Final Fantasy XV Review

Reviewed on the PS4.

After many years in development hell, Final Fantasy Versus XIII finally launches. Sorry, I mean Final Fantasy XV. Is it worth the wait? Or is it going out to lunch with Duke Nukem Forever?

NOTE: SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW.

I've been a bit of a staunch FF fan since 7 came out when I was 12 years old. Admittedly, I wasn't into JPG's until I played FF7. I wasn't following its development. I wasn't planning on buying it. I didn't even know anything about it aside from a throwaway article in the paper that said it was one of the most expensive games ever made. I guess a friend of mine saw the same article and actually picked the game up. He hated it. I recall him saying to me "It's not even a game. You just pick menu options the whole time. It sucks.". His description of the game shouldn't have piqued my interested, but for when I found out that it was 3 discs, my 12 year old self went "Wow, that must be like 3 games!". I made a deal with him and traded him a game called Vigilante 8 for 3 discs of "menu option madness", not knowing what to expect.

Fast forward to 2017. I'm 31 years old and I've been playing JRPG's ever since. The landscape for JPG's has changed a lot over the years. After FF7 came onto the landscape and invigorated the scene, causing an explosion of both great and terrible JRPG's to come out in a rather short period of time, things have died down a bit. Instead of getting 30 JRPG's per year, we're sometimes lucky to get 3. However, the quality is usually a lot more consistent. And the quality of FFXV in particular is exactly that. It's usually consistent. Let's tackle this section by section, starting with the story.

Story

FFXV revolves around Prince Noctis, son of King Regis. Destined to inherit the throne, he goes on a road trip with his mates Prompto, Gladio and Ignis in order to catch a boat to a neighboring city and marry Lunafreya, Princess of Tenebrae and prisoner of the Nilfheim empire as the result of a treaty that was signed 12 years earlier. As par for the course, things don't quite go according to plan; The empire decides kill Regis and take control of the capital city of Insomnia, which also contains an all powerful crystal. With Luna also pronounced dead and with a sense of urgency mounting, Noctis and his friends must head out into the open world, find out the truth and put a stop to the Nilfheim empire once and for all. Things happen, new characters are introduced, twists and turns occur and eventually, Noctis overcomes the odds. But at what cost?

Surprisingly, there isn't a hell of a lot to the story. It's not absolutely complicated and impossible to follow like some other FF games (looking at the FF13 series in particular). However, the fact that there isn't a hell of a lot of story is rather apparent in the game. You see, if you take away all of the side quests, you're left with a 20 hour story. Which is very short by FF standards. In total, there are 14 chapters to get through, and some of these are very short, consisting of one dungeon or area of the game. Up until Chapter 8, you can pretty much take the game at your own pace. Chapters are decent lengths, full of a decent amount of content and story progression. After this, you'll be blasting through the Chapters so quickly, it's difficult to keep up. Gone is the open world of your pre Chapter 8 life. Now it's all about getting to the end as quickly and linearly as you can. And this is probably my biggest problem with the game right here.

I don't have a huge problem with the story itself. I found it fairly easy to follow and I was enthralled for the most part up until the end of the game. But the pacing is not on point. You definitely get the feeling that you're playing a game of two halves with the first half being what the game was intended to be, and the second half being the result of cuts made to release the game within a certain timeframe. This flows over to more than just story as well, with a decrease in overall quality of the gameplay and character development aspects. If the second half was like the first half of the game, FFXV would be a true masterpiece. One to rival any of the FF's released up to this point. Square Enix have announced plans to address some of these issues in future patches and DLC, so it can really only improve from here.

Score: 75/100

GAMEPLAY

So, your father has been murdered and your betrothed is presumed dead. Shit has hit the fan, so it's time to for Noctis and co. to kick into action and take the fight to the empire. Or maybe not. Maybe he could just grab a bite to eat with his mates and kill some monsters for cash instead. Go fishing and have his manhood made fun of. That random cat living on the pier needs some food too. Gotta take care of that. Oh, you need me to find some frogs for you? No problem, we've got it covered. Need us to find some rocks for you? On it. These are just some of the many, many side quests to be found in FFXV. From the start, you'll realize that this is not a standard FF where you linearly run from section to section, fighting random turn-based battles as you go. No, this is an FF that takes more cues from games like Skyrim and The Witcher 3 than anything else. This is an FF for a new generation. The world is huge and open. Instead of running from point to point, you'll find yourself in your car, on the road, having a chat with your mates while listening to some classic FF tunes in the background.

These side quests really make up the majority of the content of the game, and while not all of them are interesting, they do feel rewarding for the mot part and really help flesh out the world as a whole. Doing all of the additional content such as bounties, bonus dungeons, menace dungeons and side quests provided me with a good 110 hours of gameplay, which I think is a pretty respectable amount of content. One consequence of doing all of the side content when it's available is that the main storyline quests become ridiculously easy. I was consistently out leveling them by around 40 levels. It's not a huge deal, but might bother some people.

