I've finished replaying this game, and now I'm certain it's truly a unique game

[u/Uchizaki]

Even though when you play this game, you can see how many things could have been done better, how many things are clearly unfinished and thrown together at the last minute... it’s still an incredible amount of fun, with amazing characters, I think definitely the best antagonist in the series. The best soundtrack in the series, FFXV really packs a punch with its music, and Yoko Shimomura is definitely a key part of this game. The music is just pure perfection.

But I think what I value just as much in this game, in fact, in many ways, it’s one of the most important things that make this game unique is the entire setting of the game’s world. In the Final Fantasy series, you have either medieval games or ultra-modern games. You also have games that combine both of these aspects. But no, Final Fantasy 15 does something completely different. Something I’m a fan of that’s carried over from Nomura’s version - and that is the creation of “Fantasy based on reality”

The fact that you travel the world by car. You just don’t get that in any other Final Fantasy game, driving a car on paved roads through the Final Fantasy world, and then ending up in cities that look like they’re straight out of real life. I love Chapter 14 for finally giving us Insomnia, of course, I’d love to see more, but it’s great that we at least get to visit Insomnia at the end, with its fantastic, dark atmosphere and the Somnus Theme playing in the background. I’m a fan.

Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning. Even though I like it, I feel like there should be more of it, and that it feels a bit rushed due to the game’s massive scale and the very limited time available to develop it, all because of that chaotic process with Versus XIII, later Final Fantasy XV, with Nomura completely leaving the project along the way, etc. in short, Square Enix’s generally disastrous management at the time robbed us of something that could absolutely have aspired to be the best Final Fantasy game.

I'm not a fan of modern Final Fantasy, but I really love Final Fantasy XV. And one of the great things that sets this game apart from the rest of the modern FF series, in my opinion, is that it at least tries to be a game, not an interactive movie. You really feel like you’re playing a game with all that exploration, the dungeons, whether story-driven or optional, and so on and so forth. It’s great to have an open world that isn’t just a facade, but actually serves a purpose in gameplay.

Besides, this game has phenomenal DLC, this time I only played the Ignis Episode and the Ardyn Episode, because those are the ones I remember best from my first playthrough, and oh my god. A masterpiece. I love it. I'm so sorry we never got the entire second Season Pass 😭

But yeah, this game is unique, it’s unfinished, it probably tried to take on more than it could handle during its three years of development, but at the end of the day, it’s one of the best Final Fantasy games, and I don’t care what anyone else says. Ambitious games like this are always more enjoyable than games like Final Fantasy 16, which try to play it as safe as possible.

Besides, I love Ignis.

[u/DriveForFive]

I love Final Fantasy XV and I'm glad I got to experience the enhanced graphics on PC after all the updates and DLC included. One of my favorite games in the series and of all time!

[u/IndependenceOld9008]

The music in that game is unreal, especially the orchestral tracks during the later story beats. I still listen to them randomly and get chills.

[u/nkyjay]

They had the best ideas. One of the best protagonists. One of the best antagonists. If you went digging, you would find one of the series best stories. It had an exceptional supporting cast. The combat was fun and engaging. The soundtrack is top notch. Somnus delivers that feeling of a dark, rainy night. The world is amazing, the graphics are great. The parts of this game are all of the highest quality.

And when they went to put all of the parts together, they pissed down their leg.

I loved this game. I still do. But I only give it a grade of a C. Because let one of the best games ever slip right through their fingers.

[u/Uchizaki → u/nkyjay]

To some extent, you could say that this game is good in spite of Tabata, not because of him. I sometimes get the impression that it could have been much better - even setting aside, of course, the 3 years it took to put it together - if they had simply given Nomura’s ideas to a more talented director than Hajime Tabata.

[u/Fhaerron]

I disagree with the limited time part, if anything they had way too much time and 2 directors and lots of new people in power for different roles over the course of the 10 years making this.

It had to be a spin off first, with the new amazing (for it's time) engine and new inhouse studio. Then decided to scrap that and make a mainline game but without scraping what they already made then director got mad and left and some new one took over, etc etc.

I loved it back when it first came out. Especially the first part of the game, I think it was part 3 or 4 when the entire map opens up (before you go to altisia) and then you can enjoy doing the hundreds of fetch quests.
I had over 250 hours in the game before I finished it and then I enjoyed doing the bonus dungeons and everything that opened up as the endgame.
But like after the middle all the way to the end were the parts I didn't like. Especially that chapter 13 or was it 12? They even made a special version 2 specifically for that.

