Overall Score: 4/5
B
Gameplay: 4
In terms of the gameplay, FFXV definitely moves the franchise forward, but there is still room for improvement. Given Final Fantasy Type-0 and before that Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, we could see the Square-Enix was starting to move away from the menu based combat interface. Even in FFXV's prototype form, Final Fantasy XIII Versus, the battle system was to be more action oriented.
Having played though parts of, or the entirety of FFVI, FFVII, VIII, X, X-2, FFVII:CC, FFXIII and FF Type-0, I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. And this free roaming sort of action-style battle isn't anything that Square-Enix hasn't done before, I thought the system was very reminiscent of Star Ocean 3's. Is this the only way to evolve the series? No, but for a flagship franchise like Final Fantasy, I think it's the correct way to go. For instance, I think Trails of Cold Steel is a phenomenal game that uses a menu based combat system, but the game is also a little more niche, as opposed to a big flagship, bread and butter, franchise like Final Fantasy. In other words evolving the series in this direction will more likely draw in a larger audience.
Exploration is done in one massive screen/interface, ala Grand Theft Auto. There are no longer a world map/town screen/dungeon screens. You can run out of town and straight into the wilderness, or be out in the wilderness enter a cave and be in a dungeon without a change of screens. It all just seamlessly flows together. While at first it might have seemed like a radical departure for a Final Fantasy game, making it open world, in practice it simply feels like a natural evolution of the franchise. Given that exploring the world map for out of the way dungeons and towns with rare goods was a part of JRPGs in the past. In short it works very well for an RPG. The world can be traversed via on foot, in your car, on chocobo, or later on, via aircraft (I don't want to call it an airship since it's pretty small this time around).
Like with games like GTA or Red Dead Redemption, FFXV has a real time, day-night timer. Nighttime bring stronger monsters so it's suggested that the player find a hotel, or a campsite to bed down for the night. Doing this also tally's the group's experience points, no longer is exp tallied at the end of every battle. Night time is also when you'll see the more traditional Final Fantasy monsters like Bombs and Iron Giants, though you'll still see some old staples during the day. During the day you mainly encounter wild animals that actually become cooking ingredients for Ignis to use. One side quest actually has you going after a Behemoth after Gladiolus has a hankering for Behemoth meat.
Combat this time around is done in a field where the player has free roam and can run in any direction with the left analogue stick, and attacks are carried out with the O button. Attacks vary depending on which way the player has the stick tiled. The player also has the ability to dodge and parry, with parrying being done though very forgiving QTE inputs that are done in a way as to not be annoying or cause instant death/game over. There's no longer a battle screen, rather enemies are seen on the main interface and battles are triggered by encountering them (ala Xenosaga or Trails of Cold Steel). Rather than going into a separate screen the game goes into a battle mode, escaping battles is done simply by just running out of the battle zone. You have three support characters, that while you can give them orders (this game's equivalent to Limit Breaks) but you can't take direct control of them. Though they will also support you, they will come and heal you when you have your HP down and are staggering.
This is my first place of critique, only the O button is used for attack (though you do get a one hit warp-strike attack with the T button which strength depends on how far away from the target you are). Meaning the game lacks a combo system and battles ultimately just become mashing the O button. Not a huge deal, but the gameplay could have been made a bit deeper by integrating in a Xenogears style combo system where combo attacks were done though pressing S, T, O, and X in different orders. By adding in a combo system like this, players can learn new and more powerful moves to use.
The second point I would hit on, would be the weapons, the firearms in particular. This time around, instead of character classes, the player character, Noctus (I'll call him Noct from here on) is a jack of all trades and uses all weapons. When the game was still Versus, the player was able to take control of Prompto (the gunslinger) and target weak points on enemies. I would have carried this mechanic over to the firearms in the form of an aim-down-the-sight or scope mode, and also given Noct access to rifles, and shotguns instead of just handguns. As it stands, in the game, other than flying enemies and weak enemies, Noct's handguns are hardly useful. I would have made the firearms very powerful but at the cost of them only being powerful on weak point hits and having to manually aim for those points.
