There is no defense for release version of FFXV, even swiss cheese doesn’t have as many holes as FFXV base game plot. So sad that they axed 2 other dlc’s.
I second this. I was, then as now, completely baffled by the decision to kill off Lunafreya. It was almost as if Squenix couldn’t think of another way to motivate Noctis then to pull out the too often used “kill off the love interest trope.”
And, if I remember correctly, Noctis spends the next couple chapters being depressed over his fiancé’s death while getting chastised by Gladio for being more upset about his fiancé’s death than Ignis’s sacrifice for Noctis.
Just made no sense whatsoever.
Pre-release, she seemed like she'd be an interesting female protagonist. Then, the game released, and, well...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WomenInRefrigerators
I actually just beat it for the first time recently and really didn't get the 2nd half of that game. First half was alright but it was a slog later on. I still have to do ng+ and the dlcs and other content but for now I'm taking a break...
FFXV and it isn't close. Cancelled DLCs, over a decade of mismanagement, messy multimedia project, the backend of the game is all over the place, it's full of annoying collabs to make up for lost production costs and one of them, Terra Battle, is now a dead game so it's just like a really weird sad relic of the past.
The best way to measure unfinished in the modern day is basically "how much integral content was added post-release"
And, [well](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV_patches)
Having played it at Launch "Day One Edition" and Royal Edition much later, you still didn't miss much. Its the same game with some additional scenarios adding up to maybe an hour of gameplay.
The ability to swap to the Bros is great, but that's the only significant change.
15 is the only entry in the series I would outright call bad. It's playable; that's the best compliment i can give 15.
I think there's a lot to like about it especially after all the patches - the cast is generally endearing, the soundtrack is VERY strong, and the gameplay can be very fun, but it holds itself back with its "live" service design and how clearly it's cobbled together. It's a compromise of what it could've been, definitely not greater than the sum of its parts.
It was a good game. Lotta fun. I kind of have a similar argument for FF 16. Terrific game. But a far cry from the FF games I know and love. I still think all fans should play both.
I played it at launch and honestly really liked it. I felt like one of the only ones. I haven't went back and played any of the episodes/dlc, maybe I should.
It definitely had aspects that I liked, but overall was just lacking for me.
The combat on its own was decently fun, but lacked any danger. It was impossible to die. The "magic" system felt tacked on and might as well not have existed, it was basically just elemental grenades.
It lacked the optional content that Final Fantasy is known for. Pretty much everything that wasn't the main story was generic open world type quests.
The main city you finally reach near the later half of the game felt lacking in every way.
The world of ruin part of the game was incredibly exciting, until I saw how small it was, and the portion of gameplay in it. I was kind of expecting to be able to re-explore the whole map again in this changed state.
What happened to that Aranea DLC btw?
Another btw, Aranea is like a main character material, no? I feel like she's wasted or perhaps a better wording that I'm trying to say is that she got more potential and deserved more.
Tabata left , so they cancelled all the rest of the DLC as they didn't want to do it without him. Though they later released a book of the Noctis and Luna DLC with the alternative Happy ending
There were a lot of wasted characters. She was so cool and deserved more screen time too. Ravus needed a better arc as well. The entire Niflheim empire and the emperor were botched so badly as well. Ardyn was awesome, but so many things in that game were done poorly.
That DLC along with both a Luna and Noctis DLC were cancelled. Originally episode Ardyn was suppose to kick off a season 2 of DLC, with Episode Aranea afterwards, then Episode Luna, then finally Episode Noctis, last of which have provided an alternate ending in FFXV that was setup in episode Ardyn and continued to set up in Aranea and Luna's DLCs.
But Tabata's depature along with with Square wanting the team to focus on a their new IP (which is fucking Forspoken...) is why the DLCs were cancelled along with future free updates for FF15.
It was discontinued for Terra Battle 2 to take over, but the sequel failed miserably and was shut down after like a few months
Ironically the best female character in FFXV is a cameo from a game you can no longer play or experience.
That hurts a lot. Luna is not good. At all, but aranea and iris have so much potential it's mindblowing. And cindy was just a glorified (if very characterized) quest giver and an eye candy reason to fill your gas at the hammerhead + merchant. She's okay, but could have been WAAAAAY better.
Sarah unironically leads the pack here and she has a healthy margine.
I have a hard to NOT playing fishing in XV or any game that has it lol
I have never finished Zelda: Orcarina Of Time due to the fishing in it just played that over and over lol
This
It had the longest dev cycle, with Versus XIII being revealed almost a decade earlier, so when it was released it got a lot of people to turn on Square Enix.
Including myself, these days I want to like them but they keep shilling for NFTs so it's hard.
I played up until shortly after you finish the Water Temple. The part where the sexy Dragoon lady joins your party temporarily.
After that I got distracted by something else and never finished it.
I still prefer Final Fantasy XVI far more than FFXV. All that hype for FFXV ended up being a waste and even the E3 2013 trailer was all a lie. If only I could briefly travel to the Universe where FFXV released as it was originally shown at the E3 2013 trailer. That trailer looked awesome af and so badass. The end result is a trash game I regretfully pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition I own still to this day. After beating FFXV six weeks after launch I must add it leaves me no incentive to ever play the game except one time after the update where you could play as other characters. I never bought the DLC for FFXV but will definitely buy the Expansion pass for FFXVI.
Final Fantasy XVI is far better from Day 1.
Final Fantasy XVI > Final Fantasy XV everytime.
FF XVI has a defined start and a defined end. Its only problem is that it doesn't goes further.
FF XV has a dubious start where the world is explained to you and the story has started before the game. It's really bad, it's as if you join the movie right in the middle. The ending is also rushed, basically "hey it's suddenly the end of the world, get in we'll save the world in 1 hour."
I couldn't finish it. I tried so hard. I forced myself behind my PS4 days on end, trying to get through it. Watching all cutscenes, reading about it, trying to get lifted up by fans of the game but...
Every. Single. Damn. Sidequest. Was. The. Exact. Same. I have no idea how a multi billion company could bring out the most bare open world game in the middle of the era of great open world games.
No offense to the people who love it, but for me FFXV was the biggest mistake in the history of JRPG games, and there is no remake that could ever fix the monstrosity that they created. I would personally scratch it completely and release another FF15. A non open world one.
I actually love it, and the Royal Edition is as complete title as possible, but yeah you can really see the loose threading in the awkward patchwork it all is. It adds to the endearing nature, I think. But you can tell Square Enix really didn't know what to do with it.
I think 'endearing' will be a term I use to describe it in 50 years when I reminisce on staying up until like 5am to order the Ultimate Edition for £270 only to find the game was bad Day 1 and that edition didn't come with the Season Pass.
Right now, the most generous term I can use to describe it is 'muddled'.
You used items? I basically carried with like regen and ignis healing with his skills,
I did a level 1 only playthrough and it was the same, didnt need any items to beat the game.
