Not going to pay attention to what else has been discussed...

Lets do a quick and final Pros vs. Cons and then I'll elaborate at the end.

Pros:
  • It was better than FFXIII, which was about the only major requirement I needed to be fulfilled from this game. Seven years since that clustersmurf and it still makes my blood boil thinking about how much a waste of time that turd was. I am happy to see that FFXV was a much more fun, expansive, and intimate experience than "rail-movie the game".
  • Gameplay was overall really fun and well designed minus a hiccup here and there.
  • I really enjoyed combat, and that statement is coming from someone who generally never cared for Action-RPG combat and was the one element I was the most concerned about. Switching weapons doesn't have the "weightiness" of the demos which was a nice improvement, and the variety of weapons made combat feel fresh as long as I experimented with the load-out. The greater emphasis on dodging and blocking attacks kept combat interesting and devolving into "hold circle to win" The dual weapons for comrades also helped make them more diversified and helpful in combat, speaking of which...
  • My biggest compliment goes to the treatment of the A.I. comrades who finally hit that sweet spot of not being so dumb that I'm screaming at them for being totally useless and making me wish for the Gambit systems (this would be your KH/FFXIII type of A.I.), but they are also not so overly competent that I have to start wondering why I'm even here (your FFXII/MGS type of A.I.).
  • The Tech system really made the party feel alive and spiced up combat exquisitely by giving me that interactive/cinematic quality to combat that older FFs had and has been missing from the franchise since FFX. It also helped establish a distinction among the party of who they were and where they fell into place on the team.
  • I'm happy the game actually begins open-ended instead of being narrow and then opening up. It may have hurt the pacing in the early sections in terms of story, but since so much of the character bonding moments generally happen during the gameplay moments, as oppose to the story proper, I felt it really helped establish the team rather well, and allowed the world to open up more organically instead of constantly being dragged from place to place and being given the quick rundown of why I should care.
  • I genuinely enjoyed most of the game's locations, even in the few times I felt disappointed when I couldn't explore or learn more about a place. Still, the game does a great job of capturing familiar locations in the real world and twisting them into something more fantastic. From the early Americana Route 66 sections, to Listallum's fantasy Havana, to Altissia being fantasy Venice, to even the wild and scare locals of the Nifelheim Empire. The locations were rarely boring to explore and there is so much content that it's easy to drown in the options.
  • The summons were pretty awesome. While it has the smallest list of available summons in the series, I was happy to see them return to being something impressive after so many years. I don't even mind the fact they are "I win" buttons since summoning them can often be tricky, usually meant you were getting your ass kicked and needed them, and could never be exploited like previous installments.
  • The core four characters really work. I really felt a level of trust and camaraderie among the main four that never felt distant or forced like the previous single player installments. The characters bounce off each other really well and I am thankful that the cast doesn't really rely heavily on appealing to archetypes like most of the series. There is a real sense of them being people and I feel XV might have one of the better playable casts in the series. Ignis and Prompto are easily the two best characters in the game.
  • Barring one important character and one minor character, I really loved most of the female cast. Iris is adorable and spunky but doesn't have the irritating traits of the hyper genki girls often seen in the medium, instead she feels genuine, and how one would think a sixteen year old would feel like. Aranea certainly deserves to be in the same league as Kain and Freya as a memorable and awesome dragoon. They were easily the best side characters. Cindy may have the creepy lech elements going for her but as I did quests for her, I came to really enjoy her more as a character who was much more well thought out than previously imagined. Gentiana was quite the surprise since I didn't think much of her before the game, she has enough quirks and story relevance to make her memorable.
  • Ardyn was a damn good villain, having that nice dual quality of being charming and scene stealing, but also a total ass you wanted to punch in the face when you saw him. I feel he suffers a bit of the same issues as Lord Vayne in XII in terms of his motives not being well presented, but he is easily one of the more memorable villains to come out of the series in awhile.
  • The more "out there" elements like the car and skills worked really well for this game and helped to set it apart from not only other FF games but a few open world ones as well. I didn't mind the fact the car had limited control cause I've seen too many times my terrible video game driving skills ruin the immersion factor for me and I enjoyed the fact it worked really well with the central idea of the game being a Road trip. It definitely hit a certain nostalgia for me, as my family mostly did road trips as vacations; so sitting back, watching the scenery and listening to conversation and good music hit all of my nostalgia buttons. The quirks of the character from their skills was also neat from checking out Prompto's photos, to finding new recipes for Ignis, to Noctis finally breaking from bored attitude to one of excitement when he finally got to fish, and Gladio always insisting on camping. All these elements were great as a means to tell you more about the characters.
  • I loved the fact the game had more interactive moments from the onset like pushing the car, stirring soup, doing foot races, and just in general for exploring and combat. It's not immersion if I'm just sitting there watching cutscenes, make me feel like I'm actually there, that was what the Golden Era of the series did and something I really missed.
  • The ability to explore and discover was also super nice, and I appreciate that I often had to look around every nook and cranny to discover a dungeon, a royal tomb, or some other cool element. Again the open world element of the game really helped to bring back that swashbuckling adventure feel of the early games, before the series devolved into poor and bizarre knock-offs of Hollywood summer blockbusters.
  • Several of the quests in the game are amusing and help to establish a fun cast of minor NPCs. While they get monotonous after awhile, they still do a great job of introducing a fun cast of minor characters who help to bring the various locations and world alive.
  • Soundtrack was pretty good, not great, but it works for what it needed to do, and I'm happy the party had some nice character themes that were actually noticeable for once.
  • Most of the game's mini-games were actually fun, fishing especially brought back pleasant memories of the Breath of Fire series.


