Review: Final Fantasy XV is an epic, but flawed, role-playing game | Metro

Destined to be as divisive as all modern Final Fantasy games, but it’s the story and characters that disappoint more than the capable combat and exploration.

[UCForce]

First mediocre review of FF 15. Well, I'm not surprised. But that doesn't hurt the game reception. I will buy it.

[ShadowKnight]

I'm loving it so far. Even the little things like fishing for food is great

[sdcard4gb]

Ofcourse they are, you are clearly a Zelda fan.

[sdcard4gb]

Ofcourse you will.
Every obedient doggie will.

[never4get]

Final Fantasy XV - not enugh programmers. Is The whole Japan's videogame industries having shortage of programmers?

[mad-dog]

Maybe the only honest review? Game seems very boring and tedious. It's also a crying shame the game has framepacing issues on the Pro. Hopefully they will fix that in the patch mid-december.
I'll wait for player reviews though. Can't trust the big review sites.

[UCForce]

And do you really think every games are perfect ? Even I wasn't surprise by this. Because game got a lot of praise and few negative feedback. Remember when one big gaming site gave Halo 5 a lower score.

Edit : @Below Yes, I aware the game run poorly on Pro, but it's entirely up to developers. More importantly, I think Square Enid will release another patch PS4 Pro. Just like they patched Deus Ex Mankind Divided to improve frame rate issues on Pro.

[Valkron1]

I'm going to wait till it gets patched for PS4 Pro. It's sad but it seems if you want to play on the best system you might have to wait longer than the day one patch to get the best results. Gives me another reason to never preorder again, so that's good :)

[UltraNova]

Valkron1

Yeah same here I got it on Monday and played about 30 mins. I had to stop because pixel shimer and baf framepacing was actually bothering me. I will wait for the pro patch as well.

I thought Sony mandated that all games released after October 2016 would have to have Pro support out of the box?

[andrewsquall]

@Valkron1 "if you want to play on the best system you might have to wait longer than the day one patch to get the best results. Gives me another reason to never preorder again"

Err when it comes to Final Fantasy, it was FFXIII that made the easy decision not to preorder a game in the main series ever again. Its hardly surprising it isn't getting constant critically praising reviews like every main FF game before XIII. That magic and talent is long gone from the series. :(

[mad-dog]

Yeah i think they will patch it. In fact, a big patch is incoming mid december. But the game is out NOW. So the game should be fine NOAW.

[muttsurini]

Yeah your gonna rely at the metacritic user reviews, they're garbage most people are spamming 10 and 0, if i were you buy the game that interest you and play it to know if you like or hate it. Some reviewers are bias to a certain genre of game so i don't trust them.

[mad-dog]

No i'm not even checking those people. Other users like people from here, Neogaf and certain Youtube reviewers i trust. And even then i'll be selective. Metacritic user reviews are retarded most of the time.

[Irishguy95]

Its possible, doubtful however.

FF8 received a 49, its sits on Metacritic
FF10 received a 6/10
The last of us recieved a 6/10

Personal opinion and all that.

[Lovable]

These games I enjoyed and played multiple playthroughs...I am the total opposite of the person who reviewed those games.

[NapalmSanctuary]

Those are not review scores from Metro. They gave TLoU a 9/10 and don't have reviews for FFX or FFVIII. Their score for FFX/X-2 remaster was 7/10.

[sdcard4gb]

The only reasonable comment here.

[bangoskank]

I just finished a 4 hour session and would keep playing if my brain didn't require sleep. Love everything about it so far. Everybody has an opinion, don't let your judgment be manipulated by someone else's personal tastes.

[sdcard4gb]

Having an opinion is useless. What matters is that people who want a proper turn-based Final Fantasy game with a varied cast are not getting it and people who don't give a shit about either do. Opinions have nothing to do with anything.
I have an opinion that the series should not have strayed away from the precedent set by over 14 games in the series and remained within turn-based combat, loyal to itself and people who were loving it the way it is. Yet it did not. In my case having an opinion doesn't change objective reality and such is useless.