The third point, is the magic system. The magic system has some really good and really bad. First the good, across the map there are elemental draw points where Noct can absorb energy from, you can then use this energy, in combination with various items to craft your spells with. The spells then become consumables that you equip like weapons. Herein is one of my issues with magic in this game. It does get a bit annoying having to craft more spells mid battle. Instead I would have taken from FFVII's materia system. Instead of crafting spells, I'd have the mechanic as crafting materia, or to stick with the game's theme, crystals. Here, rather than being used for spell casting, magic points (MP) are used for evading and warp-striking. I would have given those a separate meter or have them draw from the Stamina meter instead. The other thing I take issue with, is there seems to be some level of friendly fire with magic. You can't order the team to go to a specific point, so when you cast an area of effect (AoE) spell, they take a slight hit plus what ever negative status effects the spells give. I'd have just made them immune to the player's offensive magic. So essentially, I'd have the mechanic being crafting your own materia/magic crystals and having magic drawn from you MP points, as had been traditionally done.
Summons return, only this time, the player has no control over who is summoned and when . It's not completely random, there are certainly conditions where they would become available. When this happens you'll be prompted to hold down the L2 button to trigger the summon. The list of summons is relatively short this time around, certainly no where near FFVII and FFVIII's number of summons. I think this is a bit of a step back, I would have liked to take direct control of the summon like you did in FFX, just have a time limit for how long you have control. Built on that, Square-Enix could even add an extra mechanic where the more often a particular summon is used, the greater the bond between that summon and Noct and therefore the longer they stay on the field.
As mentioned earlier, you can use Chocobos to get around, but now if you have your bird sufficiently leveled up, it'll come and assist you in battle. Either supporting you, or attacking your target.
Another relatively new element to be brought into FFXV is the ability to customize your characters and your car. Though character outfits are fairly limited and there aren't any new ones to buy at the stores in the game ($5 says we'll see DLC for stuff like SOLDIER or SeeD uniforms for them). Your car on the other hand is a wholly different story. You can change the colors, the color patterns and decals of the Regalia, as well as upgrade the car later. This isn't just limited to the car, you can even customize the colors of your Chocobo and decorate it with medals you've earned from winning races with it. Yup, the Chocobo races are back.
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| I ultimately settled on this |
Stability: 4
For the most part the game runs stable. However I did run into a couple hiccups. I've had one or two instances where the game didn't come out of sleep mode, and I've had one instance where I was streaming the game to my Vita and had the PS4 crash at the exp tally screen. I was still able to load a previous save and continue past the point of where the game crashed. So there wasn't anything that would be considered a game stopper.
Graphics and Visuals: 4
The game looks great, however some aspects doesn't look all that much better than the PS3, in fact, I'd go as far to say that Metal Gear Solid 5 on the PS3 had better looking on-field character models (though FFXV certainly has MGS5 PS3 beat in terms of cutscene models), and possibly environments that looked just as good. This is probably due to the fact that FFXV was originally FFXIII Versus being made for the 7th gen consoles. It's by no means ugly, but on the same token it also doesn't really seem to push the PS4 in the way the FFVIII pushed the PS1.
I did see a few texture glitches here and there, I mainly noticed with this plant life having fuzzy texture depending on distance and camera angle.
Plot: 3
The best way I can describe the plot is "strong but short". The game really focuses on the relationship between Noct and his friends/bodyguards/retainers Prompto, Ignis and Gladiolus, and the player really does begin to care about these four. On an interesting note, the Lucian government, and by extension Noct and crew were based on the Yakuza gangsters of Japan. Noct and crew were inspired by young gangsters and their entourage. Despite being removed from the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos, the plot still focuses around the Crystal in the possession of the Kingdom of Lucis, and using the Crystal to save the world from an encroaching darkness. A literal darkness where the nights have been growing unnaturally long without explanation, and while it's dark, powerful monsters called daemons prowl the countryside. The overall theme of the plot is a take on "the hero's journey" (the most famous telling of this theme being Luke Skywalker's story), that sees Noct growing from an unsure and somewhat apathetic Prince, to a King determined to fulfill his duty.
