Well guys, the thing doesn’t look very good for Final Fantasy’s side. Kotaku has interviewed the Final Fantasy’s co-director Hajime Tabata in PAX Prime, and he discussed the future of Fianl Fantasy XV and what he thinks of the current state of the franchise he built and about the Console Market in Japan. And the big bad news is  we’re getting to the point there the console market in Japan is slowly dying, as more and more people prefer mobile games. The reason from Tabata perspective is :

There’s probably a cultural explanation for why the Japanese market is shifting toward handheld or smartphone devices. It’s pretty unique to Japan, where everyone is transporting—they have long train rides and bus rides to work, they have time to play handheld devices, or they’re spending more time in their own rooms vs. spending more time in the living room. via.: Kotaku

The fact of Tabata’s perspective is that most of Japan commutes around the country via bus and train versus driving individual cars.

Personally I will extend my opinion over the Tabata1s perspective. The mostly of the Japanese are between 20-79 years old and they don’t have much time to spend in home playing in your own console, so while they are commuting around the country they spend your own time interacting with their mobile device including games.

Image:Population pyramid via 2013 via CIA World Factbook.

And why Japan is so important about it? Japan is the house of the Final Fantasy Series and a ton of JRPGs, if you don’t sell console games there, that mean “no money” for the console game developers and consequently “no more games”. :/

So Tabata says that if Final Fantasy XV does not do well in Japan, that will Signal the end of console games:

So in terms of whether console games will be received moving forward, it’s not to say that I don’t have any concerns at all, but I believe that it’ll really depend on how Final Fantasy XV does. Because I really want more people to enjoy games in the living room, on a big screen. If Final Fantasy XV doesn’t do well, perhaps there’s not much of a future for console games. It kind of really depends on how that goes. via.: Kotaku

“If Final Fantasy XV doesn’t do well, perhaps there’s not much of a future for console games.” Like in the Kotaku’s opinion is that  “Even if Tabata is over-reaching—even if he’s just referring to the future of Square Enix and not of the Japanese industry as a whole—that is an inordinateamount of pressure. The people behind Final Fantasy XV are carrying the weight of an entire genre on their shoulders. No wonder it’s taking so long.”

And I agree with Kotaku and someway but what guarantee that Final Fantasy XV will really be that good to define the future of the console market in Japan? Sorry, I played Final Fantasy XIII, I enjoyed and I really liked FFXIII, FFXIII-2 and FFXIII-3, but it was a crap when compared with any other old Final Fantasies. And the problem here is we have some nice JRPGs around there like Tales of series, that keep an excellent quality along the years; the Ni no Kuni, for me one of the best JRPG of 2012; Bravely Default, an awesome portable game for Nintendo 3DS and that may be the problem. What probably he is thinking is to develop a game like that mentioned why to develop to home consoles? If for mobile or portable video game would sell many more and we could keep the good qualities of the franchise…

Well, concluding…  The sad news is Console games in Japan are truly in risk and the scare about Final Fantasy XV be the last one for console, probably what Tabata said looks more like a market message to try to hype the game in Japan. ;/

Watch bellow the E3 2013 trailer of the game from IGN Youtube channel if you have forgotten how awesome FFXV looks like:

Read the entire Kotaku’s interview HERE and get your own conclusion. :)

Jumping the blabla… Watch the trailer bellow:

Now the news :)

So the graphics looks awesome, and in my opinion Square-enix is doing an amazing job what we can see from now and the “bad” news is

Tetsuya Nomura Is No Longer Directing Final Fantasy XV

 The game is being directed by Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.

“This move allows Tetsuya Nomura to focus his full efforts as the director of other highly anticipated titles, including Kingdom Hearts III,” Square Enix said in an official statement.

quoted from Kotaku

Looks like Square is going to try speed up the development of Kingdom Hearts 3.

Final Fantasy XV’s demo will offer a ton of content for the pleasure of the player with approximately 3-4 hours if you play driving the car, but if you decide to walk it will take a lot more time, according to Square-Enix

During a recent Live Stream, the demo is set in Duscae region, and you can find at least one dungeon to explore and you can walk and go everywhere, but if you don’t care about explore, the whole thing can be finished in about an hour.

