I couldn’t help myself. Since I’m so close to the end of my journey through every mainline Final Fantasy title—only one left after this!—I had to play another one for this month’s JRPG. (Never mind the fact that I’m a month late here…) I’m ready to finish them, mostly to have the core series checked off my list but also because I’ve enjoyed entry entry so far. I have yet to play a single bad Final Fantasy game, and despite the usual doom-and-gloom from longtime fans that comes with each new new iteration, Final Fantasy XV is no exception.
It’s not that I’m easy to please—though I’ll admit I’ve at least liked pretty much every JRPG I’ve played so far (To be fair, I’ve stuck to popular games, and I’m not picky.)—more that I’m a big fan of open-area, Xenoblade-style JRPGs, and Final Fantasy XV fits that bill. Well, it’s more accurate to say FFXII started this paradigm, but Xenoblade is the example I think of first, and my greatest joy in playing XV has been seeing what Square’s learned from Xenoblade and how they further iterate on the formula. Final Fantasy and Xenoblade are the only series I know of in this little MMO-like sub-genre, so this is a rare thrill for me.
Heading into FFXV, I knew very little about it. I knew it was open world; that’s about it. I avoided all marketing for the game back when was new, mostly ‘cuz aside from playing XII way back in the day, I hadn’t really gotten into Final Fantasy yet. So I decided I’d save XV for near the end, since I wanted to be intimately familiar with the series before playing the most recent game.
Here we are, and I’m glad I did.
Much of Final Fantasy XV reads like a love letter to the series as a whole. Of course there’s the staples like a new Cid character, chocobos, crystals, even an airship—of sorts—but like never before, FFXV feels like nostalgia bait on steroids. The crystals are absolutely massive this time and once again play a central role to the plot. The famously catchy Final Fantasy prelude plays on the main menu screen and features in the primary battle track. Chocobos have become trusty, near constant companions—if you like to explore—and even level up over time. But the biggest notable dose of nostalgia is that you can buy the soundtracks for every past Final Fantasy game to back your adventure. On the one hand, I loved cruising through the countryside listening to FFXIII’s battle theme, or III’s boss theme. Final Fantasy’s full of excellent music, so having a greatest hits jukebox to throw on at any time sounds like a dream come true. And it’s certainly a good fit for the game’s major new feature—the Regalia. For the first time ever in a Final Fantasy game, your party can travel the world in a car.
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OK, there is FFVIII, so to be more specific, in XV the Regalia serves as your main form of transport and also plays a huge role in immersion. Gameplay-wise, it acts as a portable hub of sorts—you can fast travel to it, shop from its dashboard, drive it yourself, or use it to fast travel elsewhere. There’s even an off-road option in the Royal Edition, which includes all the patches and most of the DLC and is the version I played. All this functionality put together makes for some of the most satisfying open world exploration from a mechanical perspective. Early on, I wanted to drive everywhere I could, rather than fast travel, to take in the splendor of FFXV’s beautiful world. When something caught my eye, I’d stop, go check it out, then once I was done—even if I’d come out of the other end of a dungeon miles away, I’d warp back to the Regalia and continue on.
But it’s not just a gameplay device—the car is integral to damn near every other aspect of XV. Early on, Noctis and pals operate out of the Hammerhead, an old-timey gas-station-plus-service-shop, where they meet this game’s Cid, now an aged auto mechanic. It’s his granddaughter, Cindy, who’s taken over the business and acts as this game’s de facto Cid. Uhh, as as a side note, it’s kinda weird they call her Cindy in the English version, since she is in fact named Cidney in the Japanese, but having two characters based off the name Cid in English might be kinda weird. I think it’s cool they changed her name slightly, so that she references Cid while not replacing him. I’d still prefer they stick with the Japanese name, but Cindy ain’t bad. And.. not only in the naming department, she’s got… other assets to appreciate, too, let’s say.
Anyway, the Hammerhead and other gas stations dotting the countryside sport a heavy Americana vibe, a sort of out-of-time pastiche of 20th-century styles spanning from the 30s through 70s, and beyond. I’m all about it. There’s a classic 50s diner called the Crow’s Nest—which has somehow monopolized the entire restaurant industry in the world of Eos, establishing franchises all over the place—complete with fake ads for in-game companies, which I always get a kick out of. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the real-life advertising later.) There’s even a lovely bluesy theme to accompany it, honestly, one of the best tracks in the game. What a way to kick off a new fresh new Final Fantasy—Americana blues rock wouldn’t have been on my Bingo card.
