Final Fantasy XV has been in the works for almost ten years, so it’s no surprise that people are excited for this different and yet familiar type of Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy goes way back, its turn-based formula worked for quite some years and it kept the main community happy. Eventually, people started to complain that the franchise was getting old and it needed some refreshments. Changes to the core gameplay actually happened with Final Fantasy VIII with some tweaks to the main battle system. People played it, enjoyed it but still it wasn’t enough to satisfy the veteran players. So, change isn’t always better but Square Enix pushed their boundaries with Final Fantasy XV, a game for fans and first-timers by altering the battle system but still remaining in the known and yet crazy world of Final Fantasy. Let’s see if the game was worth the wait…
The Final Fantasy franchise definitely had its up and downs, alongside some of those bizarre moments that eventually turned out to be one of those great moments you’ll always remember. Final Fantasy XV may just be one of Square Enix’s biggest projects that people will remember just because it’s a bizarre mix-up of a hack-and-slash gameplay with a ton of RPG-elements set in the Final Fantasy world and stands out as an example that change does really work… or it can become the weirdo of the family that no one will ever talk about because it was a mistake to mix up the perfect formula… I can already tell you that the game definitely built up to a certain status of an oddity but then again what Final Fantasy game isn’t strange?
The game starts off like any dramatic family movie where a son named prince Noctis, rebels against his father because he isn’t appreciated by his father as much as he would have liked to… His first quest is to bring order to his father’s kingdom and wed his fiancée Luna. Prince Noctis, alongside his comrades, takes off and as things are about to get down, just like you would expect from any Final Fantasy game, the only thing that “got down” was his beautiful (probably overpriced) car. After reparations and the introduction of the new battle system, the story unfolds into one big catastrophe. Noctis becomes aware that the kingdom is being invaded and taken over under the false pretense of a peace treaty whereas his father King Regis, was slain by his enemy. It’s his job to reclaim his father’s throne with the help of his loyal companions.
Speaking of loyal companions, the 4 of them have a distinct personality that makes them all stand out from the regular crowd. Noctis, our main character is fierce and a bit hold back with everything happening to his kingdom, Gladio the intellectual muscle shield who’s always got prince Noctis’s back, the strategist Ignis that will give prince Noctis a strategical heads-up before the crew is going full throttle against an enemy and then there’s the joker named Prompto who’s one of the best friends Prince Noctis has.
“Final Fantasy XV makes itself stand out from other FF- games when it comes to the combat system.”
Aside from their different characteristics that make some of the dialogues pretty amusing to hear, they also make the party more alive instead of some un-personal NPCs. They all have their say in the matter and they’re all equipped with their own set of skills and abilities. Each of them can instantly team up with prince Noctis to deliver a critical blow to the enemy. If Noctis is in bad shape, they will always deliver their end of the deal and don’t forget the Titans that can be summoned! The four of them make a great party to go out and start adventuring. Each character can be ascended to a greater force and becomes masters in their own set of skills like survival, fishing, cooking and photography.
Final Fantasy XV makes itself stand out from other FF-games when it comes to the combat system. The combat system is a lot more straightforward and less tactical (even though Ignis gives some tactical tips). It’s a combat that really works when you start to use all of the new features that the game has to offer. At first, you’ll probably think it’s just slashing your way through enemies and survive but there’s a bit more to it than you might think. The game introduces the wait mode which offers you a quick but important pause during your battle. This “Wait mode” freezes the game during battle when you’re not taking control of Noctis: no movement, no action… nothing. During this freeze, you can scan the enemies and learn their weaknesses. The scan will reveal what kind of weapons are strong against this opponent and what kind of weapons will falter. This scanning ability needs to be upgraded when you want to scan a much harder enemy. This freeze also adds a bit more of a strategic layer to the game that gives you the opportunity to plan ahead. The freeze bar will also deplete if you’re taking too long, so this feature doesn’t make the player invulnerable.
The combat feels fluid as everything can be activated on the spot. As a player, you take direct control of prince Noctis. The prince can use 4 different “readied” weapons such as guns, daggers, magic, greatswords, …etc. All of these equipped weapons give the party certain boosts, so it’s a good thing to keep an eye out for different and even better equipment to boost your party as much as you can. Even though you’re not using a certain weapon at the moment, it’ll give your party a boost as long as it’s equipped.
