Final Fantasy XV Review (Spoilers!)
Disclaimer: I have met Hajime Tabata in person; I’ve actually talked to him personally. Hell, I’ve even touched Tabata-san with my own hands. He didn’t send me a review copy though; my Amazon delivery actually got delayed by a day so I ended up playing the game later than everyone else. Goddamn it Tabata-san.
As a secondary reminder after the title, this piece is going to have many, many spoilers about the game, so please don’t read this if you haven’t played Final Fantasy XV yet and are planning to.
I really believe the game is most enjoyable when played blind.
Overview
I wasn’t sure if I should include an overview for the game, but considering that the game took over ten years to develop, I think it’s worth it to go over the history of this game a little.
Final Fantasy XV, or originally known as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, started development some time in 2006, headed by the Tetsuya Nomura (Director of the Kingdom Hearts series, but also worked on Final Fantasy games in the past). It was meant to be spinoff title of the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos, which was a series of games set in the same universe, but development delays and roadmap changes forced it to be rebranded as a mainline title.
Not only did the title change, the game saw a multitude of other changes as well, including:
- Director, from Tetsuya Nomura to Hajime Tabata (Director of Final Fantasy Type-0)
- Release console, originally supposed to be a PS3 exclusive, Final Fantasy XV was moved to a PS4/Xbox One title (with a PC release on the way)
- Story, a lot of characters were reworked/cut during development, and fans have noted that the main story points of the story has changed over the decade of development
Although there were many changes, the main theme of the game remained consistent: “a fantasy based on reality”, as the game tried to ground itself in some sort of realistic world close to our own.
As we got closer and closer to the actual release, people were anxious to see how the game actually played. The team ended up releasing three demos to tide over consumers:
- Episode Duscae (March 2015), similar to Chapter 1 of the final version of the game, it was released to show off the open-world gameplay. Most known to be packaged with first print versions of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which is an actual, full, $40 game. People bought the game to play the demo and tossed aside the actual game. This demo ended up getting a content patch. Extra content for a demo.
- Platinum Demo (March 2016), a prologue of sorts that basically showed off some of the updated combat gameplay. The demo had horrible frame drops along with clunky controls, which they ended up fixing in the final version of the game engine.
- Judgment Disc (November 2016), a Japan-only demo that was actually the tutorial and Chapter 1 from the final release of the game. This demo was something like 14GB to download.
Thankfully, the game was finally released worldwide on November 29th, 2016. As reviews came trickling in, people found that the game was… actually not that bad. It actually performed very well, having shipped 5 million copies on day 1. This puts the game on a similar level as other greats such as Pokemon X and Y (4 million units sold in 2 days) or Diablo III (6.5 million units sold in the first week).
Sporting an above-average score of 83 on Metacritic, Final Fantasy XV became one of the few games to escape development hell that ended up being an okay game. Actually that’s an understatement, I think it’s a great game. Let’s go into the details.
By the way, this is your absolute final warning, turn around now if you don’t want to be spoiled. Don’t blame me when you find out who dies because of this review.
Story
Clusterfuck. If I had to choose one word to describe the story for Final Fantasy XV, it would definitely be clusterfuck. It’s kind of weird that I follow up “it’s a great game” with this, but let me explain. When I meant this game is best enjoyed playing blind, I lied slightly. You should first check out the 5-episode prequel Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV. Follow it up by watching the (really shitty) movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV that happens concurrently with the beginning chapters of the game. Read a couple of wiki pages on the backstory, then start playing the game. A clusterfuck.
Maybe I’m not giving it enough credit. The story as a whole is absolutely amazing, with great character development, twists and turns where you don’t expect it, and closure where you need it. It’s just that it’s so fragmented and horribly paced that it’s hard to overlook it while playing the game.
For the purposes of this review, I will keep this section contained to just the game, and will ignore the companion anime series and movie.
