Final Fantasy XV (2016, Square Enix)
In lieu of having any kind of structure with which to pick the next game I'm going to play for my semi-planned Series of Game Reviews that will continue until I'm too old or otherwise infirm to write or play games anymore I'll either go with whatever my friends at the Imp Zone are playing, or maybe I'll pick something related in some way to a game I've played recently (please look forward to next week's Illusion of Gaia review), or simply whatever may or may not already be in my game library that looks interesting at the time of choosing. This time, at a loss, I looked at my shelf and drew Final Fantasy XV, which I bought at launch and played maybe an hour of before losing interest, something which happened a lot before I gave myself a reason to stick with games by reviewing every one I play. I've sampled to various degrees a few entries in the series but until now I had never finished one. My life trajectory with regard to game taste never included a stop for RPGs, with my early life to mid-teens spent infatuated with Nintendo and Sega first and second party titles and some light dabbling in simulation and strategy games on the PC, before suddenly switching nearly exclusively to playing arcade games for like a decade through discovering the Tetris the Grand Master series and the vertical shooter genre. It was only a few years ago that I had regained any significant tolerance for games that weren't around 30 minutes to an hour in length and whose basic completion didn't require being replayed daily for potentially several months, and since then I've sampled a wide variety of all mainstream genres, leading to some amount of understanding of what quality is in the extreme ends of the game design spectrum, from the tiniest jewels of arcade action to the behemoths of the largest and freest open worlds. It is from this perspective, and not one of a longtime fan of the Final Fantasy series, that I, first and foremost humbly, offer my critique of the series entry self-designated "for fans and first-timers," Final Fantasy XV.
In developing an open world, that is, a game world that is large and mostly freely traversable, one naturally wants to fill it with lots of things to do. Predominantly these things would include sidequests, which ideally in a role playing game would take the place of traditional grinding. In other words, open world sidequests are "the new, better grinding." Even if ultimately in the sidequest you're going to a place and beating up some dudes and coming back, the surrounding tiny story shard contextualizes it and better connects to the overall narrative what otherwise would be a rote exercise. What is required here, though, is a reason to do sidequests or other side activities at all. In a game that presents the main story as a series of quests to take on, for the player to deviate from this and remain comfortably in line with the internal consistency of the game's story with regard to character motivation, there needs to be either a mechanical hurdle (i.e. the next main quest is too hard for your current level or your current equipment, i.e. you need to indulge in The New, Better Grinding for a little while), or some kind of narrative pull (a side character intervenes and persuades you convincingly to do something for them), or even just a lull in the story where you're not allowed to progress until you hang out for a bit and do some stuff. One of my two primary beefs with Final Fantasy XV is that these mechanisms by which you would be pushed to engage with the open world in this manner are very scarce. In my playthrough I was only below the recommended level for the next main quest twice; once near the beginning and once near the end. The first time I did two or three sidequests and got the requisite level ups, but once I was closing in on the end of the game, kind of ready for it to be over with, I decided on quickly grinding a previously cleared dungeon to get treasure to sell to buy a bunch of healing items, most of which I didn't even end up needing for the final bosses despite the whole party being at least five levels under what was recommended for the quest. The game is far too easy and the player far too able to fly through the main quest unabated, chasing after that ever-present red waypoint. Furthermore, I unlocked maybe four or five items on the skill tree and bought new equipment twice. Despite such minimal engagement with the game's world and mechanics I reached the end dying only three times in total.
Compare: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, released a year later, in which navigating the world and using most of what capabilities you're given is practically mandatory for a normal playthrough. Heading straight to Ganon is basically an ultrahard variant no one would attempt the first time through. Granted, considering how monumentally Breath of the Wild BTFO'd every game with an open world at the time, the comparison might not be quite fair, but the contrast is nonetheless interesting for just how far FFXV falls from the world design ideal set by a game released so shortly after it. You can "beeline the main quest" in BOTW but you have to do so much along the way, and more importantly you'll WANT to do so much along the way, to fortify your chances of survival, whereas in FFXV your survival is effectively a matter of course as you drive from waypoint to waypoint, because there are almost no obstacles to doing so. Or from another perspective look at the microcosmic open world of Yakuza 0, released a year earlier and building off a string of previous similar titles, in which people stop you on the street for help with their problems, problems which often sound too intriguing not to oblige, and in which there are often points in the story where your only directive is "hang out in the city for a while." And who's not going to stop at the arcade to play Out Run here and there? Out Run rules! If Final Fantasy XV had an Out Run machine then it would automatically be a good game. But seriously, I'm not asking for every city in a vast open world such as FFXV's to be as dense and active as a Yakuza game's one or two cities necessarily (though that would obviously be awesome), but the total absence of these narratively integrated sidequest catalysts or vastly more significant mechanical necessity to do anything but the main plot shows that the former's open world checks off a feature box and nothing more.
