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Introduction

Hey! It's been a while since I've had something to write on the blog, and this one's a doozy. I recently finished playing Final Fantasy XV, and... I have thoughts. This game left me feeling so many conflicting things, I just had to sit down and write all my thoughts about it in one place. I won't say this is a review, so don't expect actual constructive analysis about the game, just expect to hear the thoughts that were bouncing in my head that I had to get out. Thank you in advance for reading it all, it's basically a whole essay.

Putting the "Fan" in Fantasy

I would say I've been into Final Fantasy since about as long as I can remember consciously being into video games. When I was really young, I was more preoccupied with things like Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog, but JRPGs still got me hooked at a relatively young age. I believe this was largely because of Pokemon. I had a passing interest in the TV show as a kid, and ended up coming into possession of one of the games somehow. Maybe it was a gift, maybe a hand-me-down. I wasn't into the creature-collecting thing at the time, I didn't really get hooked on a creature-collector until I found the Shin Megami Tensei series. At the time, I wished that the games that I played had more interesting stories, and those earlier Pokemon games at the very least felt like an adventure, even if moment-to-moment narrative was thin. Turn-based RPG combat was new to me, but I very quickly grew to appreciate it, it was nice to be able to sit and think and consider my next move.

My actual introduction to Final Fantasy wasn't that grand. I had set up some emulator to play some other game, probably at the recommendation of a friend, and downloaded a Final Fantasy ROM with it. It's long enough ago, I don't even remember which game. I want to say it was Final Fantasy 4, I think I have some quite early memories of that game but nothing to actually substantiate them as real. It's been too long to know for sure. A long-term friend had also shown me Kingdom Hearts around the same time. I didn't know it was related to Final Fantasy at the time, but it interested me because of its character-focused story. I never cared for the Disney stuff in Kingdom Hearts, I always thought it brought the overall experience down. Sometime after that, I played Final Fantasy 8; it was one of the first pieces of media I consumed where I really let myself get invested in a love story. FF8 found me at a time in my life where I was ready to start exploring emotions like that, though I didn't even know it was a love story at the time I started playing. I played Final Fantasy 1 and 2 through the Dawn of Souls bundle many, many times. they're short enough games that I feel like that's not unreasonable to say.

Around this time, I started to become more aware of the games I was consuming. I knew what it was to be a "fan" of something, and I considered myself a fan of Final Fantasy. FF13 was coming out around that time, I got it for Christmas and bounced off. Hard. I don't really know why. It's likely the characters didn't stick with me immediately, or perhaps it was the aesthetic that turned me off. The opening area of FF13 leaned much harder into science fiction than I expected, and I think it was a big enough shock to turn me off of the experience. From there I'd move backwards, though not exactly linearly. Playing a handful of the older games, I experienced the entirety of Final Fantasies 4, 6, and 7 (though likely not in that order) and found a lot to enjoy. By that time, I had talked to enough people and read enough online discussion to know the "deal" with Final Fantasy. The series was known for its high highs and its low lows. Every game could very reasonably be someone's favorite game, and every game could very reasonably be someone's anathema.

In 2016, Final Fantasy 15 was coming out and it went completely under the radar for me. I got into Final Fantasy 14 around the time of Heavensward's release, and sunk so much time into that game on the loudest PS3 ever. If it wasn't FF14, Splatoon, or Smash Bros at that time, I didn't want it. Tabletop gaming also found me around this time, card games and RPGs, and I spent a lot of my hobby time exploring those spaces as well. There were so many factors that caused me to overlook the game. I think I borrowed a copy from a friend, or played some at a friend's house, and wasn't impressed. I'd continue to be a fan of Final Fantasy, consuming FF and FF-related games off and on for the next ten years, and finding something to enjoy in nearly every one. I never went back to 15, however. A large part of that is due to "the controversy".

