Final Fantasy XV Review

The gorgeous title screen.

Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Player(s): 1
 
The journey that started as Final Fantasy Versus XIII finally culminated in Final Fantasy XV ten years later. As fans, we never thought it would get finished, but it did. After all the fuss and all the wait, was it worth it?

I wasn't kidding about pushing the car...

The first thing that you’ll notice, when jumping into the game, is that things aren’t quite as we’re used to in the franchise. The core principles are still there, with some fundamental changes. Rather than having a motley crew of inter-changing party members, you are stuck with the same four guys throughout the adventure (with a couple of minor story exceptions). The game quite literally feels like a road trip with the guys, as the game opens with the crew pushing a broken down car along the road. It may seem like this would get stale, but this approach presents an opportunity to have a very intimately developed cast. The other big change is in the combat. Rather than sticking with the turn-based action hybrid that was Final Fantasy XII and XIII, the game is purely action oriented. 

Hammerhead, one of the first places you see.

You assign weapons and spells to the D-Pad, which you can switch on the fly in order to stream combos in various creative ways. The weapons don’t have much complexity themselves, since there is only an attack and a block/dodge button. Attacks can be varied a bit based on the direction you hold the analog stick, but in the end it’s a very simple system. A little complexity is added by your party members’ abilities as well as your spells and Armitage. The simplicity is most prevalent because you don’t directly control anybody but Noctis. I was a bit skeptical on this system at first, but it actually works and flows into some really fun and flashy battles. The magic isn’t outright given to you. What you do is gather materials and then combine them to create different spells, which each have limited uses. It’s a good way to implement something that is an oddity in this particular game’s lore. As you win battles, you, of course, gain experience. The only way to consume these points is by going to a hotel or a camp site and taking a nap. Everything gets tallied, you level up and you’re golden. You can then spend any AP you earn in a grid to level your abilities as you see fit (in the same way as most of the more recent Final Fantasy games). There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but it works pretty well, for the most part. More on that in a bit.

Camping with the dudes.

Being openly flaunted as the first open-world Final Fantasy game was exciting at first. Once you get control of your car and you can explore freely, it’s really fun to run around for a while. Unlike many open-world games, I never felt like there were parts that were empty for the sake of feeling big, which really pleased me. The side quests do get dull really fast though, due to an abundant lack of variety. Each of the side quest arcs do culminate in an interesting final quest, which was nice. It’s too bad that only the beginning and end of each of these journeys is interesting. The side quests also help to develop the supporting cast. This is done subtly and effectively, though I do wish there were more characters. For an open-world game in a franchise that is so focused on story, the cast is relatively sparse.

Justice Monsters V arcade machines!

Despite these many positive points, the game is full of Bethesda level bugs and glitches such as disappearing character models, random giant shadows, falling through floors, odd hit detection or even game crashes. What’s even worse is how these issues become more and more prevalent the later in the game you get.

15 games later, Flan are still weak to magic.

Those glitches are mostly forgivable, the real problem is that the main narrative lacks any real direction. The main cast doesn’t ever get any real development outside of minor interactions that show their bond. The game assumes you got your character development from the Brotherhood anime. We’re never given any real direction on why they are going on their road trip, a point that is elaborated on in the Kingsglaive movie. Expanding on the friendship between Noctis’ father and his friends is only done with a throwaway line, unless you played A King’s Tale. You can probably see where I’m going with this. The story itself is a complete mess due to its innate dependence on external media. There are many parts of the game that make absolutely no sense without having consumed these other stories. To add insult to injury, you spend the first half of the game with no real direction. On the flip side, is the concept of summons, which are an integral part of the story. They are presented in a very non-traditional way, via grand scale gimmick battles that are amazing set pieces. Each summon has a special requirement to come into battle, which is often randomly fulfilled. This means you can’t bring forth summons whenever you want, which is probably a good thing since they are overpowered. I didn’t mind this though, it made the summons feel like a powerful commodity.

Fishing peacefully with a giant shoopuf lookalike in the back!