Too much of the world traversal consists in cinematically waiting for stuff to happen, in that most of it takes place either riding in or driving a car uneventfully to your destination. Even if you choose to drive manually instead of having your friend Ignis do it for you it's still mostly automatic; the driving mechanics are barely there. Getting from A to B is effectively a new set of cutscenes, admittedly often accompanied by story-related chatter among your party, but conceptually I can't think of a less interesting way to convey the size of a world than to make you take a regular ass trip in a car from one place to the next. Thankfully repeat trips give the option for fast travel, though I've long been of the opinion that in an interesting and well-designed open world you wouldn't want or need fast travel, which is a lesson most developers sadly have yet to learn. Speaking of, one element of fast travel in this game doesn't really make narrative sense in that you can abandon your car, warp to the last place you rested at, rest, and then warp back to where you left the car. The idea is that it's not safe to travel at night because there's demons everywhere, with some blocking the road, so when using the "Return to rest point" option at this time how are they getting back so easily? It might be a small thing but the lack of good in-game justification for your characters to do this makes the mechanic feel cheap and sticks out as very obviously video-gamey and harms immersion, and lest you make the game unnecessarily miserable for yourself you have to use it from time to time. Hoofing it doesn't fare much better than driving as the game lacks verticality; you're mainly running on flat ground and hopping over some fences whenever you're not in the car. Like any other standard RPG you can get into random battles and find items here and there, but now it's across a way bigger area that takes far longer to navigate. A lot of the closed off environments too are far too big without good reason.
I can't bitch and moan too much about the boring world traversal (or maybe I can!) for the sheer fact that the game is absolutely gorgeous. For all that I might complain that you're riding motionlessly in a car so often, a lot of the time I didn't really mind that much as I earnestly fiddled with the radio and moved the camera around to get the precise cinematic feeling for whatever it was we were doing. The couple of substantial cities I came across are impressively large, beautiful and intricately detailed. Final Fantasy XV also has a real knack for appropriately massive bosses, and for properly conveying the epicness of the encounter. As part of a seemingly random sidequest you find a turtle creature the size of a mountain, like any of the mountains you see in the landscape, and it's genuinely intimidating (your only directive at the time is to run from it) as the choir-led orchestrated BGM spins up to really drive the point home. The music in general kicks serious ass where it needs to. The story unfortunately is profoundly uninteresting and not well-told despite how simple it really is, and has lots of sentimental moments reaching for unearned emotion. The back third of the story has a pretty dramatic tonal shift which I admire, but it also requires a jarring contrivance for the open world to remain open to the player, involving time traveling to the past, as your past selves, but with your current stats and loadout potentially including endgame exclusive capabilities that are intimately tied up with the story that's occurred thus far. I say "contrivance" but an explanation isn't really attempted at all, unless the lady who speaks in riddles that shows up when this is introduced said something about it and it went over my head.
So open world aside, the main quest is well and evenly mixed with objectives ranging from going to a place and talking to a person to full dungeon crawls with bosses. The pacing is decent if sometimes hampered by the aforementioned bland world traversal, and really picks up in the last third or so of the game by more or less discarding the open world altogether, so the connective tissue between each chapter relies on bigger story beats rather than driving across huge areas. The dungeons are small in number and are all the more memorable for it; they're well laid out with predetermined static enemy encounters and with maps that are rarely frustrating to negotiate. Experience points you gain from doing quests, winning battles and selecting certain dialogue choices all get "banked" and don't get awarded to your characters until you stay overnight at a rest area, be it a campsite or hotel, which does actually provide some incentive to break away from the main story, if only briefly. Some areas cost money to stay at but offer experience multiplier bonuses, which is a pretty cool idea. A couple of objectives across the main quest rely on how you respond in an extended conversation with another character, which are some of my favorite parts of the game, and I sorely wish they had made more use of the mechanic. Instead, the primary method of generating conflict is battle, which leads to my other main beef with Final Fantasy XV: combat is an absolute clusterfuck. Movement and attacks feel laggy and not sufficiently viscerally responsive to button presses, the lock-on seemingly picks an enemy at random rather than whatever is closest to you when you first hold down the button, and worst of all the camera is just going apeshit all of the time. I'm not joking that I either thought or spoke the words "what is happening. where am I" in at least one third of all engagements; the camera will either get stuck behind an object or your character will get stuck somehow out of view constantly, and is generally way too motion sickness-inducingly active for how hectic fights with up to dozens of enemies can get. Warp striking at least, in which your character can magically zip from any distance directly into an enemy, feels pretty damn good, and skills related to it were some of the few I unlocked on the tree as soon as I possibly could. Calling on your teammates' abilities gives you a little breather as you're invulnerable while they execute their attack in a psuedo-cutscene, after which you can often follow up at the behest of a QTE, which also feels satisfying, as does the Armiger mode in which you have a limited amount of time to hold down the attack button to automatically home in and