Put a few hours into this now as you may have noticed with my achievements.

For me this is not the best FF game I have played but I will keep at it as I remember when I first played FF13 I Initially took a dislike to it and then ended up loving that game. (and its sequels).

Visuals - Are very very good, I think considering the PS4 hardware they have done a good job, as the performance is reasonable so far.
Battles - Whilst I am ok with real time action battles, so far I am find it hard to get to grips with it, as its hard to see when an enemy is attacking me and as such defend at the right moments, as a result of this my finesse grade at the end of battle is mostly a D, occasionally I have got an C. The way libra works is awkward and I find the wait mode feature not optimal either. With that said the battle system is not a complete mess like star ocean 5, the battles are something that I think with time I might get used to and find perfectly fine later on.
Bugs - The only obvious bug I have so far is ignis analyze skill, it is supposed to auto libra all enemies at start of battles, which it definitely is not doing, sometimes it kicks in after about 10 seconds but then only for one enemy, the description (and a couple of guides I checked) says it should auto libra most enemies (probably meaning all mob type enemies).
Performance - definitely better than the first demo which was a stuttery mess, loading times are lengthy tho.
Open world - Time will tell if I think this was the right thing to do, open world games add exploration, but they can also make a very grindy game, e.g. in this game I already know there is resource collecting of minerals etc. I came across some enemies at night that whipped my backside and I had to make a run for it
Characters - Normally FF games are a mix of female and male characters, they also follow japanese type themes with how the characters are made up, this game has gone against that trend with 4 males and a modern setting.
Other stuff - I think some of the UI elements are too small, its been designed with the assumption someone is playing on a very large screen, this I think is also contributory to my issues with the battles also as from my sofa (which is already pulled closer to tv) the enemies are too small on screen. I of course wouldnt have this issue using my PC monitor as that is way closer to my chair. So this has me made me again want to get the PS4 into my monitor setup.

Dont seem to me that you like it after reading that that doesn't fill me with confidence that i will like it when i actually put the hours in,especially as I'm not the greatest FF fan

Anyway come tomorrow i will be killing a few of the thousand of undead in Dead Rising 4 and then come Friday my focus will be on 1 game only until completion, and that game is The Last Guardian .

I like it, there is lots to do in this game, just is the battle system I need to get to grips with.

Thats a relief then as i thought the battle system was far better than the tedious random battles generated in the previous games that totally spoiled it for me, walk 10 paces a random encountered that 30 seconds after walking another 30 yards yet another random generated battle, rinse and repeat and that was FF and one of the main reasons i hated it, you couldn't explore look at things without some random generated battle that quite frankly got on my nerves and completely put me of the series.

Problem is the game like many others are all released at a crammed release schedule and FFXV is probably my last choice with the long list of games i have to play.

Developers/Publishers have got to stop this stupidity when they all release there games at the same time year in year out,its not good for gamers and its not good for sales in general and this is reflected on developers complaining of low sales of there games in the last few weeks.

They seem to have it in there heads, lets wait until the end of the year like November and release a game we could have shipped 2/3 months ago, and everybody has the same idea and its so stupidly get the colder months people game more but some weeks there are actually about 4 games i want all released with in the space of 4 days.

note there is random enemy spawns, but like FF13 you can choose to avoid the fights.

The frequency of these spawns in the first part of the game where I am is very low but they will probably increase later in the game, also they occur more often at night which is to be expected really.

FF13-1, no spawns, enemies are always visible in the field, so you avoid fights by not making contact with them,
FF13-2. spawns and are random, however the spawns dont start a fight, the enemy spawns on the field close to you, you can fight or move out of range to avoid the fight.
FF13-3 (lightning returns) spawns like FF13-2 but the fights are easier to avoid as the game makes it easier to run away from enemies. Also there is limited amount of each enemy species before they go extinct, its possible to wipe them all out and have no enemies to kill

The last time FF used random forced battles was on the PS2.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 05-Dec-16 14:59:26)

In reply to a post by time2die:

Friday my focus will be on 1 game only until completion, and that game is The Last Guardian .

What's the betting that you're disappointed with it?

Its getting outstanding reviews for a game that in places looks dated and in others looks amazing, control system and camera have issues but with this developer they always have with the previous games like Ico and Shadow Of Colossus.

But both these games were on the Playstation 2 and The Last Guardian has been in development so long there are going to be a few problems and i expect it to look dated, but this is about a boy and his companion Trico and many puzzle elements within a beautiful environment ,game been in development 9 years and completely missed the playstation 3 life cycle so that is going to have a impact in one way or another.

But the 2 previous games i mentioned were class acts and a joy to play,even with the camera panning in the wrong direction and not retaining the correct focus.

To be honest Swanny I'm disappointed in most games in 2016 and think its been a weak year to be fair, there has been some good ones, but there has been more bad ones and this constant remasters have to stop at some stage.

One thing that is a worry is the unstable frame rate on the normal playstation 4 and even the Pro in some cases, digital foundry has said only buy it if you have a Pro Im sure they can patch it before Friday.

Edited by time2die (Mon 05-Dec-16 18:49:19)

the last guardian is apparently a mess on the base ps4, who would have thought a game published by sony that encourages people to buy a pro

Terrible isn't it if thats the case then thats going to come back at Sony Hard and reflect on the sales side.

I found this game not challenging at all

bit of a let down.