Two reviews in one post.
Final Fantasy XV.This game is quite divisive, and with it's history, and the conception that the game has been in development for ten years, it's not surprising that people either had very high hopes for this game, or thought it would be abysmal.
I enjoyed the game myself, but I feel that SE should have either delayed the game further, or completely cancelled Versus, and created XV from scratch. There's so much potential in just about everything in XV that isn't realised, it's almost depressing when you consider the game it could have been, had it been allowed more time.
The open map is very scenic in places, but it's also quite sparse, and with a few exceptions, most of the outposts seems to have been somewhat copied and pasted. Lucis is also the only place with an open map; there are other locations that you'll visit later in the game that limit you to a fairly small space. There are invisible walls all over the place, and it can sometimes be frustrating to go exploring the countryside, only to come up against an invisible wall. On exploring; the Regalia (the car) can be irritatingly slow (though you can buy soundtracks containing select tracks from previous Final Fantasies to play whilst driving), and difficult to drive at night due to the "daemons" that come out at that time, and force you to stop driving - there is a sidequest at one point to get some headlights that will stop the daemons from blocking your path, but that quest can only be done when you're over halfway through the game. The Regalia can also only drive on roads. You can hire Chocobos a short way in; they can go off road, are faster than walking, and you can ride them away from enemies, but you currently can't play any music when riding them - you may get annoyed of the infamous Chocobo theme after listening to it non-stop for half an hour.
The story is also rather sparse. The basic premise is that two nations, Lucis and Niflheim have been at war for years. Realising that Lucis cannot win the war, King Regis is forced to accept a peace treaty; relinquish control of all of Lucis, save the capital to Niflheim; and the marriage of Prince Noctis to the former princess Luna. In return, Regis will be left with free reign over Insomnia, the capital of Lucis. Uncertain of Niflheim's sincerity, Regis arranges for the wedding between Noctis and Luna to be held in the city of Altissa, outside of the country of Lucis. Regis sends Noctis off on a road trip to the wedding with three friends that Noctis has known for years, but after leaving Insomnia, but before leaving Lucis, Noctis finds out that Niflheim has betrayed Regis, and all of Lucis, including Insomnia is now in Niflheim's hands. Noctis vows that he will reclaim his throne, and free all of Lucis from Niflheim. Final Fantasy XV probably has one of the shortest stories in the series (around 15-20 hours if you don't do any side quests). It's a shame, because there is a story there, but the presentation of it is lacking. There's a lot left vague, or glossed over. Like Versus (supposedly), Final Fantasy XV has a rather sad, dark story underneath the road trip but the scarceness of the story means a number of the emotional points may not have their intended effect on the player - there's one in particular that's receiving quite a bit of ridicule around the Internet. While there is DLC planned to introduce further cutscenes to the main story, and a scenario for each of the three non-playable party members, I personally have doubts how effective the DLC will be.
Combat - I've seen a lot of recommendations to change the default control type (A) to either B or C; as it makes combat a lot more fun. I did play through using control type A, so I'm not sure if using B or C really does make that much of a difference. Combat is in real time, as opposed to the Active Time Battle previously used in Final Fantasy games. Random encounters are also gone; you'll see enemies on the map as you walk around, and a red bar will appear at the top of the screen to indicate how much notice the enemy is taking of you. When the red bar extends all the way across the screen, the enemy will attack. You only play as Noctis, you can't control the other three members of the team, or set up gambits for their behaviour; although each of the three has various techniques that you can call upon. Each character can only have one technique assigned at a time, but the game does allow you to go into the menu and swap a characters technique during a battle, if needed. Noctis can use all weapons, allowing you to decide whether you prefer greatswords, with slower, but more powerful blows, or daggers, for quicker, less damaging attacks. Noctis can also have four weapons equipped at a time, swapping between them is done with a press of the D-Pad, and eliminates the need to go into the menu to change weapons. Magic must be created from energy Noctis can take from fire, ice and lightening deposits, and stored in a magic flask. Magic is quite strong, but given that it needs to recharge between uses, and that it can also hurt your party, I only used it a few times during the game. You also can't use summons at will in Final Fantasy XV; summons (called Astrals) have their own minds in this game, and will only help Noctis out if certain criteria are met. If this criteria is close to being met in a battle outside, the sky will darken, and different music will start to play. Soon afterwards (Astrals can be summoned indoors as well), a prompt to press L2 (may depend on your control type) will appear, and after holding down L2 (it does have to be held down, not pressed or tapped), an Astral will appear (you can't choose which Astral; they each have their own criteria for summoning) and usually one-shot your opponent. I thought the Astral summonings were impressive, and in keeping with how powerful the Astrals are said to be in the games lore.