Despite the fact that I've put in 90+ hours in the game, the vast majority of that time was doing side missions and hunts. On that note all of these side quests happen in within the Kingdom of Lucis (most of which is under Imperial occupation, resulting in run ins with Imperial Army units, and raiding Imperial Army outposts). While you do visit locations in other countries such as Altissia, Tenenbrae and the Niflheim Empire, but you don't get to explore those lands much and are largely confined to one area/city. Which is actually a bit of the shame, while the plot takes effort in the relationship between the four guys, the antagonists by contrast, save for Ardyn Izunia and Aranea Highwind are rather one dimensional. Emperor Iedolas of the Empire, at the end of the day is just out for world domination. Imperial High Commander Ravus was somewhat interesting but no one to write home about. Now on the other hand, Chancellor Ardyn Izunia's character is fleshed out a lot more, given a backstory and complicated motives that you wouldn't guess, but there was still room to further develop his character that would have given his true agenda a greater emotional impact.
While the last chapter of the game did have a strong impact, but it could have been made greater had the player had the chance to travel the land in the ruined world and rally people for one last desperate push to save their world. There was an opportunity there for an everyone-standing-behind-the-King/The-King-carrying-everyone's-hopes-and-dreams-on-his-shoulders moment. A moment like that would have been the exclamation mark at the end of Noct's development.
The plots to previous Final Fantasy games like VII, VIII and X were much stronger than XV's. Those three had much more development, especially VIII and X, of the villains. FFVII gave us two villains, a fallen hero turned madman and a cold hearted Paul Ryan libertarian wet-dream corporate president. FFVIII gave us a villain who arguable did what she did because she just wanted to escape a cursed fate and survive. With a secondary villian doing what he was doing to avoid another world war that had happened prior to the game's start, and quite possible the reason the main characters all ended up together the way they did. Then FFX gave us one villain who was just trying to protect his people from annihilation and subjugation. While another set of villains took advantage of the situation to impose their totalitarian order on the world. Here, the Niflheim Empire is simply doing what it's doing for the sake of expansion and being the dominant superpower. Emperor Iedolas was said to be a wise and benevolent ruler in the past, but the game never goes into what changed him. Things can be speculated and implied, but there's no concrete character development that explains it. Iedolas certainly isn't as developed as the other secondary villains in previous games were.
On the other hand though, Ardyn Izunia is a much better villain than the Fal'Cie or Bhunivelze of the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos. Ardyn came off as enigmatic, on one hand he helps the player, but at the same time he is Chancellor of a hostile nation, but yet his dress and attire is much different than that of the other Imperial higher ups. By contrast the Fal'Cie just came off as lost children looking for their parent (Bhunivelze), like a crappy, whiny version of Xenogear's Gazel Ministry. But at least the Gazel were biologically programmed to do what they were doing, being part of a biological superweapon's self-repair system, the Fal'Cie just did what they did because they missed their "Father" Bhunivelze. Bhunivelze himself isn't any much better being nothing more than manipulative and petty, and only using others for his own ends. I can name the antagonists of FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFX-2, even after years of having last played them, off the top of my head. I can't even name a single Cocoon Fal'Cie off the top of my head. Sure I can name Pulse Fal'Cie, Cactaur and Titan off the top of my head, but that's only because those two characters have been Final Fantasy staples for quite some time, so that almost doesn't even count. As a villain, Ardyn is certainly far more interesting and much better written than the villains of Fabula Nova Crystallis. In fact, now that I think about it, I'd say he's one of the better Final Fantasy villains, better than Sephiroth and Kefka (oh yeah FFVI fanboys, I straight up went there!). However the rest of the Empire though is largely forgettable as villains, unlike the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company of FFVII.
