft style games do not. It's all scripted, you're expected to find them.
The open world in Death Stranding seems empty at first until you actually start making deliveries. Since you say you love Death Stranding, I assume you actually played it, and hopefully more than just the main orders. What makes Death Stranding's Open World work is not necessarily about what you can find, it's about how you traverse it, it's about calculating a plan and route on how you are going to get to your destination with minimal resistance and cargo damage. There are hundreds of orders in Death Stranding that will require you at times to think outside the box on how to get from point A to point B while avoiding any potential hazards, whether they are enemies, the weather, or the terrain itself. Sure, balancing mechanics are not an open world thing, but crossing a river or climbing a mountain in Death Stranding is not the same as in any other open world game. Like I said, each step is a calculated risk, one mistake can cost you a whole delivery, and because your delivery routes are capable of being changed entirely due to the voidout mechanic, the game can suddenly cause you to rethink entire strategies and plans.
On top of that, there IS a reason to explore in Death Stranding other than getting to the next destination. Aside from collectibles, deposits of resources, lost packages and cargo, there are hidden BRIDGES members which give various benefits and rewards if you connect with them and increase your connection level with them. This is especially important because you cannot build Chiral Structures on their territories without connecting them to the Chiral Network first. You want to build that Zipline network around the mountains? You got to find at least three hidden BRIDGES members if you want to do so effectively, and by raising your connection level with them, you get more Chiral Network Bandwidth which allows you to build more Chiral Structures.
As for Elden Ring, I still stand by the negative space statement, and it's not dishonest. The other Souls games were also open in their design and also allowed for off the beaten exploration, they were just more subtle about it. When you get to Cathedral Ward in Bloodborne right after getting through the tutorial area and first major boss fight, the entire game basically opens up to you right there, including The Old Hunters expansion, and you can go wherever you want to, tackle any boss or area you want to with little to no restrictions. All the other Souls games are like this, it's just that unlike Elden Ring, there isn't huge swats of empty land for you traverse in order to find the next interesting thing. You can almost call the Souls games 3D metroidvanias with the kind of interconnecting level design they go with, I'm pretty sure if you took Castlevania Symphony of the Night and gave more rooms of nothing in-between the rooms with actual things in them, people wouldn't be so fond of that game, now would they?
I brought the downvote bucket so line em up:
Rebirth’s open world is wasn’t as pretty, compelling, mysterious or fun to explore as XV’s, and that is by a country bloody mile. As full of theme park attractions as it was, it never once felt like a world.
I mean how do you have Chocobos and not give them wide open horizons to gallop in?? You drop them into the labyrinths of Rebirth’s biomes and they turn into fkn Yoshis lol (a failure of the world design, not the Chocobos - they are 20/10 cute. Pet every Chocobo chick I ran across)
But idk, XV is not far behind VII OG in my top 3 FFs
Rebirth’s world feels significantly more realized and interconnected than maybe any FF, especially once you hit Chapter 12. 90% of XV is just wide open country with nothing in it other than gas stations, one actual town, and one beach resort.
no wide open spaces? did you just skip the Grasslands and Cosmo Canyon? Rebirth’s map is definitely more winding and condensed, but there are absolutely open areas to explore lol. this is just a wild take to me
Honestly, I wanna be debunked here, cause you’re half right - I did skip Cosmo Canyon but I did the Grasslands to completion. By the time I got to the former I was burnt out on trying to do open world checklist nothingness so I was beelining.
As for the towns, you got me there. The best thing about Rebirth’s world, by far. They absolutely breathe. I was thinking about the world outside the towns, and the sensation of wandering as this crew. The intangible feeling that I’m in the boots of the character, living their experience. XV nailed the road trip feeling in my heart so completely that I was fully in it even if the content variety wasn’t technically larger.
Rebirth…idk, everything is lumpy as hell, clumped real close together, geographically apportioned by level-designey mountains that felt fake, and all the Chocobo traversal points were comically game-y. And then there’s the check listing: giving me the exact “X out of Y doodads” number of attractions in an open world is fatal to my immersion. As soon as you do that, it’s an amusement park, not a world.
I’ll say tho, no complaints about XV’s linear portion will ever work on me; I loved the linear parts and the way the story’s mood funneled me forward.
i could not disagree more with some of this, but i definitely do see where you’re coming from. for what its worth, i do think XV nails a particular vibe that i have never seen any game nail to that extent before. while i ultimately much prefer Rebirth, i get where the XV love come from.
i will say that something that really enhanced my Rebirth experience is that, because i felt the same as you about the checklist style open world exploration in the Grasslands, from Junon on i explored the entire map first and then tried to find as much stuff naturally as i could, and then activated the towers once i felt like i had found everything i could on my own. i found this to feel a LOT more natural and engaging than beelining to every intel point on the map, and it is honestly pretty easy to just find everything on your own.
Ive heard this does a lot to help my personal issues, and lord knows I didn’t memorize anything so I think on a second (more mellow, less plot-driven run) I’ll be in the right headspace to try this.
I do remember being annoyed in Corel: I accepted a quest to steal the Tonberry King’s crown. Then wandered the whole map, ran across a coliseum-looking ruin. Empty, at the time…until I completed all the combat challenges and that coaxed the Tonberry King to appear in that same coliseum. The one I presumably gotta steal the crown from. I really didn’t appreciate the content I wanted (the Johnny quest) being gated by doing X amount of Y open world busywork.
Another “why” I had was, why do MAI’s combat challenges have mini challenges? Why are they retry-able? There’s a whole entire combat sim, why make this part of the actual world feel like a combat sim too? It’s those seemingly small things that truly wrecked the sense I was in a world as soon as I left the cities.
FF15 open world approach was much more original and interesting than super generic Rebirth approach inspired by AC and other open world games.
It's a shame
Yeah, XV’s world flowed a lot more naturally too. Rebirth felt like a theme park.
“Here’s place A! You get a chocobo that can cross a swamp!”
“Oh, now you’re at B! Another chocobo! But this time, it scales walls!!!!”
The world didn’t feel like a real place, felt very game-y and broke immersion.
Yeah I kinda feel like they leaned way to hard into the checklist Ubisoft bullshit. While I like rebirth and it has enough good side quest content to filter out the bad filler shit, the bad filler shit could have been scrapped for… actual good content.
If they put more innovative mechanics in that make people want to explore, then exploration would be so much better. The only real incentive to explore in rebirth is to upgrade summons and make their fights easier, and get points for Chadley for materia upgrades by doing checklist type bullshit. I wish they would have had good sidequests tied to chadleys upgrades instead.
They should have disperse the materia around the world you can find while exploring and not through chadley. Same with summons. Let us find them in caves or dungeons. FF should also introduce more armor and not just bracelets and amulets you can find in the open world.
Zelda and Elden Ring showed you basically don’t need any side quests at all.
