YMMV / Final Fantasy XV

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#-A

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Noctis/Iris was one of the more popular Noctis ships, due to their on-screen chemistry and Iris's adorable crush on Noctis. However, the reveal that Iris is 15 has caused more than a few fans to jump ship.
  • Ignis ships that didn't pair him with Noctis experienced a bit of a dent after Episode Ignis, where Ignis states that Noctis is the most important thing in his life, to the point that he has trouble caring about anything else. The exception to this was Ignis/Ravus which actually developed a fandom due to their emotionally charged interactions and status as Foils in the DLC.
• Accidental Innuendo: Overlapping with Squick and No Yay, according to Noctis's English VA the final scene of Noctis being impaled by the weapons of his father and ancestors was referred to by staff as "The Rape Scene".
• Adorkable:
  • Although Noctis's appearance might suggest otherwise, he's shown to be a silly young man who's awkward around women and Chocobos(!) and gets up to all kinds of geekery and goofing around on the side.
  • Prompto. Comes with being The Heart of the group, very pretty, a total klutz, an avid chocobo fan and the character most likely to make a friggin' Harry Potter reference out of nowhere. Even Noct calls him a nerd for that last one.
  • Up until he finally hits the Despair Event Horizon, Ardyn's also a bit of a floaty, whimsical and often out-of-place man amidst the Imperial forces, with a dorky sense of humor and some vengeance anger issues. Once he finally snaps, however, that nature of his drops out the window like a bad habit for becoming a pure Wicked Cultured individual who just wants to see the world burn.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Mystery Meat Sushi, as mentioned on the wiki is actually a real thing.
• Angst? What Angst?: Neither Gladiolus nor Iris seem to give much angst about their father dying in Kingsglaive. Gladio venting on Noct the moment he complains might be his way to angst.
  • While he's clearly hurt by the news of his father's death, Noct seems to get over it pretty quickly and the light-hearted road trip atmosphere of the early game mostly persists until more named characters start getting bumped off. Considering the toll being linked with the crystal had already taken on Regis' body, though, it's likely Noct had made his peace with the fact his dad wouldn't be around forever by then anyway.
  • Ignis' episode in the Brotherhood anime reveals that since roughly age 16, he had to realize and come to terms with his father dying for the sake of the nation. While him dying in an attack instead of wasting away from the crystal is unexpected and shocking, Noctis was nonetheless mentally prepared for it to get over it fast.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • If you spend a lot of time on sidequests, the player can be over-leveled by the time they reach the final boss (or any boss even, if they focus on exploration/leveling rather than story). All of the late-game bosses can be beaten on your first try, just by outlasting them, if you have done some level grinding and have packed plenty of healing items. Whether this makes them more or less of an anti-climax is for the individual player to decide.
  • The final boss of Episode Prompto falls into this, due to being nothing more than an extended turret section that asks you to Attack Its Weak Point. Just shoot the glowy spots with your neverending ammo and it's easy to No-Damage Run the fight. The only real difficulty comes with the boss's Beam Spam attack near the end, which counter-intuitively requires you not to iron-sight your gun; otherwise, it won't move fast enough to take out the emitters before they kill Prompto. Considering the battles leading up to this were more challenging, and the boss is built up as a Weapon of Mass Destruction before a snowmobile with a convenient machinegun mows it down without much challenge, it comes off as ridiculous.
  • The Adamantoise; the massive size of the enemy works against it. It's so big that it's difficult to tell what part of its body you're targeting, your party members' AI falls apart trying to find a place to attack, and the Adamantoise itself rarely attacks and is easily avoided when it does (you'll probably take more damage falling from a Warp Strike than you will from the Adamantoise attacking you). This makes one of the game's major Superbosses devolve into a confusing mess of dust clouds and Warp Strikes. A later patch made it even more anticlimactic by making it vulnerable to the spells of the Ring of the Lucii. If the RNG smiles on you, you can zap the turtle with the Ring's One-Hit KO spell, or just cast Death until it dies. The numerous Warp Points in the area to immediately restore MP make this even easier.
• Ass Pull:
  • The alternative ending to Episode Ignis which apparently has Ardyn killed for good — despite the game emphasizing repeatedly that permanently destroying Ardyn requires that the blood price of Noctis's life be paid — has no explanation as to how this was accomplished. All Word of God uninformatively has to offer is that it was a "secret plan" of Ignis's.
  • Prompto being a Niflheim-created clone. While the Brotherhood anime implied him to be a child with no home life whatsoever and foreshadowed his barcode thanks to never taking his wristband off, his skill set seemed at odds with the Lucis magic, he took offense to Noctis calling Magitek Troopers mindless machines, and the Naga mistakes him for its child, the game at best offers Foreshadowing for him probably being a displaced Niflheim citizen or tied to the Troopers. Nothing foreshadows his DLC's reveal of being a genetic clone of Verstael in a game where cloning isn't even mentioned once in the main campaign. Though part of this is in due part to Verstael getting absolutely no screen time or any opportunity for the story to emphasize cloning or even any similarities at work until Episode Ardyn, released well after Prompto's story.
• Awesome Animation: More than a few pieces of artwork for and in-game, but special mention goes to the painting of Etro^note as of Kingsglaive, it is at the very least present in the game; the art depicting the Astrals, and the game's logo, which was revealed at the Uncovered event to be a view of a large, 3D mural.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Astrals that are fought provide epic battles:
    • Titan battles you with one arm, while Niflheim soldiers also attack, and Noctis constantly fends off his attacks despite being smaller than his finger. The fight ends with the guys shattering Titan's arm with Blizzard magic.
    • Leviathan. First, you fight her by warping to and from debris and back to her to attack her, which would have been awesome enough on its own, but then Luna unlocks Noct's Blue Super Mode, and he proceeds to systematically dismember Leviathan, while suspending himself with his own power, and summons Titan to finish her off. Given Leviathan's attitude, it's extremely satisfying.
    • Ifrit. On top of the fact that one of Final Fantasy's most iconic summons and the last of the Six has just been summoned by Ardyn like it was nothing, it also answers the question of just who you were fighting in the game's prologue. Then the fight itself begins; Ifrit is extremely powerful, yet still a fair battle, and you can exploit his elemental weakness, and duel with him in midair. And then there's what happens when you summon Bahamut (the only time he shows up as a summon in the game) and Shiva; Bahamut rains down swords upon him, which Ifrit dodges with Le Parkour, only for Noctis to chop off one of his horns — and Ifrit keeps on fighting. Then, Shiva shows up and one-shots him.
    • Though not technically an Astral, the boss battle with Garuda during the Final Fantasy XIV crossover is excellent fun (and can be fought multiple times at either Level 45 or Level 120). Garuda is extremely mobile, summons Mooks in the form of Razor Plumes and even duplicates of herself, and when she ascends into the air, Noctis can simply warp up there and take the fight to her. The story battle against her ends with Noctis summoning the Messanger of the Gods, who takes on the name of Garuda and becomes the party's Wind-Elemental summon afterwards.
  • The battle with Aranea Highwind at Fort Vaullerey, which allows you to fight her in mid-air.
  • The final battle with Ardyn, who proves to be a formidable foe even without a One-Winged Angel form.
  • Say what you will about Gladio's duel with Gilgamesh and Prompto's turret battle with a living weapon; but the final boss of Episode Ignis is surely one of the greats. In an alternate time where Ignis follows Ardyn to Niflheim rather than fighting in Altissia, he is attacked by Ardyn after learning the truth. What follows is an intense battle against the immortal Big Bad as you use the Ring of the Lucii to enhance your strength to defeat him.
  • The Updated Re Release gives us three of the past rulers of Lucis, who are fought as Noctis and Co. ascend the Citadel.
• Awesome Music: Too many to list here. Check out the Awesome Music page for the entire series for examples.

B

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is the single most controversial character in the entire game. She has faced a lot of criticism regarding her replacing Stella as the game's heroine and her early portrayals making her seem weak-willed. Some of this has died down with time, and she has loyal defenders who will praise her courage and determination despite a lifetime of hardship, as well as her more fleshed out depiction in Kingsglaive, but her critics accuse her of being uncharismatic and little more than a plot device with a handful of cool action scenes and motivations that are centered entirely around Noctis. After the game's release, more ire has erupted surrounding Luna in that for all her screentime in the trailers, anime, and movie, and with continuous updates to flesh out other members of the cast, her presence in the game itself is far less than what would be expected. This makes her divisive on a meta level, as for one half of the fandom this validates earlier criticisms regarding her supposed lack of depth, while the other half argues that Luna is simply another example of the game's wasted characters and that she shows signs of being a complex character in her own right but has simply been denied the chance to showcase it. She continues to remain divisive even after the release of the Dawn of the Future novel, as for one side it does successfully fix her by fleshing her out and giving her more agency, while for others she still remains painfully generic, becoming more proactive but no less bland and easily outshone by Aranea and Solara in her chapters.
  • Gladiolus is the most polarizing of the party characters mainly due to his characterization from chapter 9 onwards. His fans like his straightforwardness and take-no-shit attitude, believing he's the Only Sane Man of the team. His detractors however dislike him for being an insufferable, insensitive Jerkass who goes way too far with his Brutal Honesty and Tough Love and who's at times, dismissive towards his friends' feelings, mainly Noctis. His behaviour in Chapter 10 where he makes an angry outburst about Noct's depression following Luna's death and spending the rest of the chapter making snide remarks to the same effect, claiming that Noct should just "grow up and get over it" is either seen by his fans as a justified frustration and the proof of him helping Noctis to get a grip in his own way while also showing how he's just as devastated from the Altissia ritual as the rest of the group or seen as an infuriating, tone-deaf and insensitive temper tantrum where he not only shoves Prompto to the side and ignores Ignis' demand to cut it out, but also continuously lashes out at Noctis for not bouncing back from trauma and tragedies overnight by his detractors. His behavior was also criticized for cutting too close to home and reminding the detractors of men who bullied them in real life. Him being massively underdeveloped compared to the other three, his Cup Noodle sidequest and the fact that his DLC episode focuses more on developing Cor than himself don't help in that regard.
  • Cindy/Cidney. Some love the fact that there will finally be a female Cid and welcome the addition of another female to the cast, others dislike her sexualized outfit and appearance. Hajime Tabata explained however that she is intended to be an energetic and outgoing character, rather than an erotic one, so they're going to focus on moderating the way she is presented (i.e., not having the camera linger on her in overtly sexual ways). Others note that the base concept of her outfit would have been fine had they just zipped up her jacket, not made the thong visible and given her shoes a normal human can actually work in and criticise that its current version is just for fanservice after all and the denial just a bad excuse.
  • Ardyn is either one of the coolest villains in recent Final Fantasy history, an utter asshole who doesn't deserve even a lick of sympathy, or just nowhere as interesting as the fans claim by the game's detractors.
  • Some fans love this game's portrayal of Gilgamesh for being a darker and more serious character than usual, and the game not being afraid to break with long-standing trends and do their own take on the character that is different from the norm but still recognizable as Gilgamesh. Others hate him for the same reason, as the reason Gilgamesh became a fan favorite was because his boisterous, theatrical and comedic personality made him such a memorable character, and so view this incarnation as being Gilgamesh In Name Only.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • There's an NPC couple in the Episode Duscae demo that get into an argument because the man brought some day-old vegetables to feed the chocobo. This quickly escalates to the woman slapping the man for... not wasting food?? It's vague on whether this was supposed to be played for laughs (the guys don't get involved but they do voice mild discomfort). Regardless, a domestic violence scene between nameless NPCs is a bit... weird to include into this kind of game, let alone a demo.
  • In the middle of the Ramuh trials, the party encounters a Naga underground that kidnaps Prompto, begs the party to return her baby to her, and then acting as the boss. The encounter comes out of nowhere, is just a distraction from the Ramuh trial you're trying to complete, and nothing comes of it including no explanation of what the Naga was, who/what her baby was, and what happened to it. Theories abounded that the Naga was Prompto's mother, and was our first hint towards the true nature of daemons and Prompto, but Promoto's DLC episode Jossed that theory.
  • The opening sequence where the older party members fight Ifrit for a few moments before it cuts to Noctis and company leaving Insomnia. In theory, as said by Tabata, this was meant to be a major mystery tease to hook the players in like Final Fantasy II, but in practice, it's a context-less sequence that doesn't really connect with the story because there's no reason for it to be there other than for mystery, which could have been remedied if the game had a narrator explaining how it connects to the main story. And this wouldn't be so noticeable if not for the technical aspects, since in a game that already takes an eternity to load in its open world assets, it can be very annoying for people starting the game up for the first time to sit through one loading screen that loads in the Citadel, the character models, the boss fight and effects from the end of the game to then having to wait for the game to load the actual main part of the game itself not five minutes later. This is even worse on the Windows Edition if you don't have a super high spec computer, which can easily triple the loading times depending on your setup.
• Breather Boss: When it comes to the boss fights you unlock after the DLC chapters, Prompto's "Intensive Training" with Aranea is this. This is due to the sheer fact that, unlike the rest of the playable characters, Prompto is The Gunslinger, so, as long as you're evasive, it's harder for Aranea to touch you than with the other ones.
• Breather Level: The eight post-game Menace Dungeons get progressively more sadistic as you work your way down the line, with the sixth having you fight through 100 levels filled to the brim with incredibly resilient and powerful Demonic Spiders. Of course you'd expect the seventh dungeon (Crestwood) to be even more brutal, but this one's actually a mere 30 levels deep, doesn't contain a single max health reducing demon, and comes up with a fairly tame Final Boss. The final dungeon is a minor case as well, being 60 levels deep but quite easy to traverse if you have Ignis cook up some meals that confer elemental immunity.
• Broken Base: Inevitable, given the game's infamously tumultuous production. Has its own page.

