bigsocrates

@robinpersaud: I don't think it's a cable because that's not something that can usually be fixed by just rebooting. It's more likely that there's some kind of weird incompatibility between the Xbox and my TV but I don't really understand what that would be because it never has issues when I'm using it (only when I first turn it on) and 90%+ of the time shutting it down and turning it back on it's fine.

@efesell: They claimed to be making an action RPG. Like a lot of action RPGs that have both action and RPG elements (like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which famously had God of War inspired combat but also a lot of RPG elements.) But the actual problem I have with the game, if you read what I wrote, is not that the marketing was misleading (which happens a lot, and it was in this case) but that they put a bunch of bad mechanics in the game to support the marketing so the game has a lot of bad mechanics.

If they had just said "yeah this is an action RPG" but had made a pure action game I would be more forgiving. But instead they made an action game but put in a bunch of bad mechanics to support it being an RPG (which they clearly felt they needed for a mainline Final Fantasy game) so you end up with a game that has a bunch of bad stuff in it like consistently disappointing loot and combat rewards, terrible crafting, and an actual progression system (the AP system) that has way too much redundant or uninteresting stuff in it.

They also made a game that's way too long to support the lack of variety in a combat system that doesn't actually evolve much beyond the first few hours.

The problem here is that Square clearly had an idea of what mainline Final Fantasy has to be (RPG elements, a 40+ hour campaign) and the stuff they put in to try and meet that expectation is all terrible,

It's not so much the "lie" as the half-baked attempt to justify it that drags the game down from "really good" to "sometimes good but very inconsistent."

For the last six months or so I've had intermittent issues when waking my Xbox Series X from sleep (I have it set to full shut down power saver mode.) For some reason about 5-10% of the time I get one of two errors. Either the video is super low res and stretched out, like a 4:3 480p picture stretched to 4K widescreen or the console has no sound. Both issues can be fixed by going into settings and doing a restart of the console (not a factory reset, just a normal restart.) I have no idea what causes it though it's obviously a software issue of some kind since restarting fixes it, but it's defintiely annoying. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this.

ITT a bunch of people who have apparently neither played the game nor read what was actually posted arguing against strawmen pet peeve arguments that were never made.

Nobody said that the game had issues because it wasn't "traditional" Final Fantasy. The term "traditional" was used only in a neutral sense to say that the game doesn't have traditional RPG mechanics...which is ine.

The problem, once again, is that Square included a bunch of undercooked, unbalanced, or even flat out fake mechanics so that they could market this as an action RPG instead of the action game it actually is.

The player stats in this game outside attack, defense, and HP if you count that as a stat are more or less fake. They don't do anything other than slightly influene the real stats and there's no way to affect them.

Party composition more or less does not matter even though the game goes out of its way to put a list of party members on every save slot and does some other stuff.

This feels like an action game dressed up in RPG costume jewelry for marketing purposes.

If Square just said "this is an action game" or built it without these bad mechanics (so I wasn't reflexively going out of my way to look for hidden loot only to be disappointed by what I found consistently) I would have a different view on the game. I don't care about Final Fantasy traditions but I do care when a game has a bunch of very bad mechanics inserted for marketing purposes.

@zombiepie: I find this kind of accusation that by criticizing how a game fits into the franchise you are "throwing your lot in with a toxic festering ne'er do wells*" to be more or less libel. Just a completely out of control touchy fanboy whine that does nothing to engage with the actual arguments presented.

Squaresoft is selling this game as a mainline RPG and as I painstakingly explained every single RPG mechanic in the game is poorly implemented and borderline worthless.

That's a problem.

From a story/game structure perspective it's...mostly fine, there are things to argue about and critique, and from a gameplay perspective it's...boring but respectable (not nearly enough variation in the abilities) but the RPG mechanics all feel crammed in by people who didn't want them there, none of them matter, and every single one of them feels like it was mandated by a marketing team.

So why are they there? Because Squaresoft wanted to sell this is an RPG. They didn't want people to see it as the long, linear, action game (with a bunch of open-worldish side quests) that it is. There's no other explanation for why any of this stuff is there when it's all pointless to engage with beyond the mandatory trips to the blacksmith to "upgrade" your gear after every major encounter.