[Name Last Name]

Duuude get over the turn based thing!

[mad-dog]

I certainly agree with that.

[Exvalos]

I stopped reading in the very beginning when he said (FF13's strong point was it's intriguing plot and characters.) That statement alone showed this guy has no idea what he is talking about, and wouldn't know what a good story is. I have beaten ff 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, ff tactics and Dirge of Cerberus (if you want to count that) So I have a ton of experience with Final fantasy I can safely say other then Lightning I didn't care for the cast (Vanille was okay I guess) But the story was flat out Trash.

[sdcard4gb]

You made perfect sense until you yourself made a fatal error - calling Vanille okay. I really want to hope you were joking there. Vanille - the most annoying character in the entire game with her constant giggling and retarded dialogue... A okay character... Wow.

[Exvalos]

Her death spell was an absolute beast, helped me obtain most of the ultimate weapons, which I why I liked her

[dillydadally]

Could not agree with you more. She was not only the most annoying character in the game, but in - any - game - ever - to me. I share this guy's opinion: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[alstruck]

I thought she was not that bad. But i played the japanese version so i didn't that find it annoying when see acts like something from an anime. But yes I find that she is not really appealing..

[bangoskank]

All credibility went out the window when you said Vanilla was okay.

[sdcard4gb]

So did for me. Sadly, I realized there is no quests to fulfill, no great and epic superbosses of legend to fight needed to obtain them... You just need to fight a giant AT-AT-like beast from FF VI over and over again and that is that... Compared to X it was just pathetic... Hell, compared even to FF1 it is pathetic - at least in FF1 you had to traverse stupidly hard dungeons and fight impossibly poweful superbosses to get your excaliburs and Masamunes and whatnot... In XIII it's just "stagger that, spam Death, fail, die, repeat"

[chadwarden]

This game doesn't have an intriguing plot and characters either...

[NapalmSanctuary]

The review didn't say that 13 had intriguing plot and characters.

[NapalmSanctuary]

You mean where he said: "Every fan of the series will have a different opinion, but we don’t think many would argue that Final Fantasy XIII’s strongpoint was its intriguing plot and strong characters".

Sarcasm, meaning. Google it.

[dillydadally]

Vanille was literally the worst character in any game of all time. She was the singular reason I could not finish FF13. I'll just leave this here as evidence: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[DragonKnight]

He said FFXIII had an intriguing plot and characters? Did he play FFXIII? Nothing in FFXIII was good but the music, and even then it only had 2 good tracks at best. The plot was so convoluted that SE had to put it into datalogs so you could read it back to TRY understanding it. The game was designed to require as little player interaction as possible, and Motomu Toriyama said that himself.

The characters had so much potential (except for Hope) but it was just not used at all. Like, I wanted to like Snow a lot because his appearance was so similar to Seifer, but they ruined him. If he acted more like Seifer he'd have been the best character in the game. Lightning was Advent Children cloud if he were Trans and liked the colour pink. Vanille was meant to test how far someone can be pushed before they wanted to kill someone, which is why we were given the throw away character of Hope. Fang and Sazh were the only slightly interesting characters in the game.

What the hell did this guy play? It wasn't FFXIII.

[NapalmSanctuary]

Read the review, he said it sarcastically. Its plain as day.

[DragonKnight]

Excerpt from the review.

"Every fan of the series will have a different opinion, but we don’t think many would argue that Final Fantasy XIII’s strongpoint was its intriguing plot and strong characters (and that’s regardless of what you think of Lightning). And while the soon to be remastered Final Fantasy XII is our favourite in terms of gameplay, it was also let down by an undercooked plot and a focus on the wrong characters. Or at least characters that the majority of Western gamers found uninteresting."