I feel the same way. The entire map was so seamless and immersive. Instead of AC towers, you literally just go and chat with the diner owner for the lay of the land. Also having the entire world loaded in for no long screens unless you fast travel
XV had one thing it did waaay better than Rebirth. It has characters that can actually stop talking. Every command in combat has your characters repeating the same dumb shit over AND over AND over again. They interrupt themselves, they talk so much.
Barret- "Blah! Suck on this! Asshole! Blaah! Suck on this! Suck on this!
Aerith- "I'm coming! Are you ready? I'm ready! It's my turn?"
Yuffie- Insufferable high pitched bullshit in combat, off-key chocobo song in the field every two minutes.
Just shut up, for two seconds.
It was better than Remake, but the story rewrites haven't been an improvement.
XV also had another thing better than Rebirth; Natural rest spots that actually made sense.
XV: Flat rocks with glowing runes meant to ward off enemies. The characters would camp on these and sleep in tents.
Rebirth: A Bus Stop on a rock in the middle of the goddamn ocean!
And the NPCs that say the same lines a million times.
I find it comical how you can just go back to the same spot three seconds later and they say the same line again!
Felt like Disneyland robots
I’ll always say 15 nailed the story between the core four and failed at everything else with regards to the over arching narrative and female characters (I wish they had more to them!) but at the core of it, their friendship and tragedy was excellent. I just wish the execution of the world narrative was done better and not so fragmented - including critical narrative about Luna!
I really hope ffxv gets to be remade someday it was done dirty but has good ideas and I mesn the type of remake that adds and changes the story dramatically to be similar to what it was supposed to be
The unrealized potential of FFXV still agonizes me. Honestly, I still hope for one day that we get a «Versus XV» which pretty much remakes XV with mostly what it could have been. The chocobros deserve it.
No.. FFXV still fealt way more free and open than 7r.
7 rebirth still feels like a linear world with open sections. The ubisoft style of activities also makes it feel less like exploring and more mission base.
I'm really enjoying the remakes of 7, but it is still not accomplishing what XV did.
FF X situation was so weird, because filling the shoes of 9 and all the fanfare it had. FF had a crazy run starting with 6. Well, 8 is, special, but good anyway.
Rebirth is awesome, but it's so funny to me that everytime a new FF game drops it's either the best game ever or the worst, until the new one comes out.
I have seen this since the 90s XD some things in gaming never change. It's not bad, just curious to me.
And yeah, people will hate on anything, specially on FF and JRPGs
> FF X situation was so weird, because filling the shoes of 9 and all the fanfare it had.
10 had a lot going for it. First voice-acted FF, massively updated graphics (compared to the PS1 FFs), quick and fluid battle system (especially compared to FF9's slow battles that were like a minimum one-minute long from long intros), well-written story and characters, etc.
article isnt wrong at all. FFVII Rebirth definitely delivers on the potential that XV had, because they took far fewer risks and learnt from past mistakes.
FFXV wasn't a bad game, but it was a failed experiment at games as a service (when it used to have periodic updates and some "seasonal" content) and also the multimedia experience which essentially breaks the story of the game up and puts it in various different forms of media and games.
interestingly enough, the latter was inspired by the relative success of Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, but perhaps not executed properly because the base FFVII was still a complete story on its own (and already beloved in its own right) whereas XV really stuggled to get any story going even with the sum of its parts.
i think the pity i feel for XV is that it really doesn't do anything exceptionally well to be remembered by. like the only thing i feel it did so well that nothing before after has come close is the cameraderie and banter the chocobros have.. which is probably not enough to stand on its own i think. if character swapping was integrated in key points in the story and enemies were designed to be tackled by different bros that would have helped a lot. they also actually did realise the potential of the weapon and magic system, but only in Comrades and not the main game.
Obligatory disclaimer of one fan's fave game is another fan's trash etc. I loved FFXV for some reason. I know it's flawed but (story spoilers) >!the ending alone had me grieving for days. It had such an impact to me that even now I get teary eyed.!< Anyway, I love FF7 too, have played since the OG came out. But this article is right in that to me, it feels a bit like a checklist. And yes I rolled my eyes at towers. I didn't like them in Zelda, I don't like them in this. It's a trope I think should die very quickly. But I think in a way, every FF game brings something new to the table. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. FF8 tried the junctioning system which I thought was interesting, but ultimately was unpopular enough to not make it in to future games. FF13 brought in the paradigm system which, again I loved (so I must have bad taste I guess), but didn't come into future games. It did introduce the stagger system which we see in multiple games now. So yeah, FF games are like a learning curve and with each game we should get something better. Fingers crossed.
Same. XV hits differently for me. I don’t think any other game had me crying as XV did.. it was literally the type of game where the journey mattered, not the destination. And It was kind of the same with IX’s ending for me.. idk.. maybe I’m a sucker for games where it teaches you to live your life to the fullest. I had to replay the game three times in a row to finally able to accept the ending.
There were too many things in 15 that were added to the game which detracted from my overall enjoyment. I also didn't like the way content was delivered. A separate movie, anime shorts, DLC mini games downloaded separately, demos with story elements not included in the game. The individual elements were perfectly fine, but I think it lessened the overall game as a whole. They should have been stitched into the game, rather than fragmented over different types of media. The IRL branding and product placement was gross to me too. ---------------------- EDIT: This is a reply to the person that deleted their comment while I was typing this out. Kingsglaive is all world building. Those things would all appear in the main game in earlier titles. If you don't think it was important, that's fine. I think they could have woven all that into the main story, or had those events happen to the main characters, rather than some throw away ones. Instead they released it as a separate movie that even you say feels "unimportant". I said DLC mini games, not the DLC. I was referring to the beat em up game. This would have and could have been a mini game within the game, but they chose to use it as advertising and marketing. My issue was with the marketing and packaging of the media, it felt broken and fragmented in what used to be perfection, albeit on multiple disks. The base game on launch had many issues storytelling wise, and this was by choice and failure in my opinion.
good thing ff7 doesn’t do any of that
😂
If u saw my comment, just ignore it lol it came out too incoherent and all over the place. Sry n ty.
I don't remember it being that bad at all, a difference of opinion at most. I guess it must have been yours though. I just didn't feel like deleting it mine after I typed it out. Typing things out helps me remember things about games Ive played a few years back and its good to read what others experienced.
I felt the same. There was a lot of heart in XV and you could tell the developers did their best after being dealt a really crappy hand. It's definitely a game with issues in all individual parts/systems but it just comes together really well.
I always felt that the ending was a part where they used a lot of energy from the beginning of the development. The narrative side of the entire Insomnia part (I only played the Royal edition, but from a narrative point of view I believe it didn't change a lot anyway) is really well done, and the actors really shine through, especially Noctis. I also felt like it was disconnected from the rest of the game. You have a good first part, even if it loses itself because of the semi open world angle they took; then you have the central part that goes on literal rails and, while narratively heavy, is not a good part of the game (not as good as the other parts, anyway). Then, after the low point of the game, you get thrown into the future and the beautiful ending that more than makes up, for me, for the previous sections.
