Gameful Guru Review: Final Fantasy XV (PS4, XBONE, Square Enix)
Difficulty: Moderate (Story) Moderate to High (Sidequests)
Plays Like: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), Kingdom Hearts (various)
Gameful Skills Built: Independent Decision Making, Curiosity
“A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers.”
These words spread across the screen in front of me as I prepare, after ten years of waiting, to embark upon my latest adventure in the Final Fantasy series. I am a fan, to be sure. Despite not playing many of them to completion, I’ve explored many a Fantasy in my time as a gamer, and have often been enamored with their characters, their holistic design, their worlds. When I was not quite a teenager, I fell in love with Final Fantasy X’s Spira, its tale of hope, despair and sacrifice, and the way its creators brought that world, and that story to life. Final Fantasy 9, though I have yet to completely finish it, captured my heart and compelled me thoroughly with its humor, pathos and sense of wonder. Final Fantasy XIII, for all its flaws, gripped me with its beauty and its willingness to approach hard emotional territory. My love for RPGs has never wavered, though my devotion to Final Fantasy has waned over the years.
Final Fantasy XV will cause me to fall in love again. I just don’t know it yet.
Despite being conceived more than ten years ago, Final Fantasy XV feels very much on the cutting edge of what Japanese RPGs are and are becoming. In the decade since the story of Prince Noctis was first teased, under the title Final Fantasy Versus XIII, RPGs from both sides of the pond strayed from their roots in intriguing ways. Being a JRPG fan, I have paid more attention to the way that Japanese developers have looked to the games being produced by western companies for inspiration, and have created fresh, fabulous games accordingly. We saw Japanese developers embrace open world gameplay with Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), to great critical acclaim. We have also seen companies like Mistwalker, headed up by ex-Final Fantasy director Hironobu Sakaguchi, create linear but ambitiously designed games like The Last Story and Lost Odyssey, to similar reception.
All the while, Square Enix remained, undeniably alive but docile, a drowsy Titan of the gaming industry. They released a trilogy of Final Fantasy XIII games, two versions of Final Fantasy XIV, and numerous Kingdom Hearts spin-offs and prequels–and many of these releases were met warmly. But there’s been a creeping fear among diehard fans that Final Fantasy, in the face of a broadening RPG landscape, might be losing its footing, its seat at the JRPG throne.
Final Fantasy XV may not be perfect, but for me, at least, it does a lot to assuage these fears.
There are a lot of things to love about this game, not the least of which is the excellent ensemble cast and the myriad ways that the game, with great success, gets you to care about them. There’s an ongoing debate among RPG fans–and Final Fantasy fans in particular–about which kinds of stories make for the best games. Many people engaged in this debate focus on the tension between a story being “character-centric” or “plot-centric.” Most games are a mix of both, and Final Fantasy XV is no exception, but as we know from the way Final Fantasy XII’s overtly political narrative was received, when a game veers too far toward one end of the spectrum, fans opinions tend to polarize.
The delicate balance of developing characters while progressing the plot forward in interesting ways is not one that Final Fantasy XV always nails, but for the most part, no matter how the plot threads have tangled and frayed, the player has an anchor in the core four protagonists: Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum and his retainers, Gladiolus Amicitia, Ignis Scientia and Prompto Argentum. We meet this band of brothers pushing their broken down, but still luxurious car down the road of an as-yet unknown countryside, and immediately dynamics reveal themselves. This is not a ragtag bunch of strangers pulled together by fate. The familiarity and the increasingly familial bond these characters show does much to endear the player to them, and consequently, the game’s greater world and plot concerns. As the game progresses, we see them fight, laugh, eat, grow and even cry together. By the end, if you’ve truly taken your time with the game’s adventure, the player is left with a sense of having known, having lived with these characters, even if not many of the game’s supporting players get as much time in the spotlight.
There are many great reasons to take your time with Final Fantasy XV, not the least of which is the fact that its world map is huge and rich with rewarding sidequests and secrets. Apart from the quest line that makes up the game’s main story, there are countless mini-games, optional dungeons, monster hunts and other diversions to keep you busy, and although some of them feel like tedious fetch quests, the game finds ways to curb this sense of tedium.
A lot of these ways involve the skills that each of your party members develop simply by engaging with the world. From Gladio’s Survival skills, which develop the more you explore the world on foot and can net you some pretty sweet free items from battles, to Ignis’ Cooking, which enables you to create stat-boosting meals whenever you camp outside, to Prompto’s Photography, which chronicles your adventure and gives you something to reflect on at the end of each in-game day, there’s ample reason to tromp around on foot and go searching for trouble. I was surprised to find Noctis’ Fishing skill to be particularly rewarding to build, as the fishing mini-game has plenty of depth and can be a relaxing break from monster hunting and loot finding, as well as a source of valuable cooking ingredients for Ignis’ gourmet seafood dishes.
Much of your travel across the sprawling map of Lucis takes place with the help of the Regalia, the group’s trusty steed which just happens to take the form of a sleek luxury vehicle. Without the Regalia, traveling from outpost to outpost and quest to quest would eventually grow to be an unbearable slog. Luckily, the Regalia can serve as a waypoint and a means of fast traveling to and from far off locations (for a nominal fee of gil) once you’ve been there before. If you want to explore new locations, however–and you will–you will spend some time traversing the countryside in real time, either in the Regalia, on foot or, after completing one of the game’s more memorable side missions, on the backs of chocobos. On long car rides you can listen to a selection of songs from various Final Fantasies past, purchased at various outposts across the map, and while riding chocobo-back you are treated to the latest variant of the chocobo theme music that is as ubiquitous in the series as Phoenix Downs and guys named Cid.