C

• Cargo Ship:
  • Because of the Regalia being featured in gameplay footage, fans have been pairing it with pretty much any of the playable characters.
  • Gladio and Cup Noodles. Not only is it one of his favorite foods, but he has a whole sidequest dedicated to getting the perfect ingredient for Cup Noodles depending on what the player chooses.^note Choose meat or shrimp, and you'll have a boss fight waiting for you; choose egg and you'll traverse an entire volcano just to find the best eggs.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After every despicable thing Ardyn does throughout the game, there's nothing quite as satisfying as having Noctis utterly lay into the bastard with every one of the Royal Arms before ultimately running him through with Regis's sword at the end of the final battle.
  • In its own way, using the Ring of the Lucii to Curb Stomp Ardyn as Ignis during the "Extra Verse" in Episode: Ignis is even more cathartic, because it's combined with a healthy dose of Screw Destiny that feels really good after you've spent the whole base game being led by the nose by Ardyn and the Astrals.
  • Beating the stuffing out of Ardyn's brother Somnus at the end of Episode Ardyn, after he betrayed his own brother, killed said brother's fiancee, and erased him from history just so he could obtain the throne.
  • Or even in the Dawn Of The Future novel, for people who wanted to kick Bahamut's teeth in after he manipulated both Noctis and Ardyn come Episode Ardyn, and tried to do the same to Luna. The best part is that Noctis destroys his physical body and this time, it's Ardyn who puts on the Ring of The Lucii to kick Bahamut's ass, all while making peace with his brother Somnus and finally getting his rest in the process.
• Common Knowledge: Despite what people believe, XV did not start full development in 2006. Back when it was Versus XIII, the game had been put on hold due to development issues with the Crystal Tools engine, but was still being worked on during this time, culminating in the first gameplay trailers at TGS 2010. The game would then go into full development during 2011 until it was postponed again due to the development team being reorganized. As a result, development started over and the game that came out of it all officially started full development in 2013.
• Complete Monster: Bahamut, the Draconian, is the leader of the Astrals and a tyrant who views all the world as his garden. Angered by the war of the ancients in the past, Bahamut was barely stopped from erasing the world, later arranging the fate of Ardyn Izunia to spread the monstrous Starscourge and see the world overrun by Daemons. Believing mankind to be flawed, and obsessed with his own view of destiny, Bahamut intends to erase the world entirely, having no compunction killing the Astrals when they attempt to defend humankind.
• Contested Sequel: Much like Final Fantasy XIII, XV had a Troubled Production that affected the quality of the final product. The game was praised for its visuals, nonlinearity and because of the bonding between Noctis and his comrades. However, it was criticized for its underdeveloped characters (like Lunafreya and most antagonists) and because plot-relevant contents were sold as paid DLC (including the Big Bad's backstory, which is not included in the Royal Edition).
• Creepy Awesome: Ardyn Izunia is easily both of these, sometimes at the same time. With his off-kilter style and flamboyant behavior, than a few fans have compared him to an evil Jack Sparrow. Perhaps best exemplified in his first scene in Kingsglaive, where he casually strolls into the Lucian throne room (unarmed and alone) and casually introduces himself before dictating terms to the king.
  • Episode Ardyn reveals that exactly that had happened before during the Founder's Day festival, before Noctis was even born. Just Ardyn casually walking through Insomnia, entering the Citadel and casually stating his demands when meeting the king.

D

• Demonic Spiders:
  • Most airborne enemies qualify, but especially the various wasp enemies, which will inflict your party with confusion, do it again the second you're all cured, and then simply dance in the air above you with impunity.
  • The Coeurls; their glowing whisker attack can One-Hit Kill, and they can run away from you to heal before reengaging, meaning you can't beat them through attrition or Cherry Tapping.
  • A lot of the night enemies, since they're meant to serve as beef gates to discourage night travel while the party is weak. Some examples:
    • Bombs, especially the Galvanades, the highest-tier variant, for several reasons: 1) unlike their compatriots in other games, these ones get closer to self-destructing when NOT being attacked, forcing you to be aggressive (and becoming hell when there's more than one), 2) self-destructing doesn't kill them, and in fact restores some of their health, and 3) self-destructing not only has a massive radius, but it damages your Max HP directly. ONE Galvanade self-destructing in your face will knock you from full Max HP to needing a phoenix down instantly. Worst of all, Galvanades that successfully self-destruct will summon more of themselves.
    • Iron Giants early on; tough, hit hard, and can spawn in the middle of the road at night, forcing you to either fight them or abandon the car until morning. Eventually though, their weaknesses and predictable attacks make them less of a threat, and they're not an example of this. What is, however, are their bigger brothers, the Red Giant. Far more health, far deadlier (can One-Hit Kill you as high as level 50), and resistant to everything but Light, meaning the vast majority of your arsenal will be ineffective. Worst of all, if you manage to kill an Iron Giant at night, the Red Giant will simply replace it as a random spawn until the next morning, meaning you can never truly be safe from them. Of course, Costlemark Tower can have you fighting them at multiple points — including multiples at once!
    • Ronin and their upgraded counterparts. Their entire gimmick is to decimate your party with one hit kill moves. Combine this with a plethora of other annoying enemies vying for your attention and you can expect a quick party wipe.
  • Hobgoblins. These bigger, nastier goblins use martial arts, move very fast, are highly resistant to flinching, and have a surprising reach — almost as soon as a fight with one starts, you can find yourself sent flying by one drop-kicking you from more than fifteen feet away. Finally, they're super-aggressive and love to gang up on Noct, so unless you can stunlock them all at once (easiest with Machinery weapons), expect to spend 80-90% of the battle just dodging their high-speed, nonstop attacks.
  • Necromancers; they can inflict Petrify with a high-damage, hard-to-avoid beam attack, have a high-damage grapple (and higher-tier Necromancers can One-Hit Kill you if you fail to escape from it), have pretty annoying attacks to begin with, and can summon endless waves of irritating skeletons who love to swarm and stunlock you.
  • While imperial troopers are usually Goddamned Bats than this trope, Magitek Assassins are this trope, being far stronger to the point of one-round-KO'ing at least one member, and being far more durable too.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • While Luna is already a huge Base-Breaking Character to begin with, she is especially unpopular with people who actively ship Noctis with anyone else, being decried as weak and useless or a Manipulative Bitch on top of the more general complaints people have about her characterization and romantic subplot. Ironically she actually does die during the game, before she gets to even share as much as a kiss with Noctis. And it's not until Noctis himself is also dead that he can even so much as see her again.
  • Noctis himself gets this on occasion from Gladio/Ignis shippers who accuse him of being a selfish and ungrateful brat who does nothing to deserve the respect and dedication of the two in his service. Not helping is his seemingly muted response to Ignis sacrificing his vision for his sake and refusal to go on despite what he'd done for him, causing them to view Gladio's condemnation of him as justified, although Episode Ignis clarifies the situation by adding a scene of Noctis clearly upset and feeling guilty over Ignis's blindness, but reluctantly choosing to continue, when it was in fact Ignis who wanted him to stop. Again, a rather strange case considering he is out of their lives for 10 years and does die for good at the end of the game, meaning that Gladio and Ignis have plenty of time to be free of whatever supposed obligations are holding them back from pursuing a relationship, if they even exist.
  • This official tweet made in the leadup to the release of the Episode Prompto DLC briefly turned Aranea into a controversial figure among Western fans, particularly parts of the Noctis/Prompto and Ignis/Aranea shipper fanbases, who accused her of being Chickified and shoehorned into the DLC for Token Romance purposes. As it turned out, Aranea was more of a Cool Big Sis figure, with little romance aside from an offhand comment acknowledging Prompto's crush on her.
• Disappointing Last Level: Chapter 13, to the point of approaching That One Level status. It starts off as a pretty interesting change of pace as you lose your magic and have to make your way through a creepy abandoned research facility, filled with jump scares and dark lighting that wouldn't be out of place in a survival horror game. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off once you realize this level will take several hours to finish, Noctis is restricted to walking for about half the level until you get your party back, there's an annoying 7-stage keycard puzzle to solve, and Ardyn is constantly making fun of you over the PA system. On top of that, if you're really interested in the story, you have to take care to make sure to read all the notes scattered around the place, as this is the only way to learn what happened to the place. Patch 1.06 for the game made the chapter slightly easier while also giving players the option to avoid the worst parts of the level, but it's still perceived as tediously long.
  • One could argue that this was intentional; the point of the area is to wear Noctis and his friends (and you) down, frustrating and riling them up just enough so that they make rash decisions — and eventually mistakes. And it works; Noctis is forced to rush on ahead, and ends up pulled into the Crystal before he could properly explain himself and bid farewell to his companions — just like Ardyn wanted.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Ardyn, so very much. Knowing the full scope of his backstory reveals he's a legitimately Tragic Villain who was Driven to Villainy by the actions of the Astrals and his brother Somnus, and he has very valid reasons to hate them and desire revenge on them. However, he's also an Ax-Crazy murderer who delights in tormenting Noctis when Noctis has not personally done anything to him, and his plan amounts to a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum that would drive mankind to the brink of extinction and blanket the world in darkness for years, and he knows this and it is exactly what he wants. However, many side with him and say that Ardyn is within full rights to claim his vengeance and destroy everything his brother built.
• Dueling Works:
  • Square-Enix was concerned about the possibility of this happening with Persona 5, seeing as they felt the need to poll fans about which game they would try first if forced to choose. In the end, S-E's decision to delay the game yet again — since otherwise Persona 5 would be released within two weeks of XV and would've forced fans to choose sides — managed to avoid said scenario from materializing, not to mention that the English release of P5 was also delayed again to April 2017, further defusing whatever rivalry may have erupted.
  • In the meantime though, NieR: Automata fandom zigzags between being Friendly Fandoms with XV and this trope, both having small tie-ins with each other, and both being open-world action RPGs published by Square-Enix.