Square brought this upon itself by giving the game a number (it's made lots of non-numbered FF stuff) and selling it as an RPG instead of an action game. And it completely fails mechanically as an RPG. It also totally lacks side activities, which are a staple of not just Final Fantasy RPGs but the majority of big budget JRPGs since the PlayStation era.

Now this doesn't make it a bad game and if you actually read what I wrote, which several people apparently didn't bother to despite feeling the need to respond, you can see I didn't come away bitter or angry just kind of disappointed that the game wasn't what was pitched, and what Square clearly wanted me to think it was. And if criticizing that makes me somehow a "toxic and festing ne'er do well" then I wear that badge proudly because it's better than the alternative of just accepting a bunch of flat out awful mechanics that only exist for marketing purposes.

*Who are apparently toxic and festering because they don't like the direction a game series has gone?

@therealturk: I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with the game feeling old, since I can't think of many games that manage to avoid the "awkward stand around exposition" thing. Even God of War: Ragnarok, which admittedly did put a lot of its story into walk and talks or interesting cut scenes, had a little bit of that sprinkled in. It feels a little mid budget but at least to me it didn't feel archaic, though some elements (like quest design) certainly are.

I do understand where you're coming from. This does feel like it could be a remake of a game from 2013, but on the other hand I feel like game design just hasn't evolved that much since then. I will say that when I was playing it I did keep getting shadows of the first Nier, probably because the environmental designs are similar, so it definitely did remind me of older games. Except there was much more to do in Nier!

I am however 100% on board with you that it feels like they didn't have a coherent vision. Or if they did it was not what they made. So many elements of this game just do not fit together. From the bizarre choices in loot and crafting to weird ways parties work it feels like a lot of the game was added because they felt like they needed it but it doesn't fit together. Yakuza is an excellent example of a series that feels a lot more coherent even when the games have a lot of variety, because each game knows what it wants to be. This game definitely doesn't.

There is a point very late in the game where Clive says "we're trapped here, no way out" to one of his companions. And you're not. At all. You can fast travel wherever you want. Even though the game SOMETIMES locks you out of fast traveling (such as if you complete part of a quest but another thing is going to trigger when you leave that location.) While the game feels polished in some parts it feels totally sloppy and slapdash in others. It's just a weird thing.

@efesell: Perhaps it would be better to say that my criticism is that this game feels like it does not want to be an RPG and all the RPG elements of it are undercooked and often flat out bad. Like it's one thing to argue whether Final Fantasy games need turn based combat (they don't) but it's another to play an "RPG" where loot and crafting rewards are wothless and 95% of the quest rewards are crafting rewards or loot. A lot of this stuff is bad whether or not it says Final Fantasy on the label.

@kainhighwind09: To be fair this game spends a lot of time cutting away from your characters to various political scenes and it takes awhile before you fully understand how the world is set up (though on the travel map you see what country various places are in.)

But to be fair to the game...those political scenes are mostly actually about the characters involved and they pay off in various character moments later on, while the politics are a bit of a red herring.

People keep saying this game is like Game of Thrones and it's not. If you want to see Square's take on Game of Thrones play The Diofield Chronicle, a game that I sort of liked from last year that's actually about the politics and rivalries.

Instead this game uses a Dark Fantasy background (with some Game of Thrones influences) to tell personal stories, which is what the game actually cares about. I'm close to the end and if you look at everything that happens almost none of it is driven by or ultimately about politics. Without getting too spoilery it's all about other stuff. The driving plot threads are about relationships and ideologies, not power struggles between nations, though they make an appearance here and there.

There's a lot to criticize about the story but it's not trying to be Game of Thrones. It's closer to trying to be Final Fantasy in a Game of Thrones world but it's not realy that either.

It's a weird thing and it doesn't entirely work, but not because it's a failed copy.

@iphone_tyler: Welcome. The way it works is that I post a thread when the voting ends and then people can either post about the game with spoiler tags (or just discussing general impressions like if they enjoy the aesthetic or dislike the pacing) until the date or afte the date we talk with no spoiler tags.

The current thread is: https://www.giantbomb.com/dordogne/3030-77896/forums/dordogne-is-the-14th-selection-of-year-2-of-the-uu-1912597/

Anyone who can get today's game (415) from the first screenshot has my respect. I feel like these screenshot selections were much more difficult than most of the recent ones even if you know the game, but I guess some people know this game really really well.