Final Fantasy Fifteen - Fin


MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Yes, I played and finished Final Fantasy XV.

Six weeks and a shade under thirty hours was enough to get my hideously under-levelled characters over the finish line. Noctis fulfilled his destiny and the sun rose once more over Lucis, or something.

Cue the Crystal Theme.

Final Fantasy XV is terribly flawed. However, there’s a good game in there somewhere, or at least enough of one to keep me mildly entertained over the course of a month and a bit.

I thought I was going to hate FFXV but I didn't. I thought it was alright.

I'm not enamoured with the direction that the series has taken, but I'm glad that I took the time to play FFXV. Here are fifteen (XV, as in FFXV) reasons why.

1. Doing My Duty: Final Fantasy XV is a Final Fantasy and I still feel like I have to play every mainline entry in the series. XII was the last one I really enjoyed, but I haven’t fallen in love with an entry since IX. However, the series still has a certain appeal. I tried to convince myself that I wouldn't play XV because I hated the demos and it looked shit, but I knew deep down that I'd eventually relent. I have done my duty and may now rest until FFXV-2: No One Asked for This.

2. Cheap Thrills: Because it only cost me £10 (104 Gil), thanks to a brief pricing error on the PS Store. FFXV is an excellent game at £10 (104 Gil).

3. Shit Names: XV gave me four all-time silly names in Noctis, Prompto, Ignis and Gladious. I took a great deal of pleasure in referring to them as Nigel, Pronto, Ian and Gladiator, mostly to myself.

4. The Story: I realise that I shouldn’t have, but I kind of enjoyed the story. FFXV is poorly written, makes no attempt to explain existing relationships or offer any context for the game’s main premise. It is also a banter catastrophe, a bantapocalypse if you will. I know this, yet I appreciated the limited focus on four characters on a road trip, and I bought into their relationships no matter how undercooked they may have been.

5. Delicious Noodles: That bit where Gladiator professes his love for Cup Noodles and asks Nigel what his favourite Cup Noodle flavour is and then they have a Cup Noodle (sponsored by Cup Noodles).

6. What’s for Dinner: “I’ve come up with a new recipe” is the best line in the game.

7. Tunes in the Car: The option to play past FF soundtracks while cruising around in your car is a stroke of genius. I was banging out PS1-era OSTs at every opportunity, letting the memories flood over me as we headed to our next destination. Unequivocally the best feature of the game.

8. Ramooooooh: Summons were limited, which made them even more impressive when they did appear.

9. Quick Encounters: I appreciated the speed and fluidity of combat early on. Unfortunately, I eventually fell behind and spent the second half of the game under levelled, repeatedly getting owned by groups of lesser monsters and bogged down in protracted skirmishes.

10. Cockney Biggs & Wedge: I was happy to see them return and I enjoyed their ridiculous, English accents. I was horrified when the boys abandoned them on a train.

11. Noct’s Excellent Beard: It’s amazing how much of a difference a bit of facial hair makes. Just a few whiskers were all it took to endear me to XV’s whiny, brooding lead.

12. Checking out the Wedding Dress: Unintentional comedy was off the scale in FFXV. The lads excitedly rushing off to look at a wedding dress was a highlight.

13. The Final Stretch: I really enjoyed the last two bosses and was pleasantly surprised by how well the story was wrapped up. There was just enough tugging at heartstrings to balance out all the high-fiving and trash talking.

14. Misery: FFXV has its fair share of dark moments. Bad things happen to major characters, including death, maiming and having to listen to Florence and the Machine. It’s a game about sacrifice and suffering, and all of the main characters do their fair share of both. As we’ve already established, the writing is poor, put it does a fairly good job of nailing a dark tone.

15. Dat Ass: That arse.


Comments

  1. hahaha Pretty funny. I was sort of dreading having to play this too. For very similar reasons to your own. I don't need to finish every FF game, but it's weird to stop trying them at the fifteenth entry, you know? I mean, we've come this far. And nothing could be worse than XIII, which I played for probably ten hours before realizing that no, we were never going to reach a town full of shops and chatty npcs, or the overworld map.

    But then XII got remastered! And I realized that I'd only played like two minutes of XII, because of my dysfunctional relationship with the ps2, so it's super close to being a new game to me. All I could remember was the little arcs of light that happened when you fought things. (I think I might have only played an in store demo!) And XII turns out to be really well written, like my beloved VI! Score!

    So now XV is earmarked for some distant point in the future. I'm still sort of dreading it. Final Fantasy has a history (at least from VII onward) of terrible male characters I cannot stand at all, and the idea of all four of the main team being FF guys is... well, I'm very happy XII saved me. And the remaster is stunning. The voices and translation are just fantastic. So this has gone well for me so far. I strongly suspect that your blog entry will be the most fun I ever have with XV.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The FFXV leads were strangely likable in their own way. Certainly an improvement over the attrocious protagonists of XIII. Lightning, Hope, the one with the hat, pink hair, the "funny" one, the woman who wasn't one of the other two women. Absolute shite.

      I fancy doing XII again. I only played it the once, over a decade ago, and can recall very little. What I do remember is that I enjoyed it. Good old Matsuno.

      Cheers

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    2. The pirate guy you meet early in XII is already my favorite male FF character of all time. He and bunny girl have great voices. Really, the big hole in the game is that they are so much cooler than your little urchin dude that you wonder why on Earth they'd ever hang out with you, much less follow your lead. (It makes you realize how weird Star Wars would have seemed had Han Solo not been constantly bringing up the money. haha)

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