E

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Stella Nox Fleuret is probably the biggest example, back from when the game was called Versus XIII, and is a major reason why reception to Lunafreya was so divided at first. There are still fans of Stella who consider Luna to be a Poor Man's Substitute, and with how much of a Base-Breaking Character Lunafreya turned out to be in the game proper, a lot of these fans have taken the opportunity to really express their discontent with XV in favor of what Versus XIII could have brought to the table.
  • Aranea Highwind, the "Dragoon Lady" from the 2011 trailer. She gained a sizable fanbase even though she only appeared for less than 30 seconds and nothing else was said about her afterward, except for the developers confirming she was not Stella and was an enemy. She reappeared after 5 years of silence in the 2016 ATR report with a name and background, and got even more popular when her surname was revealed and she is actually called "The Dragoon" in-universe. And to make things even better, she actually joins your party as a guest, and can potentially do so multiple times (fighting Daemons at night may trigger a flag to have her fly in via her dropship and assist you). Small wonder why, of all the secondary characters in the game, she is the most beloved. In fact, she came in as a close second after Luna in the official Final Fantasy XV twitter poll for favorite female character and often gets confirmed along with the main characters in crossovers such as Final Fantasy: Record Keeper and For Whom the Alchemist Exists. The Episode Prompto DLC also features her as a major ally, to much rejoicing.
    • And then a player managed to figure out how to glitch the game into keeping her around permanently. Naturally, people were pleased. However, this glitch also runs the risk of corrupting your save file.
    • The February 2018 update added Aranea as an unlockable training partner at camp, probably as a result of this.
    • In another testament to Aranea's huge popularity, her section (which would've been the subject of one of the canceled DLC Episodes, itself announced as a result of this trope) was largely well-received in contrast to the rest of the highly divisive Dawn of the Future novel.
  • Iris gets this for being a Badass Adorable and her pleasantly cheerful personality. Players were disappointed that she Took a Level in Badass offscreen and never got to reunite with Noctis's gang.
  • Cor Leonis is very popular due to his badassery, being a knowledgeable and loyal servant of the king, and being a very powerful guest party member for the time he appears. A lot of fans were disappointed that he largely disappeared off the face of the planet early into the game. Which is likely a reason for his reappearance in Gladiolus's DLC episode.
  • Kenny Crow, who's a large source of Funny Moments due to his goofy design being hilariously surprisingly creepy. Square Enix even gave him his own DLC episode as an April Fools prank.
  • Prompto's Versus XIII appearance has just as much appearances as Stella in the trailers, if not less, before being redesigned to the current one we know now. There's plenty of fanworks depicting him as his own character, either as Prompto's Alternate Self, brother, or as another clone of Verstael.
  • Sarah from the crossover DLC with Terra Wars proved to be very popular with fans due to fans believing that she had far more romantic chemistry with Noctis than Luna ever did. Some would even say that she was much closer to what they wanted Stella to be like from the original Versus XIII concept.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • There's a wild theory about Bahamut floating around, despite having no in-game evidence, that like how Shiva used a human form as Gentiana, Aranea is the human form of Bahamut. Proponents point to the fact that Aranea's armor is draconic in design and that Bahamut's eyes look very feminine (despite having a baritone voice). Others have suggested Cor as potentially being Bahamut's human form. Both are Jossed by the technically non-canon Dawn of the Future novel, in which Bahamut is his own entity with a face that strongly resembles Noctis or Somnus's.
  • Another one that has gained a lot of steam among the English-speaking fandom concerns the ending of Chapter 13: the idea that Noctis is a "fake" king and that his real name is "Izunia" who stole the name Lucis Caelum from Ardyn. However, this theory is based on false pretenses from its genesis: the reason this theory even exists is because of the English translators taking creative liberties with Ardyn's dialogue that makes it sound like there's more to it than there really is. In the Japanese script (and the European translations of the game), instead of hinting that the Izunia name has a sinister origin like he does in English, Ardyn merely says that he doesn't really remember where he got the name Izunia from, and his tone is more of a rhetorical question that he's asking himself, not Noctis. Some others still take it to mean that Izunia was in fact the first name of the king who usurped Ardyn and that he was his brother or another member of the Lucis Caelum dynasty. It was eventually revealed via Episode Ignis, Episode Ardyn, and the Updated Re Release that the king who supplanted him — whose name was Somnus — was indeed Ardyn's brother, while Episode Ardyn director Toru Osanai himself stated that due to absorbing so many people's memories, he truly no longer remembers where he got the name "Izunia" from.
  • One of the more off-the-wall theories is that Gentiana is Noctis's true mother, or a recent ancestor of his, to explain why the two of them are similarly East Asian looking in appearance, as well as an instance of Shiva's fondness for humanity.
  • One of the ending theories (which has since been Jossed) is that killing Ardyn erased him from history, thus the ending looping the dialogue from the start of the game signifies a new timeline where the game's events didn't occur. Instead of being Together in Death, Noctis and Luna both survived and actually got married.
  • The Pitioss dungeon, which can only be accessed in the post game, has served as a source of a lot of this in regards to the game's backstory, and Ifrit's reason for turning on the other Astrals and hating mankind, as well as the origins of the Starscourge and the reason the Lucian kings are the only ones capable of using the crystal's power and the true origins of the crystal. The theory originated from this very long and spoiler heavy reddit post, and a fan summarized the theory in this video. To summarize, there is a giant statue of a woman in manacles that can be found deep in Pitioss. The theory states that she is the seventh Astral, Eos, the One-Winged Goddess of the Dawn, and was imprisoned for consorting with a human and bearing said human's children. Ifrit journeyed down to the underworld to free her, only to find her dead. He returned to the surface and burnt her body, but plucked her heart from it, burning his arm◊ in the process. This also released the Starscourge into the world as her corpse was infected with the evils of the underworld. Her heart would become the crystal. Her children would become the Lucian kings. Ifrit then created Pitioss Dungeon to tell this story. This theory was popular for a number of reasons including the fact that it followed the lyrics of "Somnus", and makes use of the one-winged Goddess seen in multiple artworks for the game, such as the Genesis painting and the "Big Bang" promotional art, as well as made use of previous Wordof God statements that Etro, the Goddess of Death from Final Fantasy XIII would be a major figure in the game, except now under the new name of Eos (which turned out not to be the case). One thing that bolstered this theory for a time was the fact that the author correctly guessed that the Rock of Ravatogh is Ifrit's corpse, something confirmed in Episode Gladiolus. However, it since then came out that Ray Chase had discussed the theory on a Periscope livestream with a Square-Enix localizer, and the loading screen flavor text that the Rock of Ravatogh is Ifrit's corpse only appears in the English text.
    • As DLC was released for the game and new information was revealed, the creators of the theory started having to make more and more "adjustments" to make it fit, while the theorizing started reaching outlandish levels. By the time the game stopped updating in March 2019 it has been effectively debunked. There is no Astral named Eos, and Ifrit's lover was Shiva.
  • Related to the above theory is the Solheim theory. It's canon that there once was a super advanced civilization known as Solheim that used to sprawl across Eos, but was destroyed around 2000 years before the events of the game and the four main nations seen in the story arose from its ashes. Many of the ruins and structures found throughout the game are remnants of Solheim. The theory states that the reason Eos was imprisoned was instead that the humans of Solheim did so using technology that suspiciously resembles those used by Niflheim in the present. They eventually killed her, and so Ifrit wiped them out and began to hate humanity.
  • In both of the above theories, the meteor Titan holds up and the firepit behind Lestallum were Ifrit's attempts at accessing the underworld to find Eos, with the second attempt being successful. This theory explains why demons tend to appear in the Lestallum power plant.
  • The alternate ending in Episode Ignis is a prime source of these, due to the fact that Noctis is somehow still alive after having defeated Ardyn and bringing back the dawn, things that were explicitly stated to have required his death for. The game offers a handful of Canon Fodder clues here and there as to how exactly Ignis might have saved Noctis, so it's not a complete Deus ex Machina, but doesn't offer any concrete explanations either. Some interpretations even posit that Ignis Died Happily Ever After and everything that happens afterwards is merely his Nostalgia Heaven, or that it's actually a Downer Ending disguised as a Golden Ending and that Noctis's survival in the short term was achieved at the expense of removing the sole means of Eos's salvation.
  • Episode Ardyn introduces Mars Sapienta, an MIA Lucian patrol guard whose form Ardyn takes to infiltrate Insomnia. Due to the similarity between his and Ignis's names, and the fact that Ignis himself was born one year after Ardyn's attack on Insomnia, a fan theory has surfaced positing that Mars is Ignis's father, and that Ignis's family was forced to change their name following the attack.
• Esoteric Happy Ending:
  • Short of the Dawn of the Future storyline where the cast has to Earn Your Happy Ending, the game is rife with this. Particularly in the main ending, the fact that the Starscourge is truly defeated and the Daemons finally routed, but humanity was put through the ringer ^note Only Lestallum and a handful of outposts are confirmed to have survived; the fate of everywhere else, along with exactly how many survived the ten years (or not), is completely ambiguious, but it's practically a given that governments have collapsed and society will never be the same again, and the line of Lucis (along with magic in general) vanishes from Eos.
  • If Dawn of the Future's plot elements are potentially taken as canon, even if the ending is not, then Bahamut, who was ultimately the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire story, intentionally let everything get as bad as it did to have the excuse to Kill All Humans and wipe the slate of Eos clean again. While he seems to respect Noctis and the Glaive in the main timeline, that doesn't subvert the fact that his goals were ultimately carried out and he barely had to lift a finger, except against Ifrit. Congratulations, you saved what little was left of the world to leave it in the hands of a god that manipulated everything to cause it all to happen in the first place, with no one but the other gods left even remotely capable of stepping in against him!
• Estrogen Brigade: Many fans joke that FFXV is a Boyband Simulator and it certainly lives up to its nickname as it earned a large female-following while the other games tend to have a balanced divide between the genders. As shown in a NHK poll◊, a whopping 71.9% votes for FFXV came from women, the largest female-male ratio out of all of the games listed. The majority-male Cast Full of Pretty Boys combined with a large helping of Ho-Yay and a lackluster romance plot also attracted a ridiculous amount of Yaoi fangirls just shipping the main cast with each other, proven with a lot of slashy fanarts and fanfics all over the internet.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Ardyn Izunia's popularity grew as the DLCs rolled out and then Episode Ardyn and its animated prequel fleshed out his backstory, making him one of the most complex and layered antagonists of the franchise. Aside from that, he's also liked for his Trolling humor, his charisma and style, his great vocal performance from Darin DePaul, and overall being a great Love to Hate villain. Some even consider him one of the best antagonists of the Final Fantasy franchise, worthy of standing alongside the likes of Sephiroth and Kefka.
  • Niflheim has quite a large fanbase due to their cool Magitek army.

F

• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • Noctis and Luna communicated for 12 years by writing messages into a notebook that Umbra carried between the two. And one of Luna's greatest regrets when she is killed by Ardyn is never having the chance to hear Noctis's voice again after their separation. Fans figured the reason they didn't use more convenient means of communication was because Niflheim would spy on them and intercept their messages, meaning Noctis and Luna used the notebook for pragmatic reasons. However Tabata stated in an ATR that they easily could have used phones, but chose not to because of a childhood promise, which upset a lot of fans who felt it was an asinine justification for a plot contrivance that deprived Luna of dialogue which would've developed her character and relationship with Noctis. This plot element is so disliked, in fact, that when a leaked Versus XIII storyboard showing Noctis and Stella communicating by phone showed up, the response was universal in its derision of Noctis and Luna's method of communication.
  • People assumed the reason Noctis and co. start off broke and have to earn their keep throughout the game, even though Noctis really should be the wealthiest man in all of Lucis, was for currency reasons, as Insomnia uses yen while the rest of the world uses Gil^note a fact lampshaded by Prompto early on. As it turns out, according to Tabata Noctis actually did retain access to that wealth, but didn't use it because he wanted to blend in with the commoners better, which fans found to be patently ridiculous.
  • The novel Dawn of the Future revealed that the true reason for Ardyn being immortal is due to having his soul sucked into the Crystal when he touched it at the ending of Episode Ardyn: Prologue. This rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, as they feel that it completely goes against the already-established lore of the Starscourge being the cause of Ardyn's immortality. Though given that the one who gave that explanation was Bahamut...
• Fan Nickname: The cast has acquired a good number of these, often out of necessity as many of their official names weren't revealed until much later and as the realistic style leads to many characters resembling other existing ones or people.
  • The entire party is often referred to as the Chocobros.
  • Noctis - Storm ^ExplanationA mishearing the Title Theme Tune, combined with Theme Naming based on Cloud, Squall and Lightning., Sasuke Uchiha^ExplanationHis hairstyle makes him look a lot like an adult Sasuke. Was even more the case back when it was still Versus XIII., John Wick or Punished Noctis^Explanationa referenced to his Plot-Relevant Age-Up appearance in the last chapters of the game looking a lot like the titular character of the same name., 陛下/"Heika" ^ExplanationLiterally "His Majesty", Japanese nickname for his older version, contrasted to 王子/"Ouji" or "Prince".
    • His powered-up form when fighting Leviathan and Ardyn has been dubbed "Super Saiyan Mode".
    • Noctis's attack in the above-mentioned Super Mode and Bahamut's Ultima Sword attack have been nicknamed "Gate of Babylon/Unlimited Blade Works".
    • The Nomura-designed placeholder outfit from Versus XIII has been dubbed "The Trashbag Outfit".
    • The Festive Ensemble is known as "El Nocto".
    • Japan often refers to Noctis as ブスティス/Bustis (literally "Ugly-tis") in photos taken by Prompto due to how ridiculously unphotogenic he looks, especially when smirking.
  • Gladiolus - Manly Bearded Dude, Scar, Gladdy Daddy
  • Ignis - Glasses Touchdown, Glasses
  • Prompto - Blondie, Shotgun
    • From the Japanese fanbase, there's Pupu/Puputamu (ププ/ププタム) taken from his name's katakana.
    • Kid Prompto - Plumpto
    • Prompto's photography skill has been dubbed "Promptography".
  • King Regis - Hans Gruber for the Versus XIII version, Liam Neeson for the XV version from the "Dawn" trailer and onward.
  • Leviathan - Levia-chan (due to the reveal of her being female), Perfect Leviathan/Chaos ^ExplanationDue to similarities between how the battles are fought in a flooded city by a powered up protagonist.
  • Gentiana - Himefu, Genitalia, Fran
  • Aranea - Dragoon Lady, Ara Ara
  • Ravus - The Hooded Man^ExplanationDue to his wearing of one in early Versus XIII trailers
  • Magic spells (specifically, of the Elemancy branch) have been christened "Poke balls", due to them taking the form of colored orbs which are thrown at the enemy.
  • Ardyn - Trash Jesus
  • First Secretary Camelia Claustra - Hillary Clinton
  • Sania - Frog Lady, Quina
  • Vyv - Hurley
  • The early designs for the Magitek Exosuits DLC have been dubbed "Power Rangers suits".
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • In the west at least, there's one with Persona 5 due to the Dueling Games status above. It does shift into Friendly Rivalry at times however, as enjoying both games isn't seen as a universal sin. It helps that there was a much larger gap in release dates in the west, the former being released in late 2016 while the latter in mid 2017.
  • A strong one exists with Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy VII Remake fans, who blame each other's creator for causing the other's Troubled Production and getting it Screwed by the Network. KH/FFVII Remake fans see Tabata as a usurper who bastardized Nomura's more interesting Versus concept into FFXV with his incompetence (a sentiment bolstered by Kingdom Hearts III introducing Verum Rex and obvious Noctis Expy Yozora), while XV fans fight back by arguing that Tabata is the only reason Versus/XV came out at all instead of dying on the backburner due to Nomura's Attention Deficit Creator Disorder, and that the hatred is sour grapes since Tabata was dealt a difficult hand due to Square Enix's FFVII Remake favoritism having partially screwed over XV's development. Which is also then pointed out that this criticism ignores the very well established fact that Nomura's team didn't have an engine to work with due to the Crystal Tools disaster and that it was reported by many individuals like Yoshinori Kitase and Wan Hazmer that Versus XIII development suddenly got going very quickly once they had a working engine of their own. Likewise some XV fans hold a grudge against FFVIIR due to a mix of the aforementioned Executive Meddling and the fact that Nomura fans point to its success as evidence of his superiority as a game director, instead arguing that it only ended up as successful as it was because of XV being treated by Square Enix as an Obvious Beta for it to piggyback off of.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The events of the ten year Time Skip between the last two chapters. You hear vague details on what other characters were doing over the time, but there's enough room to speculate.
  • A major thrust of drama is that if Noctis dies, the line of Lucian kings dies with him. Naturally, this invites plenty of storylines where Noct secretly fathers a child or has a long-lost relative out there, and the line of Lucis continues through them.
  • The alternate ending to Episode Ignis, all the way. Noctis lives on to become the 114th king of Lucis and rebuild his destroyed kingdom. Ravus is still alive in this timeline, and joins Noctis' retinue. His abode at Fenestala Manor remains intact. Though Lunafreya is dead, she appears to have ascended to some form of godhood after her death. Noctis's three friends remained close and went on many adventures together during the ten years that he was gone, and Ignis is able to keep his sight.
• Fanon:
  • Queen Aulea has no official depictions, but most fans assume she had black hair and was East Asian looking in appearance to explain why Noctis himself similarly averts Mukokuseki despite having a very European looking father.
  • It's commonly believed by fans that Cor Leonis brought Prompto from Niflheim to Lucis as a child due to Prompto's admiration of him. While Episode Prompto confirms that Prompto was taken from Verstael's facility as an infant, and Verstael speculates that it was "some Lucian", there is absolutely zero indication that Cor was the one who did it specifically; while it's not made clear exactly who did, some notes you can find imply it may have in fact been one of the disgusted Niflheim employees.
    • Furthermore it's popular to portray Cor as a surrogate father figure for Prompto or having protective feelings over him. All that's said of any possible interactions before the main game is that Cor gave Prompto basic combat training and escorted him to the capital so he could officially be inducted as Noctis' bodyguard, and there's no indication that they've met in any context outside of bodyguard training.
  • It's commonly believed that the Marilith assassination attempt on Noctis as a child left him with physical scars on his back to explain his coma and temporary incapacitation. This may be due to the fact that the woman protecting Noctis at the time did receive such a wound on her back. No such injuries are actually seen on his body in either Brotherhood or instances where his back is exposed, at least not to the degrees it's commonly depicted as.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: As far as Ho Yay Shipping go, all ships between Noctis and the rest of the Chocobros are more well-liked than Noctis/Luna, with Noctis/Prompto being the most popular one, Noctis/Ignis being a reasonably close second, followed by Noctis/Gladio in third. Not to mention shipping them all together at once.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The game was originally titled Final Fantasy Versus XIII and was meant to share a similar mythos to the main Final Fantasy XIII titles as a part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. While FFXIII and its sequels ended up becoming a massive Broken Base, many fans were still interested to see how elements of the mythos would play out in Versus's Darker and Edgier setting. When it was rebranded to XV, much of the promotional material that had been released until that point ended up being cut from the new title, and the story, gameplay and characters were rewritten to the point that director Hajime Tabata claims that they're pretty much different games. Considering that FFXV end up being just as divisive as XIII (if not moreso), many felt that the production team should have stuck with their original Versus XIII idea. A particularly sore point for players was the removal of Stella Nox Fleuret (who was depicted in the trailers as Anti-Villain whom Noct has to fight at some point) and her replacement with Lunafreya, who was seen as an uninteresting Satellite Love Interest.
• Fanon Discontinuity: For the purposes of happy fanfics (especially those in which everyone is alive), Chapter 1 never ended.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: There's a not-insignificant contingent of fans who consider Noctis' appearance post-Time Skip (after spending ten years trapped in the Crystal) a vast improvement over his fairly generic "anime pretty boy" appearance at the beginning of the game. As it turns out, the beard adds some much-needed age to his face and the longer hair looks much more reasonable than his original "Sasuke haircut". Even his being all scruffy, scarred, and covered in caked-over dirt adds to his appearance rather than detracting from it. With the long hair, beard, scars, and general scruffiness, more than a few approving Western fans have favorably compared him to John Wick or a younger Geralt of Rivia.