As soon as you start the game you’re thrust into a roadtrip with your buddies to marry your fiancée. Why? Who knows! Who am I? Who cares! Who are these people in my entourage? No time to explain, let’s just get this game on the road! The first few chapters of the game bombard you with names, locations, and countless other factoids accompanied by our favourite non-linear story telling via flashbacks (to be fair, they keep them to a reasonable amount). There were also numerous plotholes that confused me while I was playing through the first few chapters:
- Why does the gang have to travel to Altissia by car?
- Why is Noctis following along with what Ardyn (The chancellor of the Empire that murdered his father) is telling him?
- Why do we give up on collecting the royal arms after we find out about the Astrals? I thought we needed to do that to reclaim the throne…
- Where does Cor go?
- What’s up with that date quest with Iris? (Gladio’s younger sister)
- Finally, how the fuck does Umbra travel between Noctis and Luna faster than Noctis can? Can we use his method of transportation instead?
All of the confusion described above is compounded by something that really stuck out like a sore thumb to me, which is that even in these dire times (like when King Regis is killed), the gang has the time to take on some fishing quests, feed stray cats, and run chocobo races. I understand they wanted to write a grand story while keeping the gameplay open to the player, but I feel this disconnect of urgency reduces the weight of the story that the writers were aiming for.
A second disconnect I felt was with the product placements in the game. Perhaps this was what they meant by “a fantasy based on reality”… I felt that they were pushing the two products (those being Coleman and Cup Noodle) a bit too much throughout the game. Although I believe the following scene is the funniest one I’ve ever seen in a video game:
But the game somehow finds a way to regroup and collect its thoughts. By the time chapter 8 is done, things start making a bit more sense, and the story becomes more coherent.
And that’s exactly when the shit hits the fan.
I’m fairly certain that chapter 9 is when time started running out for the development team, as both the quality in story-telling and gameplay take a huge hit. The once epic main quests suddenly feel sped up by a factor of 10. You’re moving from region to region after each quest (literally switching maps), chapters are a couple quests long, and barely anything is explained. Here’s an example of a storyline that happens over the last few chapters:
- Ravus, older brother to Lunafreya and commander of the Niflheim army, is introduced to be an antagonist. The game has you to partially believe that he is at odds with his sister.
- But wait! There’s a scene after her death showing that he delivered the Ring of the Lucii to Noctis. Thanks Ravus! ❤
- You randomly find Ravus’ corpse in Chapter 13. Oh, then you end up killing his daemonized body. ???
I feel like there are a lot of characters in the game that could have been fleshed out just a bit more to enrich the story and add depth (See: Aranea, Gentiana, Jared/Talcott, etc). While at the same time, there are story points that are just glossed over in a matter of seconds (Ignis is now blind! Prompto is an MT! It takes 10 years to absorb the power of the crystal!) But due to how fast the game is moving in the latter half, there’s just no way all of this could have been fit in.
One other major complaint I have with this speed of the story is that a lot of deaths that happen feel extremely shoehorned in just for the sake of making the game feel heavier. I’m not sure if it’s a byproduct of how the story kept changing through development or just due to Tabata-san’s style of writing (see how Final Fantasy Type-0 was written), but I think a few of the deaths could have been removed while retaining the same story.
By the time the credit rolls is when I believe the story shines the brightest. The game doesn’t give full exposition so there is some manual piecing together, but I believe by Ardyn revealing his real name, it makes him the primary character of the story and cements him as one of the most tragic antiheros (and complex character) in the mainline Final Fantasy series.
I don’t want to spend too much time summarizing the story of Ardyn, so I will link to an external source where you can read up on an explanation of the ending with motivations. There is a lot of dispute around the details of the ending, but most of what is explained in that link is generally accepted.
I feel that once you understand the characters and backstories that Tabata-san and his team was able to create, it’s one of the most rich stories in any modern game. But the delivery was extremely scattered, awfully articulated at times and spread across so many mediums that it is really hard for a typical gamer to fully experience what they had intended.
