Just a heads up, there will be spoilers in here

Say what you will about the Final Fantasy series, but most of the games in it do at least leave a stronger impression than the average game. They’re not cheap uninspired throwaway games, but rather massively ambitious games, that often take a lot of risks, and re-invent the wheel with every new entry. Re-inventing the wheel is risky, and there’s been some duds here, but also some really good games.

Final Fantasy XV does not quite land in either category, but it’s far from a perfect game. In fact, this might be one of the more flawed games in the series, for a number of reasons. yet despite these flaws, there’s something oddly compelling about this game, something that kept me going, even when I was getting a bit annoyed with the games design choices.

A more grounded fantasy

Final fantasy games have, since FF7, maybe even 6 to some extent, had a tendency of being very fantastical. You don’t really have much that grounds the games into any form of reality, instead huge magical beasts and impossible machines is the normal. These things are of course still in FF XV, but you’ve also got a more normal feeling world. Through a large chunk of the game you’ll be traveling in a car, just a simple car, in what I think is supposed to be modeled after two, or potentially three different regions of the US. But between the common pine trees or large arid areas that has paved roads going through them, you also have some impossible rock formations, and a few other things that could not exist. With a world that feels as grounded as this, those fantastical elements don’t just feel more fantastical, but it’s also easier to get a feeling for their significance. You have a frame of reference. This is in stark contrast to how it was handled in FF XIII, where everything was weird and huge early on, and you only got something known to compare it to much later.

An open world done kind of wrong

Traveling through the world of FF XV feels good. It feels coherent, and the map designers have been kind enough as to not make traveling take too long (there’s also a fast travel system, but you need to have visited any place you want to travel to first). Other open world games could learn a lot from how you traverse the world here. The problem pops up when you’re actually doing things in the world, that’s not related to the main quest. There’s a lot of side quests in FF XV, most of which feel very copy-pasted, and many of them don’t even have unique dialogue, you get the exact same description for a quest in the first place you visit, as you get in a place on the other side of the map. There are very few side quests in the game that actually feel meaningful, the vast majority of them are just “Hey, monsters are eating my carrots, go and pick some carrots”. Then you go there, and there are no monsters, just carrots. So you pick them, and return to the quest giver. And then he tells you that the monsters are eating his carrots, and a quest marker shows up in a different location, so you go there, and find 3 evil cats that are half your level. So you kill them, and pick some carrots.

Then there’s the hunting missions. Most restaurant owners have a set of side quests that have no story at all, there are just monsters roaming about, with some only showing up at a certain time of the day. Beat these and your hunter rank goes up. I don’t know if you get anything fancy if you get your rank high enough, because frankly, I could not be bothered. There was nothing special about these fights, other than you possibly running into some later game monsters early.

Signs of troubled development
Now we’re entering spoiler territory.
I had heard that FF XV had been in development for over 10 years, with it originally being meant to tie in with FF XIII, but they shifted focus at some point of the development process. This shows. The games main story does not feel complete, and during the later parts of it, it runs at a breakneck speed, with some plot elements seemingly being forgotten about along the way. And then it just comes to a halt right before the final boss, where the game remembers that it needs to give you a chance to level up and improve your characters, in case you went into the late-game too early.

This switch to a very linear style is handled poorly. At several points through the main story you get told that the open world will be locked for a while if you progress, so if you want to do some more side quests, you have a chance to do so. And you get a very similar prompt when you’re reaching the point of no return for the main quest, and when I saw it, I figured that it would be just like all the others that came before it, I’ll be away from the open world for a bit, and then return to it. Nope, you never return to it. You’re brought to a second city, that feels very well developed, and looks great, but there’s hardly anything to do in it, and after about half an hour of playtime you’ll never return to it, so something tells me that the a lot of things that were meant to happen here were left on the cutting room floor.

What comes after it feels equally rushed, and somewhat unfinished. You’ll go from place to place, not staying for very long. Well, with one exception, a very drawn out segment that feels like it drew its inspiration from Resident Evil. Seriously, it even ends with a boss that feels like it’s taken from Resident Evil 1. The pacing here is just weird, which is usually a sign that things did not go very well during the games development.

A World of product placement
I sure feel like sitting in my Coleman camping chair, while eating some delicious Nissin cup noodles, and playing Terra Wars on my smartphone. FF XV really goes ham on its product placement at times. Seeing the Coleman logo on a lot of things your character bring with them is easily ignored, but when you’ve got a quest literally dedicated to making the perfect cup noodles, ending with your characters saying that they can’t improve upon perfection, because Nissin cup noodles are already so great, then product placement goes from at worst being a bit annoying if you recognize the things they’re trying to sell you, to really intrusive. There’s a few quests that are designed to just sell you other things, and they’re not well made. Heck, the Terra Wars quest was so bad that I now think the game seems like garbage, without even having seen it. Such is the power of bad product placement.

An unfinished story full of easily digested symbolism
The FF series is not a stranger to symbolism, and FF XV is no stranger to this. It can’t be a coincidence that the main character is named Noctis, and hails from the city of Insomnia, and mostly wears black, while his wife to be, Lunafreya, wears a bright white dress. Notics, known as The King of Kings, is meant to save the world from an eternal night (finally dispelling the night in the city of Insomnia). Through your journey, you’re repeatedly tempted by a man named Ardyn, who seems to know a bit too much, and who’s willing to share nuggets of his wisdom, but who never quite seems to be on your side. This is a biblical story, is it not? Ardyn is clearly the devil, Noctis is the messiah, who ends up sacrificing himself, to save humanity. The Lunafreya, Noctis & Insomnia parts are there to reinforce the light & dark themes, and the eternal night refers to the eternal darkness that the messiah was supposed to save the world from.

It does get a bit muddled by how messy the storytelling can be at points in the game. Important scenes seems to have been cut out, and and you’ve got characters who seem to change their allegiance and personality on a whim. The story feels unfinished, but the thing above is my reading on it.

Easiest combat yet
To call Final Fantasy XV easy would be an understatement. The game offers next to no challenge, and you can just brute-force almost any encounter as long as you’re willing to spend a few potions. Potions are of course cheap and plentiful, and it’s entirely possible to beat quests that are far above your level by just holding down the target and attack button, and once your companions are ready to do a special attack, hit the button for it. If someone goes down, use a potion and they’ll be back up again. In the case of longer dungeons, you might need to use an elixir at some point (elixirs can be purchased in this game, and are cheap).

What makes it even worse is how rapidly you’ll end up out-leveling things. If you do a bunch of side quests, you’ll greatly out-level the main quest, and completely trivialize it. The leveling system simply does not work well with how the rest of the game is designed, and the over-abundance of healing items makes it so that you’ll at no point be in danger of seeing a game over screen. For a game that’s about 25h long, this is not great.

At least it’s charming
Where FF XV shines is with its atmosphere. There’s something about the feeling of going on a road trip with a few friends, taking in the sights, and enjoying a nice meal under the stars (sitting in a Coleman chair, of course…). The people you’re with, while sometimes a bit too exaggerated in their personalities, do feel like real people, and the friendship between them does not feel forced. They can take jabs at each other, act silly, but also share their feelings and fears. The writing can at times leave a bit to be desired, but this road trip aspect of the game is something I don’t think I’ve come across in any other game.

Well, the DLC is good
This game has 4 pieces of downloadable content, of which 3 are free. These are about 1-2h long, and follows one important character each, for a short while. The first one, following the big muscular guy of the group is a take it or leave it affair, but the other ones are worth playing through, and help explain some of the events in the main story. Their mechanics are also unique for each one of them, which is another big plus.