G

• Game-Breaker: Has its own page, of course.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Due to Square's decision to make the game fully voiced in French and German, European sales have actually outpaced North American sales of the game.
  • The Japanese fans mostly regard Ardyn as off-putting, creepy, and not as pretty as the protagonists. The English-speaking fanbase, by contrast, absolutely adores him for his humor, charisma, and sheer flamboyant style, regarding him as one of the franchise's best villains since Kefka, and in almost all cases (fangirls and fanboys alike) regarding him as cooler, more attractive and visually interesting than the "generic anime pretty boy" protagonists. This is also helped by the fact that his personality is different between versions, as he is more akin to Kefka in the Japanese version while the localization changed his personality to be more suave and mysterious.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Imperial Troopers. More often than not, you'll be in the middle of fighting a group of monsters, and they'll butt in and drag it out for longer than need be. Sometimes, if you're really unlucky, they'll drop in while you're driving, interrupting your trip. Even worse if you accidentally drove too close before noticing, causing the game to force you out of the car and denying you to use it again until the threat is gone or you have the car towed somewhere else.
  • Daemons, particularly Giants, can be this when they aren't Demonic Spiders. They're a lot stronger than your usual enemies during the day. The player is usually safe on the road, but some enemies that appear at night will spawn in the middle of the road. If you're not strong enough to defeat it, you'll be forced to abandon your car in the middle of nowhere and fast travel to your last rest area.
  • The Level 50 dungeon Balouve Mines is infested with Level 7 goblins. They're no threat if you're ready to take on the boss, but you can't go five yards without tripping over them.
• Goddamned Boss: The Adamantoise superboss gives 50,000 XP per run and can drop two items used for crafting Limit Break magic or be sold for a hefty amount. In true Final Fantasy Marathon Boss fashion, the thing takes ages to kill (easily half an hour and upwards), lacks any kind of phase change throughout the fight, and due to it's size, the camera spins around while it's moving meaning you'll spend a hours just fighting the camera while whittling down its health and oddly enough, you can't at any point perform a Colossus Climb on this city-sized beast. This changed after the Ring of the Lucii's Alterna spell was buffed that it has a relatively low probability to trigger on the beast, so the boss can be cheesed this way and finish the fight under 10 minutes, depending on one's luck. Best of all, as long as you stop advancing the moment the battle actually begins, it can't even damage your party.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The Judgment Disc demo is full of hilarious glitches. Among them being fused characters, missing objects in the environment and the sea turning purple or disappearing completely.
  • The main game also has its share of hilarious bugs. A few examples are your party members standing in the car, chocobos, or each other's heads, Noctis being pushed up to the sky after exiting the Regalia or defeating enemies, and characters phasing through objects.
  • Someone discovered a method to keep Aranea in your party via a fairly simple glitch. Naturally, the fandom exploded considering how popular she is. This bug is also interestingly functional—Aranea will even appear in cutscenes and pose in photos.
    • In fact, an entire series of shenanigans can arise when forcing temporary party members to stay in beyond the point where they're supposed to leave. While Iris is fully integrated in that she freely participates in Prompto's photos and camp scenes, has unique dialogue interacting with the rest of the party, can ride the Regalia and even has her own Chocobo, the rest of the guests fall short in these areas. Aranea, for as much forethought that went into integrating her, cannot ride the Regalia, leading to her literally sprinting on foot while the rest of the party are on wheels. Ditto Cor, who gets it worse considering that unlike Aranea, he has no unique interactions or dialogue when setting up camp. He doesn't even get the worst; Ravus and Sarah — the two guests who are mainly exclusive to events outside the main story — lack dialogue or interactions with the party entirely.^note Worth noting that barring glitches that keep Aranea in the party when she shows up to aid the player post-Chapter 7, or not progressing the story past Chapter 6 to keep Iris, the only way to have these guests show up is through cheat engines for the PC port.
  • It's possible to glitch the game using Umbra's Mental Time Travel feature so that you can use the pre-timeskip character models in the post-timeskip portions of the game and vice versa.
  • The final boss in Episode Ignis Verse 2 will kick off the fight by... crouching repeatedly. It looks like he's teabagging the ground.
    • In Episode Ignis's optional bonus fight against a ring-empowered Noctis, towards the end he will be able to cast magic on Ignis that, if it goes off successfully, severely warps Ignis's model for the rest of the battle.
• Good Bad Translation: One of the earlier trailers had random, amusingly nonsensical Italian phrases flash on the screen.

H

• Ham and Cheese: One sidequest in the game is essentially a commercial for Cup Noodles. The English voice cast did two takes of dialogue for the quest; one that is completely straight-laced and sincere, and one that is dripping with out-of-character sarcasm. The developers used the sarcastic take in the final game.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The countdown reel briefly stopping at November before revealing the (original) release date of September 30, 2016, at the Uncovered event became one (or depending on one's sense of humor, Hilarious in Hindsight) when Square Enix announced the game was delayed to November 29.
  • Tabata promised players that Luna wouldn't need saving. Then players found out that meant they can't save her from her fate.
  • Prompto's jacket patch says "It's a beautiful day; now watch some bastard mess it up". Funny, until you realize that to some extent, this is what happens in the game, due to one particular bastard stirring the pot on all sides. Thanks ever so much, Ardyn.
  • Many of the jokes about Ignis's glasses become this on a second playthrough, knowing he'll become blind later. In particular, the lines about Ignis wearing glasses because he likes to see the world in perfect clarity and the banter where Ignis jokes that he would love to never see Noctis and the Chocobros again.
  • As if the game's Bittersweet Ending wasn't already sad enough, Episode Ignis finds a way to make it even more depressing. It turns out Ignis discovered the truth in a vision from Pryna in Chapter 9 — not just the nature of the prophecy itself, but having to witness Noctis's Heroic Sacrifice in its entirety, directly. He had to spend the next 10 years with that knowledge, dreading it and not being able to do a thing to stop it from coming true. Even worse, we find out that Ignis literally loves Noctis more than life itself. To hammer this in, as the credits play we are shown several of the scenes from the second half of the game again, Once More, with Clarity. Even worse, if you come away from with the interpretation that Ignis has been in love with Noctis all this time, it makes the plot of the whole game this.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • If the player helps Coctura, she'll make the dessert that Noctis received from Luna during his time in Tenebrae. In Brotherhood, you find out that Ignis had tried and failed for years to recreate that dessert for Noctis. This sidequest not only allows Noctis to finally have the dessert he remembered so fondly but also allows Ignis to finally learn the recipe.
  • During Cindy's final sidequest, she helps the group secure a set of headlights that's powerful enough to repel daemons, allowing the Regalia to safely travel at night. She muses that if her parents had something like this, they'd probably still be alive. During the Time Skip, despite the World of Ruin being overrun with powerful daemons, we see Talcott and others able to drive around safely thanks to the same type of headlights.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The promotional image of a bored-looking Noctis slouching on his throne becomes more amusing considering XV's years of Schedule Slip.
  • The "Omen" trailer, which features a horrific alternate future in which Noctis is forced to do battle with his despairing and reluctant dearly beloved. Sort of like the 'alternate' version of the game itself, originally Versus XIII in which Noctis was slated to do exactly the same thing with Stella. Trying to distance your creation from the original product, eh, dev team?
  • Thought that the final boss of the mystery disc demo, the CEO of Square Enix himself, played live on FFXV's premiere, was ridiculous enough? NieR: Automata takes a page from that and turns it into the 3C3C1D119440927 DLC, where you end up fighting against Yosuke Matsuda (retaking his model from the FFXV live premiere), who is then joined by the CEO of Platinum Games, Kenichi Sato. Fans who played both games had a field day with this.
  • Prompto has a habit of taking pictures to document the party's quest. His voice actor, Robbie Daymond, would go on to play another Motor Mouth Trash Talking photographer in Spider-Man.
  • This game features a royal wedding in its story and a cover of "Stand by Me", which a lot of people considered as an odd choice for a song to be in a Final Fantasy game. In the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the choir also sang a rendition of said song and is also noted to be unusual and breaking royal tradition.
  • Back in July 2017, a XV fanfic titled "Nocturne of Tenebrae" featured a AU scenario where Luna learns from Ardyn how to absorb the Starscourge into her own body. Guess what happens to Luna during her segment in Dawn of the Future?
  • ''Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn'' in a nutshell has Ardyn swearing that he will be DLC for Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) to kill Bahamut for engineering the tragic life he had. At the end of December 2019, guess who just became playable?
  • A black-haired Fallen Prince who lost everything when his father was killed, is followed by the game during both his teens and his early adulthood, is childhood friends with a light-haired princess of another territory, and performs a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat that game's Big Bad? The very next game in the series would also end up doing more or less the same in that regard.
  • Bahamut was made into the ultimate Big Bad of XV via supplementary materials. In the subsequent mainline title, the Dominant of Bahamut turns out to be a Sheep in Sheep's Clothing who ends up taking part in the final battle against that game's Big Bad alongside Ifrit and Phoenix.
• Ho Yay:
  • One of the focuses of the game is the close bond between the four handsome male leads. Naturally, this has led to shipping in almost every combination possible. The characters even joke about it at one point:
  Prompto: [sigh] "This place is so romantic.''
  Gladio: "And you get to spend it with us."
  Noctis: "All three of us."
  Ignis: "You are a lucky man."
  • Prompto's photography skills are particularly ripe for this, as it's very easy to have the characters randomly end up in suggestive poses or shoving their hands and faces into each other's crotches. When reviewing them, sometimes the party will compliment the individual pictures. If you've been doing a lot of walking around before resting, you'll probably get at least one character appreciating a closeup of their friend's (or their own) butt.
  • Episode Ignis adds a mountain of material that could suggest Ignis is in love with Noctis. He tears across Altissia in a desperate attempt to save Noctis and willingly uses the Ring of the Lucii at the cost of his own eyesight (something he never tells anyone, instead claiming he was blinded by Leviathan's poison). In the post-credits scene, and echoing their first meeting, he and Noctis chat alone after the final campfire and shake hands, with Noctis calling Ignis "Iggy", the first time he has used the nickname. In the alternate timeline, Ignis decides to hell with the world and Screw Destiny, he won't let Ardyn take Noctis away. The post-credits scene is an alternate version of the 'Walk Tall' scene, but Noctis once again calls Ignis "Iggy". In the bad ending of the alternate route, Ignis's last words are "I don't want to die without him".

