Clueless Gamer. Conan is RUTHLESS!

https://youtu.be/eXJFbsQBvLw

Posting from phone.

If this game is another FF13 as Conan's segment suggests then 15 really is the final straw in that fantasy.

lol, pushing a car to Vegas...

Eh.... reach here. It's a comedy sketch, take it for what it is.

Conan has hated on a number of games. This probably is the harshest but he is not going to like a JRPG that's for sure. Trying to make it like he is reaching back and making FF13 comparisons is a gigantic stretch.

I get that Clueless Gamer is for the lulz but It's really worrisome that he couldn't make sense of any of it.

I feel like 7 or 6 might be the last time a Final Fantasy game had characters with motivations that were relatable and made sense.

Regardless of his commentary, all of the things I saw in the game as he played it lead me to believe that no one on that game learned any of the lessons I would have wanted them to learn from FFXIII. FFXV will probably be the first main-line, non-MMO FF game I won't buy. I mean come on with those fucking names. Can a character just have one faux-Latin name? They have to have like 3? Remember when there was a main character named Edgar? Or Tidus? You know, human names that real people occasionally have?

@fitzgerald: *cough* FFIX *cough*

Does it really take 72 hours to kill the adamantoise? Because that sounds insane

I saw this earlier and thought it was hilarious, and I like Final Fantasy. Of COURSE he's gonna rip on a JRPG for being slow and boring. The only reason he didn't do the same for the Witcher is because there were boobs.

It's incredible to me that there are people in the comments saying, "Well now I don't think I'll get it." If THIS is the thing that convinces you not to buy this or any game, then I don't know what to tell you.

I gotta say though, the bit at the end with him yelling at the reps is amazing.

Also, the part you don't see here is before that segment played, he talked about how they sent him the game and told him he could say whatever he wanted. Conan told them that he actively dislikes video games and he was probably gonna bash it and the SE reps were totally fine with that.

After watching many of those, you can tell he only likes games that immediately grab his attention. Any game that has a deep plot and a lot of cutscenes and such (as a Final Fantasy game will have) will not grab his attention the way other games he has "reviewed."

For all the fans getting rubbed the wrong way from this bit, there is no need. Clueless Gamer his HEAVILY opinionated and is in no way a measurable way to tell if a game is good or not. I'm still super excited about this game and will get it day one.

I was playing the most recent "Judgment Disc" demo the other day, and one thing that stuck out to me is that while the primary characters all have these typically late-era Final Fantasy character names: Noctis, Gladiolus, Lunafreya, Iedolas, etc., seemingly every single named NPC that you come across has hilariously standard names by comparison: Bob, Dave, etc.

That aside, I did enjoy what I played of it. I like the battle system a lot more than FF13 (which I haven't yet managed to finish), and it seems to strike a pretty good "action RPG" balance. It's a beautiful-looking and sounding game too, so I can only hope that the story ends up being at least somewhat comprehensible.

He would've reacted the exact same to any FF game, or basically any JRPG for that matter. When he played the Witcher he complained about any talking the same way and Wood says the same here. I mean, hey if you don't like what you see that's cool but trying to take this as a real review for people who are into FF is a big stretch.

I wish FF, and most JRPGs, would not start as slow as they do and they can vary with that problem, but I think 15 starting slow wouldn't be the least bit surprising.

Yep I am in the same boat. I LOVED 13 and to a lesser degree 13-2 and even less so Lightning Returns but they have literally showed me nothing that has made me want to even give this game a shot.

Shadow also says hello.

Yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock into Conan. Although I've heard rumblings of other previews from actual game outlets that are ambivalent/less than glowing about the game.

Whatever. Just wait for the reviews and then make your choice.

I love Conan´s and Elijah's looks of pure confusion at the wedding dress part.
From what I've seen of FFXV the combat and the visual style all looks great, but like with most modern JRPG's for me the writing, the characters, the inane plot and just the overall tone puts me off from ever wanting to play it.

"Middle Earth Entourage." Yes!

Conan summed up my thoughts of this game pre-release exactly. To the T.

Man, way more people and websites took this segment as actual critique than I expected. Have they never watched Clueless Gamer before? I mean, the word "Clueless" is in the title. It's just humor with an edge of truth. That's all.

That being said, another funny clip. I tend to enjoy these. Also, it did make me realize how utterly out of place geeky Japanese stuff (anime, JRPGs) is from typical, Western, adult culture nowadays.

It's not like I care about Conan's critique. I care about the game seeming to have a needlessly obtuse story full of jargon that means nothing. I care about the game world being huge, beautiful, and sparsely populated with things worth doing. I care about the devs designing a 72 hour boss battle in the first place. What kind of opulent design ethos do you have to have in order to waste time on a boss 99% of your audience can never beat due to the sheer number of hit points? Those are all red flags.

And it's unfortunate because I think an RPG set in a road trip through a pseudo-US sounds awesome. Some of those towns and road-side shops look pitch-perfect. But the main story stuff looks like it has every element that has repulsed me from modern FF games.