Noctis can also “phase” out of the way or even “warp” to a certain place or enemy. This phasing out is more of a dodge button than a real teleport ability. Sometimes this “phasing” offers new combo opportunities with one of his mates. Prince Noctis’ signature ability is “warp strike”. Wherever Noctis throws his weapon at, he can follow the weapon in a blink of an eye and maybe even deliver a critical blow to the enemy. He can also use this warp to get out of the way and recover a bit of its mana and health. This is important to know since Noctis’ mana depletes very quickly and once the mana is gone, the prince starts to stagger and becomes vulnerable to the enemy.
The combat system works and it doesn’t stagger at all. The only downfall is the fact that the battles can become so chaotic that the camera and the player just can’t keep up with the fast-paced action on the screen. There’s so much going on around you that it’s hard to predict when to dodge or move out of the way but in the end when it works it works and feels amazing. The combat animations look very cool but once you’re doing an attack, you’re locked in during the whole animation progress. Once locked in, the enemy can strike you very easily as the attack can’t be dodged during the animation. It would have been a cool option, to just interrupt your animation and dodge the attack. The combat would feel much better and a lot more intuitive.
A few moments ago, I talked about magic and titan summoning. These are 2 main features within the game that are very known to the old veterans that just love the Final Fantasy universe. Magic is being used as a type of elemental grenade that blows up (obviously) and leaves a DOT- area of effect. These magical grenades are created by the menu tab Elemancy. Around your safe area, you’ll find magical nodes that can be drained for elemental energy such as electricity, fire, and ice. You’ll need to craft these elemental grenades by pouring these elemental energies into a flask but it’s up to you, on how strong you want to make them. You can also boost the “grenade” by adding potions, elixirs or antidotes to create a side effect such as healing or poisoning. These grenades can deal an enormous amount of damage to an enemy when it’s used at the right time, and when I talk about the right time, I mean that moment when you’re not targeting an area with your comrades in it because the blast delivers collateral damage. So you either use it in the beginning of your combat before everyone starts to go head to head against the enemy or use it at a convenient moment.
Summoning has a familiar face when it comes to the Final Fantasy series. These giants will aid you on your quest, once you’ve defeated them in an epic battle. These various gods leave the blasted area devastated and crackling as ever. If magic and titan summoning doesn’t do the trick, you can always rely on the ancestral weapons Noctis has to find to prove his worth to the throne and kingdom. This glorious massive damaging weaponry can be found in tombs (dungeons) throughout the open world. The only downside is the fact that they’re life draining weapons, so Noctis has to be careful not to die by his own hand. In the end, all these weapons, titans, elemental grenades, warp strikes… and other tricks up their sleeves suits the game perfectly. The player feels involved when they’re entering their battle, even with a lot of automated attacks. In the beginning, the combat feels simplistic but in the end, you’ll notice that the game becomes more difficult because of the damage the enemy bosses can deliver to your party, so be sure to bring enough elixirs to keep the whole party vivid.
As you might have expected, the game world looks beautiful and the things seems staggering. Every outpost/ town will have a lot of bounties and side quests to earn you some money and experience points. All of these quests are scattered around the outpost and create the opportunity to explore this vast world. You can discover treasure, collect crafting materials for Ignis’ meals (which gives a variety of different meals to boost you and your party) and set-up outposts to make the distance between different locations a lot smaller. Once you start collecting, Ignis will make sure you’ll try out his new recipe with the collected item.
With all these things to do, people need set-up outposts and sleep because it’s the only way to actually absorb the amount of experience points you received and eventually level up. Before you take a nap, Ignis can create amazing meals to boost up different stats of your party so it’s definitely a good thing to camp out and sit the night out. Prompto also takes photos during your journey and setting up camp is the perfect way to look through some of these often action-packed photos. This might seem useless but once you ascend certain branches of the skill tree, taking photos or setting up camp will let you earn AP that are necessary to ascend and get some extra skills.