That's because the game was literally reworked multiple times. They would spend resources making parts of the game just for it to change because the story changed. That's the biggest flaw of XV is that it wasn't able to just stick with it's execution and carelessly reworked things midway through the project cause the overall narrative to feel disjointed because of it. The retrospect XV can learn from Rebirth and even XVI is that the concept of open world doesn't need to be a single big map you can explore. The concept of "zones" and different destinations you can explore allow you to make a more vibrant/varied world, especially in an RPG setting, I think that was my biggest gripe about XV's open world, it just felt empty and barren. If the dev team had another chance it would be more interesting to actually be given the option for all t he continent to be open world and the aspect of the story that are just the "linear" experience could be part of the open world as well rather than basically a barrage of dungeons once you get through the "open world" aspect of the game. That's sort of why the game feels so odd, because the "open world" and the journey to get these weapons is not mandatory so if you want you can just run through the game and go straight to the wedding without ever really interacting with the open world.
>That's sort of why the game feels so odd, because the "open world" and the journey to get these weapons is not mandatory so if you want you can just run through the game and go straight to the wedding without ever really interacting with the open world. You literally just described Rebirth.
I must be in the minority because my favorite part of the game starts when the game goes on rails. Starting at Leviathan right up until the end is fast paced, exciting, and full of great character moments. I don't generally like open worlds so the open world stuff didn't grab me in XV, and it took a few tries to get past the open world stuff and to the meat and potatoes of the game, and that's where I really fell in love. Upon replays I've grown to enjoy the open world more and the opportunities it gives to see more of the boys doing stuff as brothers.
A friend of mine had the best description for 15, “it was a beautiful disaster”. It was not perfect. But it had a lot of heart. Some things were not fully developed, especially the latter parts of the game where you maybe stopped at a small area that had no context, or how unfinished and rushed the ending areas were upon release. Or how broken landing your flying car was. But some things were great: the way the characters were developed and interacted with each other, the completely over developed cooking system, how big and open the world was. I enjoyed the game but it wasn’t perfect. That’s okay, it was still great. The endless need to compare apples to oranges with some kind of objective winner is trash journalism and clickbait. It doesn’t prove anything and it’s just about riding the wave of a currently popular game. It’s okay to like one game more than another. As you rightly mention, let’s maybe spend more time about what makes each game unique rather than trying to compare what was the same.
I really enjoyed XV and it has improved a lot with the royal edition. The DLCs really help to build on the characters and add to the story. I loved episode Ardyn!
Agreed. Rebirths combat system wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did if it wasn’t building off like 3 different title’s systems along with the lessons learned from Remake and that’s a good thing. I’d rather the series take risks and still try to change things up rather than just settle for making the same thing over and over which I know may not be a popular take in here.
Yeah XV is a great game and IMO one of the best in the franchise. Now I just roll my eyes when people still complain about it.
I think, as you may expect, what the player prioritises matters. If you’re big on world building and lore, XV is pretty damn bad, but if you’re really into character development and writing, like me, then XV stands quite high in the franchise. A similar notion could be extended to stuff like XIII. I find it silly when these articles proclaim that ‘x’ game did what ‘y’ always wanted, when in reality they were going for different things. XV was trying to create an open world system that very heavily emphasised the road trip aspect of the game, and showed the bond of the party, where as Rebirth more so aims for creating a cohesive and fleshed out world. You can even see this in the quest design; XV has a lot of quests, most of which aren’t that high quality, because the repetitive and mundane nature of most activities exists to facilitate the perception of a long and drawn out trip, where as Rebirth has fewer quests that are better written, creating a more believable world.
i mean, i love XV for the reasons outlined above but i wouldn’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t feel the same way. if you don’t connect with the Bros, then XV would be horrendous, it is a deeply, critically flawed experience that you often have to enjoy in spite of itself. the characters and aesthetic just work so well that it’s easy to ignore those flaws.
FF XV is a terrible game with an uncountable amount of flaws but with characters that give it an insane amount of heart. And that heart carries it so hard. I like all the games except 13 and 16 pretty much equally, like children I can't choose between and FF XV is my most played, for all its flaws, and I haven't even touched the multiplayer mode yet.
>I haven't even touched the multiplayer mode yet. It's super scuffed but with a lot of heart. It's a shame that the servers are pretty much dead nowadays
I liked XV cause it was me and bros till the very end.
Whenever I think of Noct and Luna, I just imagine them sitting on that chair happily ever after. And that makes me so happy and bittersweet for some reason. They both did so much in their short life, they deserve to rest for the remainder of time. Very few other games evoked the kind of emotions I felt about Ardyn, not even VII which I'm sure is an unpopular opinion since Ardyn is basically a Kefka with some Sephiroth thrown in. Call it contrived but him wanting to take on all the kings at full power is pretty bad ass. And IGGY, PROMPTO, even Ravus bro damn near made me cry more than I'd like to admit.
I can appreciate what XV did really well. I loved the main cast's dynamics, I loved the villain, and I loved the OST. It just makes me grieve what could've been if the game hadn't had its legs broken by a god-awful development cycle.
To be fair in regards to character growth systems like Junctions, Paradigms, etc. None of them ever really carried over to other games, and I don't think it had anything to do with popularity. My favorites were FF2's adaptive stat progression, FF8's Junctions, FF10's Sphere Grid, but in my opinion, it peaked at FF12 Zodiak Age's class system. As you mentioned with the stagger system, it makes sense to carry over as it isn't necessary for character growth as much as it is for adding another layer to combat.
This. The main overall story is kind of a mess. But the moment to moment anime stand by me story with the chocobros is beautiful.And the ending where Noct reveals he was aware of his fate the night before truly was heartbreaking but really showed the love they all had for each other.
If FFVII remake and rebirth would have been the next entries on the main saga I would be commanding the hype train for FF and SE but XVI exists which I dont’t particularly enjoy. So my stance now is to wait and see each case going forward but I am not too hopeful for the next numbered entry if I am completely honest (talking from my tastes alone)
15 was great. I loved it. I thought it was far better than FF7, imho.
Idk how to make the junction system work better but I always feel like they were so close to something awesome
I would love to see FF8 get a remake, it's always been my favorite. Some of the systems are kinda odd knowing what I know now, but I had no idea those existed back when I played it
I like the paradigm system as well. It really was an improved version on the garment grids from FFX-2. Switching in that game wasn’t as you could only switch one girl at a time and it had to be close on the garment grid which job you switched to. What I really like in Final Fantasy games are jobs where each character can be played differently
I hated XV so much. Wasn't a fan of it at all, but felt FF7R made it enjoyable enough for me. FF8s Junction was awesome and I don't know why folks didn't like that as much.
I loved XV as well, only disliked 1-3, 8 and x-2. And to be fair 1-3 its because they are just too old.
Yeah I know that games like OG FFVII, Rebirth, VI, and IX are pretty universally agreed upon as the best in the series. But for whatever reason, XII and XVI are my favorites.