I-J

• I Knew It!:
  • Fans had been speculating Versus XIII was going to become XV since 2010. In 2012, it was decided development would shift to next-generation consoles, and the name was internally changed to XV, although this would not be revealed to the public until E3 of 2013.
  • When the "Omen" trailer came out, many predicted that Luna would be a Sacrificial Lion. They were right.
  • A 4Chan user posted a massive info leak six months before the release of the game that turned out to be completely right. Doubles as a testimony to how troubled the production of the game was if his claims about the state of the game at that time are as true as those of the game itself.
  • One of the loading screens for Episode Gladiolus confirms that the Rock of Ravatogh had been the site of Ifrit's corpse, which many people had speculated soon after the game came out due to the rock growths resembling Ifrit's horns.
  • A common theory about Ignis's loss of eyesight after Chapter 9 was that it was caused by him using the Ring of the Lucii to rescue Noctis in the aftermath of the fall of Altissia. Episode Ignis confirms that is indeed the case.
  • Noctis's Japanese VA Tatsuhisa Suzuki confirmed what most already suspected, that Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV was conceived by reinventing what was left of the game's original plans to have Noctis and friends present during the invasion of Insomnia, but that had been forced to cut due to difficulties getting the engine to handle it properly.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • Players unsatisfied with the base game's Bittersweet Ending can take solace in the alternate ending of the Episode Ignis DLC. Ignis isn't blinded, he sends Ardyn into retreat by fighting and weakening him, and his short-lived alliance with Ravus sparks a peace treaty with Niflheim now that Ardyn is out of the way. While Noctis still enters the Crystal and emerges ten years later into the World of Ruin, he doesn't die defeating Ardyn at Insomnia, and goes into the throne room together with his friends, reaffirming the theme of brotherhood emphasized by the rest of the game (therefore addressing some accusations of the original ending having a Broken Aesop), and after restoring the light takes his place as king.
  • Some players didn't like that the Final Boss was a Duel Boss fought one-on-one with Noctis, because the rest of the game, both in story and in gameplay, emphasized the friendship and teamwork of the party and the strength the four had together. The end of Episode Ardyn allows the player to have a boss fight that is a recreation of the final battle from the boss's perspective, but this time Noctis' friends join in to help him.
  • The cancelled season of DLC-turned-Novel, Dawn of the Future, does a number of things.
    • Fleshing out numerous characters, including Aranea, Luna, Somnus, and even Iedolas. In addition to providing Luna with much needed backstory, it also shows that Luna, contrary to what the game originally implied, did not actually know that Noctis would have to die to fulfill his destiny, and also has her reject her Extreme Doormat tendencies, two traits that made her very unpopular with fans. Likewise, while Somnus still caused Ardyn's fall to villainy, the novel version of Episode Ardyn shows that Somnus' criticisms of Ardyn's self-martyring methods weren't unwarranted.
    • For those who felt destiny was unfair or that the Astrals seemed like Karma Houdinis for being partly to blame for the main game's conflict, the happy ending of the novel is only made possible because characters chose not to go along with fate and defeating Bahamut becomes the main drive of the finale.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Noctis, especially during the second half of the game. He goes through quite the Trauma Conga Line, having dealt with the loss of his father, loss of his home, being hunted nonstop by enemy soldiers, then the loss of Lunafreya and being chewed out by Gladio for it, possibly unfairly, finding out Ignis lost his eyesight protecting him while he was unconscious, accidentally hurting his best friend after being tricked by Ardyn, having to defend himself with a ring that saps his life force every time he uses it, and then being absorbed into the Crystal, scared and alone. Then by the end of the story he finds out has to sacrifice himself to save the world from the Starscourge. It gets so bad that he can't help but break down in tears having to tell his friends about it. By the very end it feels like he's as resigned as he is due to getting dealt such a shitty hand that he can't even care anymore.
  • Regis knew for most of Noctis's life that his beloved son would have to die sacrificing himself to restore the dawn at a young age. Even worse, it would fall on him to deal the finishing blow. His life is also ebbing away powering the magic Wall that's used to protect Lucis, and he sends his son off knowing it will be the last time he will ever see him alive, and that he and his beloved city would perish soon after.
  • Lunafreya. Orphaned and forced to assume an unbearable amount of responsibility at a young age, living under house arrest and unable to see or speak to Noctis directly for years. She also knows that forging covenants with the Astrals to assist Noctis on his quest takes a huge toll on her, and will eventually kill her (or would've if Ardyn didn't beat them to the punch), and that the grand destiny Noctis must fulfill with her assistance is actually a brutal Heroic Sacrifice. It's not until both are dead that they are able to truly reunite.
• It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars: In an interview with Game Informer, Tabata stated that the story's imbalances and lack of cohesive narrative was intentional. He said "We didn't want to create a comprehensive and perfectly balanced story in this game", which sent the fandom into a towering rage, to the point that even his defenders called him out for saying it. Whether he was told to say it or not, it was something that pissed almost everyone off regardless and damaged his reputation further.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The first indication the game might be overly easy is the opening title card itself, which declares the game to be, "A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers". Both attacking and defending consist largely of holding down one button, so there's really no such thing as combos or timing your moves. The "parry" mechanic is extremely generous (time slows down and a giant "PARRY" button appears on screen). Players also have almost no control over the rest of their party, who largely do their own thing. This can create dissonance when the screen is a chaotic whirlwind of flashing lights, slashing swords, and backflips, all whilst the player is just holding down a single button. There's also no limit to using items in combat, and with potions and revives being plentiful it's difficult to get any sort of "Game Over", even against the hardest bosses. Players craving a harder challenge had to resort to Self-Imposed Challenge and even modding the game just to be able to feel some semblance of difficulty.
• It Was His Sled: Ardyn's true name is Ardyn Lucis Caelum and he's the brother of the Founder King Somnus. It is extremely difficult to avoid discussion of Ardyn without this being mentioned, since knowing The Reveal is necessary to properly understanding his motivations and goals. Episode Ardyn and spin-offs where he's playable don't do much to hide this twist, and it's understandable why — as one would expect of any character, Ardyn's fighting style in spin-offs is based on his gameplay in Episode Ardyn at least on a thematic level, which means he can conjure the Armiger and wield the Royal Arms, just like Noctis can.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Ravus, Prince of Tenebrae and Luna's brother, is a high ranking Niflheim soldier who took part in the assassination of Regis. Tenebrae was Lucis's ally, but they abandoned them when Niflheim attacked. Ravus's mother died in his arms, and he was robbed of his birthright and became a subject of Niflheim. After he has a change of heart, he is then coldly murdered by Ardyn, disguised as Noctis. And later brought back to life as a daemon, begging to be killed.
  • Even Ardyn himself can count as one. He might be a gigantic asshole, but he went through incredible amounts of trauma and betrayal before becoming twisted into the person he is now. Episode Ardyn doubles down on this, revealing he was chosen by the gods themselves to become the Immortal Accursed, spread the Starscourge, and be killed by Noctis, and his beloved fiancee may have known his fate the entire time.
  • Somnus is one of the biggest assholes in the game to the point that many consider him a Hate Sink. Nearly killing Nyx for being a commoner who dared to wear the Ring of the Lucii, betraying his brother out of jealousy and for his own personal ambition, possibly burning innocent people who were unfortunate enough to catch his suspicions of being infected by the Starscourge? Yeah, he's an asshole, but then he didn't exactly have a lot of resources to Take a Third Option for the last two, especially since the end of Episode Ardyn reveals that Bahamut chose his line solely to produce the King of Light that will kill Ardyn and cleanse Eos of the Starscourge. And even if he didn't steal the throne, Ardyn would have still been rejected by the Crystal. It makes Somnus come off as trying to make the best out of the worst options handed to him.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Gladio, compared to Ardyn. Although Ardyn is the Big Bad who attempts to commit genocide on the entire human race as part of his revenge plot, and who tortures and deliberately hurts the heroes at various points, he is mostly beloved by the fandom due to his witty and Trolling personality, his coolness, and his English voice actor's charming performance. Meanwhile, despite being one of the heroes out to save the world from Ardyn, Gladio is a divisive figure with as many haters as he does fans due to several instances where he is seen as being unreasonably cruel to people who are supposed to be his friends.

L

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Noctis. There's Luna, Iris, Aranea, Nyx, Ardyn, and any of the Chocobros, particularly Prompto and Ignis. And then there's the crack ships with characters like Lightning, Stella Nox Fleuret, and various other versions of himself.
  • Prompto, to a lesser extent. There's fanart of him being shipped with all three of the Chocobros, Cor, Cindy, Aranea, Ardyn, and his Versus XIII appearance.
  • For a relatively minor character Cor is very popular with shippers. People like to pair him with Regis, Clarus, Gilgamesh, Loqi, Ardyn, Drautos, Prompto, Gladiolus, or Iris.
  • Even Ardyn has a fair share of ships himself, which is not limited to Noctis, Prompto, Ignis, Gentiana, Ravus, Regis, Verstael, Cor, and Luna.
• LGBT Fanbase: As inevitable as the Yaoi Fangirls were, given the attractive all-male main party filled with Ho Yay. Gladiolus and Prompto are especially popular among fans of the Bara Genre and The Twink respectively. Meanwhile, Aranea and Crowe Altius are beloved among lesbian fans.
• Love to Hate: Ardyn Izunia, Chancellor of Niflheim! XV has gotten a lot of flak considering some of the changes and omissions made to it when it shifted from Versus XIII. The one change absolutely no one complains about is Ardyn's promotion to Big Bad over Emperor Aldercapt, and it's easy to see why: within the span of the game, he does some of the most despicable things to the protagonists and practically gets away with what he wants all the time, while uttering some of the most memorable lines all throughout. He's already joining the ranks of Final Fantasy's best, alongside Kefka Palazzo, Sephiroth, and Vayne Solidor.

M

• Magnificent Bastard: Chancellor Ardyn "Izunia", true name Ardyn Lucis Caelum, poses as a "man of no consequence", but is far older and far more devious than he initially seems. Working for the Empire of Niflheim, Ardyn oversees the invasion of Lucis' capital city Insomnia, where he fatally stabs heroine Luna as she summons Leviathan and allowing the Starscourage affliction to run rampant and turning many of the residents of Altissia into monstrous Daemons. After nearly tricking his nemesis, Prince Noctis 'Noct' Lucis Caelum, into killing his best friend, Ardyn turns on Niflheim, allowing the Daemons to assail their cities and converting others into more Daemons. Ardyn also reveals he taught Niflheim the technique to transform people into living weapons to begin with and puts in place a series of machinations to transform Noct into the "Chosen King" so Ardyn may destroy him. In the Dawn of the Future epilogue novel Ardyn manages to outplay even the gods themselves, sacrificing his life to turn the power of the line of Lucis upon the tyrannical Bahamut. Rejected long ago by the very land he served and saved, Ardyn's endless, witty charm and ability to manipulate events in his own favor make him one of the most memorable villains in the Final Fantasy franchise.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Noctis became this after his debut appearance in the first Versus XIII trailer, where he single-handedly and memorably destroyed an army of soldiers.
  • Cor Leonis is shaping up to be one too, if this reddit thread is any indication.
• Memetic Mutation: But of course.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Ardyn. Some of his comments to Noctis sound suggestive, especially in Chapter 13, plus, he has a tendency to invade characters' personal space. So, naturally, gamers ran away with this.
  • Kenny Crow. Noctis acts really uncomfortable around him. Then there's the fact that a man in a Kenny Crow suit at the Moogle Chocobo Carnival event basically feels you up.
• Memetic Troll: Again, Ardyn, who spends the whole story trolling Noctis in ways both petty and cruel.
• Misblamed:
  • Tabata is often fingered as the cause of the game's darker second half and Bittersweet Ending due to his previous work. However, even when the game was still Versus XIII, Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase intended it to be a sad game which would have you crying for a week.
  • Nomura strikes this trope again as the scapegoat — Cindy's Stripperific outfit was blamed as being designed by Nomura, the head lead designer. Actually, that's not the case — several characters (Namely Cindy, Umbra, and Ardyn) were designed by Roberto Ferrari, who's, in fact, listed as being equal to Nomura in the credits as the designer. And this also isn't his first job with Square-Enix either.
    • Additionally, Cindy's original appearance in a trailer was not altered by the localisation team — it was actually done at Tabata's request.
  • It has been noted by many who look at the whole of the development of the game that both Nomura and Tabata get far too much blame for all the issues it encountered. Many have noted the management of the game from Square Enix, particularly both former CEO Yoichi Wada and current CEO Yosuke Matsuda, to be the real reason for the game's Troubled Production. Particularly the latter, who pretty much completely derailed the project in favor of kickstarting Final Fantasy VII Remake. A large amount of the community still sadly put most of the blame on the two directors regardless.
• Moe:
  • Noctis back when he was a pouty, helpless Cheerful Child. Many people feel the urge to protect him, even once he's older.
  • Iris, Gladio's younger sister, also gets a lot of love from fans for her adorable and perky demeanor.
  • Prompto can be this at times, due to being the most childish of the main crew and a Keet whose selfies often consist of him smiling widely (when they don't make him look creepy).
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Ardyn crosses it when he mortally stabs Luna and mockingly calls to Noctis that his bride awaits. He then takes it a step further by slapping Luna when she tries to offer him solace.
  • Caligo Ulldor, the commander of Fort Vaullerey, callously complains that he's being reprimanded for roughing up an old commoner for interrogation. By "roughing up", he means "killed in cold blood", and said old commoner turns out to be Jared. If you take certain trailer scenes that didn't make it into the final product as canon, he also practically stalks and throws around a terrified, young Luna in her own home when Tenebrae is taken over by Niflheim.
  • Ardyn's brother Somnus drives Ardyn to villainy when he strikes down Ardyn's fiance while attempting to kill Ardyn to take the throne for himself. Somnus has the gall to taunt Ardyn about it afterwards. Then he careens even further over it by having Ardyn's name stricken from history and making himself the hero.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The score for when the player is allowed to summon an Astral, particularly after a tough or annoying fight.
  • After a long day of extremely hard battles, the camping theme can put you at ease and make you feel accomplished and safe. The arrangement of the victory fanfare also plays here and that makes you feel like you actually achieved something.

