i know it's an unpopular opinion but i thought 13 was pretty good and in that game while pressing a button so lightning would go attack > attack > attack > attack > attack > on her own wasn't rocket science, the fight system overall was much more intricate than "just hold O the entire time" which is what we have here. i feel like there's zero strategy required for battles in this game, including the boss fights (through level 21).

Oh yeah of the 3 versions of the "you only control the party leader" thing we've gone from like, the complicated AI programming in 12, to the 13 combat system(which I liked! The rest of 13 was **** but I liked the class-switching strategy of it, it was very satisfying to stagger a boss then switch to max damage then switch to healing etc) to...


Mass Effect if you only had melee and grenades? That's what this feels like, your guys are total freelancers unless you tell them to use their special moves. The combat is almost down to a Dynasty Warriors level of just indiscriminate wailing on bad guys.

Dynasty Warriors is an elite game series!

But yea, the combat here is definitely reminding me of it at times.

Installed ready to go. But won't get too deep into this until probably Christmas break. Excited nonetheless. Reading the thread has made me not as nervous about my purchase.

I'm enjoying it so far. Haven't gotten very far. The combat is still a little tricky for me and I haven't totally gotten the lock on mechanics down, but I'm having fun with it.

so i'm probably 6 hours into the game. very mixed feelings.
A lot of the reviews were saying how the relationship between your character and his friends was so well done and really drove the game. I thought this would be cheesy but it works. good balance so far. I like the feel of the game. I dont know if it exactly feels like a FF, but it works.
however...
combat is a complete clust****. Maybe I'll get better, but it seems very poorly thought out. hold circle, switch targets. hit L1 when a bar hills, R2 when HP gets low. Maybe it gets better, but i think its a mess. Magic seems fairly useless.

once you get the Armiger which is pretty much like a limit break from other FFs and the summons it gets more fun, I really like the blade warping thingy

I started the game by ignoring everything but the main mission and was super under-leveled eventually and the magic was really important. I took down a giant level 30 as a level 14 by concocting some crazy elemency and it died in one shot, it was awesome.

I wouldnt say its the best in the series, but from what I've played so far it has a legit spot among the better versions. I just hope the story holds up all the way through

are you guys doing wait or active combat?

The FF series was my favorite game series in the world for about a decade, all the way from NES FF1 to FF7 and FF9.

Lost interest once it departed from the turn based, swords and magic stuff to like scifi anime weird whatever feel it has had the last 10-15 years.

I know the turn based RPG sorta fell by the way side so I'm not surprised they felt the need to change the format a bit, but these new FF games just don't look the least bit interesting and judging by the sales and reception of the past few, I'm not alone.

One pretty baffling thing is Square has managed to splinter their teams over all these weird knockoffs so that their bread and butter mainline games aren't coming out early in console cycles anymore.

The two biggest hits they had were VII and X, and those were system sellers. Maybe instead of making 2 XII "sequels" fleshing out a story that nobody gave a **** about, they could've made just one and released this a year and a half ago when the graphics would've blown people away? The second XII spinoff game came out AFTER the Xbox One and PS4 for the prior gen systems.

I hear if you have a PS4 Pro and a decent 4K HDR TV the graphics on this are indeed mind blowing. I only have the Pro on a 1080p and it looks pretty damn impressive at times.

The load times on the regular ps4 are pretty brutal when fast travelling around quest hunting. Also would be nice if you could see all quest locations at the same time so you can plan which area to travel to to save load times having to cycle and remember while the marker jumps across the map is a bit annoying. I spent 3 in game days without sleeping and finished a bunch of quests when i was level 21 then went back to the quay and slept at the 10k place for 2x exp and went from 21 to 34 which was nice

I'm about 10 hours gameplay into it, and as a whole I don't like it. Let's start from the top.

When you load up the game, it tells you that this is a game for old and new players of FF games. This is so far from the truth. Just watch Conan playing the first few minutes, where you push a car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXJFbsQBvLw

This scene is done to the music of the hauntingly beautiful version of Stand by Me performed by Florence and the Machine. What a waste of an opportunity. That's how the game begins?

But not really. Really, the way it begins is bringing you to the fighting tutorial, which is all important believe it or not. The new fighting system takes awhile to get used to, and you really need the tutorial to figure out how to succeed, because fighting is actually challenging in this game. They could've easily incorporated this into the actual story/gameplay instead of having a whole separate tutorial.