On foot, and in battle, however, Final Fantasy XV’s musical score truly shines. Yoko Shimomura, already revered by fans for her work on the Kingdom Hearts series, has truly created a masterwork of modern video game music. Exploration themes evoke feelings of tranquility and adventurous mystique, while battle themes lend gravitas and nervous tension to even the most minor of enemy mobs, especially in dungeons, where enemies often appear out of nowhere. Battling and exploring aren’t the only places where Shimomura’s talents are on display. True to Final Fantasy tradition, and fitting given Final Fantasy XV’s dual engagement with the epic and intimate, some of the most memorable tracks are reserved for key moments in the game’s story. There may not be an iconic answer to Final Fantasy VII’s Aerith’s Theme, but there are several songs that in my playthrough, I wanted to just stop everything and listen to.
Of course, this was not always possible, as the battle system in Final Fantasy XV rewards aggression and quick tactical moves. A departure from turn-based and active-time battle systems of games past, gameplay in Final Fantasy XV feels much more like Kingdom Hearts than Final Fantasy proper. Though it lacks much of the nuance and challenge that has made Kingdom Hearts, over time, grow to be one of the more beloved action RPG series, slaying daemons with Noctis and company is often satisfying and only occasionally frustrating. The game attempts to add depth to the combat through various abilities unlocked and refined through the game’s growth system, but I found myself using many of the same tactics and techniques I used in the game’s early chapters well into the late game.
Final Fantasy is a series known for being a leader in cinematic storytelling in games, with nearly all of them challenging the graphical limitations of the systems they reside on, so no one should be surprised that this game is visually gorgeous. But in a gaming landscape where nearly every major game company has a handle on creating hyper realistic graphics, Final Fantasy XV stands out. The game’s world is well-realized and believable, and though it never reaches the grandiose scale of Skyrim, this is not a bad thing. Even after 45 hours of non-stop exploration and questing, there were still corners of the game’s world I hadn’t seen, and as a gamer who often is intimidated by non-linearity, I was excited to get a little lost in the game’s weeds.
The main trouble with Final Fantasy XV’s story–and the game as a whole–arrives in the latter third of the game’s story chapters, which for me accounted for a very small fraction of my overall playtime. Although you are given opportunities to return to your earlier questing grounds, retaining all current equipment and abilities, you do so risking ruining the narrative tension being built by the game’s final act. As far as final acts go, Noctis’ tale has its flaws, to be sure: large events take place between chapters and are quickly recapped in passing or through newspaper clippings found on train car seats, and the joys of exploration experienced in the first chunk of the game are traded in for drab corridor strolls peppered with light stealth and puzzle sequences. The game’s story builds to a satisfying conclusion, but the path to the end feels much less fleshed out than the earlier chapters, and much of how one experiences the finale of the game relies on how one spent time in its beginnings.
In many ways, Final Fantasy XV is more of a response to Final Fantasy XIII’s reception than even that game’s sequels. By beginning the game with giving players agency and freedom to explore (within certain limits) Square Enix bucked the potential critique that they cared more about their story’s transmission than about making a gameplay experience that each player could make their own, and so, too, avoided accusations often cast at Japanese RPGs: that they’re too linear, unchallenging and don’t give players much of a say in how they play out. It doesn’t completely avoid these criticisms–I only had one Game Over in my entire playthrough and it happened largely due to some screwy camera in a timed mission–but this is a Final Fantasy unlike any I’ve played before. The game tries to have its cake and eat it too, by narrowing the focus of its latter chapters, while also giving players the option of removing themselves from the game’s plot for a while to return to the side quest grind. The problem is, the most fun parts of the game have little to do with the plot and much more to do with spending time with the game’s main characters and exploring the game’s world. Even if you are fully invested in the game’s main story progression, it’s an odd feeling to reach the final boss of the game and feel over-prepared.
Fortunately, there is a truly robust amount of content that becomes available to you after you complete the main story, including more challenging bosses, sidequests and a few dungeons that have to be experienced to be believed. Square plans to release DLC and free patches to the game in the coming months, adding story and gameplay content, and this intention is heartening to say the least. After such a long development cycle, one is led to wonder what content was left on the editing room floor, and what of that content we might one day get to have our hands on.
Until that DLC starts rolling in, gamers have access to New Game+, where they can replay the game retaining certain achievements and with the addition of items such as the Nixperience Band, which prevents you from leveling up when you rest, that can offer some much needed challenge to completing the game’s main story. The hope seems to be that Final Fantasy XV will be an entry that will keep gamers playing for months, even years to come. I, for one, am excited to see what Square comes up with to fulfill that hope.
The game has reached its close, and I am at a loss for words. Even knowing there is more adventuring to be had, I am in awe of what I have already experienced and more than a little heartbroken that, to a certain extent, the tale that I began tens of hours ago is over. Maybe it happened when I reassured Prompto about his worth to me, or when Gladio challenged me to a footrace in the sand at dawn, or when Ignis invited me to help him prepare breakfast, but I fell in love with this game. I have so many people I want to thank for this experience, and more than that, there are so many emotions I have to process. I take a few days to collect myself, leaving Lucis to explore other worlds. But then I return, determined to carry on loving and living in this virtual world, if only for hours at a time. I am pleased to find I am welcomed with open arms.
There is word of earthquakes taking place near Hammerhead. I begin my journey anew.
