Is Final Fantasy XV a step in the right direction??

[Dhibz]

YES, for me.

This is a huge leap from where they left off. While it's not perfect, FFXV is building a great foundation for the series to move forward. Here some thoughts about this game..

(+) Seamless transition from exploring to battle, no random battle.

(+) Battle system is good. I have played every FFI-X in the past - I can do ATB all day long. But it just can't do justice for FF game anymore - at least pure ATB system. FFXV certainly move toward the right direction in this regard. What it lacks is the feel of coordination between party members. While there are some strategic commands, like Ignis' Regroup, but certainly SE need to develop a better way to incorporate strategic elements as per default. Like making Prompto stay far from the main battle area (he brings gun, why should he jumps around very close to the enemies??). And I really really think that combining real time battle with turn based system isn't impossible at all. One of the let down is the camera, it's so annoying at times.

(+) Great summons - not just the animation, but the concept of their presence. Since old days I always thought that summons should be superior beings, but in the past, summons attacks were overpowered by some chars limit break. That's just not right.

(+-) Random summon system - there are plus and minus about this system. In the past we easily get bored from summoning since it's a repetitive animation over and over again. But having summons that rarely appears is not good either. It's in the right direction, SE just need a balance.

(+-) Summons design. Some are good, some are just what-the-fudges-had-you-done-with-them. xD

(+) XV world. I really really like how the world's shaped up. I can feel the dedication of the dev team when building XV world. It's a bummer tho that we can't really have access to certain cities. But it might not their intention at all. With what it's filled, the game already sized 50GB + 9GB day one patch. I think had they decided to add more contents (cities, places, etc) - the game data would need to be stored in 2-3 BDs (VII came in 3CDs & VIII in 4CDs after all). And I have read somewhere that XV was planned to be episodic at first, and then the management wanted it to be compressed into single release.

About the story.. well, it's not really a direction - since every FF has its own story. I am not really like how XV story progressed, at some points it feels like the story jumping too far. But again, with this game was intended to be episodic and they cramped it into a single release, there are many parts of the story bound to be deleted. The planned DLCs (Episode Gladio, Prompto, & Ignis) might be filled with the story parts that had been removed from the original storyline and could fill the gaps in the plot.