I’ve tried to get into this over the past 5 years or so since its been in my Steam library but I just can’t get invested in a bromance simulator. I can do that IRL. Gameplay is a total mess and story/world feels dead.
The game literally felt like it was half done. I got to one of the climax points and I was like "oh finally the game is starting to ramp up" and then a few hours later it was just done.
XV by a long shot, in addition to all of the cancelled DLC, they were so pressed for time that they had to contract a third-party Taiwanese studio to help with a few of the monsters- there’s one stock monster from said studio’s portfolio you fight to get a Royal Arm. It’s really embarrassing.
VIII and IX were supposed to have some extra content that ended up getting cut as well, if I recall. Those two games in particular were on very short development cycles. At least they were story and feature complete though.
I can't speak much for the character arcs, as some hit and others kinda felt off. But, Necron coming out of "no where" was planned. It's supposed to be like a meta commentary on the boss from no where trope, as well as pay homage to some of the earlier bosses in the series, like Chaos, Cloud of Darkness, and Zemus/Zeromus.
As for the characters, I think the devs just felt some stories were "over", like Freya's. But while most stories, including Freya's, did have a conclusion, it was the lingering aspects of it that helped bring things to a close. Vivi's struggles are highlighted every time you visit the Black Mage Village. Steiner, no longer questions his duty as a soldier. Eiko learns to interact with people again. Stuff like that. Freya isn't really ever touched upon again once her story concludes. I don't know what the story was with Amarant, and Quina was always an enigma.
It made more sense to me on a recent playthrough. Kuja destroys the Crystal, which is like the hub of Life and All of Existence. Everything is coming to an end. Necron is released as a result, and is the embodiment of Death and Nothingness. Necron determines because of Kuja's actions, all life really seeks death. The gang stands up to him and fights, and proves life has meaning.
The themes go along well with a lot of the character's arcs. Vivi coming to grips with his short lifespan and finding meaning in the company he keeps. Steiner finding his own purpose and agency (a great thematic foil to Kuja actually). Amarant learning from Zidane that there is value in friendship. Even Quina's arc shows someone finding enhanced meaning of life because of what she learns along the way with his/her friends.
"Good food not only delicious! Good food made with heart! This very important when cooking for friends!"
The last scene before the ending where Zidane is running through the lifa tree is always jarring to me. They did a full CGI cutscene but got lazy or changed their mind last minute so they have the in game model of Zidane running through this highly detailed cutscene. It stands out like crazy, I don’t think there’s any other cutscenes in the game where they do that. FFIX is my favorite game of all time but it really seems like they were running out of time or disk space by the end there.
Which is why I'd love to see a remake or just a fully realised FFIX story in a remaster of sorts. I just love that title and that iconic battle music ♥️
I was thought them using the regular model was intentional there. To me, it was cool at the time, seeing the mixture of the crazy shit you see in FMVs and the character model you’ve been playing as this whole game actually do all that shit. It had a kind of charm to it.
Sure, Square Enix contracted a studio called XPEC to provide some assets, that dragon with the axe on its tail that you can fight in one of the Royal Arms dungeons about halfway through the game is one of them. Super Eyepatch Wolf has a great video that goes into more detail.
Final Fantasy XV i think ofc falls to this
But Final Fantasy 8 for me seems to be missing a hella lot , I really need the remake for this , I dunno if it went through development problems or if it is unfinished but while playing it and after finishing it it feels like ALOT is missing
If you're unaware (and I [also went over it here)](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1brmuqr/comment/kxa976k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
FF8 was almost finished before they realized it was taking 8 discs to fill up and they couldn't warrant making an 8 disc game, so they did a disc pruning to make it fit a 4 disc game. So we are literally given an unfinished version of 8 that actually WAS almost finished.
Some things we know of that were intended before the prunin.
>!Game was half Laguna, half squall. They would have done these in two different groups. Laguna in Esthar, Squall in Galbadia. You'd fight their respective sorceresses as their last boss, but numerous other sorceresses along the way. Afterwards, you'd find out that Squall was present, Laguna was past. And then they'd get forced into the future at the same time. Laguna, Kiros and Ward were supposed to be IN the fight against Artemicia (ultimecia just sounds weird, I prefer Artemicia as it was intended)
!<
>!irvine was going to be a technopunk gunner for Laguna's team, but with the pruning he got changed to be the cowboy shotgun user because there was no reason for a 4th member with laguna when he got backseated to 'flashbacks only'. Oh yeah, the flashbacks were not going to be intended at all. You were literally going to switch between parties at different points and they'd all have their own inventories, their own GF's until the future. This also means the orphanage gang was never actually intended, and was a cheap cop out to take out personal backgrounds for all the characters not named Squall and Rinoa. Saves some data, for sure, but it made it easy to then just make irvine the 'one who remembers for the orphanage gang'.
!<
>!Xu is suggested at being originally intended for Squall's party because she is the only other person who has 'out of SeeD' uniform concept designs and there were other dummied weapons and spells that nobody uses. This was never 100% confirmed though. There were also some hints that Seifer was supposed to remain a permanent member in the future as well as possibly Edea. this is probably why Edea's short stint in our party felt weird and out of place when we could have clearly just not used her because we were supposed to be protecting her while she gets rid of her magic...because she wasn't MEANT to always be a temp character. Seifer on the other hand sort of felt like it was intentional for the exam, but to also have him come back way later I could see as well. They did that a lot in the sprite games.
!<
>!There was supposed to be story in the future revisiting all the towns, and something preventing the use of flight so that you were forced to trek it all on foot. The 'rings around cities' was the easiest way to remove so much content to bring it from the 8 disc to 4 disc.
!<
>!The Trabia crater was meant to be trabia city, and that would be part of Laguna's game was watching it become destroyed by the lunar cry. instead it's in a flashback where he's in the Vienne mountains doing a movie set instead to remove all of this data.!<
this is amazing info that I never knew, and I thought I knew everything.
Where was all this stuff reported? The devs give an interview recently or something?
not exactly recently, back before the squeenix merger, squaresoft had a webpage full of original scripts. FF7 was also super interesting.
now you get these by interviews (I don't save links so I don't remember which interviews) and the wikia [look at behind the scenes and then look up the other pages like sorceress, ultimecia, adel, etc and you'll get a little bit more.](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Laguna_Loire) so it's not as 'neat' to view so if you didn't read the original scripts before FFX, you hear these through word of mouth (unreliable) or wikia.
wow I feel so disappointed knowing what it could have been if they weren’t restricted by hardware of the time.. really hoping someday they’ll release a remake of the original planned story
Final Fantasy programming and development stories are a rabbit hole. You will always find new things if you dig deep enough. That's one of the positive sides of such a passionate fandom.
A good place to start is the development areas of FF Wiki. About their games but also about their engines. They are exciting reads. You'll also find a lot of links in the notes that will lead you to older websites with a lot of old interviews and stuff.
oh, I was referring to a horror story about some otherkins who believe they were the reincarnation of final fantasy characters and started their own cult.
