When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we’ll see
No I won’t be afraid
Oh, I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won’t cry, I won’t cry
No, I won’t shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
In the world of Eos, the land is ruled by the ever present Niflheim empire, boosted by its Magitek Army and advanced technology. The only country that hasn’t been incorporated into the empire is Lucis, maintaining a long standing war with the empire for its independence. It’s capital, Insomnia, with help of the Crystal gifted to the Caelum bloodline by gods of yore, which gives powers to the King has set up a barrier that defends it from incoming Empire attacks, ensuring the preservation of the Lucian king. Despite this, the crystal puts a heavy burden on the king, who can no longer maintain both the war and the barrier, so he agrees to sign a treaty with the empire that will grant them control over plenty of areas in their country to seize armed conflict. In the meantime, King Regis sends his son Noctis along with his three bodyguards and best friends Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis to the city of Altissia where he will marry the Oracle of Tenebrae Lunafreya Nox Fleuret and on a journey that will make Noctis fulfill his calling as King.
After its precursor suffered a long winded development cycle that lasted more than a decade and eventually lead to its cancellation, Final Fantasy XV has risen from the ashes of Versus XIII and promises to set the Final Fantasy name back into relevance, as the redeeming title after a wave of disappointments from its predecessors. What has resulted is a game that shows a bold new direction for the franchise to take and a thoroughly unique experience that suffers from its hastily put compilation of ideas long past.
What works, about Final Fantasy XV is both an easy and difficult task to pin down, because there are hardly any elements about it that don’t have a flaw, minor as it may be. What are truly the best components of the game are its presentation and production values, which come along to show once again the dedication Square Enix and its designers have towards presenting a game that is incredibly mesmerizing to look and listen to.
Final Fantasy XV is a graphical marvel. Character models are incredibly detailed and feature excellent and instantly recognizable designs from Tetsuya Nomura, Yusuke Naora and Roberto Ferrari which are really pleasing to look at. Aside from characters, the environments are also very detailed and show a great deal of attention put into making its world look not only believable, but also unique and easily distinguishable. Aside from this, the world of Final Fantasy XV shows a great sense of scale and iconography, further solidifying the blend between fantastical landscapes and mundane, yet minimalist, urban locations, all presented with great use of color and with varied palettes throughout.
Even when cast aside of the rustic and naturalistic design of the open world, Final Fantasy XV’s pompous royal castles, disturbing empiric buildings or modern city landscapes stand out and set a clear sense of atmosphere for the universe it’s trying to portray.
Visuals set aside; the sound of Final Fantasy XV is also completely mesmerizing, featuring a soundtrack composed by well-known composer Yoko Shimomura that furthers the emotion of the experience with either reflective and poignant piano tracks, lighthearted and enjoyable minimalist guitar compositions and a blend of full orchestra and techno for its epic action moments. The soundtrack not only fits the context of the experience, but it is also a great soundtrack to be appreciated on its own merits as an amazing listening experience.
Aside from soundtrack, the game features great voice acting from its main leads and even some of its supporting cast, which flesh out the main characters when the writing does not allow and gives them a sense of personality through their voice, tone, mannerisms and inflections. Although, some character’s performances do show a bit of a limited range at times, unable to capture some of the most emotionally
intensive moments convincingly. This does not apply to all characters though, for some of them do manage to pull of their roles near flawlessly throughout all kinds of scenes.
This bit of awkwardness in the voice acting also translates to some of the animations and dialogue as well. Certain cut scenes do not only feature heavily stilted animations, but also stilted dialogue that doesn’t leave certain lines to get the impact they deserve, instead moving on to the next line and undermining the last. The animations outside of cut scenes though are very fluid and almost lifelike, especially when it comes to the game’s AI companions, which animate well enough to be convincingly human in certain aspects. Aside from this, the combat animations also carry weight and impact to every motion, making it all the more satisfying to play.
All of these elements come together to vastly improve the gameplay experience of Final Fantasy XV, which marks the biggest detachment from its franchise overall. Instead of being a turn based RPG like the rest of the games of its franchise, Final Fantasy XV leans more towards being an Open World Tactical Action Game with prevalent RPG elements. In the game, the player can explore the Open World with their companions on their car, the Regalia, and undertake hunts for different kinds of Daemons or Monsters that roam the overworld. Aside from this, they can also take part in Sidequests, Dungeons, or proceed through the game’s story.
Aside from exploration, the main gameplay draw is the combat, which now fully takes place in real time. The player controls Noctis, and can perform attacks by holding the attack button whilst freely moving around the enemy, they can also switch from a distinct range of weapons in the middle of combat and unleash special techniques from their partners. To defend himself, he can also phase through attacks by holding the dodge button, which causes him to instantly dodge every attack that comes his way. Sometimes, the player is able to parry the enemies’ attacks, by holding the dodge button when a specific prompt shows up onscreen and then pressing the attack button afterwards, which always delivers a powerful attack against the enemy if timed properly. When his HP or MP is low, he can also Warp away at a safe location to regenerate his attributes, and then use a Warp Strike to instantly make a preemptive attack on the enemy.
