'A Final Fantasy for fans and first timers'. The first set of words that you're graced with upon booting this game up for the first time. Final Fantasy XV seems to have a different perception of itself as opposed to what it actually is.
Final Fantasy XV may talk like it's all new, but it walks its same old walk. Things in this game are bigger than they have been before, but they're not drastically different. You're still off on an adventure in a party. There are guys with spiky hair, and outfits with zips 'n' buckles. There's still magic. There are crystals and shit. There are massive allies who will fry, freeze and electrocute everything in sight at the push of a button. There's somebody named Cid. There's some evil person in some impractical outfit. Don't let this open world talk and the boy-band vibes of the main posse fool you. This is Final Fantasy as you've always known it.
Read press releases and other reviews of this game and you'll more-than-likely see 'the first open world Final Fantasy'. But the game isn't really that open. Not to the extent of games such as Grand Theft Auto or The Witcher. In all honesty, the structure of this game isn't that different from Final Fantasy X-2 or Final Fantasy XIII-2. In fact, these games offered more freedom than what is offered in XV, just on a smaller in-game world scale.
Everybody who plays XV will progress through the story in the same way. The only thing which will differ is the levels of your party members and what you'd picked up along the way. There is only one route that you can take through the game. The only difference is that up until a point you're free to just stall the story and just do what you like. Sounds fun on paper, but there isn't actually much of anything to do in this game. Stalling the story means doing side quests, all of which are a case of fetching items for somebody or hunting down a monster to slay. There is very little in the way of variation. And as you progress through the story, more and more freedom gets stripped away, until you find yourself on the same set linear path through that everybody crucified Final Fantasy XIII for.
The game world itself is also void of any real life. You'd be hard pressed to tell that this game isn't set in some Mad Max state of post apocalypse, because the world is so damn barren. You will come across monsters and the odd car driving along a road, but for the most part you're just running / driving around and not seeing a great deal other than rocks and some bushes. The world has breadth, but no depth. It is severely underpopulated. Very few locations, if any, feel memorable and they lack originality. There is one city that looks like Venice. Another that looks like Cuba. There is some restaurant on a pier. And then there are petrol stations. Lots of petrol stations. There is also a giant city that an entire Final Fantasy film was set in and that you hear the characters talk about all of the time, but you don't get to visit it until the end of the game, and when you do, you don't get to fully explore it.
The 'openness' is an illusion. Certain areas are gated off until you pass certain points in the story. And if you want to access certain abilities, shops, hotels or quests from specific characters, then you need to do the damn story. So not matter which way you cut it, you're funnelled into the story anyway and then before you know it, you've reached the end.
So would I say Final Fantasy is open world? No. 'Open world' in Final Fantasy XV just equates to 'large spaces'.
One area where Final Fantasy XV is truly different and new however is in its battle system. XV marks one of the first entries into the series which features a real time battle system. Now this comes with some pros and cons. The pros are that Final Fantasy finally has a real time battle system. The cons is that it's not that great nor special. Battles tend not to fully realise the real time aspect of the situation, space or your surroundings. Movements are limited. Moves are limited. There isn't a great deal of tactical play which is required. Battles are a case of just holding circle and occasionally tapping square. There isn't really any depth or tactics involved. Battles are more a test of endurance than true skill. You will find that most battles are against the camera, which is one of the worst I have experienced in a game in over a decade. I thought we were past bad cameras in games. But here's Final Fantasy XV. With its garbage camera.
Final Fantasy XV may talk like it's all new, but it walks its same old walk. Things in this game are bigger than they have been before, but they're not drastically different. You're still off on an adventure in a party. There are guys with spiky hair, and outfits with zips 'n' buckles. There's still magic. There are crystals and shit. There are massive allies who will fry, freeze and electrocute everything in sight at the push of a button. There's somebody named Cid. There's some evil person in some impractical outfit. Don't let this open world talk and the boy-band vibes of the main posse fool you. This is Final Fantasy as you've always known it.
