I'm 5 hours of play time in, so far it's a pretty good game. It's so far away from a traditional FF game that it's hard to think of it as one, but as a stand-alone game not part of the series it's pretty good.
My major complaints so far:
- Load times. Might as well hit Start and go make some lunch. It'll still be loading when you get back.
- Spawning. So many times I've been running and had enemies spawn on top of me. In the old games, it was always a random attack when running but this game was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be an open area where you could choose to engage or not. Don't get much choice, or tact, when they spawn on top of you. I've seen this with cars on the road too, they randomly pop in/out.
- The open world with tons of side quests combined with just one main character (as opposed to the old party system) conjoined with the gimmicks like fishing, cooking, photography, etc really detracts from the story. The more I play, the less I care about what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not vested in Noctis' story at all, the story line just doesn't grab you like the older games did, and I find myself doing more side quests than main quests.
Things that surprised me:
- While the Regalia again feels more gimmicky than anything, I found the radio to be very entertaining. You can listen to classics from all the previous games. It's a nice touch that I didn't realize I would enjoy so much.
- The combat is overwhelming at first, almost too many things going on at once. But it grows on you and becomes much more fluid as you progress. I didn't think I'd like a FF game that wasn't turn based, but it really isn't that bad.
I'm still enjoying the game tremendously. It has it's issues with graphical glitches and tearing, but overall it's a beautiful environment. Lots to do if you actually take your time to do it (tons and tons of side quests). If you don't go in to the game thinking of it as a FF game, you'll enjoy it. Just don't expect it to be like any other FF game, because it really isn't. It's more like an offline, single player version of an MMORPG (right down to dungeons and buffs).