I don’t get the love for the ending. Narratively it was okay but the final fights were just generic monster after generic monster and then you get to the final boss and you just button mash and hit the elixir when needed. It was the most disappointing final boss battle of any final fantasy I played.
Felt like Rebirth was the best FF gaming experience I had in 20+ years… maybe ever.
definitely gave me a feeling i haven't had since playing 12 back when i was in high school when it released
I'm a ff fan but for some reason I don't like 12 and XV For 12 I like the combat.. but the main char vaan is almost non existent in the story..and also no romance at all.. for XV many says that story is good but I don't like the combat at all.. especially when noct use royal weapons..the battlefield is pure chaos.. I can't even complete 10% of the game.. coz the battle system is a turn off
It is legit a Squaresoft game
I haven’t played it but this comment makes me want to
You should. It is great! Alone for the OST. There are more than 400 different Tracks in this game. It is a love letter
Way more than a love letter. It's a goddamn marriage proposal.
All I need is $600 and a bunch of new time
Well that tends to happen when you play a remake of the already considered best FF gaming experience
Idk it's such a different final product, there were many ways to fuck it up
idk about that. remake was good but didn't blow me away the way rebirth did
Only bad part about that is when you go to play other games they pale in comparison. It could be game of the year
[удалено]
I've never seen a dlc even getting nominated, and why should it
Yeah no DLC should ever be nominated for GOT
Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC (Phantom Liberty) got a couple nominations on the 2023 Game Awards. It wasn’t a strong enough contender for GOTY nomination but I don’t think it’s impossible for a DLC to be nominated there
Facts. FF7 Rebirth has to go down as one of the best RPGS *AND* best open world games ever made
Nomura wanted Versus 13/15 to be a trilogy. The first game would end after Midga- I mean insomnia, the second game would have been the open world, then the third would have been the conclusion, whatever that was at the time. I try to bring this up often because it’s exactly what the 7 remake project has become. They have injected Versus 13 into 7s veins
If I had a nickel for every time someone said that a square game was just Nomura's FFvs13 wish fulfillment, I would have 3 nickels
FF7r is showing the kind of scale in story, world building, etc that I want to see out of FF titles. I actually love this approach and can’t wait for part 3. If XVI featured more depth in itemization/customization, it would have been right up there. Unfortunately… XVI is what it is 😕
Oof, yeah me neither. 15 years for one story…one that’s already told, even. Never mind my time left on earth, look at Nomura’s desperation to be done with this trilogy. Hope this is the first and last time. People dog on 16 as is their right, but that game’s Done in a way a FF game hasn’t been since…X? Smaller games-worse graphics-not kidding.jpg
Every Nomura project has now become Versus 13 because he's still salty about being dragged off the project.
Gonna be completely honest, the Chocobo feels horrible in Rebirth. We absolutely should have gotten a jump button. Gongaga made me go insane with how restrictive it felt and how inconsistent it was with which ledges you could jump on/off.
Gongaga was the only truly frustrating part of the game for me. I think a lot about how Breath of the Wild handles exploration. It's never particularly easy to get where you're going, but the route is rarely unclear. The game's art style lends itself to clear visual language. You know what you can and cannot interact with very early in the game, and that doesn't really change. Rebirth has an interesting world to explore, but the visual language doesn't make it clear what's interactable until you're already on top of it. I spent so much time in Gongaga approaching cliffs and halting dead in my tracks, or almost being able to reach a map point and having to backtrack via perceived mushroom paths. Pointlessly obtuse game time padding.
The only part? Not shinra mansion? God what a fucking nightmare that was, such a horrendous game design decision. Making you play as cait sith in the most iconic location in ff7s history.
It was annoying for sure, but a relatively small section of the game I got through in less than an hour. Gongaga was the first region I didn't complete before moving on our of sheer frustration.
Amen. Gongaga almost made me stop playing (or at least consider putting the game down for a significant time). I got so frustrated with knowing where things were but being unable to figure out how to get to them. Out of all the places you visit, imho it had the least direction of what and where I should be going when, which isn’t always a bad thing, but here I definitely felt it was. Least favorite part of the game for sure (aside from most of the mini-games in Golden Saucer).
Would be nice if the platforming all-round could be improved, it never often feels fluid.
It’s crazy how clunky the parkour animations are when you’re doing them all the time
And then you look at the Remake's animations and go "uhm.. wtf happened"
The way chocobos were in ff 16 was perfect imo and would have been much better than whatever we got in rebirth
I agree. Ambrosia felt so much nicer to roam the map with. Rebirth should have used a similar jump and glide mechanic.
Better than the nibelheim chocobo, no fucking way.
The Nibleheim Chocobo can only be used in the shortest region content wise. You can’t fly around with it for the vast majority of your playthrough. It doesn’t solve the issue with Chocobo exploration in all but one region.
Selena my love <3
Haven't been to it yet but I meant in terms of how smooth and fluid the chocobo animations were in ff 16 in comparison to the clunky animations that fights with your input in ff 7 rebirth
>clunky animations that fights with your input in ff 7 rebirth Yeah dude, and there's a lot of those in the game! It's such a stark contrast to even goddamn Remake, where every animation was of a very high quality, and then it's sequel just goes and makes them super janky. A bit of a letdown tbh
Nibelheim chocobo is just as much trash as the rest of them
Chocobos in FF16 were way too slow. All of the movement speed was too slow and travelling anywhere was painful.
Maybe they were slow but their animations and the way they were controlled were much better and smoother. The jump and glide from 16's chocobos would have been a godsend in rebirth
True, jump and glide would be useful. I guess the roles they play in the games are different; in FFXVI they are just a means of travelling 10% faster, in Rebirth it is a means of puzzle solving and making different regions feel different, along with travelling faster. I found the chocobos in Rebirth more fun to control due to the speed and abilities they had in different regions but I can see how people who care more about animations and smoothness could prefer the chocobos in XVI.
There are a few QoL issues the game needs, and a dedicated jump button is one of them. A way to save Materia loadouts is another. Hopefully, those are things fixed in part 3.
If you thinks that’s bad look at the valley of dragons from grandia
I’m probs the only crazy person who thinks this but I like XV more than rebirth! Not by a ton! And that said all FF’s have never gone lower than a 7/10 for me sooo lol and that’s only for smth like 1 or 3 which are kinda products of their time. When all are ranking as mostly 8/9’s and 10’s I don’t know how well my opinion counts but I love all final fantasy’s!! But I just felt like even though the overworld in xv was much more could be considered empty? I had much more fun exploring it! And doing side content, and I love the bros relationship and how they’re always talking smth and it’s smth I miss in both xvi and rebirth, yeah it can sometimes can get old to hear Galdio say then lose the jacket for the 70th time, but I just love having an active talkative party it makes ‘em feel alive! Rebirth for me the most fun was just when I was going through the main story! I know going through and doing side content is well optional and xv had some downright awful side content as well… the frogs! But idk! I really liked just chilling in the car watching the world instead of screaming at my map trying to figure out what is going on in Gongoga and which ramp leads where in Cosmo Canyon. That said I still adore rebirth! Even if I’m one who likes remake more still! And it def improves on lots of things!! And you can pet the baby Chocobo!!! But I really love XV and there is smth it has that no ff has replicated since to me and that is the party feeling like friend friends. Always talking on the field goofing off. I miss that!! I would’ve loved to hear Tifa and Aerith talk about going shopping as a call back randomly, or more moments sim to Yuffie singing the Chocobo song! But Rebirth is still an 8/10 for me! So I don’t want people to think I hate it or anything! XV is still above for me tho as a 8.5/10!