The focus on car culture and the open road doesn’t stop there, though. Many story beats require lengthy car rides, and who better to road trip with than your bros? That’s right, this time the party’s all for the boys, and I’m loving it. There’s Noctis, the protagonist and young prince of Lucis, plus his squad, including top royal bodyguard and brooding bad boy Gladiolus, well-read hipster Ignis, and Prompto, the fun-loving comic relief. It’s like Entourage, except less trashy. Of course, there’s more to these dudes beyond their surface characterization, and the Regalia is key to getting more out of them. While driving to a distant destination, the boys get up to all kinds of shenanigans, jokes, and conversation along the way, providing for what might just be the most enjoyable part of the game, and some of the best dialogue ever in Final Fantasy. Even after dozens of hours, I still got new dialogue when driving, practically all of it entertaining, and I learned more about and bonded more with these characters in the jaunts between destinations than in the actual story scenes, which underwhelmed me. More on that in a sec, but first a little more plot background.
The adventure thrusts off when the king of Lucis sends his son, our very own Noctis, on a trip to wed his childhood friend Lunafreya, who’s in the clutches of an evil empire that’s taken over practically the entire continent. That’s no exaggeration—the king hopes this marriage will help broker a peace agreement, but the empire controls all of Lucis itself save for its capital city, Insomnia. They’ve got the king surrounded, and it’s only a matter of time before everything turns to hell. Noctis and company end up on the run for much of the game, traveling from one corner of the world to another on their desperate quest to to unlock the power of the Crystal. It’s an interesting premise that had me all-in at first, wanting to find out how Noctis would manage to save his kingdom and how Lunafreya would get involved. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XV’s muddled storytelling and bizarre pacing completely killed my interest in the plot in short time.
Things start off fast and heavy, and by that I mean too fast to make the early tragedies hit home. A crucial cutscene in the first chapter flies by at a frantic clip, with jumpy, lightning-fast editing that makes no sense for a scene that’s supposed to establish the main conflict. I could barely tell what was going on! Apparently, after doing some research, some of the shots used here were from a… prequel movie called Kingsglaive? Apparently, it’s required viewing to fully understand the larger story, and I call bullshit—I ain’t watching that. I can’t believe Square hasn’t learned their lesson on the whole multimedia worldbuilding approach they’ve been attempting for years now, to little success aside from maybe the Final Fantasy VII spinoffs. I’d like to see them focus on telling a complete, satisfying story in one game, then considering a continuation if it’s successful. Maybe in the current era that’s too much to ask, but I’m an optimist, and FFXVI at least looks like it might be on the right track. XV’s lack of context though, is ridiculous, and things only get muddier as the story progresses. The game loves to throw characters at you, quickly dump their backstory, then forget about them for several chapters. It doesn’t help that damn near the entire map opens up as early as chapter 3, letting you get as overpowered as you want, as early as you want. Now, most players probably won’t go overboard here, and I didn’t go too crazy myself, but man, I couldn’t resist a whole world to explore and spent a good twenty-five hours before advancing the story much at all. This made the rest of the game a cakewalk, which I’m mixed on.
For one, the combat’s kind of lame. There’s no way around it: it’s simple, easy, and worst of all, janky. You hold a button to attack, you can dodge, and you can zip around all over the place using a new mechanic, Warp-Strike. The problem is none of these feel well thought-out. Moving the stick in different directions while attacking changes up the direction and strength of your hits, which is cool, but in most cases normal attacks do very little damage on their own. The game wants you to master its dodge and counter system, but this takes way too long for my taste in an action RPG. And make no mistake—FFXV is an action RPG, despite hanging on to some remnants of the series’s turn-based roots, like the ability to pause the action to choose a different target or analyze the enemy. Anyway, I like to ump in and smoke weak enemies quickly, not wait for them to attack then counter. That’s where Warp-Strikes come in. Pressing Triangle at any time warps Noctis directly to the point the camera’s looking at, and if it’s an enemy, he’ll do a Warp-Strike instead, dealing surprisingly good damage for very little mana cost. I noticed this right away and dumped my “Ascension Tree” points into raising its damage further, since warping around like a madman was the only fun part of combat for me.
It’s also where the jank comes in. This is the first Final Fantasy I’ve played with combat that feels even a little janky, let alone too often for my comfort. The icon to trigger a Warp-Strike doesn’t always show up when it should, enemy attacks are difficult to read and predict due to clumsy signaling, and battles with many enemies often devolve into screen-filling, chaotic messes. See, your party members fight beside you, like any true bros would, but they’re AI-controlled and don’t contribute much unless you command them to use their skills, which cost points that build up in a bar over time, similar to the XIII games. Some of these deal great damage, but since each skill levels up individually through usage, there’s no reason to switch them around. I gave Gladiolus a nice crushing attack and used that every time the bar filled up until he maxed out its level around halfway through the game. Then I unlocked an overall stronger skill and had him use that for the rest. Every battle, I’d Warp-Strike repeatedly, stopping to restore my mana when needed—which only takes a few seconds if there’s a warp point around—and using Gladio’s hammer attack whenever it was ready. That, combined with the odd spell use, was all I needed for every battle of the main game, and the depth afforded by the other systems wasn’t enough to make me want to use them much. In the end, I still had some fun whipping through enemies like butter and experimenting occasionally, but most battles were boring even when they didn’t take too long. I’d take any other FF game’s combat over XV’s. Square should have refined and iterated on Lightning Returns’s systems rather than than grafting some of them together with other random mechanics onto a wannabe-character-action Frankenstein experience.