The one piece of bonus content that really stood out to me was a puzzle dungeon called Pitioss Ruins. Here, there are no enemies, but it's arguably the hardest piece of content in the game. Be prepared for punishingly difficult jumping puzzles, made even more difficult by the fact that the games controls aren't really suited towards this style of gameplay. Be prepared to not know where the hell you're going next. And be prepared to restrain yourself from throwing your controller through the TV. See, I'm still unsure as to whether this place stood out to me for the right or wrong reasons, but all I know is that once I was done with it, I was quite proud of the fact that I stuck it through. It's rare to find a challenge like that in a game these days, and on hindsight, it was extremely welcome. Though I was certainly not thinking that after dying on a puzzle for the 25th time.

Random battles are replaced by a fast paced ARPG system similar to Kingdom Hearts where instead of "menu option madness", it's something more akin to "button mashing madness". In my opinion, it's a welcome change and when the system works, it works well and feels extremely satisfying. In battle, you're only controlling Noctis directly, but your friends also assist you in a number of ways. You can tell them to use techniques that range from enhancing your weapon with an element that the enemy is weak to, to using a devastating AoE attack that hits all enemies in sight, which Noctis can then follow-up with by pressing a button to do some extra damage. Attacking enemies from behind can trigger Blindsides, which results in an attack where you team up with one of your mates for huge damage. I find the system works best when you are fighting smaller numbers of enemies, as things start to get a bit too chaotic when more enemies start to get involved, especially in closed spaces. In some situations, it can be damn near impossible to tell what is going on, particularly in some dungeons (Costlemark Tower, for example). You can end up with so many things on the screen that you forgo any strategy and just mash buttons hoping for the best possible outcome. Magic and AoE can help in these situations, but sometimes they can only do so much. Thankfully, these situations are pretty rare and are pretty much restricted to certain areas, with the aforementioned Costlemark Tower being the main culprit.

EXP is mostly gained by killing monsters and doing quests, which accumulates until you rest at an Inn, Motel or Campsite. Inns and Motels will give you more EXP, while campsites let you have Ignis cook one of the many recipes he's found to give the party status buffs. Special events called "Tours" can also occur at campsites. Magic is also found at nodes which are typically around campsites. Spells can be created with certain parameters that can do anything from heal you, to grant you experience. Powering up abilities and stats is done through earning AP which you can accumulate by doing practically anything in the game. Seriously, you can earn AP by going for a drive, fishing, riding a chocobo, meeting certain conditions in battle and more. AP is spent through what's called the "Ascension Grid". This looks sort similar to the Sphere Grid from FFX (though a lot smaller) and functions pretty much the same. Among many other things, you can power up techniques, magic, increase stats as you level up and invest in different ways to earn AP/EXP. It's a tried and tested system that's used in other JRPG's and works well here. In terms of equipment, it's pretty stock standard stuff. The team can equip various weapons and accessories which impart stat bonuses, elemental/status abilities and the like. Nothing you haven't seen before. The only thing that is somewhat unique is that Noctis can get special weapons called Royal Arms which, after a certain point of the story, allow him to unleash an Armiger attack. This is able to be used once your Armiger meter has maxed out. It's basically a limit break. It serves its purpose as a way to beat down some of those more difficult enemies a lot quicker.

The gameplay does tend to fall apart in the second half of the game, with the infamous Chapter 13 being the primary culprit. Here, your friends are nowhere to be found and the game shifts to something similar to a Survival Horror. And a pretty poor survival horror at that. Noctis is stripped of his weapons and for a decent period of time, can only use a ring, which casts a death spell, or lets your damage enemies by evading them. He's in an underground fortress and must find various keycards to progress. I'm not going to lie, it's really boring and is easily the worst part of the game. It got a little better when I finally got another weapon, but it was only a minor improvement. That said, I'm not a huge fan of survival horror, so maybe I'm partially the problem. Still, many people seem to share my view on this.

Score: 80/100

Character Development

Here is where the game really shines. The camaraderie between Noctis, Ignis, Gladio and Prompto is unlike any I have ever seen before. You really believe that these guys have been mates for years. For example, when fishing, if you pull something small out of the water, the rest of the party will give you shit about it. Prompto will snigger and say "Better luck next time", to which Noctis responds with something like "Shut up!". My favourite is Gladio's off the cuff remark of "Small. Just like yours.". It's random quips like these that really help flesh out these characters and help you to connect and relate with them. A hell of lot of these remarks are extremely quotable as well. I found myself using Ignis's line of "That's it! I've come up with a new recipeh!" every time the wife would post some new food article on Facebook. I'm not sure how many lines of dialogue are in this game, but even after putting in 110 hours into the game, I was still hearing remarks and comments that I hadn't heard before.

What really adds to your attachment to these characters is Prompto's ability to take photographs throughout your journey. I'd read about this feature prior to the game coming out and didn't really think much of it. However, I was pleasantly surprised with how much it added to the game. I thought it was just going to be some throwaway feature that I'd ignore for the most part, but before I knew it, I was poring over photos somewhat obsessively trying to pick the best ones. The key thing that this does is personalize the adventure for you; the player. No two photo albums would ever be the same, and you do attach certain memories to them a lot of the time. Just as you would in real life. The developers were certainly aware of this fact, as the photos that you save do come into play at the end of the game. I won't say how, but in my opinion, the way they were utilized was a real stroke of genius. The only thing I would improve would be the amount of photos you can save. 150 is not enough!