The demo won’t introduce any boss fights, but will have a rideable Chocobo included.

Just remembering the Game was being directed by Tetsuya Nomura, and last week we learned that he is out of the project and now all his efforts are on Kingdom Hearts 3. Hajime Tabata takes his place in Final Fantasy XV, he directed previously Crisis Core and Type-0.

via.: Gamespot

You can watch the Combat Gameplay Demo of TGS 2014 from the channel CommunityGame bellow:

Access to the Final Fantasy XV Demo will be included with Final Fantasy Type-0. So if you want to play the demo, you purchase and wait for Type-0.

So, after a great trailer in TGS 2014 and the announce of a playable game coming with Final Fantasy Type-0 HD in March of 2015. The conclusion is: every time I get all excited with this game I’m immediately crushed right after. And now the great reason of this crush comes from the new director of the game Tabata-san:

“About 50 to 60 percent of the game is complete. We kind of started from the beginning of the game, so the first part is more complete than the others,” Tabata told Gameinformer. When asked on a possible release date, he noted, “Unfortunately, it’s still going to take a while, but I’m hoping people will reset their timers from when I joined the team and restart the count from there.” Tabata went on to explain the complications involved with creating Final Fantasy XV. “During the ‘Versus era’ – though it might be weird to refer to it that way – we weren’t able to reveal any information on release timing because that was a project in which we had to overcome so many different problems that arose. Unfortunately, while we were trying to work through the issues, the timing never matched. But about two years ago, when I officially joined the project, we did a pretty major directional change when we decided not to go with the previous generation.”

The game first announce was  in E3 2006, we don’t know exactly when the game had the development started, but what we know it was just before the E3 2006, probably yet in 2006. So, if in 2006 the game was 0% and now it is 50% can we come with the conclusion that the game’s release date will be someday near the year 2022? Not exactly, if you read what Tabata said above: “I’m hoping people will reset their timers from when I joined the team and restart the count from there.”  So this 50-60% over the many years is not a proper projection of its progress.We don’t know exactly when Nomura left the director post and how much per cent of the project was when Tabata joined the team. But what Tabata want to make clear is when he joined the team the project finally started to walk or running and it won’t take 8 years to be finished.

Ok, I like Final Fantasy series and I was very hyped about Final Fantasy XV what was shown in E3 2013. And this year with the new trailer, the game looks very beautiful but… Graphics is not everything. :/

Now the battle system is the great concern about the game. At first the Game was turn-based and that was perfect. So late they said the game would have a battle system something like Kingdom Hearts and for me it is Cool, would be a good change, Kingdom Hearts have a nice gameplay system. However now… The game play itself, you can hold the attack button and your character start to kill everything.

Fist watch bellow the new released battle system video:

Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata addressed a number of fan concerns during its Final Fantasy Type-0 HD Extended Talk Show this morning. You can read bellow, but it didn’t help.

Q: So after all, the E3 2013 trailer was a lie? You can’t actually play like that?

A：You can fight like that. I think in the recent play demonstration we showed several techniques and functions, but at E3 last year the game was running on a prototype environment (Ebony). At TGS 2014 we showed the game running in the actual environment (Luminous). Right now we are in the process of migrating functions from the prototype into it. It will take time to migrate it all. I wanted to show footage in the actual environment as soon as possible, so I ended up showing something that is in the midst of migrating. The video shows actual footage, not an idealized version. It will become more and more advanced from here on out.

Q: Can you go into detail about the “holding down the button” issue? Is it really okay to just hold the button down?

A：It’s not that simple! (Laughs.) Yes, when you continue to hold down the guard button, you can basically auto-guard and evade, but it consumes MP. You can’t infinitely evade. You have to think about timing, when it’s a good idea to attack or evade. Also, you aren’t invincible. There are attacks you can’t avoid. In those cases, there are also essential technical evasion methods.

Q: What about attacks?

A：When you push the attack button, you invoke the standard combo. You can change the actions by using it in coordination with the directional buttons. The actions change depending on your circumstances—things like whether you’re guarding and whether the timing is right, (imagine in this circumstance: when you’re guarding, you might get a chance to counterattack or something), or if your companions are nearby.