It’s not just the combat that’s full of jank, either. Oh god, this game’s jump button drives me insane. Square make the classic mistake of using the same button to interact with objects, but somehow FFXV is the worst example of this I’ve ever played. It’s the game is coded to always do exactly the opposite of what makes sense for where Noctis is positioned. I won’t harp on this too much, since it’s a problem you do eventually get used to, but I shouldn’t need to struggle with basic commands for half the game. When I’m near my car and I quickly let go of the stick and press X, I don’t want to jump. I want to access my car—the window for this trigger should override any possibility of jumping while you’re inside it. Now, I do get this is a problem with open world design in general, and that QA is tough, but when practically every other modern game gets this right, there’s no excuse.
Fortunately, the game looks pretty good, especially in the open environments, though I wouldn’t call it a stunner. It’s about what I’d expect from a recent PS4 title, which is to say, it looks worse than Final Fantasy XIII, a game from fourteen years ago. (I’m not exaggerating—compare them yourself and see.) I get that I’m comparing a huge open world game to a hallway simulator, but strangely, XV’s linear, closed-off areas somehow look worse than its open world—perhaps an indication they didn’t get enough dev time, or that Square really wanted to focus on a pretty backdrop to Noctis and gang’s travels. I can’t fault them for that, but most of the late-game story missions take place in the kind of generic military complexes I’m sick to death of after playing VII Remake. Combined with the meandering story, I lost much of my interest in the game toward the end and wanted to be done as soon as possible.
My biggest problem with FFXV its structure. I used to say I’m as big a fan of open world games as anyone, but in 2023 that’s no longer true. Some of that’s on me, sure, but Square Enix knew what they were getting into by chasing the Western open world formula, which had become tired even in 2016. And the result is disappointingly Western, with not much new. There’s the standard copy-and-paste hubs, in this case gas stations, with quest-givers scattered about, a bunch of dungeons to find, and endless, endless hunts. Man, for how boring the hunts are there’s way too many of ’em here. Every Crow’s Nest diner, found at most gas stations, doles out a bunch of these over the course of the game, but unlike FFXII, nearly every one is nothing more than a fight with a group of normal enemies. There’s nothing special or notable about these creatures that I’m aware of; you just have to find one specific pack of them and take ’em out. Worse, you can only track one hunt at at time, so if you kill monsters from another hunt that you don’t happen to have active, you don’t get credit. Needless to say, this isn’t fun; it’s as if the hunts were designed to waste your time, yet they’re the best way to earn gil, so I found myself doing loads of them despite my disinterest.
The rest of the open world works pretty well; there’s an addictive element to chasing quests and charting new locations for sure. It’s only a disappointment in that it doesn’t introduce much new. While I may be tired of the open world formula, I can still get into it, and FFXV felt weirdly nostalgic to play in 2023 after barely playing any games of this style in years. Plus, XV’s got chocobos, which are just plain fun to ride. You can call them from anywhere and they can fit into tighter spaces than the Regalia, so my go-to strat for exploration was to drive to a new spot, hop out and explore on chocobo back. This would often lead me to stumble across a dungeon, which are among FFXV’s strongest aspects. In an impressive feat, they’re seamless with the world, no load screens or anything. Walk into a cave? It might be the start of a giant dungeon, beckoning you to continue. Find a temple out in the deep forest? It could lead down into dangerous catacombs, calling you to discover what they conceal. These are no joke; like any good open world game, there’s no level scaling, so if you want challenge, taking on the high-level dungeons is the way to go.
If you don’t want challenge, consider using the magic system, ’cause oh boy is it, er, completely absurd and ridiculous. I have no idea what Square was thinking reducing their famous spell system to overpowered grenades, but I kinda like it. Now, magic use is always my favorite part of RPG combat, but I understand the way Final Fantasy’s been heading, and I’m on board. I’m over the loss of tradition; bring on the insanity. The way magic works here is that you can hold up to 99 stocks each of fire, lightning, and ice elements, found in draw spots throughout the world. Then you can combine those in a menu along with any of several items to add effects, anything from poison to paralysis, to higher power, wider range, or even increasing XP gained. Aside from that last one if you’re looking to level up for the superbosses, none of these came anywhere close to the utility of Quadcast. It does what it says, casts the spell up to 4 times—there’s actually only a chance it reaches that many, but it’s usually 3 to 4, which is insane, since magic deals a crapload of damage to nearly every enemy in the game. There’s no reason to not always craft spells of the highest possible strength, and you can craft during battle, so I’d be sure to go in to boss fights with a full stock of elements, craft spells that hit a weakness, or two if possible, and nuke them. There’s a cooldown between spell uses, so I’d still have plenty of Warp-Striking to do, but since I put the rest of my Ascension points into improved spellcrafting, I made short work of damn near everything.