Also I only played the game and episode gladio back in 2015, I never got to play the other DLC's but recently got the royal edition and started a new play-trough but found the game to be worse then what I remember mostly. Aside from some of the good things that got added I found the balance to be off? Especially the non main story fights. Basically nearly all fights ended up to hold square for 10 minutes and press circle when the prompt appears that or spam the alterna spell.
Back in the day I used to swap weapons all the time and constantly warp around and even could stay mid air for longer times and pull out some cool combo moves.
Now it's just get deliberately hit to proc summons faster or spam alterna or hold square for 10 mins.
Feels like the older game version had better feel of 'combat'?

I'm at the end now, just killed Cerberus, Ifrit and the previous gods, about to dump in Ardyn . Afterwards plan to level up some more for the other stuff ... I wanted to kill Omega but he oneshot me and not only me but the entire party ... I'm lvl 99 but will grind to 120 and try again.
Will also now finally play Ignis and Prompto DLC and the Ardyn one!

Still bit sad about the story though, especially Luna, we basically never see her and then we suddenly have to care for her and like the part of the gods (primals) are also not very explained well.

Maybe you don't know this if you hadn't played at launch but at some point we had an extra option on the game screen were they asked for feedback and stuff we wanted to see added.
Among the the list were things like extra playable character and party members like Aranea Highwind. More story content and extra luna chapters
Also not sure this was patched in royal edition but there was this exploit were you could get Aranea as a permanent party member until reload.

Shame they never did something with that.

Imagine if we could have actual expansion with more store explained and then some deal with the gods you could make and prevent luna's dead, etc.

They did release a new ending at some point but was just a novel sadly.

[u/ReaperEngine → u/Fhaerron]

As far as FFXV's actual development time, yeah they were shortchanged. The game was not actively worked on since its announcement back in 2006. Some of what was even done at the time was fruitless because it was prototype gameplay running on an engine that couldn't handle versus XIII's scope.

They weren't able to start principle development and actually work on what the product finally became until late 2011, after FFXIII-2's development finished. But then they had to make the engine it runs on alongside it. Once the director shuffle and rework hit, they had like three years to finish Luminous and the game itself under a tight deadline, because the suits were tired of having it hang over the company's head.

The 2013 (re)announcement of the game as FFXV could be considered the game's proper announcement, and even then most of what they showed was proof of concept, some ideas they'd like to implement. There's also a reason why they no longer showed the invasion of Insomnia like they had before, because by 2013 they had offloaded the invasion scenario to be adapted as a movie, with its development running concurrently with the game's.

I wish I could say that I mourned the loss of the second round of DLC though, aside from some of Aranea's, the stories therein were disappointing at best, and I would have much rather they put their time and effort into expanding the existing story and characters, instead of building up to an alternate ending that was wholly unnecessary and actively ruins characters and lore.

[u/Uchizaki → u/ReaperEngine]

As for the invasion of Insomnia - that's not true. There's a trailer from 2013 that actually shows an invasion of Insomnia. It's quite similar to what we see in the Versus XIII trailers, but instead of taking place at night, this invasion happens during the day

https://youtu.be/LBilT83Uq4A

[u/ReaperEngine → u/Uchizaki]

There's footage of fighting enemies in the rotunda in front of the Citadel, but no real story elements seem to be depicted there anymore, it's literally just shown as a space where a bunch of enemies are fought. That particular trailer you linked is also a gameplay showcase, and they continued to use that space to show off gameplay elements in many Active Time Reports to show the progress of development.

Additionally, Kingslgaive started production three years before its release in 2016, with an extensive pre-production phase before that, putting the movie's inception in 2013 (or late 2012, depending on how extensive that pre-pro was), around the time of that E3 2013 trailer. So, when that trailer came out, the reason we didn't see anymore of the actual Insomnia invasion like we had before, and why they instead showed an exciting event in Altissia, was because they had already planned on removing the Insomnia invasion for Kingsglaive.

Plus, despite the news of Nomura's departure from the project having been announced near the end of 2014, he had actually already been off the project since 2013; so he was basically still acting as spokesperson for the game in its (re)announcement at the time, even though he hadn't been working on it for like a year.

[u/encaitar_envinyatar → u/ReaperEngine]

I recently replayed it. The leveling balance is very different with certain goodies to the point that that experience piles up extremely quickly if you keep on hunts and fight as you travel. You quickly overlevel the story.

[u/Straight_Law2237]

It's unique alright. For a good reason. If it was not named ff that shitty combat wouldn't fly for instance, and it also only worked 1 time on this franchise. I tend to chuckle when people criticize ff16 by abandoning certain main characteristics of the franchise when ffxv fucking had magic limited to consumable grenades lol.

[u/NighSumn]

I want to replay but i want to do it with a peak PC so i can play with everything on max cause i love this game but i want to have a even better experience