Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV Review

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Brotherhood and Kingsglaive together offer a much needed introduction into the world of Final Fantasy XV. Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV’s first episode released back in March, and regularly came out until all 5 episodes were out. Now with the anime completely out, along with the game, let’s take a look at the anime in its entirety.

The premise behind Brotherhood is that of an origin story. The first episode introduces us to the cast in their current state during the game, while the rest of the episodes take a look back at the origins of each of the four party members you will travel with during the course of Final Fantasy XV. The present day sections of the anime chronicle part of their adventure that you’ll experience around the end of Chapter 8 of the game. During the course of this part of the story, each episode flashes back to a specific character’s backstory, before coming back to present day. It’s a clever way to give context to the game while mostly focusing on the characters’ past. 

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My favorite part is the care taken to make each character feel unique, useful and important. Each individual story is really touching, and it ultimately helps paint a very detailed picture of Noctis, the main character of the game. I especially enjoyed Prompto’s story, which resonated with me the most. In fact, I didn’t watch the series completely until I was in Chapter 8 in the game. Up to that point Ignis was my favorite character, but after watching the anime Prompto quickly became my favorite.

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Even though this formula sounds like it’ll be a complete incomprehensible mess, it really isn’t. During the course of the adventure, specific events happen that trigger the flashbacks, making everything flow nicely. These events are defined by what happens in the flashback. It ends up turning into a cohesive package that culminates with the guys travelling to Altissia, a scene pulled directly from the game. To help push this along is some beautiful animation with some solid voice acting.

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The anime isn’t perfect, though. Since it focuses mostly on the origins, the present day story is hardly satisfying enough to help this 5 episode series stand on its own as Kingsglaive does. Instead, it only feels truly satisfying if it’s watched as a companion to Final Fantasy XV. That isn’t necessarily bad, since the marketing and intention caters exactly to that thought, but it’s still an easy way to turn away people who aren’t interested in the game itself. 

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To accompany the negatives of the series is the fact that the 6th episode, which is the conclusion to the series and focuses on Lunafreya and her past, is not available by any normal means. The only way you can watch this last episode is to have purchased the $250+ Ultimate Edition of the game, which was available in extremely limited qualities. On the bright side, this episode serves more as an epilogue than an important part of the main story in the series, but it’s still a very dirty way to prevent your fans from enjoying the series in its entirety. They didn’t even release it via Blu-ray/DVD so that people could purchase it independent of the game. That’s very disappointing.

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On the flipside, the 5 main episodes are all viewable via the official Final Fantasy XV YouTube channel, which will be linked below for your convenience. As a companion to Final Fantasy XV, this anime is a wonderful series and really helps put some context into who these four guys are, and why they are even friends. It also helps make each character feel exciting, something the game fails miserably in doing.

If you’re going to play Final Fantasy XV, I definitely recommend watching this at some point before starting Chapter 9. If you aren’t going to play the game, and you don’t mind watching a bunch of short episodes telling some cute stories about some friends who are going on a road trip, then you may still be interested in watching this. As mentioned, it doesn’t stand on its own quite as well as Kingsglaive did, so it’s difficult to recommend to somebody who isn’t picking up the game as well. Luckily, I had the full intention of playing the game (and did), so I loved the anime very much.

- Teepu

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