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I don’t remember my first road trip, and I have just a few pictures from that 1985 excursion. I was a year and a half old and traveled with my mother from Connecticut to Michigan. I would take several more trips during my childhood, from Connecticut to South Carolina and Florida, multiple times for each destination, as well as one trip north of the border to Canada. This continued to adulthood, with three different week+ road trips in Colombia, a 10-day trip around Serbia, and slowly making my way north from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in 10 weeks. Plus so much more. The point being, the premise of the story in Final Fantasy XV, four friends going on a car trip, certainly resonated with me, giving me vibes of the movie “Stand by Me” on wheels. Wouldn’t you know it, within minutes of starting a new game for the first time, the song of the same title can be heard playing as the four friends push their broken-down car.
Players are immediately thrust into what seems, at the time, to be a huge world. Thoughts of Xenoblade Chronicles and Breath of the Wild filled my head, as well as Final Fantasy XII, an expansive game in its own right, considering its 2006 release. I had heard this was the first truly open-world Final Fantasy, and I was excited to dive right in. I figured this world would trump XII. To be fair to the XIII trilogy, there were some large areas, but the entire game wasn’t like that.
Anyway, running around Eos, the world the game takes place in, was liberating as everything seemed to open up immediately. I quickly realized two things: First, running in this game is terrible. Second, the majority of the world is barren. There were enemies here and there, items scattered about, but not many things to interact with overall.
There are a plethora of optional quests that send you to the far reaches of Eos, but most of them boil down to simple fetch quests that don’t seem to have much point or add anything to the story. This jerk, above, is a perfect example. First of all, does he not look a little like Hurley from Lost? Second, the many quests from this guy have you driving all around the world, taking pictures for him. It was annoying, but since they gave experience and money, it beat grinding the old-fashioned way.
Character models, towns, and gas stations are the game’s graphical strong points. The main characters, Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, and Gladiolus are the result you’d get if you took “Combat-Rock” era The Clash, mixed it with gothic attire, added a pinch of boy-band, a dash of heavy metal, and a teaspoon of emo and then divided them up into four pieces without thoroughly shaking or mixing, resulting in four different characters who kind of look the same, but have enough distinguishable unique features and tastes. I didn’t care for them on an individual basis, other than maybe Gladiolus, but I enjoyed the interactions between the four. They are an excellent example of the sum being stronger than the parts, and they work best when together. The moments in the game where they are separated, or where one of them is missing, were some of the weaker moments in the game. There was also the entire story arc with Lunafreya, but the background on her felt limited, so it was hard to get invested in her role in the game, even though she was the woman Noctis would soon marry after the trip. Even the empire, the major antagonist for much of the game, isn’t ever explained with great detail.
The towns are phenomenal and look like they could be some far-off place yet to be explored, but I couldn’t help but be confused by the type of world the developers were trying to portray. On the one hand, the four characters had a shiny new car and cell phones, while on the other hand carried around archaic-looking weapons, other than Prompto’s guns. I’d think there were more high-tech weapons around for royalty. I found dungeons to be a mix of uninspiring and monotonous to navigate. I get that caves were portrayed more realistically, but I wasn’t interested in trying to find my way around many of the game’s caves. On the other hand, one of my favorite locations in the game reminded me of a mix between Venice and Budva.
If Final Fantasy XII was the baby step away from the traditional combat of its predecessors, Final Fantasy XV is the giant step, completely reinventing the wheel. Moving away from turn-based, this game has taken the direction started in XII and completely run with it, towards fast-paced, real-time action. Sadly, the customization of XII (gambits) is nowhere to be found, and in its place is a simplistic battle system where, often, slashing away will lead to victory. That is, outside a few unnecessarily tedious boss battles where the formula abruptly changes, only to return to the typical hacking away as if nothing had just changed during the boss fight. Outside of battles, character customization wasn’t as deep as in previous Square games. The ascension grid wasn’t as inviting as the sphere grid from XII, with descriptions that weren’t very helpful. AP is gained via completed tasks and used to open up spheres in the astral sphere. This could be anything from stat increases to magic, to combat, to teamwork, and beyond.
Warp-strike adds another twist to battles, but I found it fickle and, in the thick of battle, not always easy or practical to aim, especially with the camera seemingly working against you at random times.
