No lies detected. I think FFXV really hoodwinked a lot of people, including reviewers, when it first came out, thinking that there must be 'something more' to the game, or somehow they had forgotten what a good FF game was and this was it, and it's pretty clear that's not the case. It's just kind of a sloppy mess, from beginning to end.
Absolutely. The game deserves a Metacritic average in the 60's at the most. I don't care how much effort the animators put into the game's animations, that doesn't make a good game. It's a butchered, rushed, soulless project. I was under the impression that I was loving the game, spending dozens of hours doing quests and stuff. Then after Chapter 4 reality crashed down on me and I realized that, yup, that's all there is to this game outside of the few quality dungeons (and even then some of them are hampered by Tabata's signature questionable design decisions, like having a Level 55 boss in a dungeon full of Level 7 enemies, so it's either a fun dungeon with an impossible boss, or a boring dungeon with a boss you can manage to beat). It's just running around, in this dull, empty world, completing dull fetch quests, and then progressing through the insultingly bad main story whenever you're tired of collecting wax or taking selfies or whatever.
That's what bugs me the most.
It's completely devoid of soul. Outside of the optional dungeons (at least the few I did) I guess. And it shows.
But seriously think about it.
How much does the game try to distract you from its flaws?
Exhibit A: Spoil major boss fight (with no actual story behind him presented within the game) and the timeskip (which ends up being literally nothing more than a cosmetic change) in the first 10 seconds.
Goal? To distract you from how utterly dull the opening, and the rest of the story, is.
Exhibit B: Let's cram in every possible FF song that we could use while you're driving your car!!!!1111!!!11!!!
Goal? To distract you from how boring it is to "drive" the car.
Exhibit C: Let's shove side quests in your face and encourage you to explore at every possible opportunity.
Goal? To distract you from realizing how pathetically short the main story is.
Exhibit D: Let's force random insanely high-level monsters to pop up at night and force you out of your car. Let's also force fast traveling to locations to only be possible if you've driven there. Let's also make certain hunts only available at certain times with no real way to manipulate the time of day. Let's also allow the player to only accept one hunt at a time.
Goal? To lengthen the game.
Exhibit E: All of Tabata's interviews.
Goal? To make it seem like every pants-on-head moronic flaw was some intentional artistic decision. You just don't get it!!!
Exhibit F: Let's throw in gigantic mobs of robot soldiers at you every 5 seconds.
Goal? To keep the player from realizing that the open world is COMPLETELY empty.
And early on they did things like throw in a Luna flashback by turning on the radio or having a convo with Prompto so the player can think that there's a bunch of potentially hidden cutscenes whilst exploring or doing optional things. When in fact those are the only instances of stuff like that happening in the entire game.
The whole game is smoke and mirrors. In reality it's a horrid sloppy mess trying to disguise itself as best as possible.