Before I get into this, let me say one thing: I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV.
I want to get that out of the way up front, because I’m going to level a lot of criticisms at it. Final Fantasy XV has flaws, but I had fun with it and I’m happy I played it.
Combat was fun and I didn’t mind not having full control over the car. Most areas allow fast-travel, and other times I’d just set the car’s location and do something else while they drove. Chocobo riding was fantastic, and I only wish I could buy my Chocobo permanently.
Now, I want to apologize for a faulty assumption I made about how linear the end would be. While it isn’t wholly linear, you don’t get to explore the world in the traditional sense.
Click for FFXV structure spoiler
You can return to the past through your memories (basically time travel, although the story does not have time travel and this isn’t acknowledged) and explore the open world that way.
However, you can’t naturally explore the world around you in the later parts of the game.
I wouldn’t necessarily split the open vs. linear sections into two halves, however. If you intend to do side quests, the first “half” of the game is considerably longer than the second.
This leads to very strange pacing, and that is one of my biggest problems with Final Fantasy XV. The pacing is bizarre.
The Open World
At first, you have several open areas to explore. A few become unlocked as you play, but it’s generally pretty open. My feelings on this section are mixed. Its story and exploration aren’t as well-integrated as Xenoblade Chronicles X (the main reason I enjoyed that open world), but it doesn’t have the jarring disconnect of Dragon Age: Inquisition, either.
Unfortunately, a lot of the side quests are repetitive. One guy’s quests always send you to look for dog tags, another guy always sends you to look for stones, hunts have you kill a monster without any story, etc.
And many (though not all) don’t bother to give you details about what you’re looking for or where to go, since you can run to the quest marker on your mini-map.
(These made me miss side quests where I had to think about what to do and where to go.)
But the overall vibe was fun, the quests often resulted in entertaining dialogue, and I enjoyed the interactions between the four main characters. The main cast is great. My favorite will always be Ignis, but I loved the team. It was always fun to see their reactions to quests and dungeons, and even more fun to encounter a special scene or quest while camping.
Now, if you do a lot of side quests, this section of the game has slow pacing. Hours will pass in between story details. That’s why it’s such a shock when you leave the open world behind and walk into an onslaught of story.
The Linear “Half”
The more linear section of the game is filled with story, and since there are no side quests in later areas, you get plot event after plot event at a breakneck speed with no time to breathe. And little time to explore, which makes it puzzling that the map details areas you’ll never visit.
A little exploration or a few side quests, even repetitive side quests, would have made it easier to process all the story events that happen here. But even without them, the storytelling of Final Fantasy XV has problems.
I think Final Fantasy XV has a good story. It’s just not told particularly well. Several events happen off-screen that really should be on-screen. Some of these might be intended for DLC (which is annoying), but others feel like they rushed the game and didn’t have time to include everything.
Click for major Final Fantasy XV spoilers
A sample of off-screen events that should be on-screen:
- Gladio leave the party and gets a scar. (DLC!)
- Ignis is blinded, which is a major part of the story going forward. (DLC!)
- Luna. I didn’t feel I knew Luna well enough to feel sad when she died.
- Noctis mopes after Luna’s death to the point where Gladio gets annoyed. Due to the time skip, it makes it feel like Gladio is a jerk. We need to see their relationship degrade.
- Ravus changes sides, even though the last time we saw him, he still hated Noctis.
- Ravus dies.
- Iedolas is turned into a daemon. (I’ll give them some credit that it was a shock to find out that the monster stalking me was him. The surprise worked well.)
- Noctis ends up in a prison after his conversation with Bahamut. (???)
- Ten years pass, forcing us to get an infodump from Talcott about things we won’t get to see (including what Iris and Cindy are up to).
Also, remember when I looked at the Final Fantasy XV villains and I hoped the mad scientist would have a fun role in the game? What happened to him? Verstael appears in one early scene and then never is seen again.
