Forty-two hours... that's how long it took me to beat Final Fantasy XV. I was up until sunrise this morning as I finally beat the newest entry in the Final Fantasy franchise. I've been wanting to write a review of this game for the past week now, but I felt like it would be best to wait until after I've beaten it to write this review. It's been twelve hours since I've beaten it and I've been able to let the entire experience sink in. Let's get into it!
Note: This review may contain minor spoilers, but nothing big.
Presentation:
To say this game is gorgeous would be an understatement! The visuals presented in Final Fantasy XV are the best that I've ever seen in any game including even the newest games that are out. The world is enormous! There's many vast plains, mountains, lakes, oceans, and dungeons to see and explore and that's only scratching the surface of what this game has to offer! I played the game on the high preset, but even on the average preset everything looked breathtaking!
Gameplay:
Final Fantasy XV strays from Final Fantasy's well-known turn based battle system in favor of a more real-time hack and slash style of gameplay. While some fans were initially disappointed in this, it ended up being one of the best parts of this game! You play as Noctis, a young prince as you travel around a huge open world with your three closest friends as you progress the story, help random people with side quests, explore dungeons, kill many different types of creatures, ride chocobos, discover secrets, drive around, fish, and many other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. This game seemingly has something for everyone whether you're only interested in the main story or whether you decided to forge your own path as you explore the vast world and all the many things that it has to offer.
You and your allies are able to use a variety of different weapons and spells to defeat both enemies and creatures that you come into contact with. While it's a hack and slash style game, it's not simply a button masher! It encourages you to swap between many different weapons and spells, to block and parry enemy attacks, and team up with your allies to defeat seemingly overwhelming foes. There was quite a few times that I'd go into battles thinking that I was fully prepared with many potions and great gear only to realize that there was a strategy to defeat enemies that I didn't realize until after I was already dead. Going back to finally take down big foes brought me a sense of accomplishment that I haven't felt in years!
The game also features a grid-like system for leveling up each individual ally or the entire team as a whole. It's simple and straight forward and uses AP (Ability Points) that you gain from doing various tasks such as completing quests, riding chocobos for long distances, driving around and exploring, defeating monsters, or even something as simple as fishing. While fishing in a Final Fantasy game may come off as silly, it's actually very well executed and quite fun. I spent at least five hours of my play through just fishing. It's so rewarding to see the different types of reels, rods, baits and string. There's so many different types of fish to catch and many fishing spots to find, many of them hidden away from the naked eye. I remember one time spending an entire day (in-game) to reel in one fish that ended up weighing over 200 lbs! It was such a relief to finally reel it in and it was little things like that really put the entire experience over the top. While it has a serious story, the game doesn't limit you just to that and not only gives you the freedom to, but actively encourages you to explore it's vast world and oftentimes even rewards you for it.
I could spend an entire day just writing about the gameplay, but to sum it up... Purely from a gameplay perspective, this is the best damn game that I have ever played!!!
While I've beaten the main story, there's still many more things for me to do in it and many more secrets to discover. I'll probably spend another 40 hours leveling up and discovering all the secrets and treasures that the game has to offer. There's also chocobo racing that I haven't even tried yet. To top it off, there's at least four individual DLCs that further explore each of your three allies' backstories as well as the main antagonist's. From what I've heard, they're quite good and tie up any loose ends in the story.
Music:
Final Fantasy games have set a high standard for their various musical compositions that are in each entry and I'm glad to say that this game lives up to those standards. The music is great and moving and it always seemed to perfectly match the mood of whatever mood I was in at the time whether that be happiness, sadness, curiosity, or just tense dramatic battle music for those particularly tough boss fights. The game also featured something that I wasn't expecting which is music from other Final Fantasy games of the past. This was a great decision on the part of Square Enix because while you're riding around in the car with your allies, you can just kick back and listen to nostalgic tunes from Final Fantasy titles that you've played in past games. There's even a portable MP3 player that you can buy to listen to these albums while you're running around the vast world.
Story:
Without spoiling anything, towards the beginning of the game I was a bit disappointed with the story to be honest. I wasn't 100% sure what was going on and I felt like the story didn't quite live up to the high standards that Final Fantasy games are known for. Maybe around a third of the way into the story though, things really started to pick up and got interesting. The main antagonist is someone who I really loved to hate. He was a really well written character for an antagonist and is one of my favorite antagonists from any game that I've ever played. Both you, Noctis, as well as the supporting characters all have very unique and well thought-out personalities. One of the characters, Prompto, really enjoys photography and was always wanting to take photos. I thought this was a bit corny, but by the end of the game I understood why he wanted to... what's most important isn't the destination that you get to, but the incredible journey that you and your friends had along the way! By the end of the game I was both smiling and crying. To sum it up, it's a pretty damn good story!
Issues:
While overall I would consider the game to be absolutely incredible, there was a couple small problems in the game that I didn't like. The biggest one being the camera. While you have (mostly) full control over the camera, at times the camera liked to be a little wonky and glitch out a bit. It wasn't anything game breaking, but it was certainly something that was noticeable during certain parts of the experience. The other was the story towards the beginning of the game. For the first forth of the game I'd say, the story was rather "meh" and wasn't really that interesting to me. Once the story gets interesting though, it really gets interesting!
Final Thoughts:
Purely from a gameplay perspective, this is the best damn game I've ever played. From a story perspective, it's not as good as Final Fantasy X, but definitely a game that I won't be forgetting anytime soon. I laughed and I cried... but I mostly smiled. This game made me smile more than any game that I've played in the last 10 years.
Final Score: 9/10
Summary:
"This game is a masterpiece!"
