Final Fantasy XV: 5 Awesome Things (And 5 That Suck)

5. ... And Here's The Bad

That 'one button solves everything' block button? It sometimes straight up just doesn't work. Instead it feels like the developers are going for a Monster Hunter/Dark Souls-style system of animation priority, meaning if you're going to hammer the attack or spell button you best be damn sure you've allowed time and space for it to play out, as your other abilities are restricted until it's finished. However, that system excels in those other games because enemy 'tells' are far easier to gauge, not to mention the pace of combat is slower and those titles lend themselves to a generally more methodical bent. FF XV's combat is fast, frantic, and awkward by comparison. That lock-on mentioned earlier? If you don't hold the button to soft-lock whereby moving the camera will move your reticule, you then have to click the right stick to hard lock the camera to them - although combined with encircling enemies and that finicky block button, the latter means you'll get mauled from every direction you can't see to guard from. Also, for all the attack possibilities available to you, you pull nearly all of them off by just holding the buttons down and watching animations play out, Dragon Age-style. Like DA again you're free to pause combat, whirl the camera around and sort your items out, but it all feels undercooked. In Dragon Age you're pausing to issue commands and micro-manage your troops from above whenever you're not in the fray yourself, but in XV it feels like this option is here just for the sake of it - especially in a feature-starved demo.