Road To Review: Final Fantasy XV

The opening line “A Final Fantasy For Fans and First Timers” is indicative that beyond all else, Final Fantasy XV is aiming to be the most inclusive entry in the franchise yet. At this stage it’s best not to dwell on the game’s troubled, decade-long development, from its original incarnation as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, to the Hajime Tabata-helmed production that’s just about to release, and rather to look hopefully into what has the potential to be not just one of 2016’s key titles, but the Final Fantasy that truly brings JRPGs to the masses.

Verbosely subtitled The Tale of the Chosen King – Saviour to the Star, you take on the role of Prince Noctis as you travel cross-country with your friends to meet your bride-to-be. After all of the implied royal pomp and a brief segment with your father, Final Fantasy XV’s unique opening sequence sees your car broken down, and your first interaction with the world is to push said car slowly down the road while you and your friends bicker. Not many multi-million pound fantasy game productions begin with the view of a trio of leather-clad buttocks while Florence & The Machine’s cover of Stand By Me plays. Quite simply, it’s surprisingly refreshing.

The character design will undoubtedly be the first thing to cause contention amongst players, and when you access the loadout screen, Noctis and his buddies appear in a spot-lit line-up that sits somewhere between the Usual Suspects and a boy-band promoted catalogue shoot. Thinking back, many characters from recent Final Fantasy games have sported less than sensible of clothing, though it would have been nice to see a bit more colour. You can dress them up in more colourful clothing, of course, but their initial get up helps the yellow-jacketed, hot-pant clad mechanic Cindy stand out. It may not necessarily be for all the right reasons.

Character outfits aside, Final Fantasy XV is a beautiful looking and sounding game. The landscape stretches away impressively into the distance, while some fantastic depth of field effects make close up shots shine, particularly during in-game cutscenes. The CG portions of the narrative are some of the best in the industry, completely reflective of the recent Kingsglaive release, and you’ll wait anxiously for the next one to appear.

It’s telling that generally I’d play a JRPG with the Japanese language track in place, but the Westernised setting meant that it just seems to fit better with the English voices. With a few hours playtime under my belt, the performances are solid with no sign of any ‘comedic’ relief to cheapen proceedings. The only shame is that the voice cast from the Kingsglaive movie don’t all reprise their roles, which is a touch disappointing when they’ve worked so hard to create an interconnected world.

Since the release of entries like Crisis Core and Type 0, the series has been steadily heading towards more action-orientated combat, and Final Fantasy XV is fundamentally a straight up action RPG. Holding the Circle button causes Noctis to automatically attack, with the analogue stick altering how your combo plays out, while holding Square allows you to automatically evade attacks, though you’ll still have to time your initial button press to make sure you get out of the way in time.

Things become more complicated with the introduction of parrying to the mix, as well as the core ability of warping, which sees Noctis leap from one location to another by throwing his sword. During combat this means that you can not only evade attackers, either by dashing out of the way or by leaping to a high-up vantage point, but you can also perform warp strikes as well.

This highly useful ability comes at the cost of MP, and if you run out you’ll enter stasis; a lethargic and deeply annoying state which will need a teammate to bring you round from. Fortunately you can also regain your MP by entering cover and having a quick breather, or of course by using some kind of item.

Key to the game’s implied sense of teamwork are Link-strikes, wherein you and one of your party team up for a powerful attack. They’ll also come to your aid when you’re low on health, though you’ll mainly have to rely on potions and other items to regain your strength in the heat of battle.

Certainly, one of the early successes that Final Fantasy XV boasts is that it genuinely feels like you’re a member of a party, a real group of friends, who’ll be chatting one minute, and then helping each other out in combat the next. So many RPG’s feel like your character is playing follow the leader with a batch of mindless drones – at least until the next cutscene – but that’s simply not the case here. I’d be hard-pressed to say they’re all fascinating characters – they’re not – but they are genuine, and in a sense, realistic. Once again, Final Fantasy XV does away with tradition and is all the better for it.

Your enemies all boast resistances to different weapon types, and you can cycle through your weapons with the D-Pad in an effort to find the best tool for the job. At this early stage it feels as though it will add up to a deep and satisfying combat system – there’s even shades of Devil May Cry to the mid-combo weapon swapping – though of course there’s the chance that repetition could have set in by the time you’re getting to the twenty or thirty hour mark.

Certainly as an opener, Final Fantasy XV is ticking all the right buttons, boasting production values that put many other AAA releases to shame, while being unafraid to break from the restrictions that JRPG convention dictates. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword, and long-time fans of the series may feel that this is a step too far away from the well-loved turn-based combat that is Final Fantasy for many. Personally, this is a world crying out to be explored, and one that brings the series phenomenal CG cutscenes and fantastical gameplay closer than ever before.