I Can't Believe It's Not Bethesda

I don't think anyone active in the JRPG fandom space, or gaming space in general around 2016, missed the conversation about Final Fantasy 15. From what I understand looking back at it, the game just didn't function at some fundamental level. Bugs and poor performance riddled the open world of the game, robbing many players of a clean and flawless experience. I heard the combat was boring and uninspired, demanding very little input from the player. Players complained about their problems with the game's narrative, the story the game presented at launch feeling incomplete and featuring many noticeable gaps that the story calls direct attention to multiple times. It didn't help that the story was told to the player piecemeal across the game, a movie, a short anime, and a handful of DLCs that show you the missing chunks of the story that should have been there from the start. I just didn't want to get invested in something that everyone told me was garbage. The game went on insane sale at some point, years later after the Royal Edition had landed on PC, and I picked it up and never gave it a proper shot. I may have installed it and dabbled around? I'm not sure. I didn't properly touch it until this year, when a partner of mine got the game as an excuse to use their PlayStation. It gave me a reason to try the game out, to see what I had missed, and it didn't sound like a very long game, so what's the harm?

Fantastic, Flailing, Fascinating, Falling Apart, Final Fantasy XV

I feel like it's only fair that I start my discussion of this game with what I believe to be the game's strongest asset by far: the core cast of characters. These four young men and their relationship with each-other is what got me hooked on the game immediately, and what kept me coming back until the journey was over. It's what got me to look past the broken structure of the story, the overly simplistic combat, the frustration of having to look at external media to get the full picture. I think if anything is the best foot to lead with when talking about the game, it's Prince Noctis and his Royal Retinue.

Brotherhood

The game starts in the middle of some major conflict the player has no context for, putting the main party's dynamic on full display. In a courtyard enveloped in darkness, a man, larger than life, perhaps a god, sits upon a throne of flames as our protagonists approach. The player is given control of one Noctis Lucis Caelum, and as the player approaches the burning figure, a wave of flames engulfs Noctis. A man of similar age rushes to his side, patting out the flames on Noctis's attire. This man is introduced as Prompto Argentum, and he reassures and supports Noctis as he recovers from the attack. As the figure prepares for another attack, another man, somewhat larger and older, rushes Noctis to the safety of cover. This man, Gladiolus Amicitia, shields the party with his body, protecting the others at the expense of his own safety. Ignis Scientia, the glasses-wearing member of the party, is shown giving Noctis a healing potion and helping him up before the fight continues and the camera flies away, fading to a different scene.

The four men, much younger, are shown standing in front of a king. The king gives a formal address to Noctis, the Prince of the nation of Lucis, to set forth on a journey. Noctis, seemingly fed up with the formality of the sendoff given, storms off without his companions. The remaining three give their own hastened acknowledgements to the king before following. The king follows, and before the four young men leave on their journey, he addresses Noctis not as the prince, but as his son. He gives a somewhat ominous address, warning Noctis not to return once he leaves, and leaves him with these words: "Walk tall, my son."

Another fade, this time to the four alongside their car which has broken down just outside of Insomnia, capital of Lucis. The four work together to push their car to the first stop on their royal road trip, accompanied by a cover of *Stand By Me* which incorporates the series' iconic Prelude theme. It's here that we get the first extended look at each individual's personality, and the group's overall dynamic.

The Royal Retinue

It's very rare that a game's cast of characters hooks me right away, but for me there was no growing period. From the beginning of the adventure, these four dorks owned my heart.

Noctis Lucis Caelum (Front Left)

The game's central protagonist and the prince of Lucis. Noctis ventures forth from his home for the first time to take part in a political arranged marriage. As part of a peace agreement between the Kingdom of Lucis and the ever-expanding Empire of Niflheim, Noctis is to be wed to Lunafreya Nox Fluret, a divine Oracle from the Empire's newly-acquired daughter-state of Tenebrae. Unaware of the grander purpose of this journey beyond the wedding, Noctis starts as a bit of a sarcastic slacker. Very few things motivate Noctis to push himself to his limit, and while he understands the benefit of a hard-fought victory, he would much rather sleep in or spend the day fishing at a calm lake on a sunny day.

Gladiolus Amicitia (Back Left)

The big brother of the group, and Noctis's royally-appointed bodyguard. Gladiolus is the big brother of the group, as well as the group's rock. When times get tough, Gladio is the one who offers a shoulder to lean on. When someone needs sense talked into them, beaten into them if they need to, Gladio is the one to do it. Gladio's purpose is to protect his friends until he can stand no longer, and he owns that duty with pride and conviction. An avid outdoorsman, Gladio's favorite hobby is camping. Before leaving Insomnia, Gladiolus packed all of his camping gear into the car, just in case the group finds a perfect place to rough it for the night.

