Final Fantasy XV Review
Developer: Square Enix Holdings, XPEC Entertainment, HexaDrive, Streamline Studios, Umbra
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 4
Release Date: November 29, 2016
Acquired via: Purchase by Reviewer
After 10 years, a name change, a direction change, and going through more hands than found in a football huddle, Final Fantasy XV has finally arrived. As a fan of the series dating back to the original on the NES, I was worried about this game. After other games in the series failed to live up to expectations, the thought of a Final Fantasy game that languished in a decade of development hell didn’t engender confidence in me.
By now, the story of this game’s beginnings as Final Fantasy XIII Versus in 2006 is well-known. Without harping on that history, the game that is now Final Fantasy XV is now vastly different. The current game, helmed by Hajime Tabata, takes the series in a new direction, but with callbacks to the past. The result is wholly alien to Final Fantasy stalwarts like me, but still weirdly familiar.
And, by the way, it’s a pretty good game on its own.
Final Fantasy XV follows Crown Prince Noctis of Lucis and his three bodyguards – Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto – en route to the prince’s wedding. The marriage is political; he is to marry a childhood friend, a princess from the rival nation of Niflheim. The marriage is meant to unite both nations, who oppose each other. Of course, things don’t go as planned, betrayals occur, and now Noctis and Co. must embark on the prototypical “epic journey” to right wrongs and so on.
The resulting “epic journey” isn’t really epic in story; it clocks in at about 25 hours. It is pretty epic, however, in scope.
The world of Eos is a vast, open world, and the early parts of the game allow you to explore the world freely. Your troupe mainly moves around by car, but certain areas are inaccessible by vehicle. You can choose to hike off-road or rent the series’ signature chocobos for faster travel. While on road, you have to keep track of the car’s fuel level. Fortunately, there are stops where you can fuel up. While there, you can enter a diner and eat, play arcade games, find shelter for the night, or get word on any side quests or bounties.
There are lots of side quests and bounties you can take. In fact, there might be too many. They’re a staple of open-world games and nice distractions when you want to go off the beaten path. But an ADHD person like me who gets distracted easily will end up spending hours on side quests and not progressing the story one iota. Hell, even walking into a diner and seeing an arcade machine is a sure sign that I’m not accomplishing anything anytime soon.
It’s during these quests and bounties, though, that you get a good feel for your character and his mates. Unlike every other Final Fantasy game, this isn’t a ragtag bunch of solo adventurers that have united for a common cause. Noctis and his friends are just that: friends. They have known each other for a while and are very close. Their brotherhood is the central focus of this game, and it’s essentially the glue that holds the more disparate parts of the story together. The danger that threatens Lucis doesn’t materialize in the story until about Chapter 9, and the romantic subplot is more melodramatic than anything. It’s the moments you are in the countryside with your mates, fighting and bantering, that you engage in the most early on.
Each of your buds has their own personality and role. Gladiolus is the muscle; he’s usually gruff and a bit aggressive, but occasionally shows off some softer moments. Prompto is the comic relief and the group photographer. He will bust out the most jokes (not necessarily the funniest ones) and like to break out into song. Ignis is quieter and content with doing the more mundane things like cooking and driving. They all have their own mini-story arcs during the campaign, though none are crucial. It helps flesh them out even more. Noctis’s relationship with his friends makes up the emotional core of the game.
They also make up the narrative core of the game for large swaths of time. You spend more time in diners gossiping with cooks, talking to commoners, and sleeping in motels than you do focusing on missions. Even playerse who blast though the story find themselves with lots of down time during early chapters. The game’s story doesn’t gain focus until Chapter 9; with only 14 story chapters, that means a lotta non-story gaming.
In addition to the side quests and bounties, there are dungeons that you can tackle. Some of them are pretty brutal and best done after the story mode is concluded and your group is properly buffed up. There are also cooking and fishing related tasks, as well as gem hunting and field work for scientific reasons. The townsfolk will send you off on these and other quests, and you’ll help them, and they’ll reward you with gil and items. And the problems in Lucis will still be there, and no one will bat an eye about it. The disconnect is pretty severe.
