Final Fantasy XV is... awkward

[Xanatos]

Can't come up with a better word to describe my experience with FF XV so far other than, well, awkward. It's still way too early though to make a proper judgment given I'm only 9 hours in, but there are quite a few things that irk me about this game, some rather questionable - confusing gameplay decisions, that I need to get off my chest.

First of all, my biggest gripe with FF XV so far, Regalia. There's an option to manualy drive the car, but in reality you can't. You can only accelerate and drive in reverse, that's it, the car is still on rails and you can't make a detour. What's the point of this option then? The auto option is confusing, choose parking spots and you'll get a list of spots all over the place, including in areas that are inaccessible at that point, save for the ones that actually matter. You technically can't drive at night, Ignis straight up refuses to drive, and if you jump in the seat yourself it's only matter of seconds when Iron Giant will pop up in front of you. Driving seems to be a huge aspect of the game, why is it so poorly made and downright awkward?

Secondly, combat. Not the combat itself, but the way it initiates. There are enemies roaming around the field and you think to yourself "ok, this is neat, I can either attack or avoid them", but then they suddenly start appearing next to you out of the thin air, and not just deamons. So is it random or not?

Thirdly, the gameplay mehanics, primarily controls, are so awkward/random. You're next to a mineral deposit and press A and sometimes you collect everything and sometimes you have to collect each individual piece, it's always random. You're standing behind a gas pump, 2-3m from Regalia, "pres A to fill the tank", you press A and suddenly your characters start entering the car because it switched to Regalia for some reason. You're running and Noctis suddenly pulls out a weapon, because the button for running and attacking is the same. There are so many dumb examples I can write down it's not even funny.

Resources on the world map respawn, I can understand expendable resources like food or minerals but why do "treasure chests" respawn with the exact same loot? This really irks the OCD in me. I though I would take pictures as Prompto, I mean that would be awesome, taking breathtaking photos of monsters and landscapes, but no, Prompto just takes random awful pictures himself. Why?

Then there are some weird story choices. If you haven't seen Kingsglaive you'll be confused to say the least. Chapter 2, Lucis is in chaos, and they just skrim over that shit. Few extremely short CGI clips from the film itself with no explanation or dialogue whatsoever. Kingsglaive does such a fantastic job at pulling you in, explaining the lore, setting things in just a few minutes, why is that not in the game at all?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game for what it is. Kingsglaive did such a fantastic job at setting up lore that I can't wait to see this game explore, but it's super weird, awkward, even more so after playing such a super polished masterpiece that is The Witcher 3. Please tell me I'm not the only one feeling this way.

[Pete]

You're not alone in feeling like this. It was a messy, but very pretty game. I feel like you had to watch kingsglaive and some anime on YouTube to really get any backstory as to why they're all friends in the first place. It's not particularly good storytelling.

The car is awful in the begging for the reasons you stated. I think they tried to put stipulations on your travel abilities to limit how much stuff you could actually do. It makes a little sense with how Noctis sucks at driving at first, but why couldn't the other drive at night?

Battle gets annoying, for sure. Just when you think you've finished up, a bunch of clowns drop from the sky to ruin your day. It gets better once you start getting better weapons, but it's still a pain in the ass.

[nix]

The characters are a bore, the combat mechanics are a snore, the characters are all uninteresting. The game is bearable up until the lighthouse then just turns into a complete turd.

[Xanatos]

That's not even the tip of the iceberg. This game baffles me more by the minute.

Sometimes you can't use fast travel to reach certain Outposts/Parking Spots. I've pondered quite a bit and can't seem to figure out why. Is it distance/proximity of the location, do only certain locations allow fast travel, perhaps I'm using the wrong option... I've tried literally everything to make sense out of this, it's random as f**k. Same goes for "Jump to the Car" option, is it greyed out because enemies are in sight, do I need to be close to the road/civilization, do I need to be in a specific spot, none of the criteria matter. All this makes exploration an even bigger chore than it already is.

Then there's this little gem. A shopkeeper/vendor has a quest for you, in literally any other game in existence you approach the vendor and speak to him, but not in FF XV. In FF XV there's an option for that few feet from him that leads to said conversation. Why? God knows. Sometimes you can skip dialogue, sometimes you can't. I thought not being able to skip dialogue is reserved for important bits, but that's not the case. It's just random.

I never thought I would say this, but I enjoyed FF XIII more. I really want to punch the guy who made all these decisions.

[avensis]

I was very disappointed, because I expected a lot, and we should all expect a lot when we know that it's been 10 years they work on this thing.

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