N

• Narm:
  • Many of the characters' Gratuitous Latin names, which come off as overly lengthy and florid. Ignis's original middle name "Stupeo" was removed likely for this reason.
    Max0r: If you know any Latin, this game is fucking insulting.
  • The "HAH?!" Noctis gives after learning of the sacking of Insomnia in the Japanese dub, especially in comparison to his more natural-sounding "What?!" in the English dub.
  • Jared's death. The characters are shown to be torn up about it, but most players just find themselves going "Who?". Square Enix attempted to fix this in Patch 1.03 by adding brief flashbacks during the scene where the characters discuss Jared's death, but it's still only so much that can be done for a character who appeared as a minor character in several scenes.
  • Can be self-induced since alternate costumes show up in cutscenes, including the final boss battle. So you can do stuff like wear Noctis's casual costume of a trucker hat and oversized bubble jacket. Kind of spoils the mood when characters are having very serious, very dramatic moments while dressed as a mariachi (complete with hat), or wearing swimming trunks with flip-flops and floaty wings.
  • You can also put all sorts of silly decals on the Regalia, like a picture of a Cactuar or cutesy sprites of your team which makes it that much harder to take seriously when the Regalia breaks down for the last time.
  • Likewise, towards the end of the game you have a choice to take one picture into battle with you. Noctis will show said photo to Luna during their time in the afterlife. It's quite a Tear Jerker when played straight, but since you can choose any photo in the game, this means you can put anything such as a picture of Cindy, Noctis making a strange face, or completely comical scenes that ruin the moment.
  • The Final Boss ends with Noctis pulling out several of his Royal Arms and delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Ardyn, who tries to defend himself but is blocked, evaded, or countered each time. It's a truly awesome sequence... ruined when Noctis brings out the Sword of the Tall for an attack and it begins making its stock chainsaw revving sound effects.
  • The end of the game has several of the most potentially-scary parts of the game, no doubt, but it depends upon what the player thinks of individual encounters with daemon hordes. Are they as dangerous as the narrative spins them, in general or at least in numbers, or do the mobs you face not match up to the scenes? For the scenes where Noctis is on a train going through a tunnel filled with daemons, or the trek into/through the Imperial capital, they either succeed with the suspense or fall under this.
  • After Noctis got to the Power Crystal and was subsequently tricked into getting sucked into it which is all part of Ardyn's plan, Ardyn comes forward and tells his Dark and Troubled Past that would be responsible for the game's plot. It would be a harrowing moment, if it wasn't for the fact that in the English dub the sound balancing is way off and Noctis' grunts in his struggle to not get sucked in ended up being louder than Ardyn's monologue in some instances, making the whole scene quite silly. Hear for yourself.
  • The soundtrack to Episode Prompto features quite a lot of techno beats. Catchy, sure, but it can also be wildly inappropriate.
  • A lot of Lunafreya's comments about how she wishes she could just hear Noctis's voice one more time come off as hilariously questionable when you realize the last time she actually did he was still a prepubescent child.
  • Episode Ignis has a few:
    • Some of the line delivery in the English version is less than ideal. For example Ignis's screams and yells in the English version can sound wildly out-of-place for the amount of effort he's actually exerting. Other times he suffers from Dull Surprise.
    • The most hilarious one comes right after Ignis rejects Ardyn's offer. Apparently the VA was told there would be a bit more of a struggle, because what we see is Ignis get up and brush off the soldiers... only to stand there for a few seconds making exertion noises for seemingly no reason.
    • An older Ravus shows up for the alternate ending, with the only change he has to to show for it being a beard (that looks suspiciously identical to the one Noctis has). Less charitable fans have described him as looking like Santa Claus or Colonel Sanders.
  • The Hiso Aliens in the Terra Wars event level, in terms of their voices. The regular one sounds okay but then there are other Hiso Aliens whose voices are sped up or slowed down, making them sound more odd.
  • Once again questionable voice direction rears its ugly head for Episode Ardyn, as quite a few of Ardyn's grunts and groans in cutscenes are wildly excessive and out-of-place for the scenes they're in, and worse, sound like he was reenacting some kind of porno.
• Narm Charm:
  • Gladio's cup noodle Product Placement. The English voice actor, Chris Parson, sounds like he's reading the script for an ad, but keeps his baritone. While a lot of players aren't big fans of the multitude of Product Placement in the game, they give an exception to this sidequest because it's so over-the-top it's hilarious and thankfully deliberate.
  • As under Narm, whatever sort of silly design you've chosen for the Regalia can suck the drama out of seeing it totaled beyond repair and finally abandoned by the party. But with all the time you've spent customizing it with decals, paint jobs, etc, you've probably grown rather attached to the car and will be upset to see your work left broken on the road as the heroes continue on.
  • Noctis screaming ''POWER OF LIGHT!'' before the Final Boss is the purest example of this the game can offer. In any other scenario, game, tone, or context, the quote would have been parodied and laughed away as sounding needlessly childish and cliche, especially in comparison to just how grim the game was up to this point, but Ray Chase's absolutely fantastic delivery of the line, making Noctis sound the perfect combination of Hot-Blooded, furious, exhausted, and yet determined all at once makes the quote go from almost meme-worthy to being an absolutely epic statement that sets the stage for one of the most memorable final battles in FF history. The cheesiness of it and it all actually being a Call-Back to the vintage FF formula of Warriors of Light using the power of a crystal to defeat the darkness only serves to make it more lovable.
  • Prompto's photographs will invoke this trope as well, wherein it seems the game intentionally takes pictures of funny things happening such as a party member being knocked on their ass during combat, Noctis picking up something but it looks like he's throwing up, bizarre photo-ops, Gladiolus eating cup noodles, and Prompto's bizarre facial expressions on his selfies. Players found themselves intentionally saving these and sharing them because they thought it was funny. Bonus points for when the party compliments Prompto making a really stupid face or a really poorly-taken photograph where you can't see anything, or Gladio complimenting Prompto on a picture of him on fire.
  • The Assassin's Festival DLC event. While it's a transparent attempt at Product Placement for the Assassin's Creed franchise (and it showed), nevertheless many fans found the whole thing so over-the-top as to be hilarious, and the amount of geeking out the heroes get up to adorable in earnest, so they just lie back and enjoy the silly ride. Helps that the event was free.
• Never Live It Down:
  • It's been years since it was officially announced, but Stella's removal from the game looks to be this for Tabata and for his team in general, as many find their reasons for the removal to be extremely flimsy. Related to this, their treatment of her replacement, Lunafreya, has been even more divisive, due in part to just how big a push they had for her^note Including actively throwing Stella under the bus just to try and prop Luna up in official side materials when it would have been best to let Luna stand on her own merits,only to cut most of her scenes out of the game and eventually cancelled her DLC despite fans desperately wanting more content for her.
  • The fact that the game has been in development for so long^note Technically Newer Than They Think as the game only went into full production in 2013 is something nobody wants to anyone to forget about. Especially when you considering how it affected the development of Kingdom Hearts III.
  • Perhaps another high point of infamy is the excess amount of plot-important promotional materials. Want to get a better idea of the main party's characterizations, pasts and relationships with Noctis? Go watch Brotherhood. Want a better idea of the family bond between Noctis and Regis? Play the Platinum Demo and read the Parting Ways novella. Want any context whatsoever on the entire fall of Insomnia and the death of Regis the game springs on you in the first hour? Watch the feature-length Kingsglaive film. A common sore point against all of it is people simply wanting the story of a game to be entirely contained within the game, and it's infamous enough that Final Fantasy XVI pointedly has gone out of its way to not only ensure all of its story is internalized, but will have in-game encyclopedias and records to be able to keep track of everything without having to run off to outside sources.

O

• Obvious Beta: While not remotely as bad as some other examples, it is still very evident that the game was not 100% finished as the developers intended. Aside from complaints about the cumbersome UI, uncooperative camera, inability to switch party members and difficult-to-follow story due to several plot points not being properly explained, there's a lot of Dummied Out world areas not accessible in the final game, including Tenebrae, more of Altissia, Angelgard island, and the World of Ruin beyond Insomnia. Many patches post-release added party switching, new story scenes, the ability to explore Altissia and the ocean on the boat, and a lot of other things, but it was clear the developers were patching in things they had intended to have already but didn't have ready in time for the game's launch.
• Older Than They Think: The final boss not taking on a One-Winged Angel form for the final battle. This actually occurred in both Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IX^note Even if the Cloud of Darkness is debatable, Necron isn't.. Ardyn is, however, the first final boss from a main-series Final Fantasy not to be either a One-Winged Angel or Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, though only so long as you're not counting Final Fantasy X-2 (where Shuyin also wasn't either of those) as a main-series game.
• Only the Creator Does It Right:
  • After Tetsuya Nomura stepped down as the director of the game, especially after the reveal of changes to the combat system and deletion of ridable mechs, tanks, and changeable playable characters, cries of this trope has been surfacing as potential deal-breakers. On the other hand, the new director, Hajime Tabata, also directed Crisis Core, which was well-received. As such, the accusations were rather mute for some time, until certain developmental changes under his direction were made known.
  • They flared back up when Tabata officially announced that Stella had been re-imagined as/replaced by Luna, and that the character's role in the story had been substantially re-envisioned, removing her role as the originally-advertised active antagonist.
  • This becomes somewhat odd when one considers that Tetsuya Nomura was the go-to scapegoat for Final Fantasy for pretty much a decade.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Thanks to the November 8th, 2018 announcement that cancelled all future DLC plans, and Hajime Tabata resigning from Square Enix, it was hard to positively talk about the game for some time, which still lingers years later. After this announcement/the discontinuation of support for the Comrades DLC, the only things left for the FFXV-verse were the Episode Ardyn DLC in March 2019, and the Dawn of the Future novel (released in Japanese in April 2019, and in English in July 2020).

P

• Player Punch:
  • In Chapter 11, Ardyn acts oblivious when Noctis chases him down and corners him. It's later revealed that the person you're attacking the entire time was Prompto after Ardyn created an illusion to make them switch appearances, tricking Noctis into throwing the former off the train.
  • Towards the end of Episode Ignis, we get to see Ignis going blind from his First-Person Perspective.
• Polished Port:
  • Of a fashion. Nomura has stated that the game was beginning to outgrow the PS3 hardware it was being developed for, so rather than compromise the scope of the title by cutting features and content, he proposed the game be moved to next-generation consoles.
  • On top of that, the game's PC release runs at a beautiful 120 frames per second with great visuals and gameplay (albiet with Loads and Loads of Loading), the game's director seemingly wanted it to be a more typical Polished Port (like, for example, allowing for player-made quests through mods, higher quality graphics, smoother framerate, and more gameplay functions).
  • On the console side of things, the base Xbox One port was at sub-1080p and the One X port barely got to above 45 FPS with screen tearing in Lite Mode, while the base PS4 was at 1080p, with the Pro not being able to get to 45 in the same mode. Play it on an Xbox Series X, or PS5 in Lite Mode and it gets to a perfectly smooth 60 FPS at 1080p.

R

• Real Song Theme Tune: A Cover Version of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" is featured as the game's theme song.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • As badass as the original Versus XIII trailer looked, it also gave off the impression that Noctis was going to be yet another brooding Pretty Boy full of Wangst, a character archetype despised by many Western fans, during a time when Square-Enix games were full of them. Looking just like Sasuke Uchiha really didn't help. While Nomura mentioned in 2013 that Noctis would be a shy and "quirky" character, and a trailer of him being awkward at a party supported that, few people bought it at the time. It wasn't until Brotherhood and Episode Duscae that people changed their tune, after Noctis was shown to be a lot more genial than his initial "edgelord" impression suggested.
  • Ravus was hyped up as a major antagonist for the original Versus XIII and Kingsglaive set him up to have a bigger role in the game. However, in the main game his role was ultimately reduced to a small one where most of his development occurred offscreen including him finally acknowledging Noctis as the Chosen King and his death, leaving many players lukewarm to him, some even wishing they'd cut him like Stella for how little he contributed. Due to Chapter 13 verse 2 and Episode Ignis giving him much needed screentime and character development, particularly emphasizing his devotion to Luna, reception of him became more positive.
• Retroactive Recognition: Adam Croasdell (Ignis) previously appeared in Poirot as Adam Goodman in the episode "Cat Among The Pigeons".
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The romance between Noctis and Luna is considered one of the weakest aspects of the game's plot, and somehow manages to fall into both this and Strangled by the Red String, as it gets a lot of screentime and is treated as an epic love story, but never feels convincing or satisfying, with the characters mostly communicating via scrapbook, exposition, or anguished pleas, and rarely even appearing in the same scene together. Standing in comparison to the much more well-received and moving The Not-Love Interest relationship between Noctis and his friends also did it no favors.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Due to Lunafreya's significant lack of focus and the fact that her only onscreen appearances in the game are mostly about Noctis, preventing players from getting a deeper look at her own thoughts on the events of the plot, people who don't like her, especially those who ship Noctis with anyone else, frequently portray her as a Manipulative Bastard who willfully led Noctis on about his destiny and lied to him about his need to commit a Heroic Sacrifice out of spite, or saw him as nothing more than a pawn and only pretended to even care about him at all. Some even go as far as to portray her as a pedophile preying on Noctis since she's older than him by four years.
    • Her distant ancestor Aera has begun to get this treatment from Ardyn fans post-Episode Ardyn, as the game implies that she knew that Ardyn (who was her beloved) was never meant to be the First King, and was granted his healing powers so he could become the host of the Starscourge to be ultimately defeated by Noctis. However, it's left intentionally ambiguous if she truly knew and the few times she's seen in the DLC is through flashbacks or in visions from Ardyn, who isn't exactly the most reliable or stable of narrators to begin with.
  • Ignis got a lot of accusations of being manipulative, abusive, or predatory towards Noctis, or even of being evil after the release of Episode Ignis. While he does engage in actions of genuinely debatable morality, he always defers to Noctis regardless of his own personal feelings, and at no point does he ever force Noctis to do anything he's not truly comfortable with. Even Ignis's most dubious action, which is to forego The Needs of the Many and try to convince Noctis not to fulfill his destiny as the savior of Eos if it means sacrificing himself, still ends in him accepting Noctis's wish to continue, albeit with a heavy heart. As with Luna above, preferring to ship Noctis with other characters may color these interpretations.
  • After the lead-up to Episode Ardyn — including its animated Prologue — showed the true depths of the betrayal and torment Ardyn suffered from Somnus (as well as showing Somnus to be just a horrible person in general), the Lucians, including Regis and Noctis, began to get hate while Ardyn's Draco in Leather Pants status intensified. Some claim that Ardyn is well-within his rights to hate the Lucians and want to destroy their kingdom, and Regis and Noctis are usurpers who have no right to the throne and should pay for the crimes of their ancestor. This is despite the fact that Regis and Noctis have no idea what really happened with Ardyn and Somnus, that both the DLC and anime are from Ardyn's perspective, and that Ardyn doesn't have much interest in using diplomacy or getting reparations by the time he first enters Insomnia.