Cons:

  • There is a real sense that XV feels like a "catch up" game. Similar to how I felt about DQVIII, there just seems to be a real sense that the design team was seeing what was hot in the gaming market and putting it in. While it certainly has it's charms and eccentricities that can only be offered by a Japanese developer, the game often feels like something you've probably played from many other AAA open world titles on the market. The team probably could have done more to branch out and make themselves feel different from the pack, but they rarely did.
  • The game has one of the same problems I had with Xenoblade Chronicles, which is that there are too many sidequests, and too many of those sidequests are too similar to each other. The game content could have been edited down a bit, and several of the quest lines could have been more impactful had a third to half of their number of quests been removed. It's too easy to get stuck in the sidequest grind like many open world titles and the fact they are just you redoing maybe the same seven things over and over just makes them feel monotonous.
  • While there are some gorgeous enemy designs and I am loving the fact that many of Amano's classic designs were getting the 3D treatment; it just seems like the enemy variety is pretty small considering the size of the game. The "wolf" like creatures were especially jarring since there seemed to be a lot of pallete swap/minor design difference among them.
  • While magic type abilities are usually underwhelming in Action-RPGs compared to good old brute force (Secret of Mana being one of the few exceptions) I was still a bit sad to see so little variety in magic abilities. The three core elements plus Holy, Death, and X-Zone seems really slim picking for an FF game. I get how the system works in the game, but for a world where magic is rare and supposedly powerful, I felt like the game could have done more to show that off. I mean when VI talks about how freaking powerful magic is, the gameplay mechanics back it up. Same with FFX and the summons. There was no reason why we couldn't have gotten Aero, Quake, and Water as Elemancy elements and maybe some more big magic spells from the Ring of Luci like Flare or a team attack with Armigar that is Ultima.
  • The Mark Hunts are still being done poorly. Like I mentioned in the first impressions thread, it lacks what made them cool in FFXII. There is no story component to any of them, and the enemies encountered are mostly just beefier versions of things you've fought (or will fight) a million times anyway. XII's worked because most of the monsters on the list had a story element to them but many of them also offered unique gameplay challenges and would often subvert your expectations with them. They were a series of cool mini-boss battles, not just beefier trash mobs.
  • While I appreciate the more linear nature of the final chapters (you know, the part when you're suppose to be invested and rushing to see what's next) the game has the same issue as Xenogears second disc where all these cool events and places are revealed but you the player are getting the Reader's Digest/ Travel catalog version of it. You get to the lands of Nifelheim and Tenebrae and you get to see so little and the impact is kind of lost on the player. It's sort of the same problem XIII had with making you care about Cocoon, but you have the added disappointment of having these places subtly hyped for you only to find so little of it.
  • So let's just discuss the big pink elephant in the room shall we? The plot doesn't have much going for it. The first half is just a loose series of ill-defined fetch quests and the second half is rushed and lacks satisfaction and clear context. It's not the worst plot in the series, that would be XIII, but it definitely was a bunch of great ideas that fall painfully short of their full potential. Like Crisis Core before it, Tabata finds interesting ways to bring in an emotional impact from all of it, but again, the writing is weak and leaves a bittersweet taste in your mouth due to it.
  • With the exception of Ardyn, the rest of the villainous cast is largely lacking, and the game has a similar issue to XIII where the villains all seem cool on paper but often get removed with little ceremony or fanfare. They are also poorly developed and their motives change off screen in the case of Ravus. It ultimately hurts the overall story and the game lacks the usual catharsis that many of the better villainous ensembles have had to offer. Most fans figured Ardyn was the big bad, but XV didn't have to make it so blatantly obvious by giving him all the screen time while the rest of the villains get the majority of their screen time in Kingsglaive.