Read press releases and other reviews of this game and you'll more-than-likely see 'the first open world Final Fantasy'. But the game isn't really that open. Not to the extent of games such as Grand Theft Auto or The Witcher. In all honesty, the structure of this game isn't that different from Final Fantasy X-2 or Final Fantasy XIII-2. In fact, these games offered more freedom than what is offered in XV, just on a smaller in-game world scale.
Everybody who plays XV will progress through the story in the same way. The only thing which will differ is the levels of your party members and what you'd picked up along the way. There is only one route that you can take through the game. The only difference is that up until a point you're free to just stall the story and just do what you like. Sounds fun on paper, but there isn't actually much of anything to do in this game. Stalling the story means doing side quests, all of which are a case of fetching items for somebody or hunting down a monster to slay. There is very little in the way of variation. And as you progress through the story, more and more freedom gets stripped away, until you find yourself on the same set linear path through that everybody crucified Final Fantasy XIII for.
The game world itself is also void of any real life. You'd be hard pressed to tell that this game isn't set in some Mad Max state of post apocalypse, because the world is so damn barren. You will come across monsters and the odd car driving along a road, but for the most part you're just running / driving around and not seeing a great deal other than rocks and some bushes. The world has breadth, but no depth. It is severely underpopulated. Very few locations, if any, feel memorable and they lack originality. There is one city that looks like Venice. Another that looks like Cuba. There is some restaurant on a pier. And then there are petrol stations. Lots of petrol stations. There is also a giant city that an entire Final Fantasy film was set in and that you hear the characters talk about all of the time, but you don't get to visit it until the end of the game, and when you do, you don't get to fully explore it.
The 'openness' is an illusion. Certain areas are gated off until you pass certain points in the story. And if you want to access certain abilities, shops, hotels or quests from specific characters, then you need to do the damn story. So not matter which way you cut it, you're funnelled into the story anyway and then before you know it, you've reached the end.
So would I say Final Fantasy is open world? No. 'Open world' in Final Fantasy XV just equates to 'large spaces'.
One area where Final Fantasy XV is truly different and new however is in its battle system. XV marks one of the first entries into the series which features a real time battle system. Now this comes with some pros and cons. The pros are that Final Fantasy finally has a real time battle system. The cons is that it's not that great nor special. Battles tend not to fully realise the real time aspect of the situation, space or your surroundings. Movements are limited. Moves are limited. There isn't a great deal of tactical play which is required. Battles are a case of just holding circle and occasionally tapping square. There isn't really any depth or tactics involved. Battles are more a test of endurance than true skill. You will find that most battles are against the camera, which is one of the worst I have experienced in a game in over a decade. I thought we were past bad cameras in games. But here's Final Fantasy XV. With its garbage camera.
You are in a party of four, but only control the main character Noctis. Your 3 other members are controlled by the AI. The ally AI in this game can be a liability, and to make it even worse - you have zero control over it. There is no gambit system as in Final Fantasy XV or team settings as per Kingdom Hearts. You have zero control over how your teammates behave. There have been many times when I've had a team member stagger around dying, but nobody is helping them. Times when I wanted the whole team to focus on a particular target, but instead each member is focuses on their own targets. There are even audacious instances where a team member has just stood around doing fuck all. The genuine feeling that I have with Final Fantasy XV's battle system is that I never feel fully in control of it. Despite it being in real time, I feel I have less control over battle situations in this game than I did in previous instalments. I found myself having to just grind and level up so that I was powerful enough to withstand the battle issues and shortcomings. The tactical element to battles just isn't here, and having some form of Gambit system would have helped aid this. Having 3 AI companions and giving you zero control over their behaviours feels strange to me. An online multiplayer option would have also been welcomed. Especially as there is only a couple of instances in this game where you are separated from your party.
Now the story. Final Fantasy XV's story has gone through numerous changes over the course of hopping platforms, going through a name change and having a whole new team assigned to it, and it appears to suffer as a result. The story may never have been that great in the first place back when XV was Versus XIII. But given just how many gaps and unexplained instances there are here, it's more than likely that the transitions this game went through are to blame.
