By now, everyone I know has beaten Final Fantasy XV and whilst we all have varying opinions of sections that did or didn’t work, one things for sure: We all loved it. Whilst we all have our own beliefs on WHY we love this game, I have one theory that keeps sticking in my mind: We simply love Final Fantasy XV… Because it’s Final Fantasy. Nothin’ else.

Please note. This article withholds minor spoilers for Final Fantasy XV. Please read at your own discretion.

In my mind I keep telling myself that this isn’t true, “I love the combat!” I tell myself, “No the characters are amazing” but are they really? The later game combat can be entirely done by the holding of the O/B button which gets you through the majority of the encounters, and I even remember taking on one of the final 3 bosses by just holding one button and pressing very little else…This was a major issue for me, since Final Fantasy games had always prided themselves on difficult final battles. The characters too are fine but nothing special, with the supporting cast being just…Okay.

Therein lies my issue with being critical about Final Fantasy XV, do I just love it because of what it is? Would I of spent 60 hours of my life on it had it a different name? Would I have dumped my hard-earned, cold-hard cash on the Collectors’ Edition of the game if it was something else? I can’t help but shake the niggling feeling that I just…wouldn’t.

Another bugbear I had all the way through the game was the very, VERY obvious ploy to sell us on the upcoming DLC; there were whole chapters of the game where I felt about 50% of the game was just…missing. It is such a shame about this because certain characters I loved (Iris, Ravus, Cid) were just left to one side or killed off, my biggest pet peeve of all of this though was I would of ADORED to see “Iris The Daemon Slayer” in action, but all I got was a passing note to her in a car. On this topic I was also quite annoyed that one of the most interesting sections of the game (the eternal night section) was playable for around 5 minutes, and I wasn’t able to roam around Duscae hunting daemons with my daemon hunting friends, I was just put in a car and forced into the endgame, which was nothing short of a disappointment.

I took this opinion online to various forums and, of course, Reddit, which proved to be an absolute feeding ground of hatred and anger. No matter how many conversations I had with however many people I talked to, I seemed to be only met by 2 types of people: The overly critical people who hated everything about it because it’s not the ‘traditional’ Final Fantasy they wanted, and the Fanboys who absolutely refused to believe that anything was wrong and that this was a perfect game (some even believed that Chapter 13 had nothing wrong! Which even Square admits wasn’t up to scratch)…

Even despite the newest update offering new additions such as New Game +, changes to Cid, new items such as the Warrior’s Fanfare – An item that gives you more AP for getting an A+ in offense after combat, the Nixperience Band – An accessory that stops your XP from tallying, making the game more difficult, the Carnival Passport – A ticket that grants entry to the carnival that will take place in late January, and the Choco-Mog Tee – A t-shirt with a moogle and a chocobo, available at the carnival (during late January), and many bug fixes, it still doesn’t seem like a good sign towards us FFXV fans who just wanted a full, meaningful experience in the first place.

I purposefully refused to review Final Fantasy XV because, even though I highlighted a handful of issues above, I would still give it a 9 or a 10 out of 10 and therein lies my problem with Final Fantasy XV.

So, now that rant’s over, why not let us know your thoughts on FFXV down below in the comments? Did it meet or exceed your expectations? Or did it fail them..? Voice your opinions!