Q: Can you change the operational character?

A：Not in its current specifications. Everyone on the development team thoroughly looked into an Active Cross Battle system that made free use of attack, guard, and co-op functions, but as a result they arrived at the conclusion that changing characters would be too difficult. In order to create a new and interesting battle system, we ended up not being able to put in the character switching.

Q: Is jumping in?

A: It is. Considering PlayStation 4 has plenty of buttons, there is an independent jump button.

Q: What about free running?

A: It’s there. Except for the character switching, everything that was in the E3 2013 trailer is still there. All the cool actions like the weapons barrier that surrounds Noctis called “Phantom Sword,” and the short warps and jumping from the Behemoth battle are in the actual game. We’ll release more information later on, so please look forward to it.

Q: What about weapon selection?

A: You set them yourself before battle. You set each weapon considering what actions you can use with which weapons. You can only determine one weapon from the ones equipped to be your main one, but that weapon will come with techniques which can be invoked at your discretion in battle. Besides the basic assault button (attack), you can invoke techniques with the technique button.

Q: I can’t tell if it’s more like Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy Type-0. Which is it?

A: We explained that when you push the attack button, you invoke the standard combo, which is similar to Type-0. Considering the battle system as a whole, however, it is different from both Type-0 and Kingdom Hearts.

Q: Is it being simplified for casual users? Is is still an action RPG?

A: In order to widen its appeal, we’re developing the game aware that anyone can immediately be able to play it, however the game as a whole is not casual. Because it’s a core game, we have casual controls. If you obtain good weapons and level up, you won’t have to worry about clearing the main scenarios.

Q: Will you listen to feedback from the demo version?

A: We want to reference your feedback during development, but how we’re going to do that is still under review.

Q: Haven’t you been poor at putting out information?

A: If our fans are uneasy about the information we have released, then our ways of issuing information may in fact be poor. Even though we didn’t have a lot of time, I wanted to make clear the current situation. In the future, our information releases might be poor, but I think we can receive your approval.

quoted from gematsu.com

The idea of the game looks “good” and I’m totally “ok” with “to control only Noctis”, in Kingdom Heart we can only control Sora and that is perfect, but Square-enix in my opinion is thinking so wrong try to transform big projects in Casual games, it may work for Smartphone and portable games, but not really for console and computer games. For me one great mistake of Square-enix in Final Fantasy XV  was changing Tetsuya Nomura for Tabata Hajime.

Tabata directed awesome games for portable market like Final Fantasy Type-0 (PSP), Kingdom Hearts Re:coded(Mobile), Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII(PSP), The 3rd Birthday(PSP). He certainly know how to develop a good portable game. But take a great console game series and transform in casual portable game for a console, it will work?

I think Final Fantasy already has great fans and now Noctis, the main character of the game also have fans. The game with good or  bad gameplay system already has so many people who really wants to play and the game development cost must be so high that makes Square-enix tremble in fear of making something more like Final Fantasy and fail to reach new players around the world.

Well for me the game looks awesome, but we will know better in the upcoming demo. ;)

For last, Tabata revealed he has taken a liking to the “Car Driving” meme surrounding Final Fantasy XV. He finds it hilarious, actually. So much so that he released official assets for meme makers. quoted from gematsu.com

First of all, I will not be talking a single word about “Ultimate Mega Ultra Platinum Gold Collector Edition Bundles” of any game. Just about the normal physical game box.

Well, honestly, there is nothing new here, in this video-game generation most of the physical games have ignored the existence of a manual in the box. It is not the exclusivity of Final Fantasy XV and that is sad :(.
Truly speaking, FFXV box comes with more thing inside the normal box than most of the other games from this generation (if we are talking about the day-one edition) that came with the Masamune CD-Key. That means it comes with about 3 pieces of papers plus the Blu-ray inside the box (What amazing!).

