No where near close to my favorite FF. It is at the bottom of the list. Only because they failed at delivering on every story plot and the world feels small in comparison to other final fantasy games. You aren't traveling a world like you do in the other ones and the land you do is immensely small. You are traveling a small piece of land in a kingdom with a lot more than just that. All the other final fantasy games you traveled the world seeing different environments and cultures. Looking at the scope of the map, this game is very small in comparison to the other Final fantasy games. Increasing land mass size and filling it with not much doesn't make this game big by any scale in my books. I felt every aspect of all the other games made them immensely bigger.
Exploring a world is the Final Fantasy trademark, among other things this game was missing. They had the grounds to make an awesome game, but just failed to fully deliver on all aspects. The combat was cool, but it failed horrible with bigger mobs. Summons, loved the idea that they where super powerful and you couldn't spam them, but like it or not using summons is trademark Final Fantasy and I wanted more of them and more to do with them, maybe like a limit break bar or something and a notification that said summon can only be summoned in this area. You spend more time in the menus healing retarded party members than fighting. If they implemented something like FF12 gambit system where I could manipulate their AI, I could have done a better job with the combat. I.E. If I equip magic they run away from the enemy, knowing im going to nuke them. Otherwise I ignored my party members, nuked them with magic killing the enemy in one hit, because they where ALWAYS in the way and moved on with the show since they just regen'd hp. I didn't carefully use my magic, I blasted the shit out of them, why would I care when they regen hp after the fight?
Magic was cool in concept, but I loathed every time I used magic and waited forever for it to be off cd and every time I had to drain nodes and craft magic. Kinda reminded me of FF8 with spending hours draining magic from enemies. It was cool that magic was so powerful it was limited in scope, but I thought it could have been delivered better with a lot more variety in magic. This is Final Fantasy, magic is another HUGE trademark of the series. One that is always expected to be a mainstay.
The Boss fights where booooring, the boss themselves did cool shit, but you literally just do circles around them and press O. I had to make the fight cool myself, that just seems like no effort was put into any of the summon fights or the last boss fight. The combat felt nice at times and extremely clunky at others.
The story failed to deliver fully on all aspects, every time a plot line showed up it was gone and never touched again, I.E. prompto being a MT and within 30 seconds they killed that plot line off. I remember in FF7, 8, and 9. There was hours of side quest story you could do for the characters branching out their character development. The tombs for the weapons? It was talked about when you started, after that it was like, yo lets go get this weapon. You learned nothing about those weapons and they weren't even needed, the game gives you them all in the important fights. It has no bearing on the game at all.
This is my opinion and how I felt about the game. I enjoyed it up to the point I reached Altissa and started to see where it was going. Doing side quest in this game offered nothing, like, nothing for story. It's just fetch quests. Yo, do this for me, over and over again. Let me learn something, let me dive into other parts of the story, see other parts of the world. Don't tell me because of the, "scale" they couldn't do it. I believe they wouldn't do it, because they want to sell it to you. Which is great and all, if there was a complete story to begin with. I don't play the ending of a story only to get sold the beginning and middle later. I play a video game to get the beginning, middle, and end with side quest to learn more about it. That is what final fantasy has ALWAYS been about. Again, we don't talk about 13 or x-2.
All the Final Fantasy except for 13 and this one you could travel the world before the final fight getting stronger and doing all the side quest's so when you fought the final boss you where this bad ass. At a certain point the game lies to you and says you can go back, it doesn't tell you that this is after you beaten the game and the ending of the game makes it seem pointless since he dies. All the other Final Fantasy games allow you to do this before the final fight, yes I understand umbra lets you go into the past, but all the other FF games where present time allowing you to grow the story with side quests.I just didn't enjoy post-game, all of this should have been before Noctis died, because now I am thinking, why bother? Noctis is dead. It's not just a game with no story and i'm doing shit, yea i'm sure killing Admantoise would be cool, but I no longer see the need to do it since my main character is dead. Killing the end boss was kinda like the final piece of being a completionist. You did everything and once you where done, you then killed the final boss ending the game, only to start a new game and do it all over again.
Lastly the pacing was horrible, the trademark of all Final Fantasy games is the story pulls you along and you get to branch off every now and then seeing the world, making you want to explore the world more and more, but for story reason you can't just yet and near the end of the game you get the air ship allowing you to go anywhere and explore anything. It made getting to that point special and was looked forward to in every game, say for 12. It was limited by level mostly.
So now on to the good parts
The combat worked well in smaller group of enemies, i enjoyed picking off mobs and timely dodging in that manner. It worked well, once you got into larger mobs, not so much. I think the spells where mainly used for larger mobs only and combat wasn't fully fleshed out for encounters like the empire showing up while you are already fighting 7 guys. That is when you really feel the lack of AI. I enjoyed my combat time mainly with the lower mobs.
The summons where awesome, they looked epic and felt epic like they always do, two of them you can never use sadly. At times I felt like I needed that extra oomf to win and the summon showed up and I nuked everything, it felt great for having a savory like that.
I can't say much about the world, just because it failed to fully deliver in my eyes.
The story had me hooked up till I realized they where going to end it before it even started really. I was invested in the Luna/Noctis relationship. I wanted to know more about their up bringing, I was invested in the trio and their lives wanting to learn more, and I was invested in the Empire characters. Up till they rendered everything 100% pointless. In the flash of a loading screen, everything you wanted to invest it gets made pointless. The dissidia whole pure darkness thing is an awesome idea, it lasted a truck ride. Which locked you from seeing the world and put you straight to the boss fight. I wanted to see more of the world in darkness, I didn't want to go straight to the boss fight and POOF world saved. In the span of like 30 minutes. Made it feel cheep, the concept I always love of the whole pure eternal darkness and it was a great idea, just never fully fleshed out. A lot of the story plots where great ideas, nothing ever happened with them. The moment they showed up they where gone and done with, never to be spoken about again.
All in all this game had great potential, it just failed to deliver fully on most of it in regards, it makes you feel happy playing it, but looking back on it. There wasn't any substance to any of it. I don't want to pay for this shit in DLC to enjoy a game I should have gotten after waiting so long for a great game. That is absurd that people are begging to pay for content that should have already existed... instead of people wanting higher standards for their games and wanting complete fleshed out games. They get excited at the chance to pay for the rest of a game that they already paid for.
Now to DLC
Sure, yea. Give clothes for DLC, but give me clothes to buy in-game first. It's stupid to have a clothes system in game with NO Clothes to purchase and then beg to be sold it...
If there is going to be DLC in terms of expanding the story, you're going to have to tell me a story where Noctis is alive at the minimum, recommended Luna is alive as well and go back down the story trail in a different direction than how it ended. Don't want to play the story line again, just with main stay characters alive. I wan't to see more of the world, but not piece mealed every 15$ a new plot of land shows up. Final Fantasy games are entire worlds, not 15$ plots of land.
I will refuse to pay for a flying regalia -.- this happening now would literally mean that you are going to remove the greatest aspects of Final Fantasy to greed us into paying for them piece by piece and I refuse to stand by that standard.
On that note, the game was missing the main stay mini- game as well...where was my blitzball esque mini-game, where was my card game. I don't consider the arena that, where I just toot a horn and prey they win. I'm not playing that, just watching.
Overall I would give the game a 6/10 The 6 being everything up till Altissa and chapter 13 being the most sorry excuse for story development I have ever encountered. I learned about the story through a speaker box and reading paper...really? I was already annoyed about being forced to walk everywhere....come on.
The enjoyment from a game, should never be after I have beaten the game. It should have something to offer, but it shouldn't be the best part by any stretch.