The Final Fantasy series is as legendary in gaming history as the Mario or Zelda games. The series is notable for its genre-defining characters and bold storylines which sometimes take even bolder twists like, for instance, killing a main character, or letting the bad guy destroy the world midway through the game. Final Fantasy has been responsible for some of the best moments in gaming. However, over the years the interest in the traditional JRPG (Japanese role-playing game) has been waning, which has made developer Square Enix push the envelope with the game’s 15th instalment.
What's it about?
Final Fantasy XV is loosely a combination of the TV show Entourage and The Hangover that meets a sweeping epic high fantasy. You play Noctis Lucis Caelum, the crown prince of Lucis, who along with his friends sets off on a road trip to get married to Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, his childhood friend and a former princess. As usual, all hell breaks loose on the way when Lucis gets invaded and Noctis’s father is killed, leaving the prince and his friends on a journey to claim the throne, the country and the Crystal, a magical artefact important to Lucis. And somewhere along the way, get married too.
The sheer amount of names that Final Fantasy XV throws at you is overwhelming. Sure, there is a historical tutorial, but that does not really flesh out the game’s rich backstory complete with complicated names of places and people. For more clarity on the lore, you may need to watch the Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV movie and the Brotherhood anime that Square Enix released. It would help if you focus on Noctis and friends, and their journey as well as their trials, en route to the wedding.
While everything else is just background noise, your entourage is the soul of the game. You start the game of pushing the broken down vehicle, Regalia, which is annoying, but serves as an important introduction to your posse (tough Gladiolus, savvy Ignis and the spritely Prompto). It’s an equation that humanises this alien world and brings you into more emotionally familiar territory.
There’s plenty of camaraderie: Prompto’s antics and photos, Ignis’s prim and proper attitude and Gladiolus’s cheerful spirit work well with Noctis’s cool and calm demeanour. While the cast is male dominated, Lunafreya, who is also central to the plot, is a fantastic character: strong and regal. And when she enters the story, she dominates the scene.
How does it play?
The game is broken up into two distinct parts. You have a vast open game world for you to explore, and then you have the more linear parts that push you through the story later in the game. The open world is very much like our own, with a very American flavour to the life on the road, with giant monsters instead of rednecks. You can traverse this area in the Regalia or you can hire a Chocobo, a large chicken, which you can ride on. The game allows you to carve your own path. When you’re not doing the plethora of run-of-the-mill quests, you can just drive around admiring the flora, sometimes driving dangerously close to the mountain-sized fauna.
Role-playing games are all about the story, battling enemies, levelling up your characters and saving the world. The battle system moves away from the classic turn-based system, where you have to wait for the turn of each character in your party to unleash your attacks from a series of menu commands. With XV , you control only Noctis, who has a spectral weapon ability, which lets you warp around the battlefield to hack and slash at enemies with multiple weapons. You do have a bit of control over your companions, but only to issue commands for combo attacks. Strategy comes in to play by paying attention to which weapons will affect which enemies and the parry and counter-attack system. You do have a magic system, with familiar element-based spells, but you need to collect resources for them, making them a valuable commodity. Later in the game, you will also get the ability to summon massive god-like creatures to aid you, a familiar feature for any Final Fantasy fan, is the comeback of Leviathan, Bahamut, Shiva and more.
The more experience points you and your team get, the more you level up, unlocking more abilities and weapons to use during combat. Which makes it important to travel and battle monsters and at the end of a long hard day, you set up a campfire and level up. Pick your food boosts, especially when you know you have a tough foe to tackle. The artificial intelligence of your companions are quite good, making them useful in combat for watching your back as well as pass hints for when they’re ready for a combo and support you for any status effects you may be afflicted with during combat.
As a massive open world fantasy game, Final Fantasy XV looks beautiful. A lot of work has gone into painstakingly crafting every nook and cranny. The developers have incorporated all the visual details that makes Final Fantasy so familiar to fans: blue gradient menus, sounds, chocobos and monsters which are in glorious free roaming detail. If there is one thing that stands out. it’s the cutscenes, which Square Enix are known for. XV sports some of the best to date, rivalling even the big movie blockbusters. The music is fantastic, with recognisable modernisations of familiar tunes from the series, well-orchestrated to sound appropriately epic. Final Fantasy XV may have a few glitches, but it is graphically the best-looking game in the series and one of the best on consoles.
Should you get it?
While Final Fantasy XV may be a bit too much when it comes to the lore and storyline, it’s a shining example of character and world-building in one excellent game. Despite its flaws, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable experience for both fans of the series and those experiencing Final Fantasy for the first time.