Prompto Argentum (Front Right)

Prompto is the only member of the main cast that is not of noble blood, and perhaps Noctis's closest friend because of that. Born to no special family or caste, Prompto was simply a classmate of Noctis's. Prompto struggles with his self image, believing himself to not stand up to the "higher standards" of the rest of the group. In spite of this, Prompto is the group's heart. He's the wisecracking, excitable jokester of the group. He has a passion for photography, constantly snapping photos of the journey every moment he gets. Occasionally he asks the group to pull over to take a nice photo together, and the group always looks over Prompto's photos for the day before going to bed.

Ignis Scientia (Back Right)

Appointed as Noctis's advisor and retainer, Ignis has always been by Noctis's side to provide his insight and support. A natural tactician, it is Ignis's quick thinking that more often than not gets the boys out of a tight situation. He acts as the party's chauffeur, happily driving the group from location to location. Ignis additionally serves as the group's cook, after a night of camping Ignis rises bright and early to cook a nutritious, stat-buffing meal from the ingredients the boys have gathered. After being told of a dessert that Noctis had during his childhood visit to Tenebrae, Ignis has picked up baking in an attempt to replicate the treat for his prince.

The Regalia (Center)

It would be incomplete to mention the group without mentioning their trusty steed, the Regalia. A classic Lucian sports car, the Regalia is the selfsame car that Noctis's father and his companions took on a very similar journey across the world. As the group effectively lives out of the car, it has been outfitted as a portable base of operations, housing the group's weapons, camping gear, food, and even features a system to order and have items delivered to its location. With proper love and maintenance, there's nowhere this car can't take you.

A World to Love

I've Been Here

There's a quality to this game's setting that I've not really experienced in any game since. Perhaps it is just a matter of the games I have played, I am sure there are open world games that have a similar feeling, but this is the first game that has offered me such an authentic feeling contemporary world. Perhaps the reason that I can feel myself get so invested in this setting is because I personally have been here before, in a sense. The world is big, boring, and full of nothing. There's hardly anything in the manner of cities to explore in the countryside of Lucis, and it appropriately feels like a countryside. Highways connect landmarks, with little pit stops, gas stations, tourist traps, and rustic diners on the way to where you're headed. You'll drive by beautiful, captivating natural vistas, many of which look like national parks I've been to and spent days in just absorbing the nature.

The sandy southwest vibe of the game's first area, Leide, especially captivated me. Growing up in the dry part of southern Colorado, and taking many, many road trips to random locations all around the region, this *is* what home looks like to me, complete with random junked cars peppered here and there, abandoned mines, and little settlements too small to be called towns that just make you wonder who the hell even lives here.

Open World Perfected?

Each region of the world has its own diverse biome, from rolling plains and rocky shores to swamps and volcanoes, every region has its own grounded beauty. I mentioned that the game's world is quite empty, and that's true, but I think that has its own charm compared to something like The Elder Scrolls, where meaningless little dungeons and caves are litter around every corner. If you take time to explore in Final Fantasy 15, you will find things. You'll find nature, you'll find beautiful vantage points, little pamphlets to read about the region's ecology and history, and spots to take photos, pop up a camp, and relax with your friends.

I fell in love with this world while exploring it in the first half, largely due to the open world's core gameplay loop. Experience points are the main resource for character progression, much like any other RPG. In this game, however, experience points are not applied to your characters immediately upon earning them. Characters only gain their tallied EXP once they sleep for the night, either at a camp or within a city. The nights of the Lucian countryside are dangerous, plagued with a mysterious darkness that gives rise to powerful daemons. Travel on roads is largely impossible at night thanks to this daemonic threat, pushing the player into the following gameplay loop:

• Go into a city and accept a bunch of quests
• Drive to a region of the map where your quests are gathered around
• Go from quest to quest, taking time to explore the world, gather resources, and engage in your hobbies on the way
• Tally up your experience points with every objective cleared
• As night falls, you retreat to the nearest campsite to call an end to the day, leveling up, looking at that day's photos and choosing which ones to keep, and having Ignis treat the party to a warm meal

The way this gameplay loop encourages you to interact with the open world is deceptively compelling. I've played many, many open world RPGs, but very little has felt like such an immersive adventure as this game is able to make me feel. If any of this sounds like it would be up your alley, I'd recommend looking into the game a bit deeper. This experience of hanging out with your friends on a country-spanning road trip is genuinely excellent if you're into open world games.

