No lies detected. NieR alone would've done the job tbh
The only reason XV managed an 81% is because it was a game hyped up for 10 years and it's a mainline Final Fantasy game.
When you look at it objectively?
First off, exploration is a chore. Car isn't fun. World is empty. Non-dungeon locales aren't interesting in the slightest. Load times are abysmal. Game tries to waste your time with how fast travel, hunts, and how exploration until you hit Lvl 40 works.
Secondly, battle system is pretty horrendous. When you get over the flashiness, you'll realize that there's little depth to combat. Unlike XII and XIII you cannot control how automated the combat is. There's ZERO balance to the entire thing, too. Extremely little AI control outside of spamming the same ally techniques for literally the whole game. Worst camera and lock-on I have ever encountered in a game. Magic, summon, and upgrade systems are not even half-baked.
In terms of content, you have a main story that's like a dozen hours long, some optional dungeons, and then loads and loads of horrible fetch quests. Not much in terms of non-filler garbage content.
The visuals are honestly not even great IMO. Sure they're, uh, technically impressive... I guess? Not really? The hair is jaggy as fuck, and a vast majority of your time is spent in artistically dull areas. Animations for a vast majority of cutscenes are incredibly stilted. The game is completely missing the cinematic flair and the great amount of polish FF is known for. CGI cinematics are pretty much absent (literally 3 for the entire game and all 3 are dull), too.
And I've already stated the issues with the writing.
Music's great tho!
So overall, Final Fantasy XV is literally just a game that takes place in some empty open world with mostly same-y, dull environments, with a shallow, stapled-together story, and a battle system that needs a shitload of work. It tries to convince you that it's a lengthy game with tons of content but all of that content is shallow. Much like the main story.
And if you ask me, the only boss fight Final Fantasy XV has is the camera.
Yeah, if FFXV came out in April it would have been completely destroyed. Mid-60's MC average.
Why does FFXV have such a grand and elaborate finale when the rest of the game is such half-baked nonsense? It's usually the other way around.
I don't agree with this. There was nothing "grand" or "elaborate" about XV's finale especially in comparison to pretty much all other Final Fantasy titles. It didn't feel intense at all. In comparison to the rest of the main story that felt like it had a $5 budget total? Sure. But it still wasn't anything remotely impressive. The two summoning animations during the boss fight against the So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance contestant were cool, I guess, but that's about it. Final boss was a joke. Ending was a joke.
Seriously tho XV's main story feels like it was made on a shoestring budget.