I feel like whatever PR/marketing person was in charge of deciding which segments to show off is probably gonna get a talking to. Or, hell, maybe your average Joe is super interested now and preorders shot up since this aired. Who knows? I'm still excited so who the fuck cares.

This was still hilarious though.

I'm with you on the names, but while I'm with you 95% of the time, this game might be where we have to disagree. Firstly because there was barely any game-playing shown that was relevant to what FFXV actually is (they pushed the car which is literally in the first 2 minutes, talked to a shopkeeper, ran around the area, fought some weird encounter, and saw a couple sidequests). I'd want to know what you were gleaming from the game and what you wanted them to learn from FFXIII before I take any real argumentative stances, however.

For me personally, having played the recent Japanese demo, I'm highly anticipating FFXV. The combat system looks and feels solid, the characters are surprisingly likable, and there seems to be a decent amount of exploration to be had in finding optional dungeons, items, etc.. I'm optimistic on the story concept, but we'll see how they do because this is a Final Fantasy game. My major worries 2 weeks before release are that the game won't have enough to incentivize exploring, the writing and/or story won't be good, and that the sidequests are primarily the MMO style stuff present in the beginning area.

EDIT:

That boss takes doesn't take 72 hours to kill. The director estimated 30 in-game days which translates to however much time. The problem with that is that we don't know what character strength he was using as a metric when he said that, since it was a long time ago. Was it when you first see the boss or endgame?

――やり込み要素としては、トレーラーに出ていたアダマンタイマイとも戦えるとか。これと戦ったら、相当時間が経ちそうですね。

田畑 ゲーム内時間で、30日くらいかかるんじゃないですかね（笑）。頭から尾までキロ単位という巨大な相手で、どこを殴ってもダメージを与えられはしますが、 足踏みだけでやられてしまうかも……という具合に、リアルに戦うことを想定しつつゲームに落とし込むと思います。

-- As a side activity, can we fight the Adamantaimai that appeared in the trailer? If we are able to fight it, it seems like it would take a lot of time.

Tabata: In terms of in-game time, I'm guessing it would take about 30 days to defeat it (laugh). Judging by its length from head to tail and its great mass, you can attack any part of it to deal damage but you might be defeated by its stomp... That's how tough it is but I think this is an enemy that many players will want to battle against.

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201409/22062014.html

@thatpinguino 72 hour boss, you say? There's a challenge for speedrunners.

Is it just me or is the frame rate and the texture pop in's rough or is it just you tube being crappy ?

@babychoochoo said:

I think it's expected by the PR people that Conan will rip on the game regardless, because he generally isn't a gamer (the grey-haired assistant guy is), so Conan has no patience for any of the common tropes and gameplay conventions within video games. There's probably no segment of that game he would've liked. PR people go for the Clueless Gamer spot purely for the exposure, good or bad; they just want more people to know the game exists and is coming out soon.

I was trying to figure this out too, because some of that gameplay footage looked... not good.

@kega: About half of that sounds like things I've heard, half sounds like it needs a citation because it's a bit out there. As I understood it, Versus was a mess the entirety of its existence and there was never all that much work done. Nozue's work was limited to a basic plot progression with no intermediary scenarios. I also heard that the staff of Versus were taken off the project to help finish XIII so how it took away from XIII-2 I don't even know.

That's not to say that FFXV resembles Versus--it clearly doesn't. The game is probably better off this way, though.

Man Tobey Maguire does not age

That tortoise fight length has to be made up, right?

I think the ultimate issue here is trying to showcase an RPG in only a few hours, while jumping around from section to section. For someone that knows nothing about how the game functions or works, I can only assuming that it is jarring.

This does not mean that the game is terrible or amazing, just that Square choose a poor method of PR for their game. Persona and Xenoblade Chronicles would encounter the same problem if they were showcased on Clueless Gamer.

@thatpinguino said:

That's...fine? I'm not trying to defend the game from actual critique, I was merely commenting how ridiculous it is to decide on the merits of the game based on this video. I mean, they showed maybe 60 seconds of actual footage and obviously picked mundane and nonsense scenes to fuel Conan's comedy. I have no idea if the game is going to be good or not or if the story is total inane nonsense, I just mean that it doesn't have anything to do with this video.

@bisonhero: I get that, I've seen every episode of CG. I guess I was just coming at it from the angle of Conan appealing to a very "casual" audience. Being a game with a clearly foreign aesthetic is already gonna be jarring to some, but then a segment of dudes pushing cars, going on camping trips, and then being told there's a boss that takes days to fight would presumably be more of turn off than anything else for said audience compared to if they had a bunch of combat encounters lined up.

I get any exposure is good exposure, but out of everything they could have shown off, I'm just kinda surprised they chose what they did. I would think they would much rather have him rip into a bunch of cool, flashy shit than this. It'd be like them bringing on Uncharted, but only showing the segments with Nathan and whoever else slowly walking around and chatting rather than...ya know, the shooting and traversing the environment that would probably draw more people in. Then again, I'm not in PR so I'm essentially talking out of my ass. Maybe they made the right call. How would I know?