Difficulty? What's that?

The game's core combat system is... unconventional, to say the least. Noctis can equip up to four weapons at a time, and is able to swap between them at will in the middle of the game's free-flowing action combat. The combat is flashy, each weapon type having visually stunning animations and combo chains, but it's missing depth. To do your most complicated combos, you... hold one button. Noctis will automatically advance and attack while you hold the attack button, changing his combo string depending on what direction you hold on the stick while attacking. In terms of defense, all one must do is hold the defend button. Noctis will automatically dodge and deflect oncoming attacks as long as the defend button is held, consuming small amounts of MP at a time, but never enough to matter in the long run.

I think the problems with the game's core combat mechanics can be best explained by two other tools, warp striking and elemancy. A combat system as simple as this could get a pass if, perhaps, navigation and character placement are important in some meaningful way. The game, however, gives you a tool to completely invalidate character placement altogether. At the press of a button, Noctis can warp directly to a target in front of him, dealing massive damage that scales up with how far away he is from the enemy. These huge warp strike attacks are often one of your strongest tools, meaning the best ways to fight stronger enemies is to run away out of danger, warp strike in, and repeat. If even this is too much to demand of the player, then they need only to rely on the game's magic system to end encounters before they begin. Elemancy is the name given to the game's spell-crafting system. Noctis can collect elemental energy from deposits near campsites or within dungeons, and use them to craft powerful spells. Perhaps too powerful. If you dump everything you have into two or three spells and mix in some rare monster parts for good luck, you can cast gigantic explosions that trigger five times and end boss encounters before they can even get off the ground.

Even if warp strikes and elemancy don't win the fight for you, consumables are highly abusable. Time freezes when you go to use a consumable item, and your stock of consumables is hardly limited. You can hold a stack of 99 full-heal potions and burn through them to brute force any encounter. Money is hardly difficult to come across at all in this game, and all your most important items can be freely ordered from the Regalia, meaning you hardly ever have to go back in town for anything except gas. This game's combat did nothing for me, it is pure style over substance which was neutral at best and actively bored me at worst.

Story

I don't intend to talk about the story in any detailed sense, but I won't censor myself either. I'm more interested in talking about themes and trends in this section over moment-to-moment narrative. This isn't out of a fear of spoilers, but because I'm simply more interested in talking about the broad strokes here.

The Good - Humble Beginnings

I do genuinely think the story starts off in a good place, and with decent pacing. The first handful of the game's chapters do an excellent job introducing our main cast, our supporting cast, and our primary antagonist. The first trip down to Galdin Quay in Leide serves a little-to-no stakes adventure to let the party experience their first taste of proper freedom alongside the player. The run-in with Ardyn the night before the invasion of Insomnia is a charming introduction to the game's villain, the self-titled "man of no consequence" who is secretly a vengeful immortal waiting for the day to destroy the kingdom that betrayed him.

For the first half of the game, the world gradually widens as the stakes are raised. After Insomnia is invaded and destroyed and the kingdom's protective crystal is stolen, the party is tasked with exploring the land, gathering the weapons of fallen Lucian kings, and getting powerful enough to take the crystal back from Niflheim. Meanwhile, the Oracle Lunafreya is travelling the land and awakening the land's gods (the classic Final Fantasy summons, sans Garuda), asking them to give their blessing to Noctis and alluding to a larger fate that surrounds the protagonist. I think this is executed well enough in the front half of the game, and the collection of anime shorts, Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, slots into this part of the story. The anime gives little slices of the backstories and motivations of the core party members, and watching it definitely enhanced my feelings towards the main cast a great deal. Around chapter 8, however, the game's narrative starts to show holes, quite literally.

The Bad - Who Wants the WHOLE Story Anyways?

After Gladiolus shortly leaves the party for one chapter, the game's story drastically dips in quality. From this point onward, there are no bones, no structure at all holding the rest of the game together. It moves from set-piece to set-piece, dropping you off where you need to be, pointing you at the quest objective, and telling you to be on your way. You get some cool character moments in the second half of the game, but really after you sail to Altissia and do the Leviathan fight, it's like... Do an hour of gameplay, get a cutscene, minor character moment. Do an hour of gameplay, get a cutscene, minor character moment. Cool thing is implied to have happened in the background. You don't get to see it. Maybe if you play the DLC you get to see it. Do you want to see how Ignis lost his eyesight? Pay money. Do you want to see how Prompto rejoined with the group? Pay money.