I can’t in my right mind call this a good magic system, and I wouldn’t want to see it in a future Final Fantasy without major changes, but I did enjoy using it in this one game. It again highlights the problem with the combat, though—too easy, with no reward for experimenting more with its systems. For example, your chocobo learns attacks as it levels up that it can ostensibly use to help you in combat, but these are so situational and slow as to not be worth it. It’s more of a happy accident when they happen. What kept me going was the general sense of adventure, the bromance, the beauty of the world, and watching the characters grow. Each party member has a specialty skill that slowly increases through use. Perhaps the most interesting is Ignis’s cooking, which you can do at any of dozens of campsites that dot the land. And my god, the cooking cutscenes are mouth-wateringly fantastic. I like to imagine one artist at Square with a passion for food who worked himself to death drawing the most scrumptious meals of his life, because there’s no other way to explain how tasty these look.
With cooking, however, the game’s structure again gets in the way of the fun. Campsites usually have magic draw points near by and let you change the time of day, so I found myself frequenting them, but if you want Ignis to cook something, you’ll have to spend the night, which “banks” your earned XP and levels you up. This otherwise solid mechanic’s got one flaw: staying the night in hotels gives you double, sometimes even triple experience, and there’s no reason any sane person wouldn’t want to use them instead. It’s a pure time saver, of course I’m going to prefer it. I wish this kind of thing weren’t in the game so I could enjoy the exquisitely made camping experience, but I can’t justify that. I don’t think this one’s on me, either—when one choice is clearly superior from a gameplay perspective, most players are going to take it. Still, I did camp plenty, even just to see the cutscenes and hear the dialogue, which I listened to all in Japanese. Given this is Square, that seemed the way to go, but who knows, the English VA might be great.
Noctis’s skill is fishing, which plays out as a decent and engrossing simulator that I had more fun with than expected for a guy who’s not into fishing games at all. I’m still not, but once in a while a mini-game will suck me in, and XV’s fishing did that for a while. It helps that there’s tons of pretty spots to fish in all over the map. Prompto’s skill is photography, which is more of an automated thing. Each time you spend a night to level up, he’ll show auto-generated pictures he took since the last time you slept and let you choose your favorites, which is pretty neat, albeit pointless. He’s got plenty of dialogue and even quests centered around his passion for photography, though; I love how FFXV ties these aspects of each character’s personality into the whole experience. Gladiolus’s skill is survival, which levels up as you run around and improves the items you win from battles. It’s… more of an internal mechanic being presented as something special, without giving the player anything to interact with or care about. If you’re playing, it’ll level up; if you’re not, it won’t. Well, I’ll be damned.
I’ve been harsh on Final Fantasy XV, yet I started this review by saying I like the game. That’s due to its subjective qualities more than aspects I can identify in a concrete way. In other words, it’s a vibe, man. For a good thirty hours, longer than many whole Final Fantasy games, I got to experience a weird Americana cum JRPG road trip exploration extravaganza, packed with intriguing happenstance, pleasing banter, and Japanese whimsy. I think the game was going for more than this, considering how much time the story spends romping through gray and brown hallways, but there’s enough I enjoyed to give a respectable spot in my tier list. And hey, I Platinumed the game—it gave me enough to keep going for quite a while.
I’ve got to quickly mention the infamous in-game Cup Noodle ad, which I found pretty funny. I may not like advertising in games, but this one at least makes sense in FFXV’s world, where they’re driving cars around and stopping at diners and gas stations. The devs included a cute little quest for it and everything, and instant noodles certainly fit XV’s world. So I’ve got to admit I don’t really care about this one, but I’d still rather not see ads in games, period.
Finally, the music I haven’t mentioned so far should not be overlooked and goes a long way toward my overall enjoyment of XV. I adore tons of these tracks, from the battle theme, overworld themes, and dungeon theme, to the original and quite varied songs on the Regalia’s radio. There’s enough good stuff that the soundtrack’s earned a spot in my listening rotation outside of games, a rare thing indeed. Final Fantasy XV may have plenty of flaws and frustrations. It may have jank, time wasters, and. But it’s got an upbeat core of joy and optimism, perfectly conveyed through its music, and that goes a long way.
Next month (and by that I mean later this month since I’m a bit behind), I’ll discuss Shining Force for Sega Genesis. See you then!