Sidequests and Hunts are where most people will spend most of their time in the game. There are a lot of sidequests in Final Fantasy XV. Most are marked on the map, but some you will only come across if you explore. Reaction to the sidequests are mixed, quite a few of them are fetch quests; "go to this location, and run around in a circle shown on the map until you find x item". This didn't really bother me, there was only one sidequest that I found frustrating, but again, opinion is divisive on this. Some sidequests will take you to optional dungeons; I was a little disappointed with the dungeons in that the ones with the more boring and repetitive design were much longer than those that had more interesting and varied designs (in my opinion), but some of the dungeons are atmospheric and fun to explore. One thing to note about taking on sidequests is that unless you wear an accessory to stop gaining EXP, you will end up highly over levelled for the main story if you start doing the sidequests straight away. For an example, I believe the recommended level for the last quest in the main story is somewhere in the 40's - I was in the 50's in chapter three. Hunts was something I wasn't too keen on. To start with, there isn't a centralised location to sign up to a hunt; you have to go to every diner separately to check on the hunts that diner is currently offering, though you are allowed to turn in a completed hunt to any diner. To compound this, diners add more hunts as you gain levels; you might have done all the hunts that a diner offers, but as soon as you level up your hunter rank, you'll need to check that diner again to see if any new hunts have been added. You can also only sign up for one hunt at a time, so you can't just sweep all the diners and sign up for all the hunts currently on offer. Another thing I disliked about the hunts - a lot of the targets just seemed to be minding their own business. The posters say that the targets are causing habitat destruction, but there's no visual evidence of that, and I honestly felt bad killing animals/monsters that didn't seem to be doing anything wrong. It felt odd to me that the four were okay with some of the hunts; given that Noctis and Prompto are both established as being animal lovers, and I think that apparently not having any peaceful species that existed with humanity (with the exception of Chocobos) actually detracted from the world a little.
Root Double: Before Crime.This is a visual novel game of the reading and occasionally inputting a choice variety. Unlike a lot of other "pure" visual novel games though, which usually present the player with concrete choices which determine the ending or route the novel goes down, Root Double uses the "Senses Sympathy" system, where at certain times, you'll have to input your current feelings on one more more character, using a bar. Depending on how positive or negative your feelings are will dictate the current playable character's thoughts, words and actions. This can have a minor effect, or could lead to major consequences. To help guide players, Senses Sympathy decisions are colour-coded. A blue decision means that it's a minor decision. A yellow decision means that your choice could impact the ending, or have serious consequences. Finally, a red decision is basically a fatal choice. Choosing wrongly here will almost certainly lead to a bad ending.
The premise of the story is that the Nuclear reactor in a facility call LABO has had a meltdown. An elite rescue squad, Sirius, is dispatched to search for survivors, but while Sirius are carrying out their rescue, they find themselves sealed in LABO, along with several survivors, and must find a way to escape.
When you first start Root Double, you have a choice of two routes. The After route, and the Before route. The After route covers events after the meltdown, and comes from the perspective of Watase, the captain of Sirius. The Before route mainly covers events up to the meltdown, and comes from the perspective of Natsuhiko, a student. Despite the names, and Before taking place before After, the almost universal opinion is that After should be played first.
After is somewhat reminiscent of Zero Escape: 999. There are nine main characters in Root Double, and each corresponds to one of the Enneagram personality types (Watase is the Investigator, and Natsuhiko the Enthusiast); Senses Sympathy options are done against an Enneagram, and each character is labelled with their type. The lockdown in LABO is due to be lifted in nine hours, but with radiation levels rising, and very limited quantities of anti-radiation medication, and more and more fires breaking out, simply waiting the nine hours out is not an option. There are even some scientific lectures at points, though these start really taking off in the Before route, rather than the After route.
The After route is also where the Senses Sympathy system comes into its own the most; as an interesting, but somewhat flawed mechanic. With the threat of both fires and radiation, there are a lot of times where Watase, or someone else will find themselves in mortal peril, and you'll use Senses Sympathy to determine Watase's course of action. Since you're deciding how you feel about someone though, rather than deciding to, for example, fight a fire, or run away, sometimes the actions taken as a result of your choice can be the opposite of what you intended when you made the decision. In one scenario, giving Watase a high value in Senses Sympathy may cause Watase to decide against taking a dangerous action and retreating to safety, but in a later scenario, a high value for Watase may make him overconfident, and plunge headfirst into danger. This can be frustrating, but it does seem like the developers may have realised this - most decisions that lead to a bad end in the After route initially appear as a yellow decision, and if you do make a wrong decision, the game will usually allow you to change your mind; this time as a red decision to alert you to an incoming bad ending. Additionally, if you do get a bad ending, the game will give you hints on how to avoid the bad ending; these can be switched off for players that prefer to experiment and find their own way through the story.
As with 999, there's little visual gore in Root Double, but some of the bad ends in After route are somewhat... descriptive. I wouldn't say it gets quite as bad as 999, but it may still make some players feel a bit uncomfortable/squeamish.
Before route is more "slice of life". I'd probably compare it more to Ever 17 than Zero Escape, as Natsuhiko goes to school, and listens to science lectures as a chain of events start that result in him and a few of his friends being trapped in LABO after the nuclear meltdown. Personally, I found Before to drag a little at times, after the After route, though this is by no means a general consensus. I also didn't like the student characters as much as the adult characters; I found Natsuhiko to be quite unlikeable. It's also a lot easier to avoid bad endings in Before than After. I liked the tension of not knowing whether a choice I made would lead to a bad end, and that tension made me think before making a decision, but others may prefer the straight-forwardness of the decisions in Before route, especially if the unpredictability of Senses Sympathy was an annoyance in After route.
Once the first two routes are complete, the final route opens. It doesn't drag the way Before route does, but, despite a few tense moments, doesn't really feel quite as intense as After does either, in my opinion. Once the true ending in the final route is seen, the Xtend episode is unlocked, this a collection of scenes for each of the nine characters that provide further insight, or information into the characters that wouldn't have fitted into the main narrative.
Overall, I enjoyed Root Double, even though the ending left something of a bad taste in my mouth. The story is interesting, and a lot of the cast are likeable, even though most of them have rather limited character development.
A few completion hints; I'll put these under a spoiler, but I've tried to be as vague as possible.