One of the main transportation services the game, is driving around your Regalia that can be customized to the player’s preferences. Actually “driving around” doesn’t seem the right explanation I’m looking for, it’s more of an “automated-not-able-to-skip-this-drive-from-point-A-to-point-B” kind of thing. The Regalia is often controlled by Ignis and even though you get the option to drive the Regalio manually, it won’t go off-road, no matter what you try… This is a feature I dislike the most within this game. This breaks the immersion of the game enormously a actually has to offe. Sure, you can start cruising around “from A to B” with the digitally purchased soundtracks from previous Final Fantasy games playing on the radio… but seriously, the fact that you have to wait the whole ride before you can actually do something, what a major let down. Don’t forget the fact that you also have to refuel your car before you’re heading out to your next quest, once the tank’s empty, the party gets stranded and you’ll have to push the dried-out car to the nearest outpost or call Cindy and ask for a special service. This special service takes you right to Cid’s garage, and believe me it’s closer to home but further away from where you actually want to be.
“Con-kweh-tulations, I leveled up!!
If driving gets you on your nerves, you can always rent a Chocobo. With the help of your very own “rented” Chocobo, you can go to places where the Regalia just can’t. These Chocobo’s can also be customized to your favor and be renamed. The more you ride a Chocobo, the better it becomes. It will gain experience, level up and boost its speed and stamina. It will even learn some new skills that can aid you in battle. “Con-kweh-tulations, I leveled up!!
Once you traveled to a specific location, this location becomes unlocked and you can fast-travel to the preferred destination. This is definitely a big plus that they implemented this feature into this big open world but then again, the game has some significant loading times, that breaks the immersion anyways. The game looks good but it comes with a cost apparently. However, you can definitely notice that the team delivered a gorgeous game. The visual style of the game in combination with the technology raises the Final Fantasy series to a whole other level. Familiar monsters and newly created daemon spawns suit the world perfectly and will be appreciated by the Final Fantasy newbies as well as the veterans.
As always, the game’s soundtrack is beautifully designed as well and you’ll immediately notice the variety of the game’s soundtrack. Every place you enter, readying for battle, every move you make (even when it’s with a Chocobo) … the soundtrack adapts to your every move. It’s something that won’t go unnoticed and even creates this amazing sense of atmosphere.
The story is okay but it does feel rushed. It seems to me that they were planning a much bigger and expanded story but they had to break it down into different sections and tie some of them up into one short unfinished story. Not everything is being explained to the player which kind of sucks. However, even though the game suffers from an “okay” story, the game still delivers some fantastic and even epic moments or confrontations. The main villain seems to be Ravus, but his motivations remain unclear for quite some time. Once he appears on the screen, he quickly fades away to the background, not knowing what he’ll do in the next chapters of the story. Final Fantasy seems to rely on the Kingsglaive spin-off to fill up the holes within the story. It’s better to watch Kingsglaive first before you actually start your journey in Niflheim because without it the main story loses a lot of “essential information” to keep up and get a better look on your own and the enemy’s motivations.
A few bugs were noticeable during my time spent on the game but no immense deal breakers. There were some slight frame rate issues, most of the time during my battles, characters disappearing and some physics issues but most of them would vanish after you reloaded your previous checkpoints.
Conclusion:
Final Fantasy XV is a “triple A”-game that was definitely worth the wait. Even though the story lacks some big important information units, the game’s filled with a lot of things to do that results in a faded story in the background during your hack-and-slash journey. The main characters are loveable in a way that they feel more than just NPC dudes and they actually have “important” things to say. The way they interact with each other makes the journey a lot more pleasant to experience. The photos, the cooking, the fishing, setting up camp, … all feel unnecessary and yet it ties the game to a vast and breathing world. Yes, all of these activities take a time to play out but in the end, you feel like you’ve truly been a part of the group. The game looks and sounds amazing and you can seriously tell that the team put some major efforts in creating this big project. Of course, even with the delay, there were some bugs I noticed, but nothing that can’t be fixed with a small patch. However, even though I can look passed these “issues” there was only one thing that I didn’t like and that was the transportation system with the Regalia. I don’t want to experience this “drive” as a passenger but as a driver, the same goes for the “awesome feature”, pushing your car when it dried-out… an amazing feature but no thanks! If I wanted to push my car to the garage, I would just drive my car in real life and see what happens. Anyways, I’m getting off topic… With every part that makes this game, I can clearly say that Final Fantasy may be my most favorite Final Fantasy game yet!