This approach makes it so that the focus on combat is put more on strategic positioning, dodging and also strategic use of his partner’s abilities as well as his own, unlike skillful button presses. This really meshes well with the game’s other RPG mechanics, such as leveling. Another mechanic that really works well with the combat’s strategy is Elemancy, where the player can obtain elemental powers from certain deposits or through enemies and then spend them to craft certain spells, that they can use strategically to take down tough enemies. They can also add catalysts to the spells, to improve or add certain effects that give advantages on battle, a mechanic that makes the player constantly switch up the kind of spells they use on battles.
The combat is also given a definite amount of depth thanks to the variety of enemies that the player encounters, which all have their own weaknesses to exploit and strategies to get around through, making the player constantly change up their approach depending on the enemy they encounter. These enemies also have mostly unique designs that make their type stand out amongst each other.
Each time the player completes a quest or defeats a group of enemies, they are awarded Experience Points, which they can use to level up once they rest at a camping spot or resting locale, which gives them points that they can spend on abilities on an Ascension tree. If the player chooses not to spend the night on either of those two, they will have to endure the nighttime, where increasingly tough Daemons appear, at least on the early parts of the game. This adds another level of immersion to the game’s narrative by requiring that the player constantly rests to avoid impossible to win encounters and grow stronger at the same time, which becomes very important to selling the player on the idea that the whole experience is some kind of road trip that spans a long amount of time.
Exploring the game in the Regalia actually constitutes a somewhat relaxing experience as well, providing enough downtime between combat encounters to better pace the experience and allow the player to take in the scenery as well as spend meaningful amounts of time with the main cast, though a convenient Fast Travel system stops it from getting boring before long.
The game’s great UI and sound effects help make both of these gameplay elements work much better, making it so that accessing menu options is both fast and convenient to use and so that attacks and special abilities are satisfying thanks to having a lot of impact and flair. And the music makes almost every combat encounter feel important and exciting.
Though, not without its problems. For one, the combat lacks any kind of indication that an enemy is going to perform an attack aside from animations, which makes it really hard to dodge non-parryable moves due to the overall chaos, complexity and density of most of all combat encounters. The camera gets blocked by terrain often, though mostly on the early parts of the game. Also, aside from optional content, the combat can be very forgiving on its default difficulty and lacks any difficulty at all on easy.
When it comes to exploration, what hurts it the most is the generally lackluster content the game provides. While Dungeons have generally good visual designs and interesting layouts, each of their progression seems almost ubiquitous, and some of them don’t feature enticing enough rewards to want to complete them. As for sidequests, they lack any interesting actions to perform and consist of basic fetch quests for characters, which makes them tolerable the first few times but completely and utterly repetitive, tedious and boring later on. That essentially leaves dungeons and hunts as the only worthwhile content from the game, which is not a very good thing for an expansive game such as this.
Either way, the player is going to want to do most of this content, not only because its the most efficient way to earn money, especially hunts, but also because they want to spend as much time with the game as possible since the story has almost equally as lackluster quests, but made worse due to poor pacing. The first half of the game features story quests which almost mimic the better optional content, but doesn’t provide a high enough challenge to be interesting, and the second half completely drops the Open World design and thrusts the player into linear segments which become more and more uninteresting as they go on, with increasingly more questionable design decisions that make the game utterly uninteresting to play on the later parts of the game.
But even then, the time spent on the earlier parts of the game can be almost magical at times, even with its shortcomings, this is because of how the game fully embraces its companionship theme and makes the entire experience feel like an adventure with friends. This is accomplished because of the strength of the main cast, comprised of four really strong and well written characters with plenty of layers and facets of their personality, all with defined backstories that affect who they are and how they interact with each other and the main character.
An aspect these main characters have that also makes them stand out, is nuance. How they can express facets of their personality that probably aren’t very meaningful to their overall arc, but still make them more believable as people, such as personal interests, abilities and their own special skills. Because of all of this, they can easily stand out from one another and compliment a part of themselves, to create a special dichotomy between the main characters that feels almost lifelike, Their interactions are believable, and their relations with the main character feel genuine as well.
Another aspect that really helps flesh out all of these moments that you spend with the main characters is the Photography feature, which allows Prompto to partake in his favorite pastime and take pictures throughout your journey of the different things you do throughout it. This feature really adds to the experience, by presenting a clear collection of photographic memories that the player can come back to while still being perfectly justified in the context of the story and characters. This aspects also brings a good use of reincorporation during the game’s most emotional scenes.
All of these elements create a kind of experience and tone that strengthens the immersion with the world and characters, and uses gameplay as a means to solidify the narrative by further establishing a relation between characters that will become the central theme by which the whole narrative arc revolves around.
