Game review: Final Fantasy 15 by Square Enix
A fast paced,
action epic
It's good – not great
Final Fantasy 15 is everything it's supposed to be – a fast paced, action adventure with characters that feel authentic, great voice acting and absolutely beautiful scenes. Add to that the expected RPG elements like leveling, a lot of different items, weapons and equipments. You have the magic spells, the combos, the techniques of your NPC comrades and a lot of different ways to battle your enemies.
So why did I spend most of my battles patiently waiting for Noctis to quickly blink around and finish each enemy while holding shift+F? Occasionally interrupted by Noctis flying to a safe point to regenerate all of his MP, and then continuing watch him blink around while holding shift+F.
The PC version of the game comes locked and loaded with most of the DLC-stuff that didn't ship with the console version, and unaware that "Ragnarok" was really an end-game overpowered weapon, that shouldn't have been available to a first-time player at the very beginning of the game.
Final Fantasy 15 is a great game in it's own right
Is not a great Final Fantasy game – it's a good Final Fantasy game. And if I take any comparison to a past game in the series out of the equation, the game is a damn pleasure. It's really beautiful, engaging and easily worth 50-80 hours worth of playing. So if you're new to the series, jump right in – you won't be disappointed. If you're a long time Final Fantasy fan, you'll find you miss a few expected game design and story elements.
Final Fantasy VII is the benchmark for all past, present and future Final Fantasy games
Final Fantasy VII (7) had everything, the best damn villians, the coolest heroes, the most rewarding side quests and end game content – and the most tedious and boring side quest. If we put FF-15 to the "Compare to FF-7" test, it doesn't look good. Is the bad guy as cool as in FF-7? No. Is the good guys as cool as in FF-7? No. Is the side quests worth it? Well yeah, about one third of them. The rest goes to pass the test of "Is the boring side quests as boring as in FF-7"? Yes. "Find your own damn frogs, lady" and "Shut up, Prompto" is unfortunately left out of the script.
The villain(s) of Final Fantasy 15: I won't spoil anything, but we've seen better. This one's a little "clammy". To be fair, most of Final Fantasy's villains seem a little "clammy" – remember that bad guy from Final Fantasy X? He was clammy too – but he was still better than this one.
The heroes of Final Fantasy 15: Is "emo" a thing again? The royal punk-rock boyband on a roadtrip. To be fair, it's a likeable group of friends, and their interactions and collaborative combat is nicely made. The game does have a self-ironic take on some of the more tedious quests like "Go buy this lettuce and bring it back to me" – but I would have liked to see some self-irony directed at Noctis and his lack of an actual haircut. His lack of a personality is commented on a lot though, especially by Prompto.
The enemies of Final Fantasy 15: "Hey guys, let's battle these huge beautiful friendly giraffe-looking antilope creatures" – "No wait, let's burn them with a combo fire-lighting spell". Too many of the "enemies" in this game are not designed menacingly enough. The heroes does comment on it when they've killed some overly cute group of friendly creatures, but they still just lay waste to them and leave their corpses for the crows.
The combat of Final Fantasy 15: Am I the only one who misses the turn based combat from earlier Final Fantasy games? There are a lot of beautiful creatures to battle in this game, but more often that not, you don't really get to enjoy them – either because if just too fast paced, too dark or there's too much shrubbery taking up the screen. In games like FF-X both the enemies and the heroes were put on display in each battle – I miss that. I miss the first time you got to try a higher level spell, summon or limit break. Summons are more like they were in FF-7, a one of, big hit from a damn cool deity. They're very scarce though – I didn't get to summon anything in a regular battle for the first 40 hours of play – both because I didn't know how, and the battles were over too quickly for the summon-conditions to be satisfied. I miss the theater of the battles.