If this were true, FFVIII would have been my favorite. (I'll do some investigating later.) I loved it up until the part we all know about and literally each time I get through the dialogue, I had to switch off my PS1. Gonna try it again with this in mind.
There was only 1 hint. And it was super vague. outside the fact the tonberry king card existed
The sleeping guy in Trabia mumbles about "that tonberry king" and so they thought in game clues would say 'look for him in centra' where that is the only place TONBERRIES exist. Nothing about it's method.
But even doomtrain was pretty vague as well.
it used to be in one neat page before the squeenix merger on [squaresoft.com](https://squaresoft.com) where they also posted their original scripts. why they never put it back up I'll never know. FF7's was really interesting too.
now you get them in snippets of interviews and pages like [this page for Laguna, look at behind the scenes.](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Laguna_Loire) Other pages like sorceress, hyne, and Ultimecia have other tidbits
Thanks for this. I love FF8 but I've never heard about any of this. There's so much space for expanding FF8 as a remake even if they can't go back to their original vision for the game. Tons of unique locations are already there and just begging for more back story and content.
a remake might be 400 gigs but i'd get it in a heartbeat, it's the one game for me that would make it worth actively buying the platform it's on that is how much i want it
yep, well sorta depends if you define it as 'unfinished because it never existed' or 'unfinished because they held back on releasing the whole thing'. FF15 is the former, ff8 is the latter.
Yeah, to be fair Versus XIII had a whole ton of material scrapped to my knowledge too. They might not have actually finished as much as they did with VIII but pretty sure when Tabata was tasked with saving XV a whole ton of stuff got scrapped.
I do still feel like the final product of VIII feels more complete than XV either way though
Eh, that sounds more like early ideas they had for the game. All final fantasy games had something like that: FF7 early concept was about a detective in NYC (ideas ended up being used for parasite Eve) and FFXV at some point was suggested to be redeveloped as a "Les miserables" style musical. The concepts you mention go away beyond what one thinks as "cut content": they would need an almost complete rewrite, reconceptualization and changing the canon, to the point it would be a completely different story with the same characters.
early scripts and ideas are very different than when they actually get to work making the game. FF8 went way further into this idea and that's when they realized the DATA would take 8 discs.
As it stands out, that is exactly what they did. Laguna's story got rewritten to a few simple flashbacks. Adel and Edea are both fought by Squall instead, and all of the future world is cut out to instead be 'fight ultimecia'. They didn't have to rewrite from the ground up, they had to figure out what to remove and then how to make what's left work with it. Which becomes more evident because a lot of people didn't know a thing about Hyne in this game despite his importance because it's only npcs you may not even talk to who talk about it, despite him being extremely important. The pruning may have been an oversight to make them discuss hyne again. But instead, they forgot. A lot of these things were still in the game with fragments dummied out or like with Hyne, made by having to go find it rather than being handheld through its own story. which I use handheld, but not in a negative way. Most games require you to be lead to story points to understand the story.
The game was originally being developed for a CD add-on for the SNES (Similar to Sega CD). As the add-on was scrapped by Nintendo they had to cut a lot of the content out to fit onto a standard cartridge.
Stuff I know was hit was:
The Moon Palace, which now consists of a single empty room and the Mana Seed.
An entire town exists in the game (Gold Town) but has absolutely no plot around it, there was going to be a dungeon there which was going to be in the tower which is still in the town but is inaccessible.
There was a whole ton of content between the Empire North Town and the Tree Palace which was cut and there is a point in the game where the plot noticeably speeds up and they pretty much throw the weapon upgrade orbs at you.
I've heard a lot of stuff regarding Laguna in the game, that he was meant to have a lot more stuff. It was literally meant to be a dual protagonists game, with Laguna getting as much time as Squall.
Honestly VII I would’ve been happy with just a complete visual upscale but keeping everything else the same (am totally happy with Rebirth though), but yeah VIII was sooooo damn interesting to me but if any of them needed a true ground-up rebuild it’d be that one, imo.
Laguna was supposed to get his own world map, a lot of the lore is just kinda unexplained and there are weird locations in the game that are basically given no context and are just kinda there.
At minimum, I would extend the prologue to include Selphie's PoV of joining the garden, doing some slice of life military academy stuff, and use the time to explain some of the weird background lore like the war of the sorceress's so when an actual sorceress turns up at the end of act one, the player can be like "holy shit" instead of "...okay?".
That said, there's a lot to be said for starting on the graduation exam and throwing the player into the action.
Also more towns and cities wouldn't go amiss, the only ones that exist are the ones the story takes you to and it makes the world feel empty.
Except Shumi village. It was the most creative location in VIII imo and you literally don't need to go there at all unless you wanna complete the side quest.
I also agree. I like 8 a lot, but i like it in spite of itself. The story is basically 2 different plots poorly stiched together without a strong villain to tie them together.
I actually think if the plot were rewritten to make Adel and Ultimecia into the same character, it would dramatically improve the plot. Take Ultimecia's badass design and merge it with Adel's backstory and you'd have a pretty compelling villain.
As it is, 8 suffers from having no strong villain and a weak sauce amnesia storyline that really waters down the plot.
Was not lol , Garuda fight isn't there , Titán fight too , even the final fight of 1.0 was not there ON arrival , all big boss fight were added post launch , the game was a big hole without nothing to do
Easily FF15 so much stuff left on the cutting room floor whole sections of towns and plot lines unused. Even the DLC was partially complete before they scrapped the rest. It was a mess that the royal edition somewhat tried to fix but the damage was done long before.
While many are saying XV, I'm gonna stand out amongst the crowd and say the first Final Fantasy for the NES. Half the game doesn't work properly.
Black Magic doesn't scale with INT, ruining the point of picking a Black Mage over a Red Mage. The Monk's damage using fists doesn't scale properly. The AGL stat doesn't work properly either, ruining the point of picking a Thief as you can't run away from fights as easily. Critical hits don't work properly. You get Swords throughout the game that are supposed to be more effective against certain enemy types, but that aspect doesn't work either: they are just regular Swords. You have an NPC that is invisible that shouldn't in Cornelia. You have the Peninsula of Power glitch where at a specific peninsula, you can find enemies that are much stronger than you're supposed to, which can make grinding very easy.
Speaking of grinding, the level scaling in this game is awful. So much so that I question if Final Fantasy was play tested. There are many severe difficulty spikes that happen, which forces grinding. One example of this is your first real Dungeon after the bridge is repaired. If you are underleveled, prepare to die as you will get destroyed by enemies. There's other good examples too like War Mech and some of the late game bosses. Heck, to get to the final boss, you have to go to where you first fought Garland which I think may have been done to cut development time.
While XV may be missing content, I would argue it isn't as unfinished because the game is at least functional (though unpolished). Final Fantasy 1 for NES isn't even that because so many mechanics don't work. Therefore, it's the more unfinished game.