Speaking of which, the fighting sucks in this game so far. Here's what I have to do when I face a new battle. Pause the game, change battle settings to "wait," unpause, analyze my opponents to figure out what will actually work on them, pause the game again, switch battle back to "active", unpause, change my gear or spells to be able to take down the enemies, and then I get to start the battle. This is so frustrating. Please, someone tell me what I'm doing wrong to speed up this process.

The actual mechanics are not so terrible, but I've found that the game is actually quite tough with the fighting. Even when I'm fighting guys who are around my level, one hit will shave off half or more of my life oftentimes, so I'm constantly having to use potions and stuff to stay alive. The limit breaks actually put you in harms way oftentimes, the controls are a bit finnicky, like not warping to where I think I'm gonna warp to. Overall, it just feels clumsy.

The open world is awfully constructed. There are two main modes to begin with. Car and walking (I just got the chocobo so I haven't explored that too much yet). The car is terrible. Driving is a chore, you can set it to automatic and then you just sit there for 5 minutes until you get to the next destination, or you can control it manually and crash a bunch because it's pretty clunky with the controls.

The walking mode is fine, but the controls feel clunky, oftentimes I think I'm going to pick up an item but my character jumps instead. I have to hold the controller kind of goofily to be able to sprint effectively and have the camera pointing the correct direction at all times.

The story is a typical Final Fantasy story. The world is going to end, so find 5 red frogs and bring them back to me. The fetch missions are especially painful. Drive 5 minutes, walk another 5 minutes, fight a longer than needed battle for not enough experience points, and return with the item.

I'm playing on a PS4 with a disc, and the load times are unbearable.

There are some good elements too btw. The graphics are breathtaking. The landscapes, the details, the battles, are all gorgeously constructed. The upgrading system is similar to the FFX spheres which I really enjoyed. The monsters are so far all unique not only in their look but their fighting style as well, so you are forced to use different tactics with different types.

Overall though, the bad outweighs the good. Hopefully this changes as the story moves along.

I think battling gets easier but I'm doing a lot of side quests so am quite over leveled for a lot of it.

I wish the car was faster agree with you there the side quests are mostly a chore except for the dungeons.

Helpful tip I found for sprinting: go to options and enable the stamina bar then hold O to run, right before it depletes let go of circle and you will get a boost that refills your stamina so you can run forever.

I left battle in wait mode and rarely change from my main 3 weapons + a maxed spell for larger crowds, tagetting weakness is only really important for the telegraphed boss battles

Yeah why not leave it in wait mode all the time? I do. I beleive you can upgrade Ignis to auto-scan enemies and then leave it in active mode all the time is another option.

In addition to stamina bar for sprint, just click L3 once to sprint, saves having to hold down anything.

The game techically starts with the 5 "Brotherhood" animated shorts on Youtube, btw. And the Kingsglaive movie some time after Chapter 1 (haven't watched this yet)

Played 5 hours so far. Really enjoying the fighting style in this. Have never turned on wait mode or analysed opponent. Just jump in and see whats work. Nothing more satisfying than stringing some huge combos together over multiple enemies. The block/parry system could use a tweak when dealing with many foes but overall I like it.

Played ~45 hours and finished the main story, spoilers don't read if you haven't finished the main story (long):




Anyway that's just my 2c

Also after I finished I found a way to power level from ~55-99 in about an hour if anyone is interested here's how you do it:

I have found warp striking to be almost broken. I just repeat with a greatsword and then warp to a point and warp strike again. I took down lvl 12s when I was lvl 4, lvl 20 when I was 12 and 30 @ lvl 20 without too much hassle.
I tried really hard to take down a lvl 30 iron giant @ lvl 10 and came close a couple of times, but would always get one shot.

I got the lvl 30 iron giant as a 12 or 14, made a super powerful spell, it felt great. I may have posted about this already.

I know what the icons mean in wait mode when you are scanning a villain. But what do the colors mean on each icon? I'm confused if they are weak or strong in certain areas.

Orange the enemy scanned is weak to, purple it has resistance.

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4 hours in and just starting chapter 3. Traveling seems meh in the car if you can't fast travel. Is it worth it to get the driving AP node in the ascension or will you be traveling via chocobo more and it would be worth it to get that node?