Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
I didn't hate FFXV though I suppose it's telling that I barely remember anything about the combat...
Mostly it was clunky running around, and then when you take a hit, you drink a red bull that Noctis has ensorcelled to be a healing potion. Magic is bottled in vials that you kinda throw out like grenades and can friendly fire(super bad if you made an insanely strong spell). Each of the boys have their own battle style and advantages you can capitalize on, but it's still super clunky and you have to know exactly what you're doing to make the most of it.

As far as being Noctis goes, you warp out of combat to recover and hang off warp points a lot, it's a lot of zipping in and out in general fights. But in the vertical ones, like when fighting Aranea or when Aranea is a guest party member, you fight things that fly essentially, warping up and down repeatedly, giving the game an awesome sense of scale and speed.

There's also summoning, and it comes up as a button prompt once you've fulfilled the condition to do it... which is as far as I remember, being in critical danger or being in certain spots. The summons are huge and showy, and they do a ton of damage. There's just little controlling them, or using them to prevent a bad situation etc.

But the game starts railroading you eventually anyway, giving you what I'd call, "Cutscene Combat" where you are given entirely different abilities and have to approach the game entirely differently. The Ring of Lucavi or whatever it was actually called was cool as hell, letting you basically X-Zone/Blackhole enemies, but that was only for that one segment. And kinda felt bad.