*This piece is the author’s opinion and does not reflect oprainfall as a whole.*
Square Enix made a bold move by appearing on the Xbox stage at E3 2016. This was an obvious attempt to try and gain more sales for Final Fantasy XV on the Xbox One. What followed was a messy gameplay demo of FFXV‘s protagonist Noctis and his boys fighting against the summon Titan.
Xbox is not the first thought that comes to gamers’ minds when looking for an RPG to play; the console’s main attractions are its high number of multiplayer shooters and its powerful online capabilities. So, Square Enix’s decision to introduce a movie-like RPG to this world could have gone two ways: make unaware gamers understand the power and excitement of the Final Fantasy brand, or an awkward and confusing train-wreck. Guess which one happened…
The game was being played live on the Xbox stage and choosing a boss fight probably seemed like a good idea. But this is an RPG, and enemies sometimes use the same move over and over and over and over. You’d think that a boss would have more variation ,but I guess like certain Pokémon, Titan only knew Mega Punch. And I couldn’t even tell if the player’s attacks were connecting. Not only was I bored, but I was frustrated by gameplay that I wasn’t even controlling! Thank the Espers that Noctis was prompted to cast Blizzard on the hundredth time that he was near death to end this ‘boss battle.’ After the party’s weird victory salutes, I half expected the half-awake gamers on the stage to join in. It would’ve been better than them sleep-playing through the presentation:
https://youtu.be/HGq6CdPyh9Y
What Square Enix needs to do is know their audience; Xbox is not home for RPGs, but that doesn’t mean that someday it couldn’t be. They should have created a crazy trailer of Noctis mowing through hoards of enemies. They could’ve added some funny banter between the characters like it was one of the infinite generic third-person shooters out there. But this time it would be a shooter with swords and magic! Most hardcore Xbox players avoid all news related to brands they don’t already know, so this was a chance for Square Enix to cram FFXV down their action-seeking throats! From there, they would see how great RPGs can be and, therefore, open the minds of the more casual AAA gamer. But that didn’t happen, and, instead, we got a train-wreck.
The only good thing I can say about this presentation was that at least Titan looked cool.
