I’m like half a decade behind or something but whatever.

**Spoilers**

The Train Scene

The train scene highlighted essentially everything wrong with FFXV: swaths of information that’s important to understanding what’s going on being left out or skipped over for unknown reasons.

Luna has just died. Except apparently it’s been days (weeks?) in game and Noctis is depressed about it (or something, we don’t actually see anything). Gladio gets mad and tells him to man the flip up, but like why?

Ignis is blind, Noctis got the burden of the ring now, he went through that trial, and his love died. This all happened like 5 minutes ago for me,  give my homie a break. But maybe if we’d actually witnessed Noctis acting like a whiny brat for a week and refusing to do his kingly duties while learning the world is rapidly descending into dark, daemonic chaos, Gladio’s anger might have made sense. 

Anyway, Gladio made me mad and to be petty, I refused to slow down for blind Ignis while in that underground mine.

Chapter 13

For like 20 minutes, chapter 13 was okay. Ardyn quite literally takes everything from Noctis, even his weapons. It was an interesting break in gameplay too with the stealth bits and whatnot.

But then like an hour passes and like you’re still in this dungeon (I also didn’t fully understand how to use anything except Death, so I was just running around trying to find an exit and merking daemons with the ring). Eventually, you get your sword but like you’re still in this dungeon. It’s been like 2 hours. And in case you forgot, you’re still in the dungeon. And you’re not doing anything except killing spawns of daemons.

Then, you’re forced to waltz into an obvious trap. Like Ardyn legit says, “it’s a trap lolz”, but apparently being the savior of the king of kings doesn’t give you common sense. You do get reunited with your squad, but like you’re still in the dungeon.  And you get disunited .01 seconds later for a decade.

That dungeon should’ve been like 30 minutes tops. Or interesting. Getting the ring of Lucii right off the bat minimizes the impact of losing everything – you lose it all but gain god-tier insta kill abilities a minute later. Ok.

However, having to run around totally powerless for a bit would’ve made the dungeon stressful, but more interesting. Also, why weren’t there any riddles or something Ardyn makes you figure out while you’re wandering around? Why weren’t all your homies captured and you have to rescue them one by one on a time crunch? Why can’t you find your weapons one by one via some puzzles? There were a lot of ways to make chapter 13 long but not miserable and none of them were taken.

Also, them getting separated because of the train is stupid. Literally could’ve just had them all captured and then Ardyn frees Noctis because he’s an immortal troll.

Underutilized characters

How many times do we see Dog tag Dave on screen?

Contrast that to how many times we see Aranea? Iris? The Emperor?  Ravus?? Luna???

Ravus, Noctis’ almost wife’s brother (and that’s all we learn about him), legitimately dies off-screen after all that false hype. Like you see him briefly alive and the next time he’s onscreen, he’s a dead daemon. And we never learn anything about why he was working with Ardyn/the empire. His death wasn’t even impactful like he could’ve legit been some random daemon you fight and it would’ve made zero difference.

Luna perishes before anyone has a chance to care about her, including Gladio, Prompto, and Ignis as Gladio clearly was unbothered.

We don’t know why Luna was so in love with Noctis. We don’t know why she didn’t just pick up the phone and call him if she wanted to hear his voice (??). We know almost nothing about her until she’s killed by Ardyn and we learn she was dying anyway.

Ravus could’ve just been nixed from the entire game based on his level of irrelevancy, but Luna should’ve stayed alive long enough to perish however she was going to die naturally and told Noctis about her inevitable demise. So then we get this whole Noctis is fated to save the world but can’t save the person he grows to love most plot, which is cliché but at least it would’ve made him moping over someone he barely talked to logical.

Chapter 10 could’ve been them getting to know each other (she temporarily joins the Squad to take care of Ignis or whatever), Noctis learns she’s going to die, they encounter some level 34823248390 monster Luna has to sacrifice the last of her life force to kill, she dies, and then Gladio gets mad the second time they’re on the train after Noctis has his BSOD moment and decides he ain’t gonna be king no more.

Ardyn

He ultimately achieved his goal (aside from ending the world, I suppose). Luna was dying anyway. Bye. But what did he do for 10 years while Noctis was talking to Bahamut? Sit moodily on the throne whilst fantasizing about revenge?

A single cut-scene of like Ardyn sleeping for 10 years, gaining dark energy or whatever, could’ve easily resolved this even if it was nonsense.

Ifrit

Literally why was that fight in the prologue. Luna, Ravus, even Umbra deserved that screen time.

Everything Emotional

Every emotional part of the story was grazed over. I know it’s a game but again why do we learn so much about Frog Lady, yet Noctis can’t have two minutes of woe?

Noctis’ dad died? Sorry, you can only be mad for 15 seconds, Noctis, and then literally never think about your father again.

Fiancée stabbed before your very eyes? Oh well, man up.

BFF Prompto reveals he’s a demon robot? Relevant for about 2 minutes and never brought up again.

The most emotional part of the game came after it ended (well… scrolling through all those pictures and having to pick one was pretty sad…), via that glorious camp scene and I lowkey wish that scene had come before Noctis tells his homies to stand tall, because I legitimately would’ve wept for the remainder of the game. Instead, I only wept for eight seconds because the scene ends and then more credits start rolling. Granted, it would’ve been a spoiler but like at that point didn’t we already know Noctis was going to die?

Anyway, I could probably think of more things to gripe about but overall I enjoyed FFXV, and was satisfied Noctis actually died and there wasn’t some lame cop-out or revival at the end. However, I also love a good story and I’m generally confused as to how over the course of however long it took to make this game someone couldn’t have found a way to resolve some of these issues naturally.

Open world concept but you lose your car. -1
A plethora of plot holes and focus on irrelevant characters. -1

FFXV Rating: 8/10