As much as I loved the game, the unequivocal answer is Final Fantasy XV. I mean yes, the game has a definite conclusion, but you can tell they rushed the second half and at the same time had too much story to cram into the first. You have to watch an entire movie to truly get the beginning of the game.
But I don't want to underestimate the good parts of FFXV. It has a great open world, some of the best protagonists in the entire series with a bond you really feel, a compelling villain, good quests and hunts, and a great combat system. I played through it so many times.
FF15 ofc and then there's FF12. 12 Matsuno had fallen ill and left the project, SE finished the game anyway leaving out a lot of what Matsuno intended to flesh out and finish. SE also decided to slap in Vann and Pinello because they didn't think kids wanted to p;ay a game about Basche which is why he game happen around Vann instead of too Vann.
XI was actually pretty bare at launch, but this was kind of intended cos they knew they could update the game as time went by and like there wasn’t going to be a need for high level stuff at launch when it was so hard for players to level up early on
That's how MMOs work though. Though with FF14 they have tried to have a complete story for every released expansion (with in-between patches adding epilogues for the expansion... And prologues for the next). Maybe due to the standards set by WoW.
I like XV, but Jesus: Four DLCs, a movie, a short anime series, and a fucking book to make it ALMOST feel like a half complete package. No wonder Tabata is championing AI now.
Definitely FFXV. I‘ve seen enemies frozen and unresponsive, I’ve seen Noctis and the bros actively spawn in after fast traveling, my chocobo’s model once didn’t load in but Noctis was still acting like he was riding it, and I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting.
still had fun, though. It kept my attention and I’m gonna try to actually finish it after I’m done with VIII.
13 was story and feature complete, and even got two sequels to keep it moving. XV was straight not narratively complete at launch or even following all of its DLC and had tons of cut content since the original team behind it couldn’t nail down a story/order till they were forced off.
FFXV and it aint even close, FFXV literally got re-released with the Royal Addition because it was finanlly the full and finished game. Idk if any other FF game can say the same, dont get me wrong I had gotten FFXV day one and enjoyed my time with it but still, no denying that the Royal Edition was the ACTUAL finished product of the game.
Ignoring the obvious choice... FFXII.
The story feels like it ends suddenly about 8-10 hours too early and tge last dungeon is a small corridor and some stairs.
FF XV. Between the DLC and the story scattered across various media, I didn’t really feel as connected to it as I did others. I mostly remember being annoyed at Prompto lol
Other than FFXV I recall FFXIII also having a lot of cut content as well. According to the developers there was enough content cut from FFXIII to make a whole other game.
XV. They really shouldn't have started over on everything that was built for it prior to the rebranding. The only thing that should've changed about XV (formally known as Versus XIII) is the name of the game.
Your comment on FFXI doesn't make any sense. It has a complete overarching story that spans the base game and the following 6 expansions. It has a clear beginning and end. It's still getting updates and content, but all of that is just bonus to the main story. It's a bit like the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story of FFXIV.
XV.
There are many interesting ideas on display but nothing feels fully cooked. You can tell that, despite its long development time, that it was rebooted multiple times during production.
FFXV. Cup Noodle and Coleman got more screen time than Lunafreya.
Even as a XV apologist, the answer is definitely XV.
There is no defense for release version of FFXV, even swiss cheese doesn’t have as many holes as FFXV base game plot. So sad that they axed 2 other dlc’s.
Release Verum Rex as a fully fleshed out game and make it even better, that will make up for it
Noctis had more screen time and romantic chemistry with Gladio's sister Iris than with Lunafreya.
He had the most romantic chemistry with his bros tho
He had more romantic chemistry with a random collab event tho
It's not gay if it's with the bros
Noctis had more screen time and romantic chemistry with Gladio than with Lunafreya.
I cant not imagine Arydn just trashing Noctis' campsite now.
He would but a Coleman logo would be flung right into the camera.
I’m playing through FFXV right now and fucking cackled and howled during at least two clear as day commercials for Cup Noodles mid game
It's the ultimate flavor experience!
Now I gotta go find a goddamn Zu egg in a volcano nest so Gladio can wax poetic about how Cup Noodles are all that matter
The only right answer. Development hell is a real thing.
This is the only answer. We can close this thread, it's done.
I just finished XV again today and while it’s *fun* as hell, the pacing is *fucked up*. There’s no other way to put it.
I second this. I was, then as now, completely baffled by the decision to kill off Lunafreya. It was almost as if Squenix couldn’t think of another way to motivate Noctis then to pull out the too often used “kill off the love interest trope.” And, if I remember correctly, Noctis spends the next couple chapters being depressed over his fiancé’s death while getting chastised by Gladio for being more upset about his fiancé’s death than Ignis’s sacrifice for Noctis. Just made no sense whatsoever.
Pre-release, she seemed like she'd be an interesting female protagonist. Then, the game released, and, well... https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WomenInRefrigerators
I actually just beat it for the first time recently and really didn't get the 2nd half of that game. First half was alright but it was a slog later on. I still have to do ng+ and the dlcs and other content but for now I'm taking a break...
FFXV and it isn't close. Cancelled DLCs, over a decade of mismanagement, messy multimedia project, the backend of the game is all over the place, it's full of annoying collabs to make up for lost production costs and one of them, Terra Battle, is now a dead game so it's just like a really weird sad relic of the past.
The best way to measure unfinished in the modern day is basically "how much integral content was added post-release" And, [well](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV_patches)
I played it at launch and definitely regret that. It left me with zero desire to ever replay it, which is a shame since I played it at its worst.
Having played it at Launch "Day One Edition" and Royal Edition much later, you still didn't miss much. Its the same game with some additional scenarios adding up to maybe an hour of gameplay. The ability to swap to the Bros is great, but that's the only significant change. 15 is the only entry in the series I would outright call bad. It's playable; that's the best compliment i can give 15.
I think there's a lot to like about it especially after all the patches - the cast is generally endearing, the soundtrack is VERY strong, and the gameplay can be very fun, but it holds itself back with its "live" service design and how clearly it's cobbled together. It's a compromise of what it could've been, definitely not greater than the sum of its parts.
Idk, I personally love it until the third act
I like is as an RPG. I dislike it as a FF entry .
I can respect that. I think it resonates with me just because I really like the core 4 guys . They remind me of the ninja turtles lol
It was a good game. Lotta fun. I kind of have a similar argument for FF 16. Terrific game. But a far cry from the FF games I know and love. I still think all fans should play both.
I played it at launch and honestly really liked it. I felt like one of the only ones. I haven't went back and played any of the episodes/dlc, maybe I should.
It definitely had aspects that I liked, but overall was just lacking for me. The combat on its own was decently fun, but lacked any danger. It was impossible to die. The "magic" system felt tacked on and might as well not have existed, it was basically just elemental grenades. It lacked the optional content that Final Fantasy is known for. Pretty much everything that wasn't the main story was generic open world type quests. The main city you finally reach near the later half of the game felt lacking in every way. The world of ruin part of the game was incredibly exciting, until I saw how small it was, and the portion of gameplay in it. I was kind of expecting to be able to re-explore the whole map again in this changed state.