Final Fantasy XV's story does what XIII did; throws characters into a situation and never really explains why. Square Enix wants you to care about a situation that you really know nothing about, and probably never will until you read a wiki, or there's a Final Fantasy XV-2, which will only make the plot worse and even more confusing if XIII-2 and Lightning returns are anything to go by.
Final Fantasy XV's story does what XIII did; throws characters into a situation and never really explains why. Square Enix wants you to care about a situation that you really know nothing about, and probably never will until you read a wiki, or there's a Final Fantasy XV-2, which will only make the plot worse and even more confusing if XIII-2 and Lightning returns are anything to go by.
Early on in the game it becomes apparent that there are pieces of the story which are missing, and these can be found in the animated feature film Kingsglaive and the anime series Brotherhood. However, even between the game, the film and the anime - there are still massive gaps left that DLC will not serve if episode Gladiolus is anything to go by.
Final Fantasy XV is broken into chapters, but they do not flow. When one chapter ends, the next one begins with a tonne of things having happened in between, none of which is really explained. The game just jumps you from one situation to the next. The story moves with far too much brevity and dissonance. Seemingly pivotal moments, reveals and plot twists carry no impact, because there is no build up, and quite frankly you probably never truly cared anyway. Final Fantasy XV doesn't grant you no chance nor moment to become invested in anything that happens within its world. So you find that the story is just a case of things happening for some reason that you're not really sure of, but you go along with it because you want to see how it pans out. And because by that point you've probably invested too many hours into the game to just walk away from it.
It's difficult to care for any of the characters when the game doesn't ever allow you to do so. The main female protagonist and Noctis' wife to be, Lunafreya is held with such importance in this game, but the game never gives her any gravitas and you're never made to feel anything towards her or see the importance of her. When your pals go through life changing situations, you aren't given the chance to absorb this, because the game doesn't even give you the chance to savour these moments and never really goes into it. XV somehow manages to wrap itself up nicely in its ending, which does tug on the ol' heart strings. But it also leaves you realising how little you actually knew about many of these characters and how much the game never told you about everything that leads up to the final moments of the adventure.
The main characters are for the most part, decent. These aren't characters whom are chucked together via chance and circumstance. They are friends. Square handle their kinship well and it's what keeps Final Fantasy XV from falling apart completely. The weakest link in the team by far is Gladiolus, whose delivery feels wooden and lacks character. He falls into a complete trope. But he is saved by the interactions of other characters who round this out. Noctis, Ignis and Prompto are all great characters. Initially it seemed like Noctis was going to just brood and be uncaring, but he is actually quite a well rounded character with a sense of humour. Prompto is the comic relief in the team. What could have been a Jar Jar Binks of a character, is actually a genuinely funny character with a lot more depth than this type of character usually gets. Ignis is just a boss. That's all there is to say about that. These guys hold Final Fantasy XV together. Barely. But they do.
For a game which has been in development for 10 years, Final Fantasy lacks finesse. The camera is awful. Some of the menu systems are clunky. The flow of the entire game just feels off. There are too many moments where the game gets on its own way. It's a real shame, because had everything been tightened up and refined, this could have been a truly amazing game and a contender for one of the best in the series. It has the makings of such. But there are too many loose threads, odd gameplay nuances and a lack of focus which causes it to fall apart and be a pretty generic, run of the mill J-RPG. If this didn't have the Final Fantasy brand name, nobody would fart on this game and chances are many would have been much more critical of it.
The design of the the whole XV experience feels odd, because it feels so fractured. When playing a game there should be a sense of understanding the world, its rules and its logic. But these don't always apply, or they will in some instances, but not others. There are some rock faces which Noctis can walk on and others that he can't, even though they look the same. Some low fences can be vaulted over, others can't. Noctis can warp to far and high places in battle, but can't warp outside of battles. Understanding the world of XV is difficult, because it doesn't even understand itself, and this is Final Fantasy XV all over. It never really commits to anything and it doesn't do anything particularly well.