Despite all that, the game is fun to play. It really comes into its own when you begin to engage the monsters that roam the landscape. For the first time in the series’ history, Final Fantasy XV ditches its standard turn-based combat embraces fully real-time combat. During battles, you control Noctis and flail away at enemies. If you stop moving, you will enter a pseudo-turn-based Wait Time where you can issue commands to party members, change equipment, use items, and generally take stock of the encounter at hand. You can only command them to use an ability after they’ve racked up enough damage and filled up a bar. These encounters are pretty fluid and hectic. Since you can only control Noctis directly it’s up to the other characters and their AI to get them through the battles.
Spells are also divergent from other games in the series. Instead of just learning spells, they have to be crafted. All party members can craft spells. They are crafted by mixing elements, which players much charge up at elemental springs. Potions can be added to the crafted spells to add buffs or effects to them. The spells are consumables; they don’t just recharge with more mana. Further, they have to be used with care. Throw a frost spell too close to a party member and they can get frostbite. That adds an extra level of strategy to the combat. The party’s position can determine if a spell can be used.
Of course, no Final Fantasy game feels complete without the ability to summon fierce creatures to help in the fight. But even here, Final Fantasy XV diverges from its antecedents. The six summons – called Astrals here – can still be summoned by Noctis to help in a sticky situation. But unlike other games, certain criteria need to be met in order to summon them. To summon Leviathan, for example, Noctis’s party needs to be low in health and near a body of water. Even if the conditions are met, however, there is no guarantee the Astral will appear. That almost makes the ability to summon them pointless.
There are so many elements that diverge from the main series that one would hesitate to call this a true entry. But certain callbacks keep this game in the Final Fantasy canon. There are, of course, chocobos. The Astrals carry over from previous games as well. Early on you meet Cindy Aurum, a mechanic who fixes your car in the beginning of the game. Her grandfather is none other than Cid, a recurring character in the series. These and other little bits keep you in the Final Fantasy lore.
That being said, I have trouble seeing this Final Fantasy XV as a true entry in the series. I do still enjoy the game; at level 77, I am tackling the real brutal dungeons and finding some awesome gear. But I am enjoying it as a game, not as a Final Fantasy game. That does sadden me some. Final Fantasy is one of my all-time favorite series, one that has stayed with me since its humble beginnings on the NES. But this game is so wildly divergent from what Final Fantasy is that I have trouble identifying with it that way.
Back in May, I explored what Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata called “Final Fantasy disease”. He explained it thusly:
“[Final Fantasy disease] refers to people within the company who can’t imagine anything other than their own view of Final Fantasy. Since the root is a strong self-affirmation, one’s own view of Final Fantasy takes more priority than the team’s success. If that view of Final Fantasy isn’t fulfilled, then they’re convinced that it’s bad for Final Fantasy. They think, ‘Since Final Fantasy is a special team, then we are also special because we are making it. When the new Final Fantasy comes out, everybody is going to be so into it.’ But that’s not the reality of the situation, is it?”
I recognized that I may be guilty of everything he mentioned and promised I would view Final Fantasy XV with unbiased eyes. Now that I have played it, I can say that it is a pretty good game that is trying REALLY hard to convince me it’s Final Fantasy. It did a pretty convincing job. But it’s not a true Final Fantasy game.
The series has stuck to me because of its characters, and the characters in this game are some of the most memorable. But the series has also stuck to me because of the stories. Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII, and IX still resonate with me because of their stories. Final Fantasy XV’s story doesn’t have the same power the others did. Then again, Final Fantasy VIII had a weird story, and the less we talk about XIII the better.
Tabata-san, here’s my verdict: Final Fantasy XV was a great game, just not a great Final Fantasy game.
