I guess that explains the reviews.

It is way better than XIII, let me get that out of the way.

Is it a good FF? Well... not exactly. What it did was try to copy Xenoblade, and theres nothing wrong with that. We got a decent game. Theres also alot of influences from the FFXIV:ARR. The game world feels exactly the same bar one beeing more advanced technologically on outposts. Not necessarely a bad thing, but for a cinematic game, the world seems in suspension of disbelief because its citizens hardly react to the major story events diminishing their importance.

The problem is that square is under the impression that it's old FF's formula is outdated, when in fact, it isn't. I mean the FF1-9 formula. Not the FFX one.

There is alot of merit in how the old games managed to portray a whole world, rather than a few regions. On that note the Tales series has made the same mistake.

FFX i think was probably the worst thing to happen to JRPG's. Even though it wasn't the worst thing ever, the inspiration drawn from it certainly was misguided.

So, step in the right direction? It's a step in a better direction. But i do wish they tried to make a new game with the old formula but modern graphics. Some of the old things, like the world map gave the different regions a real sense of belong in the world. Well... maybe i'd just like to see them do that properly again. What we got in XV is serviceable, but it's not that game that was breaking bounderies in storytelling, characters and dramatic fantasy pieces (though it still has retained some of this at least) in a whole coehesive world with a tactical combat with amazing over the top special effects where you connect to your whole cast, rather than one character only.

Which is a pretty good game :) Its what Final Fantasy used to be basically.

Old School made modern.

It's not that bad, but... it's really lacking. I'm kind of enjoying it, but the pace is off sometimes, side quests are generally boring and don't add anything relevant to the game, camera suffers a lot in battles, can't really tell how many times I lost sight of the action. It's not fluent enough to be a good hack n' slash and really confusing and chaotic to be a competent ARPG. It seems like it's open word because of... reasons. World is not lively enough. I feel that what this game does, XCX did better. More lively world, better combat system (this one is simple as hell, I was 10 hours running in automatic...), more meaningful side quests... It's a really beautiful game, that's for sure. And this time main characters are well grounded. But... that's it.

FFXIII-2 was better imo. I had to say it xD.

SE needs to back to basics. Bravely games are not good enough (I think they're mediocre at best). It seems that they don't really know how to make good, turn-based games.

I know that fear all too well,  its more of the fact when I'm not in the mood for battling i want to avoid combat.  In ffx i would use Tidus flee like 30% of the time cause i wasn't in the mood and still aced the game with ease.  If you are to do random encounters it has to be the same way it was done in Wild arms 3. I hope you are familiar with that games way of dealing with the sometimes repetitive nature of turn based combat.

That's one one thing that's really bothering me,  aside from being stalked by enemy ships every 200 steps the world lacks the real feeling that a war has even happened.  You have towns with buzzing happy music while apparently this big war just happened.  Even noct and co don't seem to care to much,  being more than happy to help everyone out while his dad only just died 5 minutes earlier. 

I think we need to Look at each element objectively...what part of the Combat system is it better then the previous entry. i think turn based is antiquated for newer audiences...random chance encounters should never return...omg...newer younger audiences will return the game if they had to deal with that... Open world exploration needs to stay. It's an RPG not uncharted 4 or tombraider...XP system and sphere system isn't too bad with camping...wish there was more control on what each character can learn and grow...i miss the ole Strength defense, vitality, magic luck stats.

we can all agree that fishing can stay lol

I'm hoping this game was a 10 internal struggle at squaresoft just for battle and open world direction...and not story... Maybe they will hit that with the next game and just clean up the game mechanics a bit now that its been figured out that the linear style/ closed world of FF13 FF12 and even FF10 is not what people wanted.

Side note: i miss turn based combat dearly...but i would rather compromis on that and go without it then to watch Square-Enix release games that make them go out of business.

But isnt that sort of normal for the franchise? 

I remember being completely thrown out of FFX's story many times because there was a giant killing god destroying everything around and everyone was like "we need to distract ourselves with Blitzball to not think about that Giant thing killing us all. And then the Al Bhed were kidnapping the only people who could stop him, even for a certain period of time. They really didnt think that one through. 

I'm such a huge fan of turn-based combat. And even the oft-maligned random encounter.  I love it.  I grew up with it. But it takes back seat to tone, characters, world, and story.  In my opinion, FF12 completely crushes FF10 and FF13, both of which had turn-based combat, but were ruined by half-assed attempts in those other aspects.