Magic did not have the same spotlight in this game as in previous Final Fantasy games. Elements are found throughout the world via draw points. I mixed them into fire, ice, and lightning magic, and while they did a great deal of damage to many enemies, they also impacted any characters in the line of fire. A realistic touch, and probably more apt for what would happen with such power, but not worth the potential risks.
Link strikes occur when Noctis parries, or attacks from behind or from the side. Once a tech meter fills up, powerful attacks from one of your three AI-controlled characters can be unleashed by pressing L2 and one of the directional buttons corresponding to one of the three. I liked Gladiolus’ attack most as it seemed to be the most useful for crowd control: getting rid of large groups of enemies, but his movements for the attack are baffling and ineffective, and he doesn’t always strike the enemy in the most efficient, logical way.
I was not a huge fan of having to sleep at an inn or campsite to gain EXP and levels. While it never hindered progress, it was not the best mechanic as it made grinding, once deep in a dungeon, difficult. Plus, only occasional auto saves could work in dungeons and not manual saves, so you’d have to leave whatever dungeon you are in and track down a place to sleep for more levels and exit a cave to save manually.
When you do go to sleep, a screen pops up showing Prompto’s photos. These can be saved, and after that, four different skills, one per character, gain experience and might gain levels too. Ignis’ skill is to cook different meals, adding a temporary status boost like some of the Tales games from Bandai Namco. Noctis can fish, but after trying that for 30 minutes, mostly unsuccessfully, I vowed never to return to the waters. It simply was not fun and required more patience than I could muster. Most fish simply did not bite or care that their favorite lure was just above them. Gladio’s skill allows the party to pick up items at higher rates, and Prompto’s aforementioned photography skill. Higher levels of each skill yield better results and items.
I’m not usually prone to speculation, but before playing, I had heard rumblings that, despite all the delays, Final Fantasy 15 was still rushed and unfinished upon release. I don’t have much evidence other than my personal experience, so take it for what it is worth, but I did run into some issues that would lead me to believe that there could be merit to the game being unfinished. Towards the end, after beating one boss, I could not move Noctis from the spot where he made the final strike. He just kept running in place; no matter what direction I pointed him, I could not jump off this spot. Reloading a manual save did not fix this, but finally, an auto-save helped me to get past it.
Another part of the game required Noctis and company to follow behind another car. No big deal, but then a prompt popped up saying that falling too far behind would lead to a game over. Uh oh. Uh oh is right because the guy zooms off, Nascar style, and I was left in the dust. I got a few game-overs before finally being able to pass after some reloads. These errors were shocking from a Square game, not what I would expect from an AAA title, doubly so for Final Fantasy, unbefitting of their flagship series. Luckily, driving the car was, otherwise, relatively pain-free and easy.
What was befitting of the Final Fantasy name was the soundtrack. Throughout the game, the soundtrack helped to create a unique atmosphere. Boss battles were particularly memorable.
There are loads of sidequests. I completed 114 but got bored with them, as many didn’t have much meaning, and completing more didn’t appeal to me, considering the wasted potential of the open world. One exception to that was completing hunts. Similar to Final Fantasy XII or Tales of Vesperia, stronger versions of monsters, some as powerful as bosses, can be tracked down and beaten for rewards, and I enjoyed the challenge of subduing beasts with much higher levels.
Driving the car was fun for part of the game, and I never ran out of gas, but driving back and forth got tedious by the time the game’s world started to close. Around the halfway point, the game suddenly gets linear, and the chapters speed by. The first few chapters took up more than half the game, some of the later chapters took just 1–2 hours, and in total, I finished the game in 29 hours at level 44. Had there been more meaningful, worthwhile sidequests, I might have been inspired to try the post-game 15th chapter.
Just the same, I am happy I gave this game a try. I’d recommend that any RPG fan give it a shot if they haven’t already, but this is not a good entry point into the genre, and I’d make that same statement even more emphatically regarding Final Fantasy. Go with IV or VI if you want a classic, perhaps X or XII if you want something a little more modern. This is a game that had enormous potential as a fascinating open-world action RPG, but fell flat in execution.
Check out my reviews of other Final Fantasy titles:
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3
You can buy Final Fantasy XV here or here.
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