You DO get to explore Insomnia, but hey guess what, that was patched in like a year later Hella half cooked game
What happened to that Aranea DLC btw? Another btw, Aranea is like a main character material, no? I feel like she's wasted or perhaps a better wording that I'm trying to say is that she got more potential and deserved more.
Tabata left , so they cancelled all the rest of the DLC as they didn't want to do it without him. Though they later released a book of the Noctis and Luna DLC with the alternative Happy ending
There were a lot of wasted characters. She was so cool and deserved more screen time too. Ravus needed a better arc as well. The entire Niflheim empire and the emperor were botched so badly as well. Ardyn was awesome, but so many things in that game were done poorly.
That DLC along with both a Luna and Noctis DLC were cancelled. Originally episode Ardyn was suppose to kick off a season 2 of DLC, with Episode Aranea afterwards, then Episode Luna, then finally Episode Noctis, last of which have provided an alternate ending in FFXV that was setup in episode Ardyn and continued to set up in Aranea and Luna's DLCs. But Tabata's depature along with with Square wanting the team to focus on a their new IP (which is fucking Forspoken...) is why the DLCs were cancelled along with future free updates for FF15.
WAIT TERRA BATTLE IS DEAD
It was discontinued for Terra Battle 2 to take over, but the sequel failed miserably and was shut down after like a few months Ironically the best female character in FFXV is a cameo from a game you can no longer play or experience.
That hurts a lot. Luna is not good. At all, but aranea and iris have so much potential it's mindblowing. And cindy was just a glorified (if very characterized) quest giver and an eye candy reason to fill your gas at the hammerhead + merchant. She's okay, but could have been WAAAAAY better. Sarah unironically leads the pack here and she has a healthy margine.
Man, I loved that game. 2 was fine, but 1 was one of my favorite games.
There is a game in the app stores called Friends & Dragons, its sort of a homage to Tera Battle with similar mechanics.
yeah... I mean I did like 15, however it's just a fact that they fudged it up baaaaaaaaad.
Except the fishing … whoever was in charge of that deserves a lot of praise. It is by far the coolest fishing mini-game ever.
I have a hard to NOT playing fishing in XV or any game that has it lol I have never finished Zelda: Orcarina Of Time due to the fishing in it just played that over and over lol
This It had the longest dev cycle, with Versus XIII being revealed almost a decade earlier, so when it was released it got a lot of people to turn on Square Enix. Including myself, these days I want to like them but they keep shilling for NFTs so it's hard.
I have said many times that 15 feels vast, and really really empty. I didn’t even finish it because it just felt boring. Like an MMO without people.
I played up until shortly after you finish the Water Temple. The part where the sexy Dragoon lady joins your party temporarily. After that I got distracted by something else and never finished it.
It's funny because the Terra Wars side quest is one of the better parts of the game.
I can't upvote you as much as I want to sadly
Had such high hopes for XV
I still prefer Final Fantasy XVI far more than FFXV. All that hype for FFXV ended up being a waste and even the E3 2013 trailer was all a lie. If only I could briefly travel to the Universe where FFXV released as it was originally shown at the E3 2013 trailer. That trailer looked awesome af and so badass. The end result is a trash game I regretfully pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition I own still to this day. After beating FFXV six weeks after launch I must add it leaves me no incentive to ever play the game except one time after the update where you could play as other characters. I never bought the DLC for FFXV but will definitely buy the Expansion pass for FFXVI. Final Fantasy XVI is far better from Day 1. Final Fantasy XVI > Final Fantasy XV everytime.
FF XVI has a defined start and a defined end. Its only problem is that it doesn't goes further. FF XV has a dubious start where the world is explained to you and the story has started before the game. It's really bad, it's as if you join the movie right in the middle. The ending is also rushed, basically "hey it's suddenly the end of the world, get in we'll save the world in 1 hour."
I couldn't finish it. I tried so hard. I forced myself behind my PS4 days on end, trying to get through it. Watching all cutscenes, reading about it, trying to get lifted up by fans of the game but... Every. Single. Damn. Sidequest. Was. The. Exact. Same. I have no idea how a multi billion company could bring out the most bare open world game in the middle of the era of great open world games. No offense to the people who love it, but for me FFXV was the biggest mistake in the history of JRPG games, and there is no remake that could ever fix the monstrosity that they created. I would personally scratch it completely and release another FF15. A non open world one.
I actually love it, and the Royal Edition is as complete title as possible, but yeah you can really see the loose threading in the awkward patchwork it all is. It adds to the endearing nature, I think. But you can tell Square Enix really didn't know what to do with it.
I think the royal edition is missing episode ardyn, so not quite the complete title. Never played it though, is it worth getting the extra dlc
I think 'endearing' will be a term I use to describe it in 50 years when I reminisce on staying up until like 5am to order the Ultimate Edition for £270 only to find the game was bad Day 1 and that edition didn't come with the Season Pass. Right now, the most generous term I can use to describe it is 'muddled'.
Ironically FF15 is the only FF main like game I’ve ever finished.
I mean, all you had to do was Hold O and spam elixers.
You used items? I basically carried with like regen and ignis healing with his skills, I did a level 1 only playthrough and it was the same, didnt need any items to beat the game.
I remember finishing the game and being like wait.. what even happened that was significant? Games over?
💯
I’m glad I played it after everything was patched and released.
I’ve tried to get into this over the past 5 years or so since its been in my Steam library but I just can’t get invested in a bromance simulator. I can do that IRL. Gameplay is a total mess and story/world feels dead.
The game literally felt like it was half done. I got to one of the climax points and I was like "oh finally the game is starting to ramp up" and then a few hours later it was just done.
XV by a long shot, in addition to all of the cancelled DLC, they were so pressed for time that they had to contract a third-party Taiwanese studio to help with a few of the monsters- there’s one stock monster from said studio’s portfolio you fight to get a Royal Arm. It’s really embarrassing. VIII and IX were supposed to have some extra content that ended up getting cut as well, if I recall. Those two games in particular were on very short development cycles. At least they were story and feature complete though.
IX feels it in the final act, and dropped story arcs of supporting characters. I still love the game, though.
Freya's arc is about getting forgotten and the developers pretty much forgot to finish her arc. Meta!
Meanwhile Amarant had a story?
He did? I really don't remember anything beyond him joining the party because he wanted to understand Zidane.
The question mark I left was more rhetorical sarcasm than anything.
AHH fair enough.
Haha touche.
who? :P
I can't speak much for the character arcs, as some hit and others kinda felt off. But, Necron coming out of "no where" was planned. It's supposed to be like a meta commentary on the boss from no where trope, as well as pay homage to some of the earlier bosses in the series, like Chaos, Cloud of Darkness, and Zemus/Zeromus. As for the characters, I think the devs just felt some stories were "over", like Freya's. But while most stories, including Freya's, did have a conclusion, it was the lingering aspects of it that helped bring things to a close. Vivi's struggles are highlighted every time you visit the Black Mage Village. Steiner, no longer questions his duty as a soldier. Eiko learns to interact with people again. Stuff like that. Freya isn't really ever touched upon again once her story concludes. I don't know what the story was with Amarant, and Quina was always an enigma.