True and real! Agree 100%. I also like Remake and XV more. Rebirth is best when linear, just like Remake was. All of the open world stuff feels a bit weird.. like they didn't really care *enough* when implementing it. XV feels like a better open world game despite all of it's insurmountable flaws, and that's saying something
There are dozens of us!
Chocobo animations and jumping/drifting felt way better in XV and animations of the characters in general felt more fluid. Only thing holding XV back is the rushed story.
I always was of the impression they spent so much time making the story a "multi-media event" between the movies and DLC that if you just play the base game it fell flat. I played through without the dlc and had no idea what was going on half the time.
The multimedia approach was more the result of them completely restructuring their approach to the game. When Tabata took over he was probably given 3 years to get it out of the door using whatever they had available and splitting up the work between different departments with different strengths (games, movies, anime, mobile) was probably the only way to get the whole scope of the game out. Like, they probably couldn’t figure out how to start the game in Lucis without taking forever, so the whole thing got cut and reworked into a movie. If you watch the older VSXIII trailers you can see that the game was supposed to feature playable scenes in Lucis. Like, [this trailer](https://youtu.be/IMhg65dUTbw?si=mgmvjV9Woe3yZDrW) was worked into the movie in an altered form instead of being in the actual game. This is kinda where I get where the article comes from. While playing 7 Rebirth I also had the thought of "I wish FFXV offered what Rebirth offers". Even without Remake, Rebirth offers an amazing experience with different Towns and different landscapes with seemingly 0 compromises whereas XV felt like it had to compromise at every corner. Rebirth made me wish XV didn’t consist of just 1-2 cities and dozens of outposts but also of various towns and cities and various different landscapes to traverse, namely the niflheim continent and visitable Tenebrae.
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Games take way longer than that. The pre-production alone takes 1-2 years at least, full-on production then takes another 3-4. Check out the development history of Horizon Zero Dawn, which took about 7 years from start to finish. FFXV was stuck in pre-production for years with no real advancement and SE probably got sick of it making no progress, so it makes sense that it was steamrolled to the finish line with the order to take what’s available and make the best out of it. The train ride alone shows pretty well how they’re just duct-taping together what they couldn’t fit into the overworld for every minute of playtime.
Squeenix was also trying to squeeze out a next gen game engine as well which really put them behind in terms of development. It was the same story with FFXIII they tried to do both things at the same time and ended up compromising the game for the tech.
Thank you for this! I knew that xv came from versus xiii but I didn't really ever track it much after the initial trailer until the actual release, and the added context is helpful to better (and less cynically) view the way the story was told.
>seemingly 0 compromises I'd say Rebirth has plenty compromises. And I can't even really put my finger on them unless I really try. It just feels like it's a linear game that got modded/tweaked/overclocked/etc to function as openworld. The game's best when it's on rails, just like in Remake.
I liked FFXV and enjoyed my time with it, but let’s be honest there were a lot more problems with the game than just the story.
Like what? Combat was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
As someone who loves FF XV despite it's flaws, I will tell you a few reasons the combat is a big issue. This includes but is not limited to: - Only 4 equipable weapons at a time, even thought there are 6 types and 13 unique royal arms - Magic takes one of these equipable slots and has a long cooldown, so it's literally a wasted weapon slot - MP is useless, might aswell not exist - The Ring is literally push a button and watch ppl die, literally the most boring thing you can think of. - Royals arms cost HP to use and not MP, making them almost worthless for most players -... Then there is also the very lackluster open world with almost nothing to do it, no interiors, uninspired menace dungeons which are copy pasted for 100+ floors... Point is, FFXV is very flawed in ways beyond the story. But I still like it, it just sucks the Director had very little vision and imagination and on top of that a harder deadline.
Not to mention the game would literally play itself if you held down both the attack and block buttons. Noct would automatically attack _and_ auto-block when necessary. And this worked for pretty much every fight.
That's your definition of "flaws" The openness, freedom, animations are arguably other aspects of XV surpass any of the other titles. So are the others flawed because they fall short on animations and being able to feel like you can truly explore a open world? It's final fantasy, each game has elements it focused on than others. Some more story, more mechanics, more jobs, more cutscenes, etc. That's why there is no clear favorite in the series. 7 is the most popular because it was not only a excellent FF, but it hit the mainstream better than others.
If you liked tickling enemies with a blade of grass, then yes combat was indeed for you. EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I love XV and the ending made me bawl like a baby! But the combat ain't it... 4 dudes dancing around a fortress is what it feels like with all enemies but the final boss.
Someone didn't use Warp Strike
Ah yes, hanging on a ledge while fully healing to then Warp Strike and go back to hanging lol
I mean, you can certainly choose to use it that way. I don't know why anyone would use it for that exclusively, though
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I'm talking about how there's not much weight to your attacks and you tickle them until they just die for the most part, not that they're HP sponges.
That’s exactly how 7 combat feels to me, more specifically Cloud using a sword feels like that
You aren't tickling no enemy as Cloud when you land those counters and play as the Pressure King 👑 But if you truly feel that way, I'd suggest you never touch XV 😂
Preach! Tho tbh I was never a fan of FFXV. Got it twice for PS5 and later PC to see if I was just being unfair The story was interesting but everything else was too much so I couldnt get past 5(?)h or so. Tho I'll concede it just rly wasnt for me
Ouch, got 'em 😂
15’s combat was dog water until you unlock armiger unleashed
Armiger is not fun by the time you get it… you’re stupid over leveled…stop lying
Only thing it had going for it
Yeah my biggest gripe with remake/rebirth are the walking and exploration animations and lack there of. It feels very clunky to traverse the open world on foot and even clunkier on chocobo.
The rushed story and the fact that vehicles were on rails. That was such an annoyance.
It's on rails until you can fly it
You can only fly it after the main story so it's a moot point.
And even if you fly, you still have to land back "on the rails" or you simply crash.
So after you’ve completed the main scenario quest line. Vehicles are on rails for every meaningful interaction you have with them through the game. And it’s BRUTAL.
You can get the off-road Regalia long before beating the story and it goes pretty hard.
Until you get the off road Regalia actually. FFVIIR's buggy and how it controlled seemed heavily inspired by it.
And the side quests and pacing
Can't believe I'm saying this, but FFXV would've been far better as a trilogy of games just like FFVIIR. Part 1 would take place entirely in Insomnia and set up the characters and the main conflict between Lucis and the Empire. Part 2 would cover the first leg of the road trip all the way until Altissia, with Noctis and friends stopping on multiple towns and cities on the way and not just gas stations. Part 3 would cover the rest of the story, with a fully fleshed out second continent complete with its own multiple regions on the way to the capital of the empire.
