I was happy to discover that Square Enix has a survey to gather feedback about their Final Fantasy XV demo, because I have a lot of opinions about it. So I’m really glad Squeenix allowed me to share the following with them:
“This did not feel like a Final Fantasy game. It plays like Skyrim meets Kingdom Hearts II.
Let’s be honest, it also LOOKS like Skyrim meets Kingdom Hearts, too.
Now, I’m not certain that’s necessarily a bad thing, as I enjoy both of those games, but it’s not really what I’m looking for in my numbered Final Fantasy games. The battle system was almost fun once I started to get used to it, and with a bit more practice, I think I might actually enjoy it. I will say, though, if there are unskippable quicktime events at the start of every boss battle, then this game will tire my patience quickly. Navigation was difficult, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the entrance to the Behemoth’s canyon every time I wanted to head back there after camping, but after I figured out how to set destination markers on the map, I was able to navigate a little better. A word of advice: if you’re going to have an open world design ala Skyrim, copy one more thing from Skyrim, the quick travel. Being able to teleport to already-visited locations makes an open world fun to explore instead of a boring chore across which to journey.
I might have forgiven many of these issues if the demo contained a compelling story, or even a story at all; alas, Episode Duscae is largely free of context, making it difficult for me to determine how I felt about any of the characters. I know I feel slightly irritated that the entire party is male.
Quite the sausage party.
One of the most compelling things about Final Fantasy as a series is the typical inclusion of strong, interesting men AND women as playable characters. Yuna, Terra, Celes, Fran, Tifa – the list goes on. Your frankly baffling decision to make the party all one sex, thereby guaranteeing that at least half of your potential audience remains unrepresented was unfortunate, but forgivable – I’ve played men in great games before, and I’ll do it again. However, I was in fact more dismayed after finishing the demo.
In the demo, only one female character has a name or interacts with the party, and that is Cindy, the ridiculously and almost offensively sexualised Cindy. When you arrive at your party’s broken car, all you see is Cindy’s butt.
YOU THINK I AM JOKING
Seriously, her NPC model is bent over, frozen, with her ass in the air, and she remains that way until your quest is achieved and the garage reopens. Her model just stands there, thrusting her ass into Noctis’ face. It’s utterly ridiculous, and it made me laugh when I saw it, but in disbelief rather than delight. This is my gender representation?
Also, this is not how boobs even work.
A pin-up girl mechanic in daisy dukes?
Sure, you dressed Fran in lingerie, but at least I got to have her shoot bitches in the face with arrows and intone cryptic warnings about the Mist.
Even wearing inexplicable stilettos, she can kick your ass.
This was a pretty big disappointment, SquareEnix. I’m glad Final Fantasy Type-0 HD turned out to be so amazing. You can keep ogling Cindy’s butt. I’ll be over here, stabbing bad guys with a longsword as Queen, one of those awesome female characters that you’re usually so good at.”
RPG Rabbit 
I didn’t get to play this, but I did watch a run-through of it, and I was struck by how the FFXV team seems like a hair metal band whose bus broke down and they have to run to their next concert on foot. It’s weird. The gender thing is definitely a factor too – I think every FF before this, even the old SNES and before ones, had central female characters. Still, this is just a demo, so who know what they’ll pull out when they release the full game?
As for the open world aspect, I liked how that looked, especially after the god damn endless hallway of FFXIII.
Man, you are RIGHT. They DO kind of look like a super bishonen version of Rammstein! Now I cannot unsee it.
An open world skyrim-esque Final Fantasy game could be AMAZING. At least they’ve gotten hallway simulators and auto-attacks out of their system. Still, I wish they could keep a handle on the core elements of what it means to be Final Fantasy in the same way that, say, the Zelda and Mario franchises have done. It can’t just be crystals, chocobo, moogles, attacks names, enemy types, and a pilot named Cid if you’re going to make a numbered game in the main series. Mario in particular is great at exporting surface details to spin off games while keeping the core series true to it’s past and it’s fans. Many of the core FF elements like Strong Intro Sequence, Ensemble Cast, Engaging Main Villain, Enjoyable Dialogue, and Innovative World Building increasingly take a back seat to shiny video, wacky clothes, and experimental game mechanics.
Okay, I guess FF13 had most of those except for the villain, but it was just terrible in almost every other way.