Oh, but aways was like this! no?
Oh no… my innocent children… A long time ago, there had such amazing true manual inside the box, this manual was so amazing that you would sleep hugging it and dreaming about the game.
So why this happened?
Well, maybe because is cheaper just to put a Blu-ray and 2 printed papers in a box. However, believe me or not, there have maybe a (obvious) theory that the game industry wants you to purchase the digital game version and put an end to the physical game age. So they earn more money with direct distribution and can handle better the piracy.

And the manual content?
The manual content was inserted inside the game itself by a stupid tutorial, which the game teaches you the most obvious things possible, since the game considers you a child with mental problems that can’t press A or B to figure out “itself” what this button can do, there have this amazing tutorial that with 4 lines of small text explain that “Pressing X=attack”.

Now let’s talk about some true good game manuals. Have you played before Baldur’s Gate? not the enhanced edition, but the physical box version of the old Baldur’s Gate had a fugkin amazing manual that explain everything about the game in a “small book”, no, not useless thing like “Press X=attack”, I’m talking about some really useful things like: “What the fugk this magic can do?”, “What the fugk the magic Parangaricutirimícuaro can do?” every answer for your life is inside that manual. Most of the games from that time had some good manuals, also most of Playstation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo64 and other consoles from that age had games with some well made manuals. Earthbound itself had some kind of strategy guide as a manual, civilization 3 had about 200 pages of manual with some useful contents. The biggest manual ever? Maybe Flight Simulation from Microsoft, that was a true manual.

So, what is ur conclusion?
My conclusion is that maybe the time to purchase physical games and be proud to have it with a  full manual to sleep hugging it in your arms, while it emits a delicious odor of (Magic The Gathering) cards is mostly over. Digital games are the future. bye.

If you have any different opinion or wants to comment any xit, u are welcome to comment. :)

or maybe Not

Most of the characters in Final Fantasy XV sadly have a very simple plot behind, nothing like “Oh my gosh! What story!” and Prompto isn’t an exception, however, he has a different story to tell us.

In Brotherhood Final Fantasy XV – Episode 2: “Dogged Runner”, the character is introduced like a guy that love dogs (and maybe other animals too) and love to take shots with his photographic camera, also he “falls in love” with the protagonist of the game Noctis, but he thought that he was too fat to be accepted by the great prince Noctis as his friend.

Yeah, the poor Prompto was really a little fat boy.

After Prompto saves a random poor dog from a hurt in the leg, the dog runs away, Prompto tries to find the poor dog, but couldn’t find it. In the next morning he gets a letter from the court oracle Lunafreya. Luna tells in the letter “Thanks for saving my doggo! I know that you study in the same school that Noctis.” and she asks Prompto to become friend with Noctis. This makes Prompto happy and ready to lose some weight and be accepted by the prince.

The result is the skinny Prompto that we see in the game.

If you want to watch the Brotherhood, it is available HERE :3

SPOILER ALERT BELLOW!!!!

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In the game, we discover in Chapter 13 that Prompto is a “Magitek Soldier”.

WAT?

Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense, and it changes absolutely nothing in the game mechanic or in the story. It looks like an unnecessarily forced entry for his background and in my opinion, it even breaks a little the anime episode 2 itself.

And in case you don’t know what is “Magitek Soldier” it is a embued fusion between machine, a little piece of “human” and demons.

Bye.

.

Let’s skip the introduction and avoid the gibberish about the game was in development for 10 years and more… Final Fantasy XV is a good game, an “MMORPG”, which you play alone with a lot of things to do and with a nice customizable car to drive like a train on many rails.

So here I am after do almost everything in the game and… The game is “good”. I got a lot of fun playing it. After my 40 hours I was still excited in playing it, what is rare, most of the games after 20 hours I start to get tired, but this didn’t happen to Final Fantasy XV.

Although this game is good at the same time it is terrible, really, really terrible. Well, let me explain a little better…

The world of Final Fantasy XV is amazing, very well made and with a nice base-plot behind, when you arrive in Altissia and see all that waterfall and how it works is amazing, there is a mix between a modern world with a beautiful touch of fantasy, with magic, gods and everything else are very well-built.

So what is terrible in it?