S

• Salvaged Story:
  • A common criticism upon the game's release was the disjointed story, which involved important plot events happening offscreen and certain characters being wasted. In an attempt to fix this, free DLC is planned that will feature new cutscenes to flesh out the story and certain characters, with Ravus being mentioned in particular. The first of these came in 2017, with a new flashback provided by Shiva in Chapter 12 explicitly spelling out the history of the Astrals and how and why Ifrit turned on them. Word of God is that similar free story updates like this will continue to be provided by patches going into 2018.
  • Additionally, on the front of the game's criticisms for They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, the DLCs for the game all prominently feature several of those side characters, with Episode Gladio allowing Cor to tag along and reveal his backstory, Episode Prompto giving Aranea additional screentime and featuring Verstael Besithia as the Arc Villain for the story, and Episode Ignis adding Ravus as an ally and explaining his change of heart as well as explaining ultimate fate of Caligo Ulldor.
  • The Royal Edition significantly expands the endgame World of Ruin portion, one of the most base-breaking and heavily criticized portions of the game for how underbaked it was.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Due to the lack of a hard mode, Level 1 runs, no items, no magic, no summons, etc. are pretty popular for those wanting some challenge in the game.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • Noctis/Luna is the Flame Bait of the shipping fandom. Any discussion where it comes up will get heated. Either you love it, are willing to vehemently defend it to the death against others who you think can't or are unwilling to understand its sublime beauty, and find the idea of people wanting to see them romantically involved with anyone else unfathomable, or you loathe it as one of the worst written romances of the whole series and think anyone who does enjoy it in any form must be delusional. Only the bravest dare openly express an intermediate opinion. Of the various competing ships, Nyx/Luna and Noctis/Prompto tend to be the ones that cause the bloodiest fights.
  • The popularity of Noctis/Ignis skyrocketed after the release of Episode Ignis, which provided a treasure trove of material that could be construed as supportive of the ship. Naturally, fans of the more popular Noctis/Prompto and Gladio/Ignis for the Chocobros did not appreciate it, leading to a lot of butting of heads, and in some extreme cases, accusing Noctis/Ignis of being an abusive/incestuous/pedophilic relationship.
• Ship Mates:
  • People who ship any of the Chocobros with each other tend to pair the remaining two together, even when it's nominally an OT4.
  • In general, fans who ship Noctis with other characters tend to ship Luna with Nyx and vice versa.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Loqi/Cor has a following due to Loqi taunting him in the boss battle that's the one time they interact together, plus some Ultimania guide stating that Loqi has a rivalry with Cor.
  • Cor/Prompto has a lot of fans in Japan; but in canon the two have very little interaction outside of early-game party banter.
  • Cor/Iris gained a following due to a single line that suggests they work together as Daemon hunters in the World of Ruin .
  • Despite neither of them having any overt love interests, and a line from Prompto that suggests Ignis might be gay, Ignis/Aranea gained a surprising following, mostly stemming from their conversations during Chapter 7, with Ignis' gentlemanly attitude contrasting Aranea's tough personality, and his relative maturity playing off of hers. Also, some of their banter does add a bit of fuel to the fire. Despite her no-nonsense attitude Aranea does also express a surprising amount of concern for Ignis after he loses his eyesight. Ray Chase and Adam Croasdell seem to be aware of the ship's existence.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Noctis teleporting haphazardly around the map and up buildings leaving blue after-images is a regular part of battle. Wait 'til you see the special in-battle events.
  • Forget that, wait till you see Ramuh and his gigantic size while obliterating Deadeye the Behemoth in one go!
  • Find all four Phantom Swords in Episode Duscae, activate Armiger and perform Warp-Strike. You can pick your jaw up off of the floor now.
  • The Duscae stinger invokes the hand-over-mouth-horror measurement of this, as it heavily implies the game's treatment of warfare and its consequences will be substantially more brutal than originally thought.
  • According to this article by Dualshockers, the Final Fantasy XV world is 786.4 square miles or 2036.8 square kilometers, making it several times larger than those for Grand Theft Auto V and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
  • After the E3 2013 rebranding, it was obvious that this game was going to be a major investment for Square-Enix. But it wasn't until the March 30, 2016 Uncovered event that the sheer scope of the game's multimedia universe was revealed. Put simply, there is so much money being thrown at Final Fantasy XV that this title is now SE's make-it-or-break-it moment, and they came prepared with a slew of announcement after announcement after announcement ^*15 in total that had viewers saying "holy shit" over and over again. Few games that have gone through as much Development Hell as this one manage to meet expectations... but Square-Enix is really making one hell of an effort to ensure that XV lives up to the hype.
• Signature Scene:
  • The battle with Leviathan. The story intensity building it up, the music, the scale of the fight, and the fact you're fighting Leviathan as Noctis fully empowered by a completed Armiger, make it one of the biggest moments in the game, and thus something most every player remembers.
  • The final scene where Noctis looks at the picture you chose before the final mission and "marries" Luna in the afterlife while the franchise's main theme triumphantly plays before cutting to the logo, where it is revealed Luna was the woman on the logo before the logo is updated to add in Noctis.
• Special Effect Failure: The game's graphics are far from flawless.
  • Occasionally, water won't properly animate, instead appearing perfectly flat.
  • Lighting will highlight seams on models that should obviously be invisible. Hair is also often a victim of lighting, making it look like Noctis has blonde or even white hair sometimes.
  • Many of the NPCs qualify for the Unintentional Uncanny Valley, which isn't helped by poor lip-syncing and voice acting on non-major characters.
  • When Prompto takes a photograph, the game will render plant life in the way and instead give it an extreme close-up... which causes hideous pixelation that makes it look obviously fake.
  • The Adamantoise is too big for the game to handle, resulting in the camera often swinging into and through its model.
• Squick:
  • The reveal of Iris's age has caused... polarizing opinions to pop up regarding the Noctis/Iris ship, resulting in Abandon Shipping for some.
  • The game and Brotherhood pretty much confirm that Noctis and Luna have loved each other since they were children. Which is sweet and all... until you remember that Luna is 4 years older than Noct. Meaning that at one point, Luna would have been an adult romantically involved with a minor. Thankfully, though, their relationship remained chaste during that time.
  • Ardyn's body is essentially full of black ooze that consistently reforms into his human form whenever he is damaged. While it is thankfully never shown in any gross detail, simply knowing this is very gross.
• Stoic Woobie: Ignis, especially after the events of Episode Ignis. He finds out the person he loves more than anything else in the world is fated to die horribly in order to save it, is forced to witness his death in excruciating detail thanks to a vision, sacrifices his valued ability to see to protect him, only to lose him for ten years, and ultimately fails to stop him from going through with his sacrifice. But Ignis adamantly refuses to show his sorrow to anyone, and only allows his facade to crack for a brief moment shortly before the end of the game.
• Strangled by the Red String: A common criticism concerning Noctis and Luna's romance. Since she has about 30 minutes of screentime and they only interact in the present after she's dead, it feels rushed and poorly developed to some. Even people who do like the romance think it should've had more time spent on it.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • While the bit NPCs are very hit-or-miss, the principle characters' voice acting in the English dub is considered a high point by many. The casting is excellent and the actors are highly and very convincingly emotive. Darin De Paul in particular is obviously having a blast voicing Ardyn.
  • When Ardyn reveals his true name, he says "you'll never guess whose name Izunia was." This gives the name "Izunia" a double meaning, with some fans interpreting the line to mean that Ardyn took the name Izunia from Noctis' ancestor, who took the throne from Ardyn, which is exactly the sort of thing a Troll like Ardyn would do. In the Japanese dub, the line is much more dismissive, with him saying that Izunia is just a random name he got from somewhere he doesn't even remember.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The Boss Music for the Justice Monsters Five pinball game. One could be easily forgiven if they immediately drew comparisons to "One" by Metallica.
  • The underlying motif of Apocalypsis Noctis, Apocalypsis Aquarius, and The Hydraean's Wrath is remarkably similar to that of The Elder Scrolls' main theme.
  • Veiled in Black, which plays during fights against Imperial enemies, has been compared to the final boss music Yoko Shimomura composed for Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.