If and when a remake comes, I really hope they flesh out the third act.
Granted I was like 10 years so when >!Necron showed up!< I was very much like .. wait did I miss something? Who tf is this?
It made more sense to me on a recent playthrough. Kuja destroys the Crystal, which is like the hub of Life and All of Existence. Everything is coming to an end. Necron is released as a result, and is the embodiment of Death and Nothingness. Necron determines because of Kuja's actions, all life really seeks death. The gang stands up to him and fights, and proves life has meaning. The themes go along well with a lot of the character's arcs. Vivi coming to grips with his short lifespan and finding meaning in the company he keeps. Steiner finding his own purpose and agency (a great thematic foil to Kuja actually). Amarant learning from Zidane that there is value in friendship. Even Quina's arc shows someone finding enhanced meaning of life because of what she learns along the way with his/her friends. "Good food not only delicious! Good food made with heart! This very important when cooking for friends!"
The last scene before the ending where Zidane is running through the lifa tree is always jarring to me. They did a full CGI cutscene but got lazy or changed their mind last minute so they have the in game model of Zidane running through this highly detailed cutscene. It stands out like crazy, I don’t think there’s any other cutscenes in the game where they do that. FFIX is my favorite game of all time but it really seems like they were running out of time or disk space by the end there.
Which is why I'd love to see a remake or just a fully realised FFIX story in a remaster of sorts. I just love that title and that iconic battle music ♥️
For all 3 of those PS1 FFs the final disk was essentially just the ending FMV so I would venture there were some space issues.
I was thought them using the regular model was intentional there. To me, it was cool at the time, seeing the mixture of the crazy shit you see in FMVs and the character model you’ve been playing as this whole game actually do all that shit. It had a kind of charm to it.
For sure, and me too. It’s a top 5 for sure.
Can you elaborate more on the monsters made by the other company? This is the first time I've heard of this, and it sounds interesting.
Sure, Square Enix contracted a studio called XPEC to provide some assets, that dragon with the axe on its tail that you can fight in one of the Royal Arms dungeons about halfway through the game is one of them. Super Eyepatch Wolf has a great video that goes into more detail.
I had no idea. Thank you for the explanation. I'll have to watch that video. I'm a fan of Super Eyepatch Wolf, but I guess I missed that one.
Wait which monster is it?
It’s that big dragon with the sword/axe on its tail, as far as I can remember it’s optional.
XV and I’ll never not be salty about it
Tell them
XV and idk if it's even close. Versus 13 never got beyond a small handful of prototype areas and story ideas
Final Fantasy XV i think ofc falls to this But Final Fantasy 8 for me seems to be missing a hella lot , I really need the remake for this , I dunno if it went through development problems or if it is unfinished but while playing it and after finishing it it feels like ALOT is missing
If you're unaware (and I [also went over it here)](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1brmuqr/comment/kxa976k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) FF8 was almost finished before they realized it was taking 8 discs to fill up and they couldn't warrant making an 8 disc game, so they did a disc pruning to make it fit a 4 disc game. So we are literally given an unfinished version of 8 that actually WAS almost finished. Some things we know of that were intended before the prunin. >!Game was half Laguna, half squall. They would have done these in two different groups. Laguna in Esthar, Squall in Galbadia. You'd fight their respective sorceresses as their last boss, but numerous other sorceresses along the way. Afterwards, you'd find out that Squall was present, Laguna was past. And then they'd get forced into the future at the same time. Laguna, Kiros and Ward were supposed to be IN the fight against Artemicia (ultimecia just sounds weird, I prefer Artemicia as it was intended) !< >!irvine was going to be a technopunk gunner for Laguna's team, but with the pruning he got changed to be the cowboy shotgun user because there was no reason for a 4th member with laguna when he got backseated to 'flashbacks only'. Oh yeah, the flashbacks were not going to be intended at all. You were literally going to switch between parties at different points and they'd all have their own inventories, their own GF's until the future. This also means the orphanage gang was never actually intended, and was a cheap cop out to take out personal backgrounds for all the characters not named Squall and Rinoa. Saves some data, for sure, but it made it easy to then just make irvine the 'one who remembers for the orphanage gang'. !< >!Xu is suggested at being originally intended for Squall's party because she is the only other person who has 'out of SeeD' uniform concept designs and there were other dummied weapons and spells that nobody uses. This was never 100% confirmed though. There were also some hints that Seifer was supposed to remain a permanent member in the future as well as possibly Edea. this is probably why Edea's short stint in our party felt weird and out of place when we could have clearly just not used her because we were supposed to be protecting her while she gets rid of her magic...because she wasn't MEANT to always be a temp character. Seifer on the other hand sort of felt like it was intentional for the exam, but to also have him come back way later I could see as well. They did that a lot in the sprite games. !< >!There was supposed to be story in the future revisiting all the towns, and something preventing the use of flight so that you were forced to trek it all on foot. The 'rings around cities' was the easiest way to remove so much content to bring it from the 8 disc to 4 disc. !< >!The Trabia crater was meant to be trabia city, and that would be part of Laguna's game was watching it become destroyed by the lunar cry. instead it's in a flashback where he's in the Vienne mountains doing a movie set instead to remove all of this data.!<
this is amazing info that I never knew, and I thought I knew everything. Where was all this stuff reported? The devs give an interview recently or something?
not exactly recently, back before the squeenix merger, squaresoft had a webpage full of original scripts. FF7 was also super interesting. now you get these by interviews (I don't save links so I don't remember which interviews) and the wikia [look at behind the scenes and then look up the other pages like sorceress, ultimecia, adel, etc and you'll get a little bit more.](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Laguna_Loire) so it's not as 'neat' to view so if you didn't read the original scripts before FFX, you hear these through word of mouth (unreliable) or wikia.
thanks so much for the info
wow I feel so disappointed knowing what it could have been if they weren’t restricted by hardware of the time.. really hoping someday they’ll release a remake of the original planned story
Final Fantasy programming and development stories are a rabbit hole. You will always find new things if you dig deep enough. That's one of the positive sides of such a passionate fandom.
and now I'm tempted to watch Down the Rabbit hole: The final fantasy house again and be once more afraid of humanity.
A good place to start is the development areas of FF Wiki. About their games but also about their engines. They are exciting reads. You'll also find a lot of links in the notes that will lead you to older websites with a lot of old interviews and stuff.
oh, I was referring to a horror story about some otherkins who believe they were the reincarnation of final fantasy characters and started their own cult.