Where's the sarcasm? He is dead on about FFXII's focus on the wrong characters but you think he's being sarcastic about FFXIII? Based on what? Your sudden transformation into Charles Xavier?

[KosherNostra]

I stopped reading this comment when you said you stopped reading the review. If you only read things that mirror what you believed going in, then what's the point?

[CrimsonWing69]

Dude a 6? Like an 8 for the flaws makes sense but from I've been playing so far this game is not a 6.

[sdcard4gb]

Sure, it is not. It is clearly a 8.5 or something, I am sure.
But only if you are measuring it as a entirely new IP. As a numbered Final Fantasy game it seems like a travesty of unprecedented, cataclysmic scale.

[overrated44]

Did you sip on some tea and push you glasses up on to your nose before writing "it seems like a travesty of unprecedented, cataclysmic scale"?

[bangoskank]

Come on, man. You must be one of those people who hated FFXII instead of embracing its evolved gameplay. Turn-based gets kind of old after over twenty years. Change and progress is a good thing. If I wasn't half asleep I would've picked up on your sarcasm earlier with the Vanille comment. Carry on.

[bangoskank]

@kalkano

I'd rather warp blade and cast spells in real time than select and action then wait for my character to execute it. Don't get me wrong; I grew up on old school RPG's and am actually playing DD Saga on the side right now but that's because I love the story. The combat is enough to put me to sleep.

[Fist4achin]

I'm in regardless. I still like and support FF!

[sdcard4gb]

A correction, if you will, you are supporting FF XV, not FF. Here.

[JoeDG]

"Opinions are like assholes...everyone has one...."
i am really not happy with the Game ( fighting, spells, Charakters) but common 6..

[sdcard4gb]

A very true statement.
Well, why not 6 ? It IS a travesty after all.

[feraldrgn]

Does this site use 5 or 7 as their "Average"?

[ShadowKnight]

Yes lmao

[josephayal]

terrible game

[sdcard4gb]

No, it is not. As it's own thing it is pretty good.

As a numbered Final Fantasy game...
No, it is not.

[Chexs1990]

I Love the game so far, and i don't know why he hates the chars but i like them. The japanese voices are brilliant, high mode need another patch, but Lite mode is fluent as hell and super pretty ^^

[sonerone]

Metro is at it again

[DA_SHREDDER]

It's better than final fantasy 13, but it is far from being a good Final Fantasy game currently playing the beginning and I have yet to really enjoy anything about the game so far besides the fact that it's nothing like final fantasy 13, thank God

[kaizokuspy]

This is how I feel. I rank this above FF13 series and FF2 and that's about it. I enjoyed all the other titles in the series more including the FF mmo and tactics.

[Derceto]

Saw about 45 mins of this on Twitch and it was a struggle to stay away. People pay to be bored these days? I'm in the wrong business.

[chadwarden]

Apparently any negative review of this game is wrong and any positive review is correct.

[cash_longfellow]

As I've said for reviews of many great games in the past...there's always 1...lol!

[kaizokuspy]

I agree with a lot of points in the article. I love FF so much and this one disappointed me so much. Graphics and Sound are great, but the combat feels clunky, camera is clumsy at times, either too close or too far. Spells are used like grenades and you have to craft them are irritating alone, but what really pisses me off is you hurt yourself when you cast spells like blizzara. I finished all the hunts in the first zone up to lvl 15, explored all I could explore and I clocked 8 hrs. Which isn't bad, but when I look at my level and I'm only lvl 11 I feel stilted as the majority of quests, hunts, etc male it seem like nothing but fetch quests. Walk here, walk back. A lot of the time spent was just getting to quest then getting back to complwte. I'm rattled, I'm going to keep playing and although it has a lot of final fantasy elements, I just don't enjoy the combat, or level progression. Anyone else feel like this? Although I could understand if I'm in the vocal minority but how I feel about the game right now I agree with this reviews score.