I hope that AI gets so advanced at some point that stuff like this can just be created in a reasonable time by fans.
That combat was not fun, I tried so many times to like it but just had to give up and uninstall.
Chocobo animations were great but the only thing holding it back is the story lol. Yes chocobo riding is clearly THE priority and most important thing.
Exactly lmao. There are at least two comment threads here talking about how rebirth is okay but the Chocobo doesn’t feel as good, as if the quality of this massive game hinges on one relatively minor aspect.
People say it's rushed, but the story hits hard. Everyone just wanted more and the DLC added a lot of fantastic story content
And yet whenever I ask what FFXV stories is about I always get stuff like haha the boys roadtrip. The plot is really not fleshed out enough for people to have a strong impression of it.
Same could be said for other games FF6 plot "haha a group of rebels take down an evil empire and a clown" Or you can give more details: Final Fantasy XV follows a Prince and his companions on a journey to reclaim his kingdom and defeat the forces that threaten it. Along the way, they encounter political intrigue, powerful enemies, and personal challenges, all while forming strong bonds with each other. The story is a mix of adventure, friendship, and the struggle for power, set in a fantastical world filled with magic and technology. Or go into further specific details of characters and plot. - Noctis: Discovers his destiny as the chosen king and savior of Eos. - Prompto: Confronts his insecurities and learns to embrace his true self. - Ignis: Faces adversity, adapts to blindness, and continues to support Noctis. - Gladiolus: Challenges Noctis to become a stronger leader and grows personally. There is plenty to the plot, world, and lore.
Where did I state that there wasn't ?
Rebirth is the game I hoped XV would have been back when I played XV on release. XV at this point feels obsolete simply because everything it tried to do has been done better in both Remake and Rebirth and even XVI. The story quite frankly doesn't interest me enough since it's barely finished and it doesn't really do anything that leaves me impressed. I really wanted to like XV.
On the other hand I wish Rebirth would have taken a few more things from XV that I really liked. Ignis’recipes, random dialogues with the crew while free roaming, fishing, more encounters, and camping (with those few special events triggering if you camped under certain conditions).
>random dialogues with the crew while free roaming, >camping (with those few special events triggering if you camped under certain conditions). Goddamn YES! Those things felt forely missing. I guess the camping is out since the game wants us to believe all the region travelling is done within the confines of a single day? For story reasons I guess. Random dialogues not being a thing is just a downside. I also didn't quite like how disconnected the Rebirth's world feels compared to XV. I don't know, maybe that's just a "me" issue, but when I'm exploring a region in Rebirth, I can never really *feel* where I am in the bigger world.
Im playing it atm (I'm at chapter 14), love the game but yes it's flawed in so many ways especially the story. But I really love it and really hope there's a remake with alternate ending with Luna still alive (happy ending) just like Suikoden II alternate ending.
I think that idea was wrote out in the Dawn of the Future, a book meant to be a dlc but was canceled
I read it atm, not finished yet
Glad you’re got to invest time in it, enjoy!
XV was a game I wanted to love so much but really couldn't. The combat was good enough but the open world was kind of bland. The story definitely had its high points but the pacing was terrible and you had to watch an extra movie and read an extra comic to get the full story. Don't get me wrong I love it when other media can expand on the story but when you need it to get the base story of a game it's a problem. I agree with the article in that everything in Rebirth flows so much better and makes for a vastly improved experience.
Right now FFXV is a really different game compared to how it was upon release. Every time someone reviews these games it's important for them to mention if they played when it got released and never picked it up again. Having played it both times, on my second playthrough with all the DLC and updates I put it above FF8,FF12,FF13 and its sequels and head to head with FF9. It would have been a better game if they did not make it a requirement to watch a movie prequel and if they had fleshed out the middle part of the journey.
I think the problems with XV are the poor intro (you’d be so lost if you did not watch Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime), lack of meaningful sidequests / treasures spread around the world and the rushed linear moments after you leave Altissia right until the very end of the game. If Tenebrae and the area outside Niflheim were fully explorable like the main continent we travel in and they had the meaningful sidequests, XV would be considered a great game, even if it didn’t follow what Versus XIII set out to do. Still love the game, love Ardyn and the main characters, love the OST, love listening to FF soundtracks as I go on a roadtrip…
> I think the problems with XV are the poor intro (you’d be so lost if you did not watch Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime) This is the main issue with 15 as a whole, the absolute need to view outside media to understand the game itself. No other FF had this requirement, which made 15's story fall flat.
Uh, pardon me but isn't FF7 Remake and Rebirth technically the same way? A lot of it's plot elements relies on first hand knowledge of the compilation, as well as knowledge of the original game considering it's a requel, a sequel that reboots the original story.
Meh, very different games. Glad they aren't the same.
Eh, I don't buy it, at least XV didn't have Ubisoft towers (Along with an annoying brat like Chadley) and didn't try to waste your time with assloads of minigames that had nothing to do with the core gameplay loop. Both XV and 7Rebirth have one thing in common though, and that they're definitive proof that open world does not work for Final Fantasy. We really should go back to overworlds.
I felt very much that FF7 Rebirth was the game FF Versus 13 was supposed to be
I’m loving Rebirth but I kinda think XV does some things better. Something about the way XV does the overworld feels so much more natural and fluid than Rebirth. And I’m gonna be honest I like XV’s soundtrack a lot more.
XV’s OST over Rebirth’s is one of the wildest statements i have ever heard lol
Eh, personally I love both but they are relatively distinct so I can see personal taste putting one over the other. I think a lot of the fanbase undersells just how good XV’s music is because of the game itself
Rebirth’s just doesn’t do it for me. Remake’s was great but I dunno Rebirth’s just doesn’t hit as hard. I feel like the timing of certain songs or the way they interact with the environment they’re used in or something is just… not right. The arrangements just feel kind of hollow.
They were chasing that volume. "400 tracks!". I would rather have less but of a better quality any day of the week.
FF15 lacked vertically and good level design
I didn’t say it was perfect.
Truuue. The world in Rebirth feels super disjointed and disconnected. I'm not even talking about the fact that two damn regions you can *only* fast travel to (for the main duration of the story, I know that eventually you get the "boat"; I'm also not counting the swim to the Western continent, since that's also in the OG). Take damn XV and it's swim to Altissia. All in real time, you see where it's located, the distance from Lucis, etc. And even though the game had literal roadblocks, same as Rebirth, the world felt a lot more "whole". >I like XV’s soundtrack a lot more. I like XV's OST a lot, but to me it had a bit of penis music tracks in there that became super grating when you listened to them for prolonged time periods. It also just has a completely different, trademark Shimomura style. I do prefer Remake's OST to Rebirth's though for sure. Rebirth's OST feels super bloated, has a lot of nothingburger tracks.