Once you get to the second continent, where the Empire's capital is, the game is entirely on rails. Quite literally, actually. The party takes a train into the capital of the Empire, so you follow an extremely linear track. You get a cut-scene on the train, do a short "dungeon" run that's really just 3 combat encounters. Train, combat encounter. Train, combat encounter. The story kind of evaporates, mostly just becoming "Look at how evil and strange Ardyn is and ooooo daemons!!!" up until you get to the Empire's capital city.

I really don't like the Episode DLCs. They feel like genuine parts of the story that should have been shown to the player to begin with, especially because of their length. They're no longer than any other individual chapter, but you have to pay for them and play them separately. It really feels like they were intended to be more substantial pieces of the original narrative that got cut for some reason or another. They were then taken and molded into smaller, more independent experiences that Square could sell back to you to stretch the game's profit even further. It feels... bad. It feels disrespectful of the game's creators to suddenly just cut out pieces of the story and expect the player to buy them to see a full picture that they obviously had to go out of their way to cut up.

The Beautiful - You Guys Are the Best

There's a strange parallel between the story that the characters are experiencing in the second half of the game and the way the gameplay and structure changes. As the journey gets further and further along, it becomes more and more obvious to Noctis that the journey is more than just a road trip to a wedding. It's more than just a fight for his homeland. The truth of the cosmic stakes of the adventure starts to reveal itself, and it becomes more and more obvious that there is a preordained fate that Noctis is subject to. As everyone becomes more and more aware of the rising stakes, everyone does what they can to protect and support Noctis until the end.

It's revealed that, at the end of the road, Noctis must sacrifice his own life to purge all darkness from the land. Once the group arrives at the second continent, everything that could push Noctis towards this fate is already in place. There is nowhere to go back to, nothing you can do to stop it. You are on a train, headed for the heart of the Empire, and you *will* do what needs to be done, no matter if you want to or not. There's something poetic about how that plot thread mirrors the structure of the game. The scope narrows, pointing you towards the one inevitable endpoint. The closer Noctis gets to it, the more unavoidable it becomes.

There's a critical moment in the game's final chapter that I can't not mention. After a 10 year time-skip, the party finally returns to Insomnia to defeat Ardyn and end his eternal night. Right before you enter the room where Ardyn is waiting, Noctis asks Prompto if he can look at the photos Prompto took one last time. Here, you are shown every photo you have saved across your time playing the game. One last chance to relive the memories you have made with your friends. The group will comment on the photos as you flip through them, as Noctis picks just one to take with him into the final encounter where he knows he is going to die. It was genuinely heart-wrenching to flip through these photos at this moment. I started to cry, ugly and loud, and the tears didn't stop through the final fight, not until long after credits had rolled. The post-credits scene around the campfire, where Noctis expresses his gratitude to his friends before the final gauntlet starts, got my tears flowing harder than they possibly could have before.

Takeaways

This game is conflicting. I didn't get to play it at release, when it was largely considered "trash" by people whose opinions I respected. I got to play the Windows Edition of the game, with years of stability fixes, patches, and updates. The game that I played was so good at its peak and so bad at its worst. I guess that makes it a true Final Fantasy game. This game got emotions and tears out of me that rival what I felt when finishing FF14 Endwalker, or got to the Ragnarok scene in FF8. The game's world is immersive, feels lived in, and is the home to four of the best and strongest friends I've seen in a piece of media. This found family will live in my heart for a long, long time.

But also, this game sucks. I'd say 60% of the game's content along its critical path isn't just "not good", it's bad. Capital B Bad. It's lazy, it's rushed, it's obvious that the game needed more time in the oven but it just wasn't afforded that, so what was there had to be kind of sloppily stapled together. I don't know if I can recommend this game to a general audience. I think this game has potential to have big fans, I think I'd even consider myself a fan of this game, but I couldn't tell someone to just play it. Not unless they knew what they were getting into. I'll probably be thinking about this game for a very long time, wishing it was done more justice.