Verstael’s only scene
Things like this make me feel like Final Fantasy XV was somehow rushed and they had to cut things out or skip important details. There’s a lot of trailer footage not in the game, too.
Previous Final Fantasy games switch to other characters if the main protagonist isn’t involved in important scenes. Final Fantasy XV does show events Noctis isn’t present for, so why not fill in these gaps, as well?
Now, there’s one section where I thought it worked really well… and this is probably my most controversial Final Fantasy XV opinion.
Chapter 13
I loved Chapter 13. Loved it.
People complain about Chapter 13 so much, it’s actually going to be patched eventually to “fix” it. But to me, it doesn’t need to be fixed.
Chapter 13 feels like it wandered in from a different genre.
Click for Chapter 13 style spoilers
Survival horror, to be precise. It veered into Silent Hill or Resident Evil territory.
If the game belonged to that genre, I’d judge it more harshly, but as a light touch of that genre in an RPG, it delighted me. The storytelling in Chapter 13 also finds an agreeable pace: steady, gradual, with small details here and there until they finally come together.
I’m in the minority here, but while Chapter 13 is many people’s least favorite Final Fantasy XV sections, it’s honestly one of my favorites.
The Story Overall
You know what else I liked a lot? Ardyn. While a lot of the villains suffer from the storytelling, Ardyn is much more entertaining here than he was in Kingsglaive.
In fact, I enjoyed the story overall. The plot events were exciting, and I grew attached to the main characters. When certain things went wrong, I felt terrible for them. If one of them was in danger, I worried.
That’s why I want to see more of this story… and why I wish certain events were handled differently.
Click for MAJOR Final Fantasy XV spoilers
In particular, the conversation with Bahamut really bugs me.
When I reached Ardyn’s revelation that he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum, I was stunned.
By his account, he was a king who saved people from the Starscourge by absorbing the plague into his own body. But instead of being thanked as a savior, he was ostracized and vilified, his throne taken from him.
This makes Ardyn more sympathetic. It suggests that he was a victim, and that Noctis’s ancestor was in the wrong, even though now Ardyn has gone insane and needs to be stopped.
Then Bahamut explains it away as Ardyn being “so impure of body and soul [he] was deemed unworthy of the Crystal’s light, and forbidden to ascend” and essentially makes it sound like Ardyn was always in the wrong.
The game sticks with this, discussing the irony of how a king of light became a twisted monster and not touching upon the notion that maybe Ardyn was wronged. They don’t even discuss Ardyn’s perspective or try to tell him why he was rejected.
It makes sense for Bahamut to take that viewpoint, but it feels as though the game itself wants you to quickly hurry past any sympathy and return to viewing him as an evil monster that must be destroyed.
The plot also progresses so quickly, there’s no time to develop true sympathy for Ardyn.
Yet there’s official art of Ardyn like this and this! They obviously intended him to be a fallen savior figure!
(And they call Noctis the “King of Kings” so many times it can’t be a coincidence. Noctis is the new savior who will destroy the fallen savior.)
Kingsglaive makes the Lucii seem pretty cold, so it’s not a stretch to imagine the jealous king Ardyn describes.
So why didn’t the game develop this further? It’s an ambiguous story, but the game acts as though it wants you to accept Bahamut’s side without question.
It’s rare for me to praise Tales of Zestiria’s story, but this is where a mechanic like the Earthen Historia could have been used to great effect. The Earthen Historia let the party see tiny glimpses of the past. If something like that showed us what Ardyn used to be like and what happened to him, it would be a lot stronger.
Maybe that can come in an update someday, too…
I believed in Final Fantasy XV. I still do. Final Fantasy XV is an enjoyable, if flawed, game with an endearing main cast and an exciting plot that unfortunately feels rushed.
Maybe someday we’ll get to see Final Fantasy XV as it should have been.
Buy Final Fantasy XV from Amazon
Buy Final Fantasy XV from Play-Asia
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is one of those games I’ve meant to play for years and finally got around to.