How is the 'expert' in the room so convinced that a battle is going to last 3 days? I mean, it might take an hour tops, but cmon now. I almost feel like he got confused by some bossbattle in FF 11 with the same creature on some rediculous difficulty setting or something?

@vasta_narada: The things I gleamed centered around the jargon and the narrative style. I fell off of XIII largely because I felt very disconnected from the story. The dialog and plot points were melodramatic in a way I could not get behind. Characters would have long, breathless conversations about the true nature of "insert proper noun full of apostrophes" for hours worth of cutscenes. The options were to either skip the whole cutscene or listen to these characters speak for sooooo long. I never thought I'd miss "pressing X to story", but boy did I. In 20 hours the main cast were hardly fleshed out beyond their archetypes and I barely understood what was going on without reading the codex. And I play a lot of these games! I'm down for some breathless melodrama if it's going someplace interesting! Sign me up for Persona 4's musings on the id, ego, and super ego. I love FFIX's musings on the fragility of live. I'm all in on Chrono Trigger's wacky look at causality. Hell, I'm even in for fever dream nightmares like FFVIII and Chrono Cross. But I just can't stand a game that's going to spend 20 hours to set up a conflict that is as shallow as an after-school TV special, but with higher production values and more jargon.

I really don't care about combat system improvements over other FF games because I liked those earlier systems. I'm not picky when it comes to RPG combat. I just need the driving story to earn 40 hours from me. And FFXIII did not do that for the reasons I mentioned above. Unfortunately, from the trailers and the gameplay I've seen, it looks like FFXV won't either.

I share Conan's sentiments. Final Fantasy has never really done it for me, but I understand the huge influence and impact it's had on games.

when he goes in on the developers in the other room i fucking lost it lmao. This was incredible, and i have no idea how squenix let this happen lolol.

I thought it was hilarious. Anyone drawing any meaningful conclusions from these videos is seriously missing the point.

@onemanarmyy: I also immediately thought of that insane endgame stuff in FFXI.

Maybe he was told something by a PR person and misconstrued it. Time consuming bosses in an FF game wouldn't be something new, but 3 real time days is just ridiculous.

@thatpinguino: That's totally fair. XIII was a complete mess of a story through-and-through, and I never bothered to finish that game. I hit Gran Pulse, dicked around there for a while then said "Nope". I can't judge FFXV until after I finish it, but having been in the trenches and following it for a long while, I'm totally down to see what they do with the themes of brotherhood, obligation, and even filial piety that seem to be the driving force behind the game. It will turn into a save-the-world story eventually, I'm sure, but for now I think it has promise and as a person who also plays a ton of JRPGs (and feel like I have similar taste to you), I really hope your concerns turn out to be non-issues.

For what it's worth, I've heard from previews that FFXV is lighter on cutscenes and is more interested in exploring its characters via conversations they have with each other. That seems more like my jam, perhaps yours as well.

@magmamud: Or it could be like the robot-spider fight in FF8 where you're supposed to run away from it, but you can beat the boss in 10 minutes if you really want to. Maybe this is a similar situation, but if you actually wanted to kill the beast it takes 3 days at their level.

My fear with this game is that it will be a big empty open world with an extremely repetitive structure, just like MGS5. This video has done little to dissuade those fears.

Saw it this morning and chuckled quite a bit. Even my friend that's convinced it's already game of the generation had a good laugh.

Don't take it seriously.

I watched some of the new JP demo on twitch and I'm hyped for the game now, used to not be. The Conan segment was funny but no way you could judge the game from it.

..Squareenix prolly won't let Conan review anymore of their games though ^^

@onemanarmyy: Yeah that sounds plausible, and if so I guess that could be kind of neat to have this crazy level and stat difference between you and the boss from the start, but once you level up enough you can beat him in a more reasonable time span.

This is the right attitude to have. I like Final Fantasy and I still got a laugh out of this. People should be able to handle the thing they love being made fun of, it's just video games afterall.

LOL

What an asshole! /s

I expect nothing less from Conan. Really, Final Fantasy is mostly bullshit, bullshit I enjoy, but bullshit nonetheless.

I don't really think this is "ruthless", it's pretty par for the course as far as the Clueless Gamer videos go.

What's even crazier is that game publishers actually PAY Conan for these features. But like others have said, this isn't really the best way to judge the game. I'll wait for reviews or at least lengthy gameplay videos that aren't being interrupted by a comedian in his 50s who doesn't actually play video games. This was a funny video, though, as are most clueless gamer segments.

I haven't wanted to play a Final Fantasy game in a long time, and I'm really hoping that this game is better than everything that came after FFX.

People will either love the game, convince themselves they like it, or hate it. I am willing to bet this game is laughably bad.

I'm guessing you've never watched Conan or played a Final Fantasy game. The game can be unanimously declared the best Final Fantasy game by everyone one who plays it and Conan is going to react to it in the same way.

He didnt even rate the game!

It's hard to believe there are people worried about the quality of this game based on the "Conan O'Brien is bad at video games" comedy segment.

I mean guys...