Developer: Square Enix
Available on: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Stadia
The goal of the developers of Final Fantasy XV was clear: they wanted to develop a game for fans and first-timers of the Final Fantasy series. I can tell because every time I load up the game, it says “A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers.”
Final Fantasy worlds are typically, well, fantasies. They’re filled to the brim with magic and everything in them, from the buildings to the weapons to the clothes, are visually pleasing but look entirely impractical. Final Fantasy XV went in a slightly different direction. They took a real, modern-looking world and imported some of the magic and the traditional fantasy elements into it.
Final Fantasy XV is also different in that it encourages a more slow experience, like Red Dead Redemption 2. The car your group travels in has finite gas, forcing you to periodically stop at a gas station. At night, powerful monsters called daemons appear, forcing you to seek shelter and call it quits for the day. Various shops and stores you can browse contain supplies and decorations for your car. You can sit down and restaurants and eat meals that give you temporary buffs. The game as a whole feels less like a hero’s quest and more like road trip amongst friends.
That’s where Final Fantasy XV’s biggest strength lies: its main characters and the camaraderie between them. The game follows Prince Noctis and his 3 best friends, Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto, who volunteered to be his bodyguards. Noctis is a moody teenager, Gladiolus is a buff jock, Ignis is an intelligent nerd and Prompto is a cocky, hyperactive guy with a bad sense of humor. The chemistry between them is excellent. Their friendship feels sincere, and they each have developed personalities and a unique set of skills and interests that they bring to the group. Even though the dialogue is rough at times (and contains the occasional cringeworthy pun), some of the most enjoyable moments in the game are the conversations and banter between the characters as they drive around in their car.
Final Fantasy XV is an open world game with a large number of side quests. While the characters don’t have to sleep, nighttime brings out monsters that are too powerful to fight, so you still pretty much have to call it quits at the end of the day. As such, you often have to plan out your day to get the most out of it. When evening comes, you can either make camp, allowing Ignis to cook a meal for the group that buffs their stats for the next day, or you can pay to rent a room which multiplies the XP you’ve earned that day by a small amount. The end of each day also brings a slideshow of pictures taken by Prompto, who’s attempting to document the group’s journey.
Enemies roam the world and you can choose to fight or avoid them as you travel. Normal enemies are original to the game and mostly consist of wildlife and enemy soldiers; they can be found at any time. Daemons come out at night or in dark areas and mostly consist of familiar, recurring enemies in the Final Fantasy series.
Combat is in real time. You always play as Noctis and his friends are always controlled by AIs. The combat system doesn’t have a whole lot of depth to it; you run up to the enemy and you attack. Besides attacking, Noctis has the unique ability to teleport short distances, and you can use that to warp to vantage points or attack enemy from afar. Some attacks can be parried and countered (by blocking at the right time), but most attacks have to be dodged. By holding down the dodge button, Noctis will automatically dodge most attacks using his warp ability, but he cannot dodge multiple attacks at once and dodging also consumes MP. The animations in combat are all satisfying. Occasionally, attacking an enemy triggers a “link attack” where Noctis and an ally will strike together with an even more satisfying animation.
Where combat is at its most fun is when you’re up against enemies at a specific strength relative to yours. Too weak and you kill them almost instantly which is not very fun. Too strong and it just becomes a long and annoying fight where you rely on your practically infinite supply of healing items. The sweet spot is in the middle where you take them down and look badass doing so.
While the combat’s fun, the open world has problems in it. There’s virtually zero exploration; you just travel from waypoint to waypoint. Additionally, it’s not quite as open a world as it may seem. At the start of the game, you, Noctis, don’t get to drive the car. Only Ignis can drive, and all you can do is designate a destination for him. After some time, you unlock the ability to drive the car for yourself, only to discover that you’re forced to stick to the roads and the game essentially steers for you. After some more time, you unlock the ability to convert the Regalia into a big ass monster truck and travel off-road, only to discover that there’s still plenty of restrictions as to where you can go and that taking the roads is still usually the easiest way to reach your destination.
The map is also not helpful. The system for waypoints is unintuitive and poorly thought out. I find myself occasionally fast traveling to places I didn’t mean to. The map itself is a satellite image of the world, but it has extremely poor resolution and you can’t make out any details. Simple problems like “how do I get around this fence?” become huge pains at times.
There’s a lot of side quests, but most of them aren’t very fun. Additionally, most NPCs who dole out side quests don’t just have one side quest, they have at least 5 of the same side quest, each of which becomes available after the last. Trying to do them all feels like an endless void of despair and emptiness.
Of course, the game isn’t literally just a vacation for the characters. There’s still a story that involves you saving the world per laid out prophecies. The story starts out with Noctis on his way to get married, only for his journey to quickly be interrupted by news that the capital was taken over and that his father, the king, was killed. Now Noctis is the king, and he’s forced to quickly mature in order to retake the throne and serve as an effective king. As he’s no longer welcome in the capital, he also has to learn how to live in the real world and experience some of the struggles of ordinary people.
Additionally, like all friendships, this one is faced with tests. Noctis is a complete chore at times. Although at first his friends are eager to collect scars for his sake, over time their patience with him grows thin and they question whether it’s worth it.
The plot itself is enjoyable and the game contains its fair share of beautifully written scenes. However, there’s a major problem with the game’s pacing. After the first set of events, the game goes at a slow but steady pace for about 20 hours. Then, at what feels like it should be about a third of the way through, it proceeds to abandon its open world format and cram its entire plot into the next 5 hours. I don’t mind this transition, but the issue is everything proceeds to occur too fast. It’s one intense moment after the other all the way to the end of the game, with virtually no cool down periods or chances to soak it all in. It makes these moments and the story as a whole not as effective or enjoyable as it could’ve been.
Summary
There’s a lot of good and bad with Final Fantasy XV. The developers set out to make a game fit for newcomers and veterans of the Final Fantasy series, and on that front they succeeded in a lot of ways. Its combat is simple and satisfying and its world feels modern and real while also containing plenty of traditional Final Fantasy elements. Its characters and their camaraderie are great, but there are a large number of problems with its gameplay outside of combat. Additionally, while it tells a good story, it tells it with very poor pacing. Overall, I don’t think it’s fair at all to say Final Fantasy XV is a bad game, but given its shortcomings, I’d have a hard time recommending it to friends.