Story: 7/10
World
Eos, the world the game takes place in, is absolutely breathtaking. Or at least the places you visit. Each region and city has a distinct feel to it; Altissia is basically Venice, Duscae is an expansive plain with lots of places to explore, Leide is a large desert, and Tenebrae gives a nice jungle vibe. The NPCs that populate the world is fairly sparse and their dialogue is minimal, but it still accomplishes on giving a lively feel to the game.
The fact that you have the option to drive between most of the places lets you really take in the scenery. Although the graphics may not look as pretty up close, a lot of the vista opportunities the game provides really highlight the beauty of the different locations Tabata-san and his team was able to create.
What is dotted throughout these regions are small gameplay areas such as quest locations, fishing spots or even photo ops (that Prompto asks from time to time during drives) to let you take in your surroundings and get immersed in the game. While not as populated or as detailed as some top-tier open-world games (such as Witcher 3), I often found myself walking around or fishing to take a break from the main story.
Accompanying the eye candy is an amazing score by Yoko Shimomura who composed the soundtrack for the game. There’s a song associated with most cities and events that happen throughout the game that keeps your ears occupied as well.
If, for some reason you don’t like the game’s soundtrack, there’s a handy MP3 player you can buy very early on which you can use to listen to (most of) the older games’ OSTs while playing. I thought it was a nice extra feature to the game and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to songs from Final Fantasy 6. (which is of course, the best FF game)
The interactions and dialogue between the four main characters was extremely solid and really helped with understanding the different types of relationships they had with each other. The little bits of expositional dialogue while battling or the random side-quests after night of camping really fleshed out the characters. Albeit as many people noted, some the lines did start repeating eventually (TIME FOR A NEW LINE AIN’T IT). I feel like I really got to know the four of them by the end of the game.
Any other dialogue though, even within the main story quests, I felt was a bit lacking. Some of the lines were really clunky or just out of place (see the Date with Iris quest). Anything that dealt with the secondary characters probably didn’t receive the amount of attention it deserved, and is a void left unfilled.
World: 9/10
Gameplay
The highlight of Final Fantasy XV.
We’ll start with the battle system. The “Active Battle System” does its basic job by providing real-time combat system while providing basic command over your party such as using items or spells. A “wait mode” is also available that freezes time when you’re not moving, providing a more strategic way of playing out battles that’s closer to the turn-based system from yesteryear.
The transitions between exploration and combat is fluid and you’re free to run from a battle that’s too difficult at any time, assuming any of the encounters you’ll have are challenging at all. I found that even while playing on normal (there’s no hard mode), a lot of battle could be easily cheesed by using warp points, spells, or just holding the dodge button. Spells easily decimated boss monsters in one or two hits, and I found myself out leveling the mobs at most points of the game.
That being said, most of the combat feels extremely good, with all the combos, spells, and links flowing fluidly. Weapon switching flawlessly chains into combos that you don’t have to think about. The only gripe I had was that the dodge prompt that showed up was not consistent with respect to how much time you had to press the button, sometimes you had to press it instantly, other times you had a few seconds.
The customization the game provides is plenty, with different weapon types, a few combination of spells (albeit a lot less than previous entries), and a whole set of skill trees to explore and spec out with your collected AP.
Finally, the Astrals you eventually acquire throughout the story can be summoned in battles when a certain set of criteria are met, but I found that it was too opaque on what I needed to do to trigger them and I rarely used them. Although the few times I called for their help, the cutscenes that triggers and the utter destruction they caused to the battlefield (and the poor enemies caught in their spells) was amazing.
Outside of combat, the real open-world gameplay comes from the plethora of activities you can partake in with Noctis and the crew. What do you want to do for the day? Hunt? Fish? Collect recipes? Take photos? Explore some dungeons? The day is truly yours to take and the game lets you loose.
