I remember before Final Fantasy XV came out, I watched Clueless Gamer’s look at Final Fantasy XV.
I thought the segment was hilarious, but it might not have amused fans of the series. Clueless Gamer gave a less than stellar impression of Final Fantasy XV. still, it ended with a somewhat positive recommendation. I think…
But a couple of comments about Final Fantasy XV still stick out to me:
Conan: “This whole thing is like an epic…blue balls waste of time.”
Conan: “An aggressive wasting of our time.”
Now of course, in the grand scheme of things he’s right: Final Fantasy XV is an aggressive waste of time.
Not that it’s a bad thing.
The minigames are really fun, but they aren’t really mandatory. Same with the camping, fishing and side quests. The game aggressively takes your attention to these things. You have to consciously ignore them if you want to simply play the story.
But that’s no problem for fans of the series. The story may be the main appeal, yet the gameplay hooks players. This happens in all Final Fantasy games. We play minigames, we encounter random monsters, we take side quests, etc. This is the foundation of a role-playing game. We waste time.
But Conan didn’t say it was a waste of time. He said it was an aggressive waste of time, in that it was overly forceful. That’s when I wondered if maybe Conan was right. Maybe Final Fantasy XV and the rest of the series is an aggressive waste of time.
So are they?
Yes, all Final Fantasy games are an aggressive waste of time. They have to be to make the Final Fantasy game the Final Fantasy game we know and love.
They aggressively hold our attention so we can’t put the game down. It’s addictive. And then again, that’s why we play games – to waste time. We’re here on this planet for a short time, so why not get out and do something worthwhile? This is worthwhile.
Just like watching movies, and reading books before it. We aren’t doing anything of practical value, rather than entertainment and perhaps challenging our perspective. That’s it, but it’s so important to who we are as human beings.
Since we love wasting time on Final Fantasy, this shouldn’t be a problem. Conan plays other games that are addicting enough to play, yet put down after a while. Final Fantasy XV isn’t like that. If it’s going to waste your time, it’s going to do it aggressively.