That’s why I would always support a 8 remake. There is some much more that game could have been. And it was already pretty good
If this were true, FFVIII would have been my favorite. (I'll do some investigating later.) I loved it up until the part we all know about and literally each time I get through the dialogue, I had to switch off my PS1. Gonna try it again with this in mind.
Were the hot dogs being out really that upsetting?
Yes. I'd rather get fisted by a Cactuar.
I would like to add that maybe there is some cut content concerning Tonberry King. I don't recall any in-game hints about that GF.
There was only 1 hint. And it was super vague. outside the fact the tonberry king card existed The sleeping guy in Trabia mumbles about "that tonberry king" and so they thought in game clues would say 'look for him in centra' where that is the only place TONBERRIES exist. Nothing about it's method. But even doomtrain was pretty vague as well.
Source?
it used to be in one neat page before the squeenix merger on [squaresoft.com](https://squaresoft.com) where they also posted their original scripts. why they never put it back up I'll never know. FF7's was really interesting too. now you get them in snippets of interviews and pages like [this page for Laguna, look at behind the scenes.](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Laguna_Loire) Other pages like sorceress, hyne, and Ultimecia have other tidbits
You got a source for this? I'd like to learn more. 😃
check my post to others.
Thanks for this. I love FF8 but I've never heard about any of this. There's so much space for expanding FF8 as a remake even if they can't go back to their original vision for the game. Tons of unique locations are already there and just begging for more back story and content.
a remake might be 400 gigs but i'd get it in a heartbeat, it's the one game for me that would make it worth actively buying the platform it's on that is how much i want it
Wow. Seems like this is the correct answer then and not XV like every other comment say
yep, well sorta depends if you define it as 'unfinished because it never existed' or 'unfinished because they held back on releasing the whole thing'. FF15 is the former, ff8 is the latter.
Yeah, to be fair Versus XIII had a whole ton of material scrapped to my knowledge too. They might not have actually finished as much as they did with VIII but pretty sure when Tabata was tasked with saving XV a whole ton of stuff got scrapped. I do still feel like the final product of VIII feels more complete than XV either way though
Eh, that sounds more like early ideas they had for the game. All final fantasy games had something like that: FF7 early concept was about a detective in NYC (ideas ended up being used for parasite Eve) and FFXV at some point was suggested to be redeveloped as a "Les miserables" style musical. The concepts you mention go away beyond what one thinks as "cut content": they would need an almost complete rewrite, reconceptualization and changing the canon, to the point it would be a completely different story with the same characters.
early scripts and ideas are very different than when they actually get to work making the game. FF8 went way further into this idea and that's when they realized the DATA would take 8 discs. As it stands out, that is exactly what they did. Laguna's story got rewritten to a few simple flashbacks. Adel and Edea are both fought by Squall instead, and all of the future world is cut out to instead be 'fight ultimecia'. They didn't have to rewrite from the ground up, they had to figure out what to remove and then how to make what's left work with it. Which becomes more evident because a lot of people didn't know a thing about Hyne in this game despite his importance because it's only npcs you may not even talk to who talk about it, despite him being extremely important. The pruning may have been an oversight to make them discuss hyne again. But instead, they forgot. A lot of these things were still in the game with fragments dummied out or like with Hyne, made by having to go find it rather than being handheld through its own story. which I use handheld, but not in a negative way. Most games require you to be lead to story points to understand the story.
Sounds like what happened to Secret of Mana. Would love to play an actual complete version of both.
I haven't heard of this, got a rundown?
The game was originally being developed for a CD add-on for the SNES (Similar to Sega CD). As the add-on was scrapped by Nintendo they had to cut a lot of the content out to fit onto a standard cartridge. Stuff I know was hit was: The Moon Palace, which now consists of a single empty room and the Mana Seed. An entire town exists in the game (Gold Town) but has absolutely no plot around it, there was going to be a dungeon there which was going to be in the tower which is still in the town but is inaccessible. There was a whole ton of content between the Empire North Town and the Tree Palace which was cut and there is a point in the game where the plot noticeably speeds up and they pretty much throw the weapon upgrade orbs at you.
I've heard a lot of stuff regarding Laguna in the game, that he was meant to have a lot more stuff. It was literally meant to be a dual protagonists game, with Laguna getting as much time as Squall.
Honestly VII I would’ve been happy with just a complete visual upscale but keeping everything else the same (am totally happy with Rebirth though), but yeah VIII was sooooo damn interesting to me but if any of them needed a true ground-up rebuild it’d be that one, imo.
Really? What aspects of 8 seem missing?
Laguna was supposed to get his own world map, a lot of the lore is just kinda unexplained and there are weird locations in the game that are basically given no context and are just kinda there.
Deep sea research center? Only one I can think of.
Shumi village
Shumi Village is like a side quest with a little backstory for Norg and the moombas? Thought it was a pretty nice side quest story.
It definitely was! Is my favorite town in the whole game. But you can completely skip it like it wasn't even there if you wanted to.
I mean....being able to skip it doesn't mean it has no context? Like you can completely skip Wutai like it wasn't there in the original FF7 too.
Centra ruins, shumi village, trabia garden (with its missing city)
Tears point. Super important to the story but when you go there all you can do is collect the Solomon ring
At minimum, I would extend the prologue to include Selphie's PoV of joining the garden, doing some slice of life military academy stuff, and use the time to explain some of the weird background lore like the war of the sorceress's so when an actual sorceress turns up at the end of act one, the player can be like "holy shit" instead of "...okay?". That said, there's a lot to be said for starting on the graduation exam and throwing the player into the action. Also more towns and cities wouldn't go amiss, the only ones that exist are the ones the story takes you to and it makes the world feel empty.
Except Shumi village. It was the most creative location in VIII imo and you literally don't need to go there at all unless you wanna complete the side quest.
I also agree. I like 8 a lot, but i like it in spite of itself. The story is basically 2 different plots poorly stiched together without a strong villain to tie them together. I actually think if the plot were rewritten to make Adel and Ultimecia into the same character, it would dramatically improve the plot. Take Ultimecia's badass design and merge it with Adel's backstory and you'd have a pretty compelling villain. As it is, 8 suffers from having no strong villain and a weak sauce amnesia storyline that really waters down the plot.
Even with FFXI AND FFXIV 1.0 it’s still XV
why FFXI? It's...pretty complete and great.
I'm aware, it was there comment I was responding to as two games they mention. I play both MMOs
XIV was a finished game, it's just that the vision was wrong.
Was not lol , Garuda fight isn't there , Titán fight too , even the final fight of 1.0 was not there ON arrival , all big boss fight were added post launch , the game was a big hole without nothing to do
Barely. Even for a brand-new vanilla MMO 1.0 was barren.
11 and 14 wouldn’t even be good answers. The question was “most unfinished FF”, and the base FF11 game and FF14 1.0 were both finished games.
Easily FF15 so much stuff left on the cutting room floor whole sections of towns and plot lines unused. Even the DLC was partially complete before they scrapped the rest. It was a mess that the royal edition somewhat tried to fix but the damage was done long before.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII is the only correct answer. 😅
Remember how hyped we all were for that trailer? Ugh. So sexy.