You will spend most of your time within the regions of Leide, Duscae and Cleigne, with parts of them unlocking as you make progress through the main story. A fast travel option is provided for locations you have driven to at least once to keep the gameplay less monotonous. Littered throughout the map are a multitude of dungeons that grant royal arms, ultima weapons, or gear for your team. A few of them are aimed to be completed after you’re done with the main story (some of them don’t even open until after Chapter 14) and even after 35 hours of gameplay they have been the main reason I keep booting the game back up.
The day and night cycle adds an interesting dynamic at the start, since it adds an additional time management layer to the game, but eventually just becomes an annoyance since the daemons that appear at night do not scale with your level. This means driving becomes very stop-and-go during the nighttime and I usually resorted to riding chocobos or fast traveling to locations and walking to my final destination.
The level-up system provided by the camp vs hotel argument is also another element that makes the player stop and think at the beginning of the game; later on, there’s no real reason to use the experience boost since the meal boosts provided by Ignis’ cooking is far superior.
Speaking of meals, I find that the recipe system is fantastic in the game, it’s fun to track down different ingredients and to unlock new dishes (which there are multiple ways to do so). Not to mention the textures for the food look absolutely amazing. Of course, it’s more than eye-candy and is an actual useful system in the game, as different recipes will provide different battle bonuses for the next day.
There are other minigames that are scattered throughout Eos, fishing, chocobo racing, darts, the Justice Monsters Five machines, and a colosseum where you can bet on monster battles. All these provide a nice break from the main game, and some of them do have a lot of depth. For instance, the fishing system is really fleshed out, with different types of lures, rods, reels, and fish species per location. I know many people that spent many in-game days trying to fill out their fish encyclopedia, and I don’t blame them; the dev team made sure that even the smallest gameplay mechanics were fun to play.
With regards to parts that weren’t done too well, as mentioned in the story section; roughly Chapter 9 is where everything feels a little low quality. It’s not necessarily a downgrade in the gameplay. It’s at this point where you leave the main continent you were exploring the whole time and travel off to other regions. For example, I would have loved to spend a couple of chapters in Altissia, but due to how the story forces the player from region to region, there’s barely any time to explore any of the cities. Hopefully the future DLCs will fix this problem.
Overall, I feel like Final Fantasy XV provides enough diversity and depth to keep the player no matter what point of the story they may be at. The fact that they don’t force a specific chain of quests on the player means that they are free to do what they want when they want, and really provides a true open-world gameplay experience. There’s just so much to do, I myself spent a good 18 hours on side quests and minigame before getting to Chapter 6.
As an addendum, I feel like I’m obligated to talk about Chapter 13 here; I feel like it’s definitely the lowest point of the game overall. The 2–4 hours spent inside Gralea’s fortress is one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I’ve had
- All your gear is taken away from you, which basically means any customization you’ve worked on for Noctis is rendered useless.
- Using the Ring of the Lucii provides the worst combat experiences. The fact that you can just one-shot any enemy takes away any challenge.
- The forced stealth sections make no sense. As mentioned above, you can just one-shot the enemies anyways so why should I waste time sneaking around?
- The “puzzles” are no fun and drag on for way too long. The fortress should have been an hour at most. I feel like they dragged it on for hours just to pad out the gameplay.
- They disable running inside the fortress. WHY?
That being said, it seems like Square has heard all the complaints and are working on fixing Chapter 13 in a future patch.
Gameplay: 9/10
Final Thoughts
I was pleasantly surprised with how the game didn’t turn out to be an absolute disaster after such a long development time. (see: Duke Nukem Forever, Spore) The characters are well-written and Eos is a world where I can really be immersed due to the great gameplay. The only gripe I had was the story: both the pacing and coherence were really out of place at times and I had a hard time following what the writers had created.
With the continuous stream of updates planned for the game for the next year or so, Final Fantasy XV is a game that will I come back to again and again.