Though, aside from these characters, there isn’t really much to say about the rest of the supporting cast of Final Fantasy XV, which mostly pales in comparison to the player’s team of heroes. When put into perspective, most of these characters lack depth and any kind of purpose aside from what the plot dictates them to do. They have definite personalities, sure, but the nuance and believably of the cast most come from the facets of their personality, and they only seem to have a few because of how they only exist to serve their specific purpose to the story. There are exceptions to this, of course, but in general most of the game’s cast seems to fall for this, where they are only important in relation to the main character’s narrative arc, but don’t stand on their own as interesting characters.
This kind of underwritten flair also extends to most of the game’s narrative, which starts out well enough until the player realizes it has no real goal, purpose or direction for most its first half. During these parts of the game, the player’s goal seems to constantly switch to whatever the plot wants them to do at that specific time, and no real narrative arc is being built up aside from the main characters’ bonding. This makes the plot deflate and become uninteresting for the first half, meaning most players will either rush through the story, or pay no mind to it while they choose to do optional content.
Once the second half of the game, the story does pick up and the focus becomes more clear. Narrative arcs are built up and characters start to fulfill their roles in the overall plot, but all of it comes with the underwhelming feeling that the rushed nature of these later parts bring. Characters lack appropriate development and mostly stay the same throughout their journey, Chapters go by in a flash or plot points that should have importance seem to have no effect on the characters. This is without mentioning how quickly many aspects of the game’s world are quickly dismissed or dropped for the sake of wrapping up the plot as quickly as possible, leaving a lot of explanations to be desired from the player, especially in some of the bigger reveals which come really close to the game’s conclusion and should probably be given more time. if that’s not the case, then the player will be left completely uninterested or unfazed by.
At this point of the game, characters suddenly disappear and become irrelevant to the story, having their narrative arcs dropped almost entirely just for the sake of moving the plot along when it should’ve been moving along on the early parts of the game, creating a jarring contrast between the aimless plot at the beginning and the rushed roller coaster of conflicting emotions of the second half.
The narrative also suffers from having many aspects of its backstory not being present, leaving much to be desired out of certain characters which receive a minimal amount of scenes and don’t quite capture the kind of character that they are supposed to embody. While this issue can be mitigated by watching the companion material that the game released with, it still leaves the game feeling hollow or empty as a result, like some integral part of it was cut out needlessly.
Though, thanks to some miracle, by the end of the game’s narrative its central arc just seems to work out, despite all of the flaws listed before and all of the inconsistencies the game manages to pull its few final punches with the strength it needed to make the plot survive in the end. This is all in thanks to the strength of the game’s central arc, which is maintained by its core elements retaining their quality throughout the entire game.
Final Fantasy XV is a game about two things, first and foremost, Companionship and Destiny. Its a story about a hero coming to terms with the role he is fated to carry, but doing so by losing almost everything he holds dear and going through the most troublesome trials of his entire life just to understand his place in the world. Its about a hero not being sure about what he wants to do or why and being frustrated by the burden he has to carry, but slowly gaining the confidence he needs to truly become The Hero by the end of it all.
Final Fantasy XV is also a game about Companionship. Its about a group of friends going on an adventure together, sharing the most important times of their lives both for good and for bad. Its about them standing up for each other, making up for each other’s weaknesses and losses. It develops their growth as people and as friends, reinforcing their desire to be together and to accomplish their common goal. But most importantly, its a story about how the best of friends and how people who love you will always be at your side, to help you grow as a person and to help you stand tall, even when the worst of times have ravaged everything you once thought you loved.
What I like the most about Final Fantasy XV, not just its narrative but also characters, themes and motifs, is that its full of humanity. Its the kind of story that encapsulates many of the good and bad aspects of life and people. It helps you appreciate the things around you, and how important they may be to you, keeping itself relatable; but also being rooted in fiction and presenting unique characters that you will grow to love and care for throughout the whole experience, ones that will surely make you feel something for, making it the kind of emotional experience that only fiction can provide and definitely leaves you satisfied in the end.
Even after its long winded development cycle, and its lackluster reconstruction of Versus XIII’s ideas and concepts, Final Fantasy XV still manages to be a game that has the ability to become its own memorable experience. With all of its flaws and its increasing examples of wasted potential, the positives shine enough to create an experience that is memorable and completely worthwhile to experience. It can be hard to put up with its shortcomings, but when it truly shines it can be something you can really appreciate. In a lot of ways, the game itself embodies what its like to be friends with someone, to stand with them. It may not be a perfect game, its not even amazing, but just how humans aren’t perfect, what comes out of your experiences with the game have the potential to be unique.
If Final Fantasy XV was developed with its core ideas and themes already set in place, and polished enough to deliver an experience based around these themes, it would probably be one of the experiences I’d love the most. Though, for what it is, I am satisfied. I cannot call Final Fantasy XV an amazing game, but it is a very, very special game, and one that I can look back to in the years to come.
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won’t cry, I won’t cry
No, I won’t shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
And darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand…
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Once again, another pretty good review. I wanted to break down what FFXV feels like to me, both what it failed to do but what it did accomplish. I believe it is a pretty nuanced take on the game and I really hope it can resonate with someone. I really like FFXV, and if you read this, I hope you can see why.