FFXV is one of the most "mixed bag" games I've ever played! It's obviously a miracle the game exists at all because of its legendarily bad management for most of its existence and the fact that the final product had probably at best a year and a half of meaningful development.
That said, there are some things in here that are legitimately top tier. The bros are some of the best characters ever in a Final Fantasy and the game 100% sells their friendship. They similarly nail the road trip theme with a ludicrous amount of love put into things like the animations for setting up camp, cooking, fishing, etc. If the entire game was as good as these high points, it would quite possibly easily be my favorite Final Fantasy game.
But the rest is... not very good. The storytelling is some of the most bafflingly bad I've ever seen in a big budget JRPG (no doubt a symptom of how rushed the game was) and "cut corners" doesn't even begin to describe the sections past the open world. Luna was one of the biggest victims of this rush and basically ended up being a non-character so it's interesting to see you call out the "romance" with her as a high point! Iris was a thousand times better anyway, fight me.
The Episode Ignis and (especially) Episode Ardyn dlcs were absolutely god tier and part of me wishes we could have seen more of this world realized with an appropriate development schedule, but alas, Tabata is gone and that ship has thoroughly sunk at this point.
I really disagree with Luna being a "non-character." They built her up quite well, even if her time with Noctis was limited. The memories of little Noctis and Luna were really good.
Iris was cute, sure, but Luna is much more complete as a character. Iris' whole point is that she's young and therefore not completely formed as a personality.
colliding posted...
Also yeah I definitely disagree that the Luna romance was done well
In fact, I'd say that the plot overall really sucks. On paper it sounds good but it's executed worse than any other mainline Final Fantasy game.