Grave Considerations: Final Fantasy XV

Some of this article may be unfair, as I never finished playing Final Fantasy XV, and had only progressed as far as Leviathan. So my understanding and knowledge of the game, as well as, some may say, my ability to really assess it, are admittedly limited. But, I do feel qualified to make some evaluative statements on the game.

Fighting the urge to give a bland and obvious explanation of this game and its place in this storied franchise, allow me to simply say that the Final Fantasy franchise is perhaps one of the most well-known and beloved in all of gaming. Virtually inventing the role playing video game back in the 1980’s on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Final Fantasy has always been here with us, and has introduced us to some of the best characters and most memorable locations in gaming. Rather than act as a retrospective, I mention this to front load the reader for some things that will be presented as issues in the fifteenth installment. Every so often, meaning with every few games, Square Enix, the company that produces the Final Fantasy series, adjusts or changes things in the gameplay, and the aesthetic changes with every new chapter. Thus, this is a series of games that is ever-developing, which is most certainly the thing that allowed it to reach 15 main titles, along with several spin off or sequel games. Since every game focuses on different and new characters, it is not possible to get invested in them over several games; so, unlike franchises like The Legend of Zelda or others that have reached multiple titles but retain characters or locales, each new Final Fantasy charges you with learning a complete new world with some similar elements. The franchise is certainly not responsible for inventing the expansive world in role playing games, but its role in bringing that to the home game console, or video gaming in general, cannot be denied.

As with all entries in the series, Final Fantasy XV introduces a new, fantastical world with new, intriguing characters. But right away, there are some real obvious differences between this world and ones we remember fondly from previous games. XV is set in the world of Eos, a place not that different from modern-day Earth, only with the standard magical/fantasy elements of such games layered on top of it. In Eos we get the usual story of the Empire attacking the kingdom that our character and protagonist Noctis not only hails from, but is naturally the prince of. Noctis sets out on a journey with his King’s Guard: the strong and stoic Gladiolus; the smart and sassy Ignis; and the young and plucky Prompto. They travel by car . . . around the world fighting monsters and running errands and, once in a while, advancing the plot.

I have always loved the Final Fantasy series of games. But this one, I just cannot get myself in to. Let me start by saying that I don’t mind or care about the car and the too-close-to-this-world aesthetic of the game. NPCs wear jorts and Noctis has a smartphone. I’m not totally in love with those things, but they don’t bother me too much.

The combat system doesn’t make sense to me, and honestly feels random. Long since having evolved beyond turn-based fighting and into more and more real-time combat, Final Fantasy XV employs the same general combat system that XIII did, but removes targeting, so characters basically attack whatever enemy is closest to them. If enemies or characters move around, the target changes, making fighting laborious and time consuming. The work around for this seems to be the ability to chain attacks together, so that you can command the other members of your party to employ some kind of super move against the target that you are engaging, sort of a combo system that does not function as effectively as it should. Final Fantasy as a franchise is no stranger to confusing mechanics that only make sense when you’ve invested enough time in the game to “get the hang of them,” but I was 15 hours in before I stopped playing, and still hadn’t gotten this combo system down. Or point warping, a kind of instant transmission maneuver that also serves as some type of attack in combat.

But, my real issue with the game is the cast. I just can’t care about the characters. The threat is poorly defined, as it often is for the beginning hours of these games, but something that is usually a strength of the franchise is a cast of characters with whom you’ll be spending lots and lots of time that are interesting and compelling. You may not have like Tidus or Squall or Balthier or Hope (that one’s for you, if you’re reading. You know who you are. –mr) Ashe or Irvine or Snow or Zell or Wakka or any of the rest, but you spent enough time with them to get to know them, and develop some degree of affinity or maybe even care for them as the game progressed. More so than the villains, who honestly have only one memorable member and we all know which one he is, these games march on the strength of the party members you travel the world and grind with. Some of them take time to grow on you, and some maybe never do, no matter how much time you try and give them, but you know them.

I don’t know anyone from Final Fantasy XV. After 15 hours, I know the names of the party members essentially because my wife and I have argued about liking them, and I don’t know the names of anyone else. I don’t know who the bad guy –the “time being” nemesis or the actual one – in the game. I don’t know the conflict, or the names of locations, or anything. That’s because they are not memorable, and not worth the brainspace it takes to remember them. The same thing happened with VXIII-2 and XVIII-3, specifically the latter. Who are these people, and why are they doing what they’re doing? Not being able to answer those questions causes the game to really falter, at least for me. We’re not talking about Dark Souls-level vaguery, where questions are not answered and fragments of lore essentially need to be accepted because. We’re talking about not being able to answer fairly basic questions about the world of the game because the answers are simply not interesting enough to bother with.

And I know that these are personal issues. They are things I don’t like about the game, and so not necessarily faults of the game. But to me, they are faults. RPGs are games that we invest tens of hours in, I think my most recent Dark Souls playthrough clocked in at 90-something, and I went fast this time, but at my 15 hours of FFXV, to still not know what’s happening, that’s not good. A games’ narrative can change during play, sure, but 15 hours in I don’t know what I’m doing, at all.

A lot of the game play of FFXV revolves around the game being a huge and practically immediately open world, filled with people who need you to do things for them in addition to the actual quest of the game. So, you drive from one roadside pit stop to another to search for a tomato, to bring back to the first roadside dinner. You have to stop for gas. Frequently. This makes travel laborious, even when all you do is set a destination and let the car drive itself. You can’t travel after dark, as demons stalk the roads, and night takes forever to pass, while the daylight hours go by in what seems like triple speed. I am a sidequester, so I really do appreciate the sheer quantity of side quests that are available in the game, but they have to be good or satisfying in order to really mean anything. I was several stags deep in a side quest where all I was doing was driving around and taking pictures of things for a guy who runs a magazine. Finding tomatoes is not a flippant remark, but an actual quest. There’s a real story in here too, somewhere, if you find it, a side quest in its own right.

I just can’t get in to this game, and I really, really wanted to. I love the franchise, and I’m not happy about leaving a game unfinished like this. But there’s just not a way that I have found to make myself invest in this, or the characters, or the narrative. If I could do any of those things, there’d be no question of finishing the game. As it is, someone told me the ending and I was totally fine with it being spoiled. If anything was bad about that, it’s that I don’t even remember what the resolution was. I know Final Fantasy XV was “fixed” via some DLCs and patches, and that’s the version I’d been playing, but I’ve heard that prior to these attempts at remedy, the game was really rough. Maybe the time is just not right for Final Fantasy XV and I, and maybe in the future I’ll return to it and give it another try. But this is not a good game, and I don’t seem to be in the minority for thinking this way.