First of all, let’s begin with the side quests. The base plot story of the main character Noctis is “ok”, in truly, it is pretty good, however, the way that the player has to follow this story inside the game mechanics is terrible.

The game looks like an unfinished game full of plot holes, useless chapters and quests that are worst than Naruto anime’s fillers. Instead of fill this terrible HOLES with some useful quests… But no, it doesn’t happen. Some entire chapter’s plot are just so terrible as the side quests.

Very minor spoiler in the quote bellow:

I was sent to look for Mythril to fix my ship. The Mythril is located in a specific mine. So I went there in this mine following a nice dungeon and in the end of this, I found a blue dot flashing in the mid of the ground. So I picked it like a random potion, ok… So I went back to the dungeon’s entrance so I could head back and finish the quest. After finishing the quest and get ready to get out of that continent in “my” fixed boat I was (with no reason) “teleported” inside a “Power Plant” and forced to kill some demons there and head back without any plausible reason.

Many parts of the main quest make it look like there should have a “better background” behind. Some parts in the game the development team didn’t have enough time to develop it properly and cut off so many things to sell in future DLCs (or not). It is like was replaced for a “simple and prolonged content” to build time to the players. The game could easily take less than 2 hours of gameplay plus cutscenes to finish it if there were no “fillers” in the main storyline.

Everyone already knows about this problem but in the second part of the game (more specifically in chapter 9) the game changes a bit. From chapter 9 forward the game becomes more linear with some QTE to complete the adventure of Noctis. However, it worked well, but not perfect. I think there should have a new exploitable continent to the player, one of the characters in the game speak a specific thing before the chapter 9 that makes clear that the exploration will continue in a “new continent”, what was probably cut off because of the lack of time in the development or because “we need more content for DLC”. I don’t know and I don’t care.

So this is the only problem of the game?

No! That is just the begin.

The side quests are awful…

One woman ask you to look for five yellow frogs in the lake and bring it to her. The other guy wants you to bring a piece of “meat” of Catoplebas, so he can make a delicious food for you. All side quests have some terrible context, worse than any MMORPGs and we are talking about a single player game. It basically works in: “Take the quest”, “go to the place X”, (“kill the monster(s)” or “pick something”) and “bring it back” with some shit excuse.

That is why it is called side-quest, right?

No! Side-quests are supposed to bring some small complementary plot of the world or main quest itself. Explore this amazing world’s stories and possibilities and bring more useful knowledge about this to the player! That doesn’t happen!

Another problem is… The game is too easy. I have no idea how is the Game Over Screen. My character Noctis has never died. When you beat the game some good quests appears, some of these quests are a good challenge to the player that will make you often access your inventory and keep healing, healing, healing more and maybe a phoenix down or two over the fallen party members, but nothing really hard enough to make you lose.

Talking a little more about the combat… The combat is really fun and works very well in real time, but have tons of problems one of them is the Summon system is terrible, the summons appears in some rare random time while you are fighting, it could work better, another problem are cast the magics, while you are in combat it is cool but, could be better, the magic could be associated with MP, but no, it is an equipment in your inventory with limited amount of magic to cast. The biggest problem is the Combat Zone, a circular area, if you leave this area the combat ends, the enemies start to recover HP and stop attacking you (what makes the game easier and avoid you from to die).

Just a note, but the entire game made me remember the game “.hack//G.U”, since the way you pick quests, side quests, the combat mechanic and even the game difficult. Both games have some great similarities.

RatE: 8.0/10.0 –  Final Fantasy XV is really a fun game. Even after 80 hours I have been yet excited with the game. What I see is a fun game that could be one of the best JRPGs ever. But the final result is too far from that, the game looks incomplete in every aspect, there have some potential characters like the final boss, that could be one of the most amazing villains of all time, but it doesn’t happen, because they don’t explore this great villain in side quests or even in the main quests. It makes that he looks just like a dull, idiot and weak villain. The entire World of FFXV is really amazing, but “empty” at the same time. All of this “emptiness” in the world and each character’s background probably will be filled with DLCs and transmedia materials, since the game is incomplete for now. Despite this problems, the game is easily one of the most fun single player games of the year.

Game Trailer bellow: