A part of me has been waiting for this game since the first glimpse I saw back when it was still Versus XIII, though as the years dragged on, my interest had waned quite a bit.The troubled development of XV has had a significant impact upon the game itself. From the news and trailers that have been released piecemeal throughout the last ten years, it is evident that the story and overall design of the game have gone through a few iterations. However, a large portion of the game has been preserved from its original inception. At its core, I believe Final Fantasy XV has the trappings of a good game but I there are a lot of issues that mar its overall quality. This review goes deep into spoilers in order to criticize the problems I had with the story, be warned.

 

At its heart, FFXV is the story of prince Noctis’s ascension to the throne, which involves him becoming strong enough both physically and emotionally to be able to fulfill his destiny as the king of kings. Noctis’s development into a true king is catalyzed by the many tragedies that befall him and through the interaction and support of his close friends. In the beginning the goal seems to be to overcome Niflheim and reclaiming their country but quickly escalates to a doomsday scenario with the entire world hanging in peril, which is more or less pretty standard. Having a generic plot is not necessarily a problem for the quality of the story, which is more dependent on how the story is told and by the strength of its characters.

Compared to some of the more sullen and annoying FF protagonists, Noctis, from the very start, is fairly grounded and likable. The opening cutscene show his interactions with his father where he  blows his father off, not in a disrespectful way but more in line with a normal kid trying to get his dad to stop being overbearing. However, Noctis has no idea that his father is not telling him the true danger that the treaty signing with Nilfheim will lead to. This scene does an excellent job showing this two sided interaction where King Regis is trying to make sure that his son is ready for the hard journey in front of him and at the same time wordlessly say goodbye and spend as much time with him as he can, his expressions are enough to realize the concern he feels for his son. While Noctis is entirely clueless and just believes his dad is being annoying and doesn’t realize the danger his father is in.

While there are many emotionally powerful moments in the game,  I believe some of them end up not hitting the mark due to the lack of development of certain characters and relationships.

 

Supplemental Material

Before we get into the issues that I had with XV’s story, I think this is an appropriate time to talk about supplementary material providing extra story content to a game. Many series have extended universes that aren’t bound by the medium of games but extend into books, movies, and/or TV series. Which gives rise to complaints about the necessity of these other sources being required to enjoy and understand the story.

I believe that as long as the story of the game is self contained and complete that having supplementary material isn’t really a problem. Now judging a story to be self contained and complete will have different metrics of course. To further clarify my point, I would want the game itself not to require any sort of outside material to understand the overarching plot nor the motivations of the important characters involved. I also don’t think the game should explicitly explain absolutely everything either, I don’t mind subtlety or ambiguity.

FFXV has two big supplementary sources, the movie, Kingsglaive, and the 5 episode anime series, Brotherhood. I believe that Kingsglaive for the most part was entirely inconsequential to XV and suffered to an extreme degree the same problems I have mentioned about XV’s story. Kingsglaive serves as a leadup and tie in of XV’s beginning chapters in order to see the events that involve King Regis, the treaty signing and the fall of the crown city of Insomnia. The movie also spends some time trying to establish Lunafreya’s character in which she shows a vehement devotion to her duty as an oracle. This single mindedness seems to stem more as a duty to her position rather than any kind of emotional connection to Noctis himself. Though we know that she deeply cares for Noctis, this isn’t really focused on in the movie itself especially since Noctis isn’t involved in the movie. These events are not really necessary to play the game, though it had been suggested to me. Your party eventually finds out the outcome of Kingsglaive  and the things they don’t know explicitly are theorized upon by the guys (such as how Luna has the ring).

Now, the Brotherhood series end up being short stories into each of the 4 party members past. It establishes Noctis’s relationship with his friends and provides background details into theirs lives and history. The series does well fleshing out the backstory of the main characters and was not necessary in the main game because I believe the relationships between them is fleshed out well in XV. I do wish they had linked the stories or referenced them in some degree.

The best way to examine the faults with the characters and story is by looking at what the game does well first, which is the relationship between your party.

 

I think the best thing about the game has to be the relationship between the main party, their friendship is done and shown well throughout the game. XV does a great job establishing these friendships throughout the banter and dialogue that is present throughout the game while driving, fighting and exploring. A lot of these interactions are highlighted through nonverbal interactions throughout the story.

Gladiolus is Noctis’s sworn shield, his duty to protect him. Gladio serves as the party’s primary motivator, especially in moments of weakness where Noctis’s resolve is shaken, such as Luna’s death. He comes across as cruel in these moments but needs to keep Noctis motivated for the benefit of the world. He most likely knows this and carries this burden without complaint. Remember he also lost his father when Insomnia fell.

Ignis serves as a sort of caregiver for Noctis, who due to his mother’s death and father’s duty has no one really taking care of him. Of course as a prince he doesn’t really want for anything but Ignis bring a more personal concern that Noctis lacks from others. Much like Gladio protects Noctis physically Ignis does the same emotionally.

Prompto is an outsider, while both Gladio and Ignis serve Noctis, Prompto does not. This does not discount Gladiolus’s or Ignis’s friendship but it does provide a point of difference between them and Prompto. Prompto isn’t duty bound to Noctis and serves as a partner in crime in a way because they are the same age. While the other two both serve as partial authority figures in a sense as older brothers. This otherness serves as a point of weakness to Prompto because he fears he isn’t as useful to Noctis.

There are a handful of scenes that serve as emotional gut punches throughout the game and highlight the depth of the bond these guys have between them.

There is a scene that is missable that occurs with Prompto confiding in Noctis that he feels like he doesn’t bring anything to the group and is useless. Noctis reassures him that this is not how he sees him. I wish this scene was unmissable, I had to catch it on Youtube, because it provides insight into Promto’s feelings and would make a later scene more important, which I’ll mention later on.

Moments dealing with Ignis’s blindness were also well done with a complex set of emotions dealing with the whole group dynamic. Gladio is angry at Noctis for being unmotivated and lost and not really showing concern for Ignis. Noctis is depressed and unmotivated after Luna’s death. Which leads to a rift between Noctis and Gladio. Gladio in a way is correct and they do have to push on in spite of their losses but chooses a poor way to try and motivate Noctis who just gets angry in turn. Prompto is stuck and can’t really do anything to fix the issues. The turning point occurs after the Marlboro fight, where Ignis gets tired of all the animosity and comes to terms with his blindness being permanent and choosing to stay with the group. He agress with Gladio on Noctis moving forward but also tells Gladio that he can only do so when he is ready. Moments like this really highlight the strength of these characters and they don’t instantly resolve these issues and works through them like normal.

The only flaw I can point out is that I don’t think there are enough of these moments! Granted not all of them can be as heavy as the ones mentioned already but even small, fun scenes would have been great. Especially since the one Prompto scene I mentioned earlier is missable.

Which leads into one of the scenes I don’t think really worked because it involved the overall story rather than focusing just on the relationships. Near the end of the game Prompto reveals he is from the empire and has the required codes to open some door they needed to get through. This reveal was dropped in so suddenly it felt like an afterthought and of course nobody cared and friendship transcends where you are from etc.

This is a good moment to point out that there are 3 character DLCs coming out for Gladio, Ignis and Prompto that fill in the moments in the story where you are seperated, which just seems like they carved out these sections to part out for money. Especially since in the game the intentionally make these sections vague and the characters don’t really expand n what hapened or refer to specifics. I would probably have an easier time accepting these DLC missions if they were linked more organically to the game. Why make it a huge secret, it doesn’t make sense within the game for the characters to not fill in Noctis about what happened.

Now finally, my hands down favorite part of the game occurs after the credits roll out.

“I’ve made my peace. Still… Knowing this is it and seeing you here, now, it’s… more than I can take.”

– Noctis

The final camp scene really is the culmination of all the interactions that occur between your group and Noctis finally breaks down in front of his friends, not because he is afraid to die, but because of the love he feels towards his friend. This was the most powerful scene in the entire game and especially tragic due to Noctis’s upcoming fate. The facial animation of Noctis was fantastic with the lip quiver and everything. Both Ray Chase and Suzuki Tatsuhisa knocked it out of the park with their voice acting as well.

 

 

Outside the main characters the supporting cast  is woefully overlooked and underutilized. Lunafreya is supposed to be a huge part of this prophecy in which she acts on to support Noctis but her motivations or struggles are barely shown. She has personal history with Noctis yet this is not shown much if at all besides flashes of their childhood  and the game even introduces an easy way to fill in this background with Umbra passing messages between the two. However, this ends up providing no information at all with both Noctis and Luna only writing one line responses which seems to waste a great nonintrusive way to establish their relationship and why they care for one other. After the large buildup of meeting Luna, there is zero opportunity to interact with her personally before she is swiftly executed, which is suppose to serve as an emotional gut-punch to cement the party’s determination but the moment ends up having no weight behind it and feels like a cheap way to draw emotion rather that building up a memorable character. Ignis’s injuries, which occur at the same time, have a larger impact due to him being a more more fleshed out character. While the later examples of character missteps can be partially excused as not being a part of the main focus of the story, this reason falls apart for Luna because she is important and a large part of the journey from the beginning of the game until Altissia.

Luna’s brother, Ravus is built up as an antagonist throughout the entire game with his own reasons for not liking King Regis and Noctis but aside from him popping up once to confront you he disappears until the final chapters of the game. You learn later on that he was conflicted and ends up trusting his sister and held on to Regis’s sword to give to Noctis but rather than encounter him a final time you find him dead in Chapter 13 with a bunch of letters scattered unceremoniously around his body almost as if placed after the fact when the developers realized they had not properly laid out his motivations or his actions throughout the game.

Even the emperor of Niflheim, Aldercapt,  is basically ‘killed’ offscreen by being turned into a demon. If I had not had subtitles turned on I wouldn’t even know one of the demons I killed was supposed to be him.

Then you have Cor, who was supposed to be a close friend and protector of King Regis just disappears after the first third of the game and never encountered again and only briefly mentioned in passing.

Ardyn being the true villain and not so subtly manipulating you for his own purposes is interesting and I do thin that keeping his motivations at the outset mysterious and unknown serve as enticing motivation to follow through to the end but you never really know whats going on with him. You have information that he gave which can hardly be completely trustworthy and unbiased and a brief mention of him from Bahamut. I wish there was a chance for Noctis to slowly unravel more of what was going on with Ardyn. His origin as an originally good person who was corrupted and then discarded by the Astrals makes an interest origin for a villain and in the end we see that his plan for the most part succeeds. He ends up manipulating Noctis into killing him, making the using up the power of the crystal, ending the royal bloodline and ridding the world of demons. Was he just crazy and corrupted or was there a prt of him that wanted to remove the influence of the Astrals and finally destroy all remnants of the demons present in the world?

Having these holes in characterization end up torpedoing parts of the story because many of these characters aren’t fleshed out enough to feel a connection to, positive or negative.

Pacing

Aside from the issues I had with how the characters were handled, I believe there were some problems with the pacing and mood of the overall journey. The game is build up as a road trip from the outset yet by the end of Chapter 1 the fall of Insomnia and the death of King Regis occurs which instantly changes the situation and the mood, it actively works against the premise of a road trip with bros, there is a dissonance between fulfilling inconsequential sidequests with the death of Noctis’s father looming over his head. However, this isn’t much of a loss since most of the side activities are generic fetch or kill quests which lose any sense of novelty almost immediately. After the end of chapter 8 the open world aspect is closed off and you are railroaded through the remaining story. I don’t have fault with this because as the story progresses the stakes keep increasing until you can no choice and can’t ignore the greater threat at hand. The game even included a mechanic to take a break from the story and continue sidequests if you should so desire.

I have a problem with the overall pacing of these chapters and everything after reaching Altissia feels rushed. Altissia itself is introduced as a beautiful and huge city which aside from a few portions you cant access or explore. After the battle with Leviathan and Luna’s death you are moved along with transition screens from point to point without a chance to really interact with the places you go to. You visit Tenebrae but you can’t even look around, which would provide a moment to flesh out both Luna and Ravus, instead we talk to some servant of their family who basically tells you Ravus was a good guy all along and that’s it. The location where Shiva’s corpse is just seems like cut content which might led to a larger storyline associated with Gentiana. Finally, you reach the empire but are immediately sequestered into long hallways instead of being able to even in the smallest sense experience the capital city of the empire which is now ruined. This is the infamous chapter 13, where you are stripped of your friends and your power and forced to use the Ring of the Lucii to deal with enemies. You are alone and enclosed in a claustrophobic setting without your powers with Ardyn gloating over the intercom. This moment strips Noctis to his lowest point in the game which should instill you with anguish and fear but the sheer length and tediousness of the encounters end up making this whole chapter an exercise in frustration. The tight corridors also make the already terrible camera infuriating.

