Is Final Fantasy too ambitious for its own good ?

[VXIII]

CaviarMeths said:

- FFXV seems to be Xenoblade with a more powerful engine and Nomura's trademark awful character designs. We'll see how it goes, I guess. Bishounen Fantasy may turn out OK, 10 years and 100 million dollars into development.

I don't know why Square Enix has gone from setting industry standards to being obsessed with glorified tech demos.  FFIV was one of the most influential RPGs ever made. It was years ahead of its time and a game changer. Almost every JRPG since has been influenced in some way by it. But now it's been 5 years since FFXIII and the only game it influenced was FFXIII-2. Sakaguchi may have sold his soul with Spirits Within, but the games just haven't been the same without him and Uematsu.

The best Final Fantasy games in the last 10 years were The Last Story and Bravely Default.

As mentioned, the gameplay is fundamentally different. Xenoblade has a slow, command based battle system, it very close to the likes of XII and White Knight chronicles. XV is fast and engaging, yet it utilize strategic systems like the gambit system to give the player an overall control over the battle, and the warping system to interact with the environment.

As for spamming the word "awful" without any further explanation why the characters design are "awful" ( even though they share many similarities with the designs from the other games that you mentioned). one thing can be said :