Unfortunately, the story as a whole only gets worse as you go on. The second half of the game throws the open-world into the trash and turns into a really long climax. During this part of the game, there is a lot of build-up and a lot of narrative that is thrown at the player at once. In many ways, it almost feels like a separate game. The story takes a lot of odd (but interesting) turns, that don’t feel as impactful as they should have due to the major lack of development in the first half. The combat starts to feel off as well, with targets not being hit correctly and the camera acting really weird. It feels like the mechanics of the game get worse and worse as you get farther, as if the whole last half of the game was rushed. There are plot twists that are dropped nonchalantly with no explanation, there are scenes that happen with no context and there are battles that take place that feel out of place. There’s even sections of the game where you are forced to travel via automated transportation and you can clearly see a complete and breathing world around you. One that you’d love to explore, but you’re forced to skip all of it as if the developers realized they couldn’t completely implement these sections in time. Even amidst this mess, I felt intrigued in what was happening. I just wish things were played out better and that there was more investment in developing the characters and story before getting to that point. That’s what makes it most disappointing. There is a lot of really amazing story that is happening, but due to a totally haphazard presentation it’s difficult to care.

One of the many times I fell through the floor and ended up in another dimension. Glitches. Yay.

I feel torn since at the core, the game is still fundamentally fun. The open-world is handled reasonably well, the characters are interesting with a lot of potential, the combat is fun, there’s some really fun and challenging post-game content and the exploration actually feels rewarding. There’s plenty to do in the game and even with the lackluster elements, there was enough in the game to keep me invested all the way to the end. That’s something the previous entry was not able to do with me.

No Final Fantasy is complete without Chocobos!

The main side quest arcs are mostly dull, as mentioned previously. Where the extra content really shines is in the dungeons. There are quite a few optional dungeons that you can discover. They range from being really easy to providing the toughest challenges in the game. These optional dungeons, along with the optional hunts, provide the most enticing combat scenarios unlike anything the main story presents. If you feel a little less confrontational, there are a decent amount of fish to catch via a simple but satisfying fishing minigame, there are Chocobo races, there is the Justice Monsters V minigame and more. 

That's the first summon. Yes, you fight it.

On top of the other positive points, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Everything looks and sounds wonderful. Square-Enix always knows how to put out a very pretty game. The musical score does have some misses, but overall it’s actually pretty solid. To help push that along is the wonderful ‘music player’ feature. As you progress through the game you can buy ‘albums’ which provide selections from all sorts of games from the franchise. You can then play these songs back as you’re driving or you can purchase a portable player to use while you’re walking around. It’s a nice nostalgic nod to the series that I really enjoyed. The voice acting was mediocre as a whole though. The main cast does a solid job, but the supporting cast feels drab for the most part. Overall, there isn’t anything exceptional, but there isn’t anything terrible either. Part of this is attributed to the fact that the game hardly has any scenes where the actors could even try to be exceptional.

The beautiful city of Altissia.

Final Fantasy XV is a really odd duck. It has many elements of an exceptional game. At the same time, there are many sections that feel rushed. I don’t know how to describe it though. Despite the tons and tons of complaints I have about the game, I still had fun and I still look forward to playing the DLC as it comes out. I put in about 70 hours into the game, finishing almost everything that it offered. Had this game been given another year to iron out its kinks and properly develop its story, it could easily have been one of, if not the best game in the franchise. As it stands, it’s somewhere in the middle, not being exceptional nor being terrible. It may be a mess at times, but it is a fun mess nonetheless. JRPG fans will still find plenty to enjoy. Be warned that you should watch Kingsglaive at some point before the end of Chapter 3 and you should watch Brotherhood at some point before the end of Chapter 9 to get full enjoyment out of the game. Here’s hoping that they deliver promised free patches and DLC to amend the issues I’ve complained about, in order to help elevate this game beyond what it is. Now it’s time for me to dive back in and try and tackle Adamantoise. Cheers!
 
NOTE: I played the entirety of the game on the normal model PlayStation 4. From my understanding, there is nothing noteworthy that is different between the platforms.
 
- Teepu

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Graphics: AMAZING
Sound: GREAT
Gameplay: GOOD
Value: AMAZING
 
OVERALL: GREAT
 
All screenshots ©SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

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