So many of the game mechanics feel half baked an under developed. The game stresses the importance of certain things, but you never have to really do them. What Final Fantasy XV could have done with is a stricter edit. The expansive map could have been cut as much of it is dead space. Several of the features could have been cut as they don't add anything but bloat. Many of these so called new features are just plasters over cracks which have been forming across over the course of decades. Final Fantasy XV should have been built from the ground up. Instead what you end up with is a Final Fantasy game with new ideas bolted onto something which was never that robust in the first place. The whole thing feels stitched together.
So many of the game mechanics feel half baked an under developed. The game stresses the importance of certain things, but you never have to really do them. What Final Fantasy XV could have done with is a stricter edit. The expansive map could have been cut as much of it is dead space. Several of the features could have been cut as they don't add anything but bloat. Many of these so called new features are just plasters over cracks which have been forming across over the course of decades. Final Fantasy XV should have been built from the ground up. Instead what you end up with is a Final Fantasy game with new ideas bolted onto something which was never that robust in the first place. The whole thing feels stitched together.
The graphics, whilst nice, are look too clean and sharp - which kills the atmosphere of some locations and also highlights the limitations. There are no filters, lens flares, bloom or haze utilised to really bring the world to life. These effects are employed in cut scenes, but not in game, which causes a visual divide. There isn't always a sense of atmosphere or density to surroundings because they all look so clean. Do not get me wrong. Final Fantasy XV is still a gorgeous game. There were many moments which left me awe struck. You're hard pressed to tell the difference between the in-game graphics and the FMV sequences, sequences of which are scarce because there's no need for them with the graphics looking as good as they do. I just wish the same effects employed for the cut scenes were utilised in the game to take the edge of the sterility of the visuals.
The soundtrack to this game is grand and beautifully composed by Yoko Shimomura of Street Fighter II and Kingdom Hearts fame. However, the sound design in Final Fantasy XV isn't great, which has a huge impact on the soundtrack. Despite the soundtrack being so expansive, it seems as though you only hear a handful of pieces from it. Also, when you're traversing the world map on foot, most of the time you're doing it in complete silence. When you're in the car you have the option of listening to selected pieces from previous Final Fantasy soundtracks. This feels like a cheap shot at fan service, when it would have made more sense to have done GTA style radio stations. Have a station that plays old FF music if you will. But to just let you cycle through old songs in the car feels lazy.
The soundtrack to this game is grand and beautifully composed by Yoko Shimomura of Street Fighter II and Kingdom Hearts fame. However, the sound design in Final Fantasy XV isn't great, which has a huge impact on the soundtrack. Despite the soundtrack being so expansive, it seems as though you only hear a handful of pieces from it. Also, when you're traversing the world map on foot, most of the time you're doing it in complete silence. When you're in the car you have the option of listening to selected pieces from previous Final Fantasy soundtracks. This feels like a cheap shot at fan service, when it would have made more sense to have done GTA style radio stations. Have a station that plays old FF music if you will. But to just let you cycle through old songs in the car feels lazy.
Final Fantasy XV is incredibly flawed, but you find yourself just mucking through it anyway. But the dissonance in the team changes and development hell this game went through really shows and it pokes a giant hole in the game for those who had been following it back when it was Versus XIII. So many story points, characters and game play mechanics which truly looked cool and pushed the series in a new direction seem to have been scrapped in favour of what is a wholly safe game which doesn't provide anything above and beyond what any of the previous games offered.
Verdict:
If you're a Final Fantasy fan, buy it. If you've played Kingdom Hearts, but have never played a Final Fantasy game before, buy it. If not, then buy at your own risk.
I feature on a podcast called Chocolate and vanilla swirl, where I talk about Final Fantasy XV in greater detail. Check it out if you want to know more, and here me get into the nitty-gritty of this game.
Credits: All screenshots courtesy of videogamer.com
Verdict:
If you're a Final Fantasy fan, buy it. If you've played Kingdom Hearts, but have never played a Final Fantasy game before, buy it. If not, then buy at your own risk.
I feature on a podcast called Chocolate and vanilla swirl, where I talk about Final Fantasy XV in greater detail. Check it out if you want to know more, and here me get into the nitty-gritty of this game.
Credits: All screenshots courtesy of videogamer.com