Better late than never? Final Fantasy XV

There were a number of reasons that I didn't pick up Final Fantasy XV when it was first released, but it boils down to the all-male party, and more specifically the really gross ways that the developers talked about the all-male party. I had come to trust Square Enix as a media company, and then they spent two years systematically eroding that trust (between this and Lightning Returns), so I walked away.

But I can never completely walk away from this series, and so when T and I were looking for a new game to play together after we finished Persona 5, we spent awhile looking at our possibilities and eventually landed on this one. Not with particularly high expectations, but given the (mixed, but not terrible) overall critical and fan reactions to the game, and the fact that the price had already come down, we decided to give it a shot. We bought the game, fired it up, played through the tutorial... and then got distracted by something, I don't even really remember what, and didn't come back to it until a couple of weeks ago. Since we'd basically forgotten everything we learned in the tutorial, we started over again, and this time we kept at it. We've gotten a very little bit into Chapter 2 (where Cor leaves the party), and I will say that I like it so far. But I'm not sure that I'll ever come to love it.

The band of bros is... fine. I'm afraid none of them has distinguished themselves much as individuals yet, although I do like the sense of camaraderie among them. I still don't get why they all had to be men. Cindy's character design is ludicrous, and the straight-male-fanservice-ness of it inescapable. (Consider the unskippable cutscene every time you buy gas in Hammerhead, and tell me I'm wrong.) The story is obviously just getting started, and with the first major twist behind us I look forward to seeing the rest.

Not much more to say yet, but I'm sure I'll share my thoughts as the game progresses.