To sum it up, the plot was good, there was great focus on the four main guys, and on the antagonist... but that kind of came at the expense of the rest of the characters. Case in point, the emotional impact of [spoiler]'s death was less than the impact of [spoiler]'s injury, let alone having the same kind of punch that Aerith's death did in FFVII. That's just a result of [spoiler]'s character not being as developed, they had their scenes in the story, but they weren't enough of a presence for the player to really emotionally invest into, and care about this character. Another example would be [spoiler] who has an obvious crush on Noct, but that isn't expanded on, nor is there any sort of resolution to it.
Part of me suspects though that they just wanted to get this game out, given that it's been rolling in development hell for some time, and that they needed to get a numbered Final Fantasy out to get people to forget about the XIII series and put that all behind us. I really just can't think of a good reason/excuse for such a short plot, given the story in open world games like Red Dead Redemption and the plots of past Final Fantasies. Which I suppose it's fine, but FFXVI is going to need more in the in the plot department, no excuse otherwise.
Though, while people gripe a lot over DLC and getting nickle and dimed over them. In this case, I think it would be good to release a few, it would give Square-Enix a chance to flesh out more characters, like Aranea Highwind. There's a time skip between the last two chapters and dialogue in the last chapter states that she's built up quite a reputation. A DLC chapter focusing on her and her exploits during that period would certainly be a nice bonus.
Perhaps this was the game that should have been Final Fantasy XIII...?
Art and Music: 5
I found the art direction to be very reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII and VIII which is no big surprise given that Tetsuya Nomura was heavily involved in XV's development. The game very much has that modern era with magic feel, though I'd say it was closer to FFVIII's feel than VII's dystopian feel. A convo I had with cosplayer and "old coot gamer" (her words) "Cinnabunny" I mentioned how the four seemed like they could have been another class of SeeD candidates from a Garden in FFVIII, an idea she was in agreement on. And speaking of the characters, they very much have Nomura's style.
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| Four buddies out on a road trip, the titular "Bros on the Road" |
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Along with different designs the characters do have different accents though they don't vary by much. Cindy speaks with a Southern drawl. Ardyn sounds somewhat like Jeremy Clarkson where as Ignis speaks with a more dry sort of English accent. Personally I would have liked to see the Imperials speaking with either French or German accents.
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| Promprto and his crush Cindy |
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| Altissia, looks like a nice place to live |
On to the music, the music was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who's past work included most of the music for Street Fighter II and the soundtrack for Parasite Eve. The sound track is pretty much what you would expect from Final Fantasy, which certainly isn't a bad thing, it actually reminded me quite a bit of FFVIII's soundtrack. Like most other RPG soundtracks, FFXV's has a wide variety of tracks to fit the mood, in fact, FFVX's soundtrack even has multiple battle themes, giving it the most number of battle scores in its sound track. Having a wide variety of tracks, FFXV's OST has the classical style with Latin lyrics, that was introduced with One Winged Angel and has become something of a go-to in the video game industry when something epic sounding was needed. To the more sleepy sounding music of Hammerhead. To fit the tone, Lestallum's music has something of a Spanish feel where as Altissia has guitars and accordions.
Final Verdict: Definite Buy
At the end of the day I would certainly go as far as to say this with the Final Fantasy game that people wanted after Final Fantasy XIII. No one really wanted XIII-2 or XIII-3, fans just wanted it to be done and over it and moved on from. And that's what FFXV did. Fans were mad that FFXIII lacked any towns. Fans didn't really warm to the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos. Surprisingly enough, Square-Enix listened, towns were back, and we got a whole new mythos, along with a more action oriented gameplay, that was new but still familiar at the same time. If this is a sign of things to come, of where the franchise is going to go, then I'm pretty optimistic for it's future.
Given that the game has been out for awhile, unless you're a fan of the franchise or the genre, I wouldn't pay full price. But it is a game that any gamer could enjoy. I didn't find any of the main dungeons or bosses to be crushingly hard. It's a game that even casual gamers can enjoy. The game's opening tagline, even before the title screen is "A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers" given that a friend of mine who's played WoW and had no prior interest in Final Fantasy made this his first PS4 game, I say it lived up to that tag.
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