As for the other characters in the game, I do feel that some more time could've been spent on Lunafreya, since she does play a rather pivotal role in the game. We really only see her in a few flashbacks, and the time actually spent with her in the present is rather brief. Characters such as Cor, Aranea, Cid and Cindy have a small amount of back story mentioned in passing. While it would be nice to have some more time with these characters, I didn't have too much of a problem with them simply acting as peripheral players in the story. The game is really only meant to be about the core 4 after all.

A small mention to the antagonist of the game, since I'm trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible - this is a case of an FF villain done right. I can think of a few FFs that have failed at making you really feel anything towards the big bad at the end of the game. This is not a problem here. They don't just pop up randomly at the end of the game and attempt to wipe out your party, and their goal isn't as black and white as "I just feel like destroying everything". No, their presence is made fairly early on and their motivations are in more of a grey area. Needless to say, this is one of my favourite antagonists yet. Not just in an RPG, but in gaming in general.

Score: 95/100

Graphics

Full disclosure - this was only the second PS4 game I'd played and was the first I'd played in 4K HDR, so this likely affected my opinion on the graphics. As expected, I was absolutely gobsmacked by how beautiful everything is in this game. Right from the start, I was simply in awe. The world of Eos was somehow able to pull off the feat of looking both otherworldly and completely realistic at the same time. When on the road, I was constantly moving the camera around and just taking in the scenery. Being from New Zealand (and living in the US), I always have people saying "Oh, I've heard it's gorgeous over there!". Usually I reply with something like "Yeah, we get a lot of tourists and such.", but now I sort of want to reply with "It's pretty decent, but you should play this game called Final Fantasy XV. It looks better. A lot cheaper than flying to NZ too.". OK, that's a bit ridiculous, but it's not far off. If this game was VR compatible, it would be the deciding factor in me picking up a Playstation VR. It's that good.

The character models of the main 4, as well as the supporting cast look amazing for the most part too. It does sort of fall into the syndrome that a lot of game do these days where a lot of the token NPCs you come across don't quite have the game level of detail applied to them as the main cast, but none of them look particularly terrible. Some of the clothes that the NPCs wear in the city of Lestallum do look pretty strange, mind you. Speaking of clothes, our heroes do have a few different outfits, and all of them look fantastic. It can sort of detract from the seriousness of a scene when you have Noctis sitting there in a cap and t-shirt, but it can be pretty damn funny though.

Last, but not least, there are the Summons. Though there isn't quite as many of them as in previous installments, they're all very pretty. And since they're not completely essential to the gameplay, you don't really ever get sick of seeing them. There are 4 that can be summoned when certain criteria are met in battle, 1 that is summoned as part of the storyline and another who you don't get to summon at all. It's hard to pick a favourite between the four, but if I really had to choose, I'd say Ramuh is the winner. When summoned, he reaches down from the sky, picks you up and then hurls a giant lightning spear into the ground, dealing heavy damage to everything in sight. Brilliant stuff.

Score: 95/100

Sound

I don't run a sophisticated sound set-up at home (it's basically just Logitech 5.1 PC speakers plugged into an analog to optical convertor that runs into the TV), but everything sounded pretty on point. Sounds effects themselves were very well done and made it so that all of your attacks felt like they had a real impact. Sometimes when fighting a large amount of enemies, a lot of the sounds can get a bit muddled together, so it's hard to tell one attack from another. Could be less of an issue for people with better sound systems.

Anyone who's played a Final Fantasy knows that one of the core aspects of the game is the music. I can't think of one that had a sub-par soundtrack and XV is no different. It's rather exceptional, in fact. Though Nobuo Uematsu hasn't been involved in FF in some time, I could hear traces of his work in Yoko Shimomura's brilliant score. I can't pinpoint a single track that I disliked, though I did get a bit sick of the chocobo theme after hearing it for the millionth time. Since you're on them so often, it does get a bit tired after a while.

One of the amazing things that was added in was the ability to play track from past FF games through your car stereo while driving, or though an MP3 player while you're on your feet. I didn't actually find out about the MP3 player until I was 90 hours into the game, even though you can purchase it from the start of the game through the Shop that you can access in your car. Whoops. I found myself avoiding using Fast Travel when getting around the world just do I could listen to tracks like "The Place I'll Return to Someday" from FF9 or "Dancing Mad" from FF6. Most of the time I would just pick a game and let it play through. It should be noted that FFXV doesn't have the entire soundtracks for the past FF's; it's more like a greatest hits selection from each game.

Score: 90/100

CONCLUSION

If you had any doubts about whether Square Enix could still produce a good Final Fantasy in this day and age, FFXV is proof that they can. Sure, there are definitely issues with the second half in regards to the pacing of the story and the Survival Horror-lite gameplay, it makes up for it in nearly every other aspect of the game. It's not perfect, but this is an FF with soul. And it's extremely hard to find that with any game nowadays.

Total Score: 87/100

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