I. The extended media is required.
Just before the release of the game, I decided to take a look at the film, “Kingsglaive”. While I will spare you a full review, ultimately, it was coherent and entertaining. Right off the bat, it became apparent that the film prequel was required if you wanted to understand any of what was happening at the start of the game. The beginning of Chapter 2 starts with scenes from the film, but doesn’t provide any context for it.

At about the 10 hour mark, I decided to check out “Brotherhood”, realizing the game was not going to give me any reason to care about the cast. Not only does it give you a look into the history of the main cast, it also give you a glimpse into the suburbs of Lucis, which look an awful lot like the surrounding areas of any major metropolitan area in Japan. A real surprise for me, as it is unprecedented in a Final Fantasy game.

II. The main characters are flat.
Without the look into their history as friends, you have no idea what sort of connection they have. The game spends very little time even helping you get to know them while playing. They simply follow stereotypes based on their clothes and react to situations that happen to them. You get the sense that they are close, but you have no idea why. And when the game does drop information, most of it is related to scenes from “Brotherhood”, the anime prequel to the game.

III. The villains are never formally introduced
Without the film, the villains just seem to appear and spew some kind of “I’ll make you pay for this” shtick. You also, for a large part of the game, never get to understand the motivation of the villains. You can’t even lean back on the “World Domination” trope. They want power, and they have most of it, but to what end.

IV. So many strange bugs.
The first 10 hours of the game I played had various bugs here and there. Things like having no water or having only black voids where water should be. At some points my companions were stuck in a misty haze, somewhere between being fully rendered and alive to being a ghastly wireframe. In battle, sometimes only their weapons would appear. Honestly though, this was pretty entertaining.

V. Too far removed from JRPG genre
One of the best aspects about JRPG’s is that they exist at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from western RPG’s (WRPG). In the west, we tend to be concerned with the actual physical space that the character can move around in, while the JRPG counterpart has always been a little more concerned with creating atmosphere and using backdrops or dialog to fill in where physical space wasn’t used. In Final Fantasy VII, Midgar had multiple districts and boroughs, but instead of worrying about actually constructing all that space, the characters and atmosphere create the sense that the city IS big. The world of Eos is a little too big for a JRPG. They didn’t really know how to fill it and make it come alive. Basically, they stretched the atmosphere too thin and the game ends up suffocating.

VI. Battles stack on one another.
In certain places across the world map, if you run around long enough, the empire sends a group of soldiers after you. The game doesn’t care what you are the middle of. Sometimes, it’s just time for them to randomly show up, placing two separate battle areas on top of one another, meaning you can accidentally leave one early while trying to take on the soldiers, stopping missions midway.

VII. Driving. Oh god, the driving.
There is no way around it. Like most open world games, you can’t fast travel somewhere if you haven’t discovered it yet. Fine. But there is so much land to cover, with almost nothing in it but pretty scenery. You can’t drive the car like in GTA (which probably would have solved the boredom problem). Very few random battles happen while driving, and there is no mini-game to keep you occupied. It’s too much like an actual car trip. When I finish playing the game and have to drive somewhere, I feel like I have already been driving for miles, and I dread stepping foot into the car.

VIII. Main quest vs Side quests
Instead of the story line leveling with you, the game goes at its own pace. So if you spend a bunch of time on side quests and leveling up, the main story will still be stuck way behind you. Currently, I am 20 levels over the story line. There is almost no balance between the two.

IX. Interactions with people are hard to initiate or randomly start.
Generally in JRPG’s, you would confirm interactions with surrounding NPC’s, but RPG’s have slowly started having them talk as if you just walked into the conversation. It is supposed to be immersive, but it honestly hurts more than it helps. Some cues start after you have passed them and others require a confirm press. Also, no classic on-screen text, all dialog is spoken with subtitles, which kills me a little inside.

X. Cross (x) is both Confirm AND Jump
Why they decided to have you jump with the same button you confirm action with, I will never know. Maybe they just want you to make an ass of yourself while streaming. I almost always jump before the confirm icon completely appears, restarting the whole process of waiting for it to appear.

XI. You can’t order your missions in any meaningful way.
You’re missions just appear by level… or some other mysterious order. Basically, you can’t choose how you want them to display. And even then, you can’t bounce between the “Map” function and the “Quest” function easily. You have to enter the menu system to access quests. It would be helpful to organize them by quests closest to my current location.

XII. Music gets interrupted by… other music.
The game has a great music feature; you can easily play music from several different games from the series. However, for some reason, it can’t seem to hold onto your choice between certain scene jumps, like fast travel or story cuts. Another weird issue for me is that the menu music interrupts almost any music in the game with its own theme. When you are in a heart pumping scene or battle and need to change up your gear, you suddenly get super calm music that ruins the vibe.

XIII. Magic isn’t target friendly
In battle, I often find myself without any meaningful way to move my team out of the way of magic. It is a fun addition that your team can be hurt by your magic on the field, but without any meaningful way to try and avoid it, it causes battle strategy anxiety (BSA). (BSA is not really an acronym)

XIV. No quick way to locate Warp spots
In battle, it is imperative that you recharge your MP by flying to Warp Points. Some of these points are ground level, others are very high, the issue however is finding one. You can spin your camera around a good deal before ever finding one. Sometimes I just have to give up.

XV. Your team is ALWAYS IN YOUR WAY!
Walking anywhere in the game, your team constantly finds a way to stand in front of you. And for the sake of “immersion” you can’t just walk through them. You have to push and grunt your way past. I long for the old days of running in line. Less immersive, better gameplay.