Sorry for being late to the party and thanks for tagging (albeit I don't get notifications) – I am very tired from playing "two days" straight and my English is also bad when it comes to writing, so I hope you all can make sense from my mess:
- My "normal" playthrough was roughly 37 1/2 hours long – I tried to take everything with me, means: Mini-games, Side-Quests and "collectables" (including Materia, Weapons…). That said: my playlog tells me, that there is still things to do, I am not sure how long it'll take.
I would say, I did good for my "first try"!
- I can't comment on English voices, sorry but BE AWARE: if you play Japanese and do not understand the language, there are some after/in-battle banter that is not translated as well as some in-game scenes. I obviously can't tell more about it.
- The direction, tho, I personally like very much. It has an "Anime"-tone to it, which is shown through typically gestures and also facial expressions – some trope-y scenes. Not as much as an "full-on" Anime-Game like Persona 5 for example but it's a "JRPG" at it's core.
So if someone really dislikes that, I could see them finding the game kinda "cringey" at moments.
- There is lots of banter, if you know FFXV you know in which direction it kinda goes. I liked many of the characters, even the ones I was like "Well, could do without them" at first. Not everyone is super fleshed out but even side-characters have a nice feel to them. Again: the point above still stands. Some of them are very over-the-top, so I could see that people might dislike them.
They really nailed my personal aesthetic and style with them.
Sorry if that information is not really helpful but it does not help if I say that I loved almost everyone (YES, EVERYONE) to bits and pieces because it is so heavily based on my preferred way of story-telling and character-building
- The graphical style has it's issues. Hopefully the textures get "repaired" with a day-one patch – the character-models on the other hand look very handsome, cute and beautiful with lots of nice details. If you played the original and remember a few characters we haven't seen yet or not seen much: you are in for a treat!
With places it's a mixed bag – there were scenes/places which I found very pretty but some of them look dull? Not ugly or anything but the environment mostly wasn't something I would gush about. It serves its purpose and there are nice details here and there.
Sequences look gorgeous, I personally do dislike how liquid in pools/glasses etc. look. Maybe it's just me.
- Gameplay is… good for me, not the best. It's missing the option to customize your AI-partners a bit more, in my opinion. They did fine with me, never fucked up or anything but I also felt the need to "help" them to get the enemies faster done.
It's kind of easy to "over train" yourself. I played normal and did side-missions as well as some grinding; not excessively; but I could do most of the game pretty easy like that. On the other hand… two sections got me really hard but I think generally speaking: The game can be easy but I also see a lot of people that feel like there is "too much" going on, on the battle screen.
- Music is good, I also like the new old music (many don't) but I feel some of the new new tracks feel like odd ones out. Maybe it's because I already knew the rest of the OST and someone that doesn't won't even notice.
Very talented Japanese voice actors (beware: English subtitle are based of the English VO, so there are a few differences between what is said and what is displayed)
Some minor nit-picks:
- Too many instances in which I had to press triangle without it really making sense…
- If two (or more) characters are on a ladder or a narrow cliff, they clip ugly together
- Narrow spaces with Barret are generally unpleasant
- I had one bug (game froze)
- Why can't I simply "Retry" / "Restart" mini-games but instead have to give up and trigger the mini-game again?
- Why is it faster to fast travel with its fast travel "cinematic" than skipping the scene…?
Some major love-loves:
- The TURKs
- Cloud, Barret & Marlene Banter
- The Banter in general but especially those three in one scene!
- Besides the semi-last boss, I really like how cinematic the bosses are – some very cool new additions, the old one shine as well!
- Cloud
- CLOUD
- CLOOOOUD
- The side-quests, especially the "last ones" before the last act
- Many of the new elements & characters – even though I missed some of the cheesy scenes, they would feel super strange with that kind of graphic, so they changed things up for the better
The "eh":
- Some of the changes I don't deem necessary
The "bad":
- One of the additional bosses is just abysmal in my opinion
I'll answer questions, sorry I am bad at giving impressions, my head is full of Cloud!