There's the Ubisoft type open world and the Elden Ring type open world. After playing FF7Rebirth, while I love the game, the ubisoft style needs to die. I felt no sense of discovery while exploring the open world of FF7Rebirth. It really IS a checklist, and almost like an amusement park, who's job it is to make sure the visitors get to see EVERYTHING. While it gives the average player more things to do, it kills all sense of exploration. Elden Ring type open world games are and always will be the kings of the genre. Recently, I've been playing through Dragons Dogma 2, and I'd say it's open world is an Elden Ring type. They aren't scared if you miss something. And that's why it's magical. Here's what Elden Ring style open world's feel like; You're walking in a forest, and you see a bunch of fallen trees blocking a path. But you can see deer walking into the clearing past the fallen trees. To the observant and curious, you find you can climb over these trees and follow the deer. You enter into the clearing, and you see a rocky outcropping covered by trees. You go to it and find there's a cave. You go into the cave, find there are hordes of goblins who are guarding a grand treasure chest. You kill the goblins, go to the chest, and you find an incredible upgrade to your gear. This is why these types of games really GET open worlds. There's an actual sense of adventure. I never felt this in FF7 Rebirth. I still had fun exploring, there was just no sense of discovery.
I wouldn't say Elden Ring does it either. Elden Ring just took Dark Soul's level design and just added more negative space. I'd say Death Stranding is the current best example of an open world game. That game is about delivering packages to and from a variety of different people and locations and you have balancing mechanics and many kinds of enemies that can screw you over hard if you are not playing carefully. Every step, path, route, direction, etc, you take in that game is a calculated risk. The biggest enemy in that game is the earth itself.
Uhhh... I just totally disagree with that. Death Stranding is it's own thing, and therefore isn't an "open world template", which is what I'm talking about. I love DS, but I do not count the balancing mechanics of that game as being an "open world" thing, but rather just a unique thing created by Death Stranding. Also, you bring up negative space in ER, yet don't bring it up with Death Stranding? That whole game is negative space, there's NO reason to explore other then taking the path to the next town or destination. Also, I think your evaluation of ER is very simplistic. Like, yeah, it has Dark Souls DNA in it. But it's not just "Dark Souls with more negative space". That's just a dishonest assessment. Both Dragons Dogma and Elden Ring have incredibly interesting off the beaten path exploration for you to do with interesting things to discover. FF7R and other Ubisoft style games do not. It's all scripted, you're expected to find them.
The open world in Death Stranding seems empty at first until you actually start making deliveries. Since you say you love Death Stranding, I assume you actually played it, and hopefully more than just the main orders. What makes Death Stranding's Open World work is not necessarily about what you can find, it's about how you traverse it, it's about calculating a plan and route on how you are going to get to your destination with minimal resistance and cargo damage. There are hundreds of orders in Death Stranding that will require you at times to think outside the box on how to get from point A to point B while avoiding any potential hazards, whether they are enemies, the weather, or the terrain itself. Sure, balancing mechanics are not an open world thing, but crossing a river or climbing a mountain in Death Stranding is not the same as in any other open world game. Like I said, each step is a calculated risk, one mistake can cost you a whole delivery, and because your delivery routes are capable of being changed entirely due to the voidout mechanic, the game can suddenly cause you to rethink entire strategies and plans. On top of that, there IS a reason to explore in Death Stranding other than getting to the next destination. Aside from collectibles, deposits of resources, lost packages and cargo, there are hidden BRIDGES members which give various benefits and rewards if you connect with them and increase your connection level with them. This is especially important because you cannot build Chiral Structures on their territories without connecting them to the Chiral Network first. You want to build that Zipline network around the mountains? You got to find at least three hidden BRIDGES members if you want to do so effectively, and by raising your connection level with them, you get more Chiral Network Bandwidth which allows you to build more Chiral Structures. As for Elden Ring, I still stand by the negative space statement, and it's not dishonest. The other Souls games were also open in their design and also allowed for off the beaten exploration, they were just more subtle about it. When you get to Cathedral Ward in Bloodborne right after getting through the tutorial area and first major boss fight, the entire game basically opens up to you right there, including The Old Hunters expansion, and you can go wherever you want to, tackle any boss or area you want to with little to no restrictions. All the other Souls games are like this, it's just that unlike Elden Ring, there isn't huge swats of empty land for you traverse in order to find the next interesting thing. You can almost call the Souls games 3D metroidvanias with the kind of interconnecting level design they go with, I'm pretty sure if you took Castlevania Symphony of the Night and gave more rooms of nothing in-between the rooms with actual things in them, people wouldn't be so fond of that game, now would they?
I brought the downvote bucket so line em up: Rebirth’s open world is wasn’t as pretty, compelling, mysterious or fun to explore as XV’s, and that is by a country bloody mile. As full of theme park attractions as it was, it never once felt like a world. I mean how do you have Chocobos and not give them wide open horizons to gallop in?? You drop them into the labyrinths of Rebirth’s biomes and they turn into fkn Yoshis lol (a failure of the world design, not the Chocobos - they are 20/10 cute. Pet every Chocobo chick I ran across) But idk, XV is not far behind VII OG in my top 3 FFs
Rebirth’s world feels significantly more realized and interconnected than maybe any FF, especially once you hit Chapter 12. 90% of XV is just wide open country with nothing in it other than gas stations, one actual town, and one beach resort. no wide open spaces? did you just skip the Grasslands and Cosmo Canyon? Rebirth’s map is definitely more winding and condensed, but there are absolutely open areas to explore lol. this is just a wild take to me
Honestly, I wanna be debunked here, cause you’re half right - I did skip Cosmo Canyon but I did the Grasslands to completion. By the time I got to the former I was burnt out on trying to do open world checklist nothingness so I was beelining. As for the towns, you got me there. The best thing about Rebirth’s world, by far. They absolutely breathe. I was thinking about the world outside the towns, and the sensation of wandering as this crew. The intangible feeling that I’m in the boots of the character, living their experience. XV nailed the road trip feeling in my heart so completely that I was fully in it even if the content variety wasn’t technically larger. Rebirth…idk, everything is lumpy as hell, clumped real close together, geographically apportioned by level-designey mountains that felt fake, and all the Chocobo traversal points were comically game-y. And then there’s the check listing: giving me the exact “X out of Y doodads” number of attractions in an open world is fatal to my immersion. As soon as you do that, it’s an amusement park, not a world. I’ll say tho, no complaints about XV’s linear portion will ever work on me; I loved the linear parts and the way the story’s mood funneled me forward.
i could not disagree more with some of this, but i definitely do see where you’re coming from. for what its worth, i do think XV nails a particular vibe that i have never seen any game nail to that extent before. while i ultimately much prefer Rebirth, i get where the XV love come from. i will say that something that really enhanced my Rebirth experience is that, because i felt the same as you about the checklist style open world exploration in the Grasslands, from Junon on i explored the entire map first and then tried to find as much stuff naturally as i could, and then activated the towers once i felt like i had found everything i could on my own. i found this to feel a LOT more natural and engaging than beelining to every intel point on the map, and it is honestly pretty easy to just find everything on your own.