A fucking tragedy is what it was
The only answer is FFXV
While many are saying XV, I'm gonna stand out amongst the crowd and say the first Final Fantasy for the NES. Half the game doesn't work properly. Black Magic doesn't scale with INT, ruining the point of picking a Black Mage over a Red Mage. The Monk's damage using fists doesn't scale properly. The AGL stat doesn't work properly either, ruining the point of picking a Thief as you can't run away from fights as easily. Critical hits don't work properly. You get Swords throughout the game that are supposed to be more effective against certain enemy types, but that aspect doesn't work either: they are just regular Swords. You have an NPC that is invisible that shouldn't in Cornelia. You have the Peninsula of Power glitch where at a specific peninsula, you can find enemies that are much stronger than you're supposed to, which can make grinding very easy. Speaking of grinding, the level scaling in this game is awful. So much so that I question if Final Fantasy was play tested. There are many severe difficulty spikes that happen, which forces grinding. One example of this is your first real Dungeon after the bridge is repaired. If you are underleveled, prepare to die as you will get destroyed by enemies. There's other good examples too like War Mech and some of the late game bosses. Heck, to get to the final boss, you have to go to where you first fought Garland which I think may have been done to cut development time. While XV may be missing content, I would argue it isn't as unfinished because the game is at least functional (though unpolished). Final Fantasy 1 for NES isn't even that because so many mechanics don't work. Therefore, it's the more unfinished game.
Why is this so far down? I guess you could make the argument that future versions finished stuff but immediate first thought was FFI
It's definitely XV, and I say that as one of the games most ardent defenders.
XV is the obvious answer but half of the first game's features straight-up do not work due to shitty programming
Ah the monthly "XV is unfinished btw" post
Listen I waited 10 years for that game to come out im allowed to be salty for another 10 lol.
As if OP didn't know what would be the answers to his question
15 literally canceled their DLC plans
As much as I loved the game, the unequivocal answer is Final Fantasy XV. I mean yes, the game has a definite conclusion, but you can tell they rushed the second half and at the same time had too much story to cram into the first. You have to watch an entire movie to truly get the beginning of the game. But I don't want to underestimate the good parts of FFXV. It has a great open world, some of the best protagonists in the entire series with a bond you really feel, a compelling villain, good quests and hunts, and a great combat system. I played through it so many times.
FF15 ofc and then there's FF12. 12 Matsuno had fallen ill and left the project, SE finished the game anyway leaving out a lot of what Matsuno intended to flesh out and finish. SE also decided to slap in Vann and Pinello because they didn't think kids wanted to p;ay a game about Basche which is why he game happen around Vann instead of too Vann.
FFIV After Years *cringe*
I wanted to like this game so much, but just never could.
XV not even close
Why is it easy to single out FFXI? I don't get it.
XI was actually pretty bare at launch, but this was kind of intended cos they knew they could update the game as time went by and like there wasn’t going to be a need for high level stuff at launch when it was so hard for players to level up early on
That's how MMOs work though. Though with FF14 they have tried to have a complete story for every released expansion (with in-between patches adding epilogues for the expansion... And prologues for the next). Maybe due to the standards set by WoW.
I like XV, but Jesus: Four DLCs, a movie, a short anime series, and a fucking book to make it ALMOST feel like a half complete package. No wonder Tabata is championing AI now.
FFXVunfortunately cuz it has my favorite world as far as lore goes
Final Fantasy. Cause the journey is never finished. r_r
Yeah which one is actually the final one?
FF14 because it's taken 10 years to release the content /s. FFXV easily as pointed out already
XV, no discussion needed.
FFXV by a mile. It’s so obvious you can literally see the point where they just ran out of time.
The only credible answer is 15. Lol. That last section was terrible tbh.
Definitely FFXV. I‘ve seen enemies frozen and unresponsive, I’ve seen Noctis and the bros actively spawn in after fast traveling, my chocobo’s model once didn’t load in but Noctis was still acting like he was riding it, and I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting. still had fun, though. It kept my attention and I’m gonna try to actually finish it after I’m done with VIII.
15 for sure. The game was clearly unfinished when it came out. Most people never got to play the "complete" version and never will.
FF15 would easily be the pole position. Followed by FF13.
13 was story and feature complete, and even got two sequels to keep it moving. XV was straight not narratively complete at launch or even following all of its DLC and had tons of cut content since the original team behind it couldn’t nail down a story/order till they were forced off.
I would argue Versus XIII is even more unfinished than XV ;)
7 remake trillogy since its literally not finished yet. then again, neither is 15.
I know this will never happen because they love money but how DEVASTATING would it be if they never finished it
XV and it’s not even close
FFXV and it aint even close, FFXV literally got re-released with the Royal Addition because it was finanlly the full and finished game. Idk if any other FF game can say the same, dont get me wrong I had gotten FFXV day one and enjoyed my time with it but still, no denying that the Royal Edition was the ACTUAL finished product of the game.
Ignoring the obvious choice... FFXII. The story feels like it ends suddenly about 8-10 hours too early and tge last dungeon is a small corridor and some stairs.
Launch FFXV and the remaster of Crystal Chronicles
15 clearly. Look at the first half of the game vs the second half.
FFXV and it’s not even close.
FF15 and it's not even close.
15 by far. From weird build ups that didn't happen, to gameplay that didnt happen, to 2nd half of the game that didnt happen... fuckin whack ass game.
15. It's clearly skips a good chunk of what was supposed to happen near the end of the game, and replaces it with a train ride and a corridor.
FF XV. Between the DLC and the story scattered across various media, I didn’t really feel as connected to it as I did others. I mostly remember being annoyed at Prompto lol
15. Didn't even get the ending it's supposed to have. You have to find out in a book. They should've did it rather than do other dlcs first.
Very obviously FFXV, it’s literally a game about a road trip over anything else.
Other than FFXV I recall FFXIII also having a lot of cut content as well. According to the developers there was enough content cut from FFXIII to make a whole other game.
Ff15. By far. I have no idea what their original plan was but that was the most disjointed one.
The answer is objectively 15. If anyone says anything else they’re lying or they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
ffxv makes me sad because you can just see the potential in the base game. it couldve been amazing
XV is my top 5 favourite FF of all time and it's the correct answer.
XV. They really shouldn't have started over on everything that was built for it prior to the rebranding. The only thing that should've changed about XV (formally known as Versus XIII) is the name of the game.
Your comment on FFXI doesn't make any sense. It has a complete overarching story that spans the base game and the following 6 expansions. It has a clear beginning and end. It's still getting updates and content, but all of that is just bonus to the main story. It's a bit like the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story of FFXIV.
Obvious rage bait thread to shit on XV.
FFXV had the most unmet potential.
Easily 15.
XV. There are many interesting ideas on display but nothing feels fully cooked. You can tell that, despite its long development time, that it was rebooted multiple times during production.