The Clunkiness of Final Fantasy XV
You've all seen the posts on why FFXV's story or combat sucked, but I'm here to complain talk about the overall feel of moving around in the game.
And I've got quite a number of complaints. First there's an infuriating number of animations to cover nearly every action, each of which takes away control of your own character just to play some insignificant animation.
- Want to pick up an item? Animation. Want to pick up the next item next to it? Wait for your first animation to reset, try to point your character the right way, and then try to pick it up without accidentally jumping. Then: animation. Thank god they made battle drops automatic, cause I shudder to think about trying to pick up drops from every enemy you kill
- Getting out of your car? Animation. Getting back in? Another animation. Want to start fishing? I hope you're ready for a mini cut scene. Want to fuel up the car? Cut scene. Better hope no one calls you cause you're gonna have to stand there and listen.
- Even in combat there's annoyances. Before combat one of your buds will grab you to propose their own strategy (which often is just deal X damage; how else am I supposed to kill them????). Each time this happens takes a solid 15 seconds of just pure animations. And after combat, even as you're already sprinting away, Noctis will stop, stand still, and brush his hands off.
- Every god damn time you pick up a new ingredient you'll hear: "Aha!" "What is it Iggy?" "I've come up with a new recipe!" "I'll taste test for you." Combined with a cut scene and a zoom in on Ignis' face. And yes, I actually memorized that dialogue. I think I hear it in my nightmares now.
- Etc. Etc.
What's even worse than the animations and mini cut scenes however is how slow they are. While the actual action itself might be fast, there's a slight lag afterwards before you can actually move your character. Which is fine the first few times, but after a few hours it was infuriating.
And then there are all those hidden load screens when you squeeze through gaps or under a log. They're long. Really, really, long. And yet on the other side you just come out into the same dark cave that you just left. Why are there so many of these in dungeons when the over world sections are many times the size without loading screens?
And then there's driving around. The Regalia can do, at best, like 60 MPH. Driving to somewhere 5 miles away can actually take 5 or more minutes. Noctis also runs at an annoyingly realistic human running speed (he also has a stamina gauge for running) which makes running around the countryside without the Regalia absolutely torturous. I get that these are for realism, but it tends to take away from the realism to be bored and distracted moving from point A to point B. Even running from the parking lot of Galdin Quay to the building got annoying after the first 2 times.
Some quests involve sneaking around, following beasts or people that walk annoyingly slow and in agonizingly circuitous paths. These are horrible. Most of the time there isn't even dialogue to listen to while you just slowly move around, minimal effort/thinking required.
There's also smaller stuff like automatic vaulting over rocks, bumping into people, and forced "look at this" moments that are either overly jarring/slowing or completely remove your camera control.
However, it's not like there's nothing good about the game. The graphics are gorgeous, especially for a game from 2016, and the music is incredible. "Stand by Me" by Florence + The Machine from when you're pushing the car at the start is an awesome song and it's a sin that it wasn't on the Regalia radio. Those pre-rendered cutscenes are absolutely incredible as well. Noctis and Prompto, characters aside, have great voice actors. Being on Game Pass is also a huge plus.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my rant TED Talk.
Posted Sep 11, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC
While I do get some of your complaints, it does sound really nitpicky to me.
Accidentally jumping instead of picking up an item for sure is annoying and somehow clunky, but the animation for picking something up doesnt even take a second?
I have no idea what you mean with some things. What animation is there when fishing? I just looked up some gameplay. After pressing X at the fishing spot, it immediately lets you throw in the bait. Fishing is also completely optional.
The animation for getting into the car is like 4-5 seconds.. takes about a second to get out of the car. No idea how it can get that annoying for anyone. Same with Ignis telling you about the new recipe. Takes like 5 seconds and in that time you also get the information on screen what effect the food has.
Loading times were absolutely awful in the 1.0 version. It got a lot better with the updates, but it can still feel too long for sure. Imo a lot of ps4 games suffer from long loading screens. I do think FF15 did a better job of hiding the loading times inside the dungeons in a more natural way than FF7R did.
While I did enjoy the more realistic feel of driving around with the car, I can see why others dont. Running around as Noctis is for sure slow, but you do get the chocobo early in the story and you can call them whenever you want, which makes travelling a lot faster.. especially the more you use them.
I totally agree, it sounds nitpicky, but these things get pretty annoying over time. The first dozen times it was totally ok. But after several hours the slowness gets really obvious, possibly a result of the poor quality of the rest of the game not being there to distract. When most of the stuff could be accomplished by a pop up on screen, like new recipes, it gets infuriating. Again, fine the first 10 times, but not really the next 50.
For picking stuff up, there's a tiny angle you have to be facing for Noctis to actually pick up the item, even when it shows the prompt on screen (same button to jump). So you walk up, press A, and Noctis jumps instead. Picking up 3 things in a row is horrible.
It's not nitpicky. The loading time of this game is obscenely long. I wouldn't be surprised if my total loading time add up to more than 2 hours.
I'm fortunately on an SSD so it's decently quick, but I do remember it being atrocious back on PS4. I guess that explains all the stupidly long squeeze through cracks sections in dungeons.
Ok I have an early PS4 build. The load time for fast travel is absolutely atrocious.