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This is a rather calmer, more clinical evaluation of where I stand with things. I thought I had gone through the five stages of grief during the marketing cycle for this game and that I would be able to achieve a sufficient level of dissociation from it to play it with a kind of ironic, detached aloofness, and while my playthrough essentially started out that way I do find myself returning to that sense of frustration in that I am constantly identifying new and exciting ways to see the bad in it, because it is so fundamentally flawed as a story and as a game. And that speaks to the complaint voiced here in that the problems with it are not scarce or isolated: they are part and parcel with how Nomura as director chose to approach the material-- that is to say, it's not a failure of execution in terms of the more complex elements that bewilders, but the basic errors in design and getting the very easiest things wrong. That leads to a sensation of disillusionment which is then exacerbated by how simple the game should have been to deliver given that this is not a rushed sequel to build franchise potential (like KH2), but an event consummation this team has been building towards for the better part of a decade, stringing fans along with them all the while. It shouldn't feel so disposable and listless when it has that kind of grounding in reliable appeal and the surrogate passion of such a lively community to drive it.Quite the opposite actually. My dissatisfaction with this long awaited title has cemented the idea of no longer anticipating events that each and everyone one of us should have had a role in shaping. For a series that appears to have such a heavy focus on consumer involvement and satisfaction, it feels like there was this alarming disconnect between what everyone wanted, compared to what the community was actually given. For years fans have expressed their various desires for what we wanted and expected to be part of this conclusive installment. The task was over simplified for those who worked on the title, as the keys to success were laid out plain and simple. Yet somehow despite all of the communities feedback and reception of the various titles that preceded it, including that of FFXV, it still feels like all of that was totally ignored and what we were given was the ambitions of a select group that doesn’t seem to understand the fan base all too well.
It’s like being at a birthday party where everyone wants to play manhunt or hide and go seek but the birthday kid insists on duck duck goose. The birthday kid has every right to do whatever he wants at his party just as the developers are allowed to express their vision in whatever way they see fit but that comes at the risk of no one coming back to show their support again. Ether way I find it to be a regrettable mistake that will surely cost them.