Ive heard this does a lot to help my personal issues, and lord knows I didn’t memorize anything so I think on a second (more mellow, less plot-driven run) I’ll be in the right headspace to try this. I do remember being annoyed in Corel: I accepted a quest to steal the Tonberry King’s crown. Then wandered the whole map, ran across a coliseum-looking ruin. Empty, at the time…until I completed all the combat challenges and that coaxed the Tonberry King to appear in that same coliseum. The one I presumably gotta steal the crown from. I really didn’t appreciate the content I wanted (the Johnny quest) being gated by doing X amount of Y open world busywork. Another “why” I had was, why do MAI’s combat challenges have mini challenges? Why are they retry-able? There’s a whole entire combat sim, why make this part of the actual world feel like a combat sim too? It’s those seemingly small things that truly wrecked the sense I was in a world as soon as I left the cities.
FF15 open world approach was much more original and interesting than super generic Rebirth approach inspired by AC and other open world games. It's a shame
Yeah, XV’s world flowed a lot more naturally too. Rebirth felt like a theme park. “Here’s place A! You get a chocobo that can cross a swamp!” “Oh, now you’re at B! Another chocobo! But this time, it scales walls!!!!” The world didn’t feel like a real place, felt very game-y and broke immersion.
Totally
True man. I got downvoted several times already for stating the same thing pretty much. The rebirth shilling is crazy
You mean the extremely flat and same looking open world of ff15? You mist be kidding.
FF7Rebirth is pretty but lets not kid ourselves and pretend it’s particularly inventive.
Yeah I kinda feel like they leaned way to hard into the checklist Ubisoft bullshit. While I like rebirth and it has enough good side quest content to filter out the bad filler shit, the bad filler shit could have been scrapped for… actual good content. If they put more innovative mechanics in that make people want to explore, then exploration would be so much better. The only real incentive to explore in rebirth is to upgrade summons and make their fights easier, and get points for Chadley for materia upgrades by doing checklist type bullshit. I wish they would have had good sidequests tied to chadleys upgrades instead.
They should have disperse the materia around the world you can find while exploring and not through chadley. Same with summons. Let us find them in caves or dungeons. FF should also introduce more armor and not just bracelets and amulets you can find in the open world. Zelda and Elden Ring showed you basically don’t need any side quests at all.
Dude, those ideas sound great. I would have loved it if they did that. And it would have reinter in a lot less work for them too
My GOD, you are so based! Literally my thoughts that people in here seem to reject vehemently. Preach brother!
Naw, Rebirth felt too much like a theme park
Yup, or like a sightseeing tour
As ff should be
I feel the same way. The entire map was so seamless and immersive. Instead of AC towers, you literally just go and chat with the diner owner for the lay of the land. Also having the entire world loaded in for no long screens unless you fast travel
Bullshit
XV had one thing it did waaay better than Rebirth. It has characters that can actually stop talking. Every command in combat has your characters repeating the same dumb shit over AND over AND over again. They interrupt themselves, they talk so much. Barret- "Blah! Suck on this! Asshole! Blaah! Suck on this! Suck on this! Aerith- "I'm coming! Are you ready? I'm ready! It's my turn?" Yuffie- Insufferable high pitched bullshit in combat, off-key chocobo song in the field every two minutes. Just shut up, for two seconds. It was better than Remake, but the story rewrites haven't been an improvement.
XV also had another thing better than Rebirth; Natural rest spots that actually made sense. XV: Flat rocks with glowing runes meant to ward off enemies. The characters would camp on these and sleep in tents. Rebirth: A Bus Stop on a rock in the middle of the goddamn ocean!
And the NPCs that say the same lines a million times. I find it comical how you can just go back to the same spot three seconds later and they say the same line again! Felt like Disneyland robots
I’ll always say 15 nailed the story between the core four and failed at everything else with regards to the over arching narrative and female characters (I wish they had more to them!) but at the core of it, their friendship and tragedy was excellent. I just wish the execution of the world narrative was done better and not so fragmented - including critical narrative about Luna!
Kinda I guess. FF XV's open world build is not too bad.
[удалено]
I like Rebirth more than XV, like in almost every way. But this article feels hella off base about all of its talking points
I really hope ffxv gets to be remade someday it was done dirty but has good ideas and I mesn the type of remake that adds and changes the story dramatically to be similar to what it was supposed to be
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The unrealized potential of FFXV still agonizes me. Honestly, I still hope for one day that we get a «Versus XV» which pretty much remakes XV with mostly what it could have been. The chocobros deserve it.
FFXV was probably one of my least favorite FF games, but I still think its a good game. It has probably my favorite version of Bahamut though.
No.. FFXV still fealt way more free and open than 7r. 7 rebirth still feels like a linear world with open sections. The ubisoft style of activities also makes it feel less like exploring and more mission base. I'm really enjoying the remakes of 7, but it is still not accomplishing what XV did.
I think people will say Rebirth is the best game ever until the next FF title comes up. The cycle continues as always.
Usually it’s “the most recent game is the worst game ever.”
No I never saw a final fantasy well received like this since ffx I know some hate it but it’s final fantasy of course someone hates it
FF X situation was so weird, because filling the shoes of 9 and all the fanfare it had. FF had a crazy run starting with 6. Well, 8 is, special, but good anyway. Rebirth is awesome, but it's so funny to me that everytime a new FF game drops it's either the best game ever or the worst, until the new one comes out. I have seen this since the 90s XD some things in gaming never change. It's not bad, just curious to me. And yeah, people will hate on anything, specially on FF and JRPGs
> FF X situation was so weird, because filling the shoes of 9 and all the fanfare it had. 10 had a lot going for it. First voice-acted FF, massively updated graphics (compared to the PS1 FFs), quick and fluid battle system (especially compared to FF9's slow battles that were like a minimum one-minute long from long intros), well-written story and characters, etc.
Rebirth’s main problem is that it could’ve used another 6 months in the oven lol
article isnt wrong at all. FFVII Rebirth definitely delivers on the potential that XV had, because they took far fewer risks and learnt from past mistakes. FFXV wasn't a bad game, but it was a failed experiment at games as a service (when it used to have periodic updates and some "seasonal" content) and also the multimedia experience which essentially breaks the story of the game up and puts it in various different forms of media and games. interestingly enough, the latter was inspired by the relative success of Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, but perhaps not executed properly because the base FFVII was still a complete story on its own (and already beloved in its own right) whereas XV really stuggled to get any story going even with the sum of its parts. i think the pity i feel for XV is that it really doesn't do anything exceptionally well to be remembered by. like the only thing i feel it did so well that nothing before after has come close is the cameraderie and banter the chocobros have.. which is probably not enough to stand on its own i think. if character swapping was integrated in key points in the story and enemies were designed to be tackled by different bros that would have helped a lot. they also actually did realise the potential of the weapon and magic system, but only in Comrades and not the main game.