T

• That One Boss:
  • The Tonberry Knights, an upgrade to the series' dreaded Demonic Spiders. You get to fight them as a Wolf Pack Boss, and they're all equipped with energy knives that amount to lightsabers, and can quickly decimate your entire party if you don't preemptively gang up on a single one. Oh, and they're level 75, making their encounter at night something of a nightmare.
  • The Naga boss; she can be fought pretty early at the end of a particularly rough early dungeon, it's possible to get knocked into her boss chamber without having a chance to prepare, you fight her in a compact corridor (and she has attacks that have pretty significant reach), and she can inflict the Toad status on the party.
  • The Marlboro, fought in Chapter 10, is a major pain in the boss of a Puzzle Boss: every time you whittle down its HP, it comes back to life until Ignis suggests falling back. It's all to easy to mistake this instruction for running out of the battle area, in doing so bringing it back to full health, instead of moving to a specific spot in the battle area that is barely indicated.
  • The battle with Daemon!Ravus in Zegnautus Fort is universally acknowledged to be the single toughest fight necessary to advance the story. He's fast, hits very hard, has a number of AOE attacks, and has an insane amount of HP. Pray for those who never played the Platinum Demo and unlocked Carbuncle... because they'll really be missing him.
• That One Level:
  • Chapter 13 has been met with a lot of criticism, due to the use of a Scrappy Mechanic that robs Noctis of his powers, his weaponry, and his allies and throws you into a labyrinth of hallways. What's more is that the moment you start to make some progress, something happens and it effectively knocks you back even further than you were before. And even if you are able to brute force through all of the combat and stealth by having enough HP to safely spam your magic, the chapter drags on due to how scarce the plot points are between the many maze segments. Thankfully, a patch helped with some of these issues, making Noct's magic stronger while also giving him the ability to sprint. And just in case a player still hates the chapter, the option to play as Gladio and Ignis was also added in a post-launch patch, allowing players to "skip" the chapter.
  • Costlemark Tower, the hardest dungeon you can tackle before post-game content. Whereas the game tends to thrive on large-scale battles and open arenas, Costlemark is filled to the brim with excess numbers of monsters per encounter in small spaces. You basically can't even take a swing at an enemy most of the time without another knocking you flat on your ass. But then the final part of the dungeon brings a vague (yet surprisingly linear) labyrinth of moving cubic walls. Which you have to go through at least three different times from three different angles (four if you take a wrong turn in the final path), each ending in ever-escalating battles against Red Giants, Nagas, and a horde of Flans to the point that you can fight multiples of each at the same time. Clusterfuck doesn't even begin to describe it; if you can get through the dungeon, odds are the boss won't stop you despite how much damage it does by virtue of only being one target and actually having plenty of space to fight it in! Due to FFXV retaining the historical save point system, this entire, long, dragging dungeon must be done in a single sitting, as leaving will cause all of the monsters to reset.
  • The Steyliff Grove Menace dungeon is easily the worst of the Menace dungeons, though not due to level; it's 100 floors deep. Every other Menace dungeon aside from Costlemark is 20 or 30 floors deep, and Costlemark is still only 60 floors. Not only is Steyliff significantly longer than the other dungeons, but the enemies within include Tonberry variants (mass amounts of HP) and Flan variants (immune to all conventional damage, time to bust out the Ring of the Lucii) that will serve you annoy you further and drag out the dungeon more. Completing Steyliff's Menace dungeon can take in-game days, real world hours, to finish.
  • The Pitioss Ruins are a vast, enemy-free platforming dungeon in a game whose controls are utterly unsuited for precise platforming. Combine this with the total lack of hints as to where to go or what the hell you're even supposed to accomplish in there, and you have yourself a level that shouldn't be tackled by anyone with little patience unless they have a couple of spare controllers handy. There are quite a few powerful items to be found here, but some players may argue if the stuff is really worth the immense investment in time and nerves required to get them.
  • The Daurell Caverns. The first time you notice something is off is the game lying to your face. The game says the Daurell Caverns are a Level 28 dungeon but the welcoming committee is two Level 41 Necromancers. After that, it's all one-way drops, poison pools, Iron Giants and more Necromancers. And the end reward is... nothing. No Royal Arm, no cool boss to fight, nothing. There is also an entrance to one of the Menace-dungeons and it's the only one of them to be Guide Dang It! since it requires you to point-warp, which you can only do in combat but the ladder you need to extend is only accessible when out of combat. The one redeeming factor to the dungeon is the Daurell Stills fishing spot where a ton of hard but hugely rewarding fish like the Bizarre Barramundi dwell.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Cid's weapon upgrade quests, because of the Guide Dang It! nature of the required parts. You'll probably find most of them by accident, and then comes actually getting the weapon upgrade, because the game doesn't tell you that no matter how long you wait, Cid won't finish the weapon until you complete so many quests and then rest.
  • Dino's final quest requires you to venture into Costlemark Tower, the toughest dungeon in the game, which is swarming with hordes of powerful monsters, to get a gem from roughly halfway into the place.
    • On the subject of Costlemark Tower, the sidequest where you have to fight the boss can be this. You'll encounter Bombs a lot, there's a tedious block puzzle, and it can take well over 24 in-game hours to finish it.
  • The two hunts "To Catch a Frog" and "Rainstorm Duel! Poison Frog of Wennath", for the reason that they can only be completed in a specific type of weather, that being rain. The catch is that the game's weather system is entirely random, so a player may find themselves camping over and over waiting for a rainstorm to come, then racing to the site of the hunt spawn hoping it doesn't let up before they get there. Fortunately, these two are the only quests that demand a specific kind of weather.^note Weather also has an influence in fishing and chocobo racing, but you can ignore the weather and still complete them just fine.
  • Catching the Mummy Bass. Even getting it hooked on the line is an excercise in patience, since it only appears in a specific part of the sea as part of particularly large schools of fish, and even then there's no guarantee it'll be there, and there's actually getting it to bite the line once you see it. That's the easy part — the hardest part is catching the damn thing, because it far and away has the best stats of any fish in the game coupled with Artificial Brilliance in its movement patterns, making it very good at rapidly wearing down the line. Even if Noctis' Fishing is maxed out, he's armed with the best gear, and you have the 25% line defense boost from a meal, it is very difficult to catch the Mummy Bass, and doing so can take over five minutes as you chip away its massive HP bar.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Some fans reacted negatively to a number of changes to XV compared to previous Final Fantasy games and even previous versions of XV. Square Enix seem to be well aware of this; see Author's Saving Throw:
  • The most heated example; trailers post-rebranding were a little vague about it, but the Episode Duscae stinger was more blatant — not only did Stella's name appear to have been changed to Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, or "Luna" for short, her role also appeared to have been changed. Previous promotional materials posited her as an Anti-Villain and major antagonist to Noct & Co. and a very capable combatant; the TGS 2014 trailer seemingly treated her more like a classic Love Interest, and then the Duscae stinger shows her badly disheveled and wandering the streets of a war-blasted Crown City, with a radio report voiceover reporting (apparently falsely) her demise. Either this implied that she barely escaped from a warzone (fighting the entire time), or other possible implications, which had those who were looking forward to the originally-posited antagonist Stella fuming in anger. It was later confirmed that Stella had indeed been cut from the game/reimagined as Luna, making people even more wary and angry. It's also not helped by the fact that she was removed because Tabata apparently didn't understand how to fit her into the plot, and also possibly removed a large portion of the game's (as well as lots of material that had been around since the beginning) story that would thus have to be rewritten entirely, which contradicted what was promised when Nomura claimed the game's story had not been changed.
  • Linking to the above, changes to character designs between the 2006 announcement and the final version of the game, as well as alterations to character profiles. For example, Prompto is no longer a new friend of Noctis's and has now known him since their days at school together.
  • The transition from the turn based battle systems of previous Final Fantasy games to a Action RPG one.
  • Prompto's hair got changed in the TGS 2014 trailer to something resembling Cloud's and/or Zell's, to the annoyance of those who liked his more normal style from the previous trailers.
  • The announcement that there would be no Moogles in the game brought about a heavy dose of this, to the point that Word of God stated that there was still a chance that they would be included if fan demand was high enough. The crisis was averted when the decision was made to include them after all. Then it turned out that this "appearance" was simply a Moogle stuffed animal that Iris gives Noctis as a sidequest reward that is a disposable item that can be used as a decoy in battle. There was also a Moogle Chocobo Carnival event held in early 2017 where characters appeared in Moogle costumes and quests were given where Noctis was required to hunt down stuffed Moogle dolls.
  • Many longtime FF fans are not happy with the portrayal of Gilgamesh as a stoic cold-blooded guardian portrayal in this game, rather than the Hot-Blooded Large Ham Dimensional Traveler with a love for theatrics and weapon-collecting that he's always been.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: While many are happy with some of the changes in the Dawn of the Future novel, many fans have sharp criticisms of things like almost nonexistent role of Gladio, Prompto, and Ignis and lifting plot points from other Final Fantasy games, particularly drawing comparisons to the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII with Bahamut being compared to Bhunivelze which in turn stirred more debates on whether XV should have remained a part of Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy since, despite initial attempts to distance itself, it ends up sharing much of its mythology.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • One of the biggest criticisms of the game after release concerns just how little screentime so many of the supporting characters got. Characters who looked like they'd be of great importance, such as Emperor Aldercapt or Cor, have little to no significance to the plot. The worst offender is Verstael, the head researcher of Niflheim and Prompto's biological father, only appears for all of one cutscene. Episode Prompto, fixed this, but in the base game it still comes across as a thrown away plot idea.
  • Furthermore, while the idea of Guest Party Members was well-received, it's felt by many that even the guest characters are underused. Cor, Iris, and Aranea are only available for brief periods, while Luna, who was initially stated as one, wasn't in the final product. While some fans argue there should've been more opportunities to use guest characters ( particularly in the World of Ruin, as all the guest characters are referenced, but don't appear on-screen), others wish that the game used them as permanent party members like in previous games.
  • Lunafreya Nox Fleuret might be the most noticable character who feels wasted by the story. She's given so much importance to the games story for what is barely only a few minutes of screen time, with much of her personality being just stated rather than shown, and she dies only after a few appearances. It doesn't help her relationship with Noctis is treated as a Romeo and Juliet type romance, but they have only several minutes of screenshot to make it seem like it exists. Worse, she was supposed to geta DLC story chapter, but it was scapped, meaning she gets almost no focus at all in the main story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • After Chapter 9, the game starts to play more like it ran into a Cosmic Deadline^noteAll evidence indicates it did: some unconfirmed but plausible rumors say that Square-Enix was bound by an ironclad contract to ensure that Final Fantasy XV was released before the end of 2016 with numerous events that could have made for some compelling gameplay set pieces occurring off-screen. A few examples include the Imperial Army launching an all-out attack on Tenebrae, Aranea and the 86th Airborne defecting and coming to Tenebrae's aid, Ardyn betraying Niflheim and unleashing an army of daemons and reprogrammed Magitek Troopers to lay waste to the imperial capital, Ravus being executed, etc. One of the bigger ones is in Chapter 14 when Noctis awakens in the "World of Ruin." Those who are familiar with Final Fantasy VI would probably expect the game to go back to an open world format as you gather your allies for one last attack against the Big Bad, but this doesn't happen: it consists of Noctis talking to his friends and Talcott, being told what all the supporting cast has been up to for the past 10 years, then rushing to Insomnia to fight the final battle. While the Insomnia segment itself would receive significant expansion with the release of the Royal Edition and its associated DLC pack, the rest of the World of Ruin remains pretty much entirely unexplored.
  • The Moogle Chocobo Carnival DLC. While many fans enjoyed it for its lighthearted atmosphere and access to special items, others felt like it was a waste that only Noctis could attend the carnival. Aside from the rest of the Chocobros, it's lamented that characters who usually wouldn't be able to interact with Noctis couldn't meet him there — including Regis and Luna — while Carbuncle could.
  • Game trailers from Versus to the latest ones, Platinum Demo and Brotherhood strongly emphasize Noctis and Regis' father-and-son relationship that one can be forgiven for thinking the game will focus on their parental bond. In the actual game, it isn't explored as Regis only appears twice: first to say goodbye to Noctis before dying (and in another medium) and at the end of the game as a ghost to deal the last blow to his son. Noctis himself gets over his death fast and even in Kingsglaive, they don't interact much since Noctis only appears at the beginning and end. Their bond is referenced in a few cutscenes, dialogues, and side materials, though it's still minimal compared to all the hype the trailers created.
  • Unlike previous and even future Final Fantasy games, the story is told almost entirely from Noctis' POV, with little to no "meanwhile" segments. This unfortunately means that many events that are critical to the story, such as Ardyn taking over the Empire and turning the Emperor into a monster, how Ravus was able to secure the Lucis family sword and Ravus' death and subsequent transformation into an undead monster all happen entirely offscreen and are only told to Noctis, and thus the player, secondhand.

U

• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Despite the beautiful scenery and the well-done graphics for the backgrounds and many of the important characters, some of the unimportant NPCs (namely shopkeepers) have realistic but oddly-rendered faces, made worse by the bizarre animations that goes with their voice acting. Important NPCs like the ones around Hammerhead are great, but some of the minor ones around some outposts sometimes seem to suffer from Lip Lock or have really bizarre overbites that makes them look jarring.
  • On occasion Prompto will take selfies where he's smiling, but for some reason, he's almost always squinting, and his eyes bulge a little too much when he's doing so, causing the photos to look hilarious or creepy instead of charming.
  • The famous Cup Noodles questline ends with the characters waxing poetics about how great the product is... with creepy grins and vacant stares on their faces. While this would ordinarily be creepy, it instead comes off as humorous. Which, according to Ray Chase, is the Intended Audience Reaction.^*In an AMA, he admitted that they did two takes of that scene: One where they took it seriously, and another where they read the lines in an ironic tone like they were reading off of cue cards. And that is the take that got used.
  • The Cactuars and the Tonberries look very unsettling, due to having a very cartoony design in an otherwise realistic looking game and not moving their individual limbs while moving or attacking.
  • Noctis's post-timeskip model can have this at times due to his head seeming a little too big for his body, unless you're wearing the Kingly Raiment or Master Assassin's Robes (which subsequently have the converse problem of looking too big if you're wearing it on his normal model).
  • The character models for FFXV Pocket Edition are intended to be cute, but the extremely warped proportions end up making them look more creepy, especially Gladio.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • As the Oracle, Luna is supposed to act as the mouthpiece of the Astrals, and she does their bidding dutifully. However, they're a serious case of Jerkass Gods who are ultimately responsible for many of the setting's ills, including the creation of the Big Bad and sentencing Luna and Noctis to their deaths via Heroic Sacrifice in order to clean up said ills. The fact that Luna is aware of her own death due to her status yet expresses no desire to challenge this at any point or find an alternate, less bloody solution (particularly now that the alternate ending of Episode Ignis shows they do exist) causes some fans to see her as an Extreme Doormat who is complicit in Noctis's death at the end. Dawn of the Future addresses this by revealing that Lunafreya is Locked Out of the Loop regarding what is going to happen to Noctis. The instant she finds out, she rebels.
  • Episode Ignis does a lot to flesh out Ignis, including showcasing his darker aspects such as just how far he would theoretically go to protect Noctis. Some fans came away viewing him as more cruel than tragic.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Ardyn is outright hated by most of the cast in-game. Nearly all the heroes mistrust him and even the villains find him odious. But within the fandom, he's unambiguously one of the most popular characters due to being a Magnificent Bastard who leaves ham and destruction in his wake.

V-W

• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • From the E3 2013 trailer alone does one get the impression that, even by FF standards, the game is going to be brimming with obscenely, positively stupefying amounts of this.
  • Opinion is even more heavily skewed towards this in regards to the leaked Paris Games Week trailers. The visuals shown put even The Archylte Steppe to shame.
  • Summoning Ramuh in Episode Duscae is downright awe-inspiring and gorgeous. If that's only one summon, imagine the rest in the real game.
  • A minor, but still impressive example: Flans. Their bodies move and ripple like liquid extremely realistically, and it looks fantastic.
  • Another very great example: If random NPCs get in the player's way and they walk near them, they'll actually step out of the way before bumping into Noctis; the way they do that is very well animated.
  • The character generator for Comrades. The player can extensively customize their character from top to bottom and even see how well their hair moves when they walk or run.
  • Episode Ignis has a shot of the Citadel that looks absolutely stunning and really highlights Luminous Engine's ability to create environments.
• Vindicated by History: While the alternate ending of Episode Ignis was criticized by some parts of the fanbase at the time for coming off as a Fix Fic and being a lot more on the sweet side compared to the game's very bittersweet normal ending, it's gained some new fans from detractors of Dawn of the Future's Golden Ending, who view that one as overly sappy and going against the themes of friendship exemplified by the normal and Episode Ignis endings.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • The game served as a means for Square-Enix to try and reach out to disillusioned Final Fantasy fans who had given up on the series. The biggest example being that Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu spoke at the event (the latter by video recording) essentially saying that although they both had their disagreements with Square-Enix's decisions in the past, it truly looks like Final Fantasy XV is moving in a direction that allows it to recapture the original meaning of the Final Fantasy name. This is extremely telling, considering that both of them left Squaresoft / Square-Enix in the early-mid 2000s on bad terms.
  • The video game forum NeoGAF has been among the game's staunchest critics, especially when it came to the game's graphics and gameplay. To put it into perspective, these people were nitpicking on "jaggies" and how subpar the graphics of — of all things — the foliage were. When Square Enix announced the delay of the release date in August, forum members took it as an omen that the game was in trouble. Reports across the Internet from people who had tried the demo at conventions since the delay was announced weren't reassuring, as a lot of those reports stated that the game was littered with bugs and graphical downgrades from previous builds. With the early October announcement that the game has been data-locked and the subsequent release of footage by several game journalists who had recorded themselves playing the final build of the game, even NeoGAF members were impressed by the footage and praised how quickly Square Enix managed to address many of the graphical and gameplay complaints that had been made since the announcement of the delay. And yes, even the improved foliage was praised.
  • The "Omen" what-if story trailer made a huge impression on the fans, even from some disillusioned Versus XIII fans, due to its heavy use of Mind Screw, a very dark and ominous tone, and especially for bringing back a major plot point from the Versus XIII concept that everyone assumed had been scrapped for XV: namely, Noctis in a tragic duel to the death with the love of his life. Unfortunately, other than being one of Noctis' nightmares, none of those elements actually made it into the final game's plot.
  • While just as much of a victim to the Broken Base like the other games, people are willing to call this game a worthy, if flawed, (offline) entry in the series after the divisiveness of Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels.
  • The multiple free patches has been a big one for detractors and critics by significantly improving the experience from its initial release. In particular includes the addition of plot elements (notably, for the divisive later chapters) and gameplay features such as party member switching, a codex, and off-road driving.
• The Woobie: A large chunk of the cast would probably qualify for some kind of one or the other. As far as the standard type go, Prompto had absentee parents and a Friendless Background growing up, and is often upbeat to hide his insecurities. Then comes Episode Prompto where it all comes crashing down and he starts doubting if it's even worth reuniting with Noctis after learning about his true origins. Thankfully, he does get better by the end with the help of Aranea snapping some sense into him.
• Woobie Family: The Caelum and Fleuret families. Every tragedy they have experienced throughout their entire existences is due to the whims of the gods.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Cindy's outfit is considered by some fans to be the worst in the game, even to the point of ruining the concept of her being a female Cid/"Cidney". Basically, Cindy works as a mechanic in the desert, yet she wears a crop-top jacket with sleeves all the way to her wrist, which is opened to reveal her bikini top, a pair of daisy dukes with the bikini bottom's thong poking out, as well as leg warmers and white boots (despite all the grease and oil).

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