Still Chapter 3, but I'm finally breaking away from sidequests to focus on the main story, especially now that I've most likely shot myself in the foot and am probably over-leveled as hell for the part I'm going into.

Pros:
  • CHOCOBOS! Enough said...Okay more seriously, I'm seriously digging the way they were implemented in this game and I love the fact they are more useful than past installments (not counting the MMOs) since they can be used everywhere and the time limit for them is quite generous. Being able to customize them was cool too, especially when you notice the first color palette you unlock are the color schemes for the basic Chocobos you race against in VII.
  • Prompto taking selfies with his Chocobo are adorable.
  • Finally got some better weapon options and really opened up combat.
  • I appreciate the fact that weapons are more standardized and not filled with dumb "increases the Tech bar when evade ground based moves" nonsense from more recent battle systems. I got a Lightning Spear and it does exactly what it says it does and not some arbitrary boon to an overly complicated battle system.
  • I love that character quests have a bit of story to them.
  • While I am way under-leveled for them, I love the Dungeons I've encountered so far. The Mine Shaft one with the low level Goblins and the freaking Lv. 50 Ronin prowling on the bottom floors was pretty cool.
  • Iris is adorable and her little story mission was really cool. She's my favorite NPC so far.
  • I love the way Iris breaks the fourth wall in the menu system since when you open it up, she'll be sneaking a peak at Noctis until she notices the player is watching her and then starts acting like she wasn't just gawking at him.
  • Finally took out that Lv. 30ish mutant monstrosity behind the Hammerhead, which is as satisfying as the first time you take out a Saurion in the Estersands in XII.
  • After what feels like a lifetime of gas stations and silly resort locations, I finally reached an honest to goodness town and it didn't disappoint.
  • I can finally beat some of the Daemons that appear at night.


Cons:
  • I never thought I would say this but the world might be too big. Again, going back to my previous posts, I often feel like too much of the game is just trying to get to the interesting places, and I find my favorite quests tend to be ones that don't require me to go far from the mission giver. I mean thank god for the Chcocobos cause I can't imagine I would have finished half of the quests in Duscae if I didn't have them to shorten the walk. It doesn't help the fast travel system is just as slow.
  • While I love the concept of Mark Hunts, much like FFXIII, XV seems to have failed to understand what made them so interesting in XII. That would be the fact that many of them either had some interesting, non-repetitive, story component to them which often expanded the lore of the world, but XV sadly has very few story based ones and many of them were unique creatures that may look like something you faced a hundred times before but always offered some unique gameplay element that made you really have to think on the fly and learn the ins and outs of the gameplay to finally beat. Instead, XV's is much like XIII's with many creatures just being beefier palette swaps of things you've faced over and over again which can be beaten with the same tactics. My favorite fights tend to always be ones against creatures I've never encountered before, but I assume they'll become the new standard later.
  • The Deadeye quest was so much cooler in the demo than the final game. In fact, despite the amount of fanfare you get for beating it, the fight was completely underwhelming.