Do you think that someone will hack it to uncap the framerate, or do these games usually depend on the framerate for game logic to work right? Last FF I played on PC was 7.

Which version of 7 did you play? The Steam version or the vanilla PC version? And by vanilla I mean anywhere, but Steam, which you would've likely purchased a physical boxed copy if this was the case. Because believe it or not, they're two different builds unrelated to getting it on Steam's framework, God knows why. If you don't care for Steam features, then the vanilla version is actually the better version because nothing was tampered with unlike the Steam version (though I don't know if patching has addressed ALL of the differences).

And to answer your question, somebody will probably mod it to uncap the frame rate if such a cap exists. Right now, Square-Enix is aiming for a solid 30 fps, but their design should be able to adapt to 60+ fps IF the hardware (such as PC) can handle it. Since FFXIII on PC is theoretically able to do 60 fps, I'd be surprised if FFXV's design couldn't adapt to higher frame rates as well. It's like saying the predecessor is better planned out and more flexible than the successor (though I can't tell if a different team worked on this while FFXIII was in production since I remember it was announced as the nonsensical FF Vs XIII at the time before FFXIII-2 and FFXIII-3 even existed to us).


So it really depends on how the game was designed. For Final Fantasy X, you will get issues like animation glitches and sound syncing, but Naxshe is working on it (got the intro and a combat scene running at 60 fps) and says it'll take months to make the game adapt to a different frame rate. For Final Fantasy XIII, it's capped at 60 fps @ 720p (Durante's GeDoSaTo patch addresses the resolution limit), but the devs were so used to 30 fps, that they didn't actually optimize the game to run at 60 fps. So what happens is you will dip down to 30 fps at times, while hitting 60 fps at other times. Why it's capped at 60 fps, I don't know, but it's probably due to animation and sound design that isn't adaptive to different frame rates (cause you know, consoles don't really need to offer such choices, so why bother thinking ahead for the PC port when making the console original right?).

A temporary workaround would be to disable the freaking HUD completely (have fun fighting blind and using photographic memory to know where your combat options are), because apparently the HUD was ported so poorly that it tends to run at 30 fps which slows the entire game down to 30-40 fps as a result. You can still get 60 fps without any changes at times, but the HUD is hilariously one of several anchors that make 60 fps more of a dream than an actual option provided for the PC port. Still passable compared to other games though, and it didn't contain inferior audio files (and in FFVIII's case, inferior audio AND textures). In fact, it contained higher quality cinematics which made the installation requirement a nice small and totally not an oversight 59 GB to install.

I have no clue what FFIX's port is like. I assume passable. Let me check.

*Reads PC Gamer's report on FFIX which is surprisingly not written by Durante this time.*

It's a pass unless you're picky like me. Square-Enix didn't have time to improve anything beyond FMV cinematics and 3D models. Even the video backgrounds are default, so it's blurry. And the frame rate is default. Note I didn't say 30 fps. There is a mod from NeoGAF to bring up the frame rate during combat to 24 fps while keeping the whole desync issues at a minimum (again, this is meant for battle animations). So it's really just a copy and paste job, add keyboard and mouse support (full support mind you, including in-game), and give resolution options and high quality FMVs (now the videos re-rendered to be natively at 1440x1080 according to PC Gamer, though your screen resolution options can be higher).

With that said, it doesn't look like FFIX accidently swapped any files out for inferior ones, so that's a good thing since it was a mistake that happened twice with previous ports.... NOPE NEVER MIND make that three times. FFIX game uses audio files that are inferior because they're downsampled to 16 KHz because God knows why. Square-Enix has a designated audio producer for PC ports and he's called DJ PC Troll, hired solely to swap audio content out from the original and replacing them with inferior versions solely for the PC. Good news is like the other two times (before 7 got patched to have better audio), modders will rush to fix this if they haven't already.

Overall I'd say the PC version is better than the mobile version, but worse than the PlayStation version. However, modding will make any Final Fantasy port (including XV) great as long as there aren't enough securities on the files to prevent hacking, and usually there aren't. I'm sure FFXI and FFXIV are exceptions though given their online nature (which as PC games are well-designed so no need for modding anyway). So, grab the Steam version, and mod the crap out of it, and then enjoy it. Worse comes for worse, there's always emulation provided you kept the PlayStation disc. I've done that before, with upscaled resolutions and whatnot, but I don't quite remember how I got that to work.

The original/vanilla version. It came with the numpad paper that showed you what buttons mapped to what actions. The box was so cool.

This is my favourite part of your whole response. Almost laughed out loud at work.

I'm a Counter-Strike player, so I'm a huge fan of 144hz gaming. I don't think I'll get it with FFXV, unless there's some sort of *sync with desktop resolution* setting that makes the game run at 144hz. I'm hoping that because it's a newer game on what I assume is a newer engine that it'll be able to run at any framerate without sync issues. But, as you say, it is a console game first. You never know.

I suppose all of this conversation won't even matter if it never comes to PC in the first place, but you have to imagine they'd want as much income as possible to recoup the long development costs. On one hand I hope they are able to quickly port it so that it's financially feasible. On the other I want them to do what Rockstar did with GTA V and actually take the time to do it right. (Disclaimer: I've not yet tried GTA V, so I'm going off of what I've heard. I'm waiting for the steam summer sale.)

Here's to hoping they don't muck it up!