The final chapter has you timeskip into a ruined world 10 years into the future  and when you work your way back to your friends they basically seem no worse for wear and treat your absence much like a little jaunt to the store and immediately transitions you into the final moments of the game. They throw you into this nightmare of a world that has been this way for 10 years and you don’t even get a few minutes to actually see the ramifications of it.

These pacing issues feel jarring and the rush the the end doesn’t help the gravity of the situation sink in, letting up on the pedal near the end would have provided some time to reflect on the monumental sacrifice that Noctis was making and allow his friendsa chance to deal with the fallout.

 

 

Combat

Throughout the game the combat ended up swinging wildly from immensely satisfying to frustrating and a chore. The combat is fairly simple and easy, you can easily finish most encounters spamming attack with the occasional parry. The game allows for different weapon types: swords, greatswords, spears, guns, daggers and royal arms. Enemies are weak to certain types of weapons and you can seamlessly switch between your weapons with the d-pad. The combat system also allows for different moves and combos depending on the position of the analog stick and even the timing of attacks. The weight of your attacks and your warp maneuverability are satisfying  and the link strikes with your party members are amazing. I ended up switching the game to Wait Mode, which pauses your game when you aren’t taking any actions, simply because using team abilities does not pause the game like using items does.

Combat works well and is enjoyable when there are only a few enemies around but as the number increases it devolves into a large group of quick enemies just spamming attacks non stop. Again in no way is this really a problem in terms of difficulty, just annoying. The game doesn’t punish you for using items and you can brute force yourself through many encounters just by spamming items. The way the game deals with difficulty is to make enemies damage sponges and deal incredible high AoE damage which turns the game into a frustrating series of using items to keep your team alive until ultimately you realize they are absolutely useless. Now granted this starts happening towards the end of the game and even in the post game with high level enemies and bosses but it is still a problem.

A lot of problems come from the camera itself which is mildly annoying in open fields but as soon as there are any kind of obstacles like trees your visibility will immediately drop to zero and god forbid you are in an enclosed space which enemies jumping around you.

 

Boss Fights

Boss fights consist of various large monsters, the Astrals (which end up as your summons) and demon Ravus and finally Ardyn. Most of the large monster bosses occur at the end of the various dungeons you explore throughout the story and overall I didn’t have much of a problem with them besides your party being mostly useless in these fight, a problem which escalates as these monsters become stronger. Out of the six Astrals present in the story you fight three of them: Titan, Leviathan, and Ifrit. The Titan fight ends up being nothing more than a QTE with empire soldiers peppered in and your fight shifts between these two. I believe the sheer size of Titan serves as a problem for you and the combat system so these QTEs are used to avoid them, however, the fight isn’t stretched out so I didn’t find it as too much of a problem. Though they might have broken the fight into phases where you just deal with parts of his body as the fight in much the way the God of War series does.

The second Astral fight, which is Leviathan, is an all around poorly designed encounter. You are without your friends throughput this fight and basically warp around hitting Leviathan for almost no damage until a QTE sequence begins and you are then given a powered up infinite armiger form where you can fly around and hold down the attack button to fire weapons. Initially this boost of power feels amazing until you realize how much hp Leviathan has and Leviathan itself has no interesting mechanics to avoid or any semblance of challenge. The fight devolves into holding down the attack button until you can work your way through the giant hp bar with absolutely no fear of losing the encounter.

The next significant boss fight, excluding the random bigger monsters,  that you deal with is the reanimated Ravus which I think fully encapsulates all the problems with how boss level encounters are designed, which is something that is repeated throughout the post game fights. Your party’s usefulness at this point has become almost nothing, aside from maybe using on of their abilities to buff your damage. The Ravus fight is incredible simple, I believe besides his random weapon swings he only has three major abilies: a parry-able charge, a purple AoE explosion and a another AoE explosion he starts using after he takes a large amount of damage. Both these AoEs are highly telegraphs so it is extremely easy to avoid as Noctis both your party is completely helpless and usually gets 1-shot and immediately go into a downed state. Ravus also has a huge hp pool and pretty much doesn’t change tactics throughout. Personally, the only teammate I kept alive was Gladio because I could abuse his ability’s invincibility frames to avoid the AoE attacks every time they were used. There is almost no point in reviving your party for them to immediately be downed again, a occurrence that is especially heinous throughout the post-game monster hunts and dungeons where everything does enough AoE damage to instantly down your party. The combat really falls apart trying to make satisfying challenging fights. All these fights usually include huge damage abilities balanced around being able to warp or parry through them, which leaves your party to take the full brunt and dying. These fight don’t progress through different phases or movesets or enemy behavior which ends up making fights tedious especially because the hp of the enemies is so inflated.