  • Speaking of which, Kingsglaive, and to a lesser extent, Brotherhood should have never been made. All of that content should have been in the game proper and I really wish large studios would stop trying to transform all of their projects into multimedia ensembles because it weakens the element by pulling them apart. The early sections of XV could have benefited from having the Fall of Insomnia as a gameplay piece (just drop the Kingsglaive and let Regis and Lunafreya have some more screen-time) and the Brotherhood scenes could have been nice story elements to spruce up the more dry parts of the early chapters. Yes it's easier to get all this content now, but it still doesn't change the fact the main game felt a bit empty by having these events removed, and in the case of Kingsglaive, it had an epic moment over-produced into something that can't really stand on its own and would have worked better as a scaled back experience to kick off the main event proper.
  • Lunafreya is probably not going to win "best female FF character in the series". She has the same issue as Serah in the original XIII, where she's kind of just there in the plot and only after she's gone does the game bother to give you the flashbacks to develop her as something more than just "The Oracle". The Aerith undertones don't help either. The bigger pet peeve I have with her is that I felt the game should have left her relationship with Noctis ambiguous. It would have helped both of them to give the fans less and leave us wondering if they truly loved each other, were just friends, or two people trapped in their duty. The last half of the game ruins the mystery that should have been there and is a wonderful example of when less is more could have really helped.
  • Regis is another character I feel under-performs, and is probably one of the few times I'm going to bother saying that Versus XIII promised us something more with him and XV kind of falters with that promise. He was a character that had great potential from the other media sources but his role in the main game proper feels empty.


So final thoughts on the 15th installment of the series:
Overall, I am quite pleased with XV, it's hardly perfect but I feel anyone going into it thinking it was going to be "the greatest game ever!" was doomed for disappointment. Considering it's very public implosion on the development side, I was expecting a much worse and I feel the game does a good job of taking half baked ideas and making something presentable out of it. Could it have used more time to be better developed? Hell yes, but we the fans were not going to give it anymore, so it's our own fault for rushing the game out once it changed directors, and either way, I still feel like it was always doomed to begin with.

With that said, the core game is still super fun if still trapped with the usual pitfalls of open world design that is starting to feel tired after the over-saturation of the market last gen, yet I still feel that it was some of the best gameplay satisfaction I've gotten out of a numbered entry in ten years, so it at least succeeds as a game. While the narrative falls flat, the core cast make up for it with their frank conversations, small moments and little idiosyncrasies that help make the world feel alive and actually inhabited by real people. In fact a more subdued story and cast was a bit overdue for the franchise, so while it falls short of it's potential, I'm still satisfied with the results.

XV to me feels like one of those games where several years from now, when the raw emotion of it's development history and controversial design choices in the aftermath of Tabata taking over has faded just a bit; fans will finally be able to look back and see this game for what it truly is: a fun if flawed feature we placed too much hope and expectation on. The game is also filled to the brim with so many secrets and shout-outs, it may still be many years before fans uncover everything about it, which is something I always appreciate from my games. For the most part, I would recommend the game to people. To both new and old fans of Final Fantasy.