The final Astral fight with Ifrit takes place at the end of the game and I actually enjoyed the fight even though it suffers partially from the issues I mentioned earlier. Ifrit doesn’t do anything really interesting except spam the same few abilities on you, however, he actually doesn’t instantly kill your party members and his hp bar isn’t as ridiculous compared to the damage you are able to dish out at the moment. There are no QTEs throughout the fight aside from the normal parry pop ups you get. All these factors allow you to have fun with the combat and be able ot use your entire party in the encounter without the need to endlessly spam elixirs and phoenix downs, not to mention there are some awesome scenes with the other Astrals helping you weaved in before and after the fight takes place. I am glad they let you actually fight because I believe they could have easily took the fight out and dealt with Ifrit through the cutscenes with Bahamut and Shiva.

The final fight of the game is against Ardyn, who mirrors your abilities, in a one-on-one fight which starts in an interesting way with a human enemy but it goes through a similar pattern as the Leviathan fight with both of you activated infinite Armiger and flying in the air shooting projectiles at each other, thankfully the fight is over in a few minutes and doesn’t stagnate as much as the Leviathan encounter.

I believe the combat system itself isn’t so flawed that there is no way to fit fun and challenging fights without them devolving in tedium because the Ifrit fight, while not perfect, was still enjoyable for me. Thematically the game is focused on you and your friend’s journey and of course you as the main character have special powers, however, they also included you sharing this power with your friends. Having the rest of your party fall so far behind and become useless item sinks doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience, especially since a lot of the fun moments in the combat come from using your teammate abilities and linking up for combos with them.

 

Technical and Design Issues

These issues are going to get more nitpicky as I go through them but they bothered me enough to remember and this was the only place I could really list them.

First of all, the camera is just absolutely terrible and with any kind of obstacle near you turns into a complete mess with no visibility. I actively avoid fights near bushes rocks or trees. The default control scheme was pretty bad and after I found that there were more control options I changed to the ‘C’ scheme, which maps dodge and attack to L2 and R2, respectively. This has a marked improvement in my combat ability and enjoyment once I became use to it. The lock on system is obnoxious there is a lockon that you need to hold and a ‘permanent’ lock that is toggleable with another button press. Even if you do lock in the lock-on has the problem of switching wildly when you move the camera. Using the item menu pauses the game but using your teammate abilities, some of which you need to aim while trying to actively dodge and fight, does not. I had to turn on Wait Mode simple for this reason alone.

The game is filled with fetch/kill quests, pretty much none of the quests are interesting or add anything in terms of character interactions or plot . I spent some time doing the hunts but even those are tedious because you can only pick up one hunt at a time and each time you pick one up  you need to talk to a tipster, transition into sitting down, move over to the hunt window, accept the hunt and then back out of the sitting animation which adds up to a lot of wasted time. Some hunts are arbitrarily locked behind hunter level even though there are harder hunts at earlier levels.

You cannot track multiple quests in the map menu, you need to select the quest in order for it to be marked.

80% of the time you try to pick up something, you jump.

The car is basically on rails. Once it can fly it becomes a metal death trap.

Carved out DLC.

 

Conclusion

Looking back it might seem like I completely hated the game but I do think it was worth playing. Maybe its because of the brain’s ability to fill in the gaps and try to make satisfying connections that haven’t really been given to you but I enjoyed the overall story. More specifically I enjoyed the journey involving a close group of friends struggling through terrible circumstances and yet still struggling to barely get a bittersweet ending.I think the development of this core bond that lies at the heart of the game really saved it and makes it the reason I enjoyed it so much. The combat too has moments where its just very exciting and fun, which did make me actively seek fights, I just don’t believe if delivered fully as a satisfying and challenging experience, especially during the endgame and post game. I guess there is some ineffable quality that occurs when everything comes together and despite all it flaws, I still enjoyed the game as a whole. Hopefully the next Final Fantasy doesn’t have such a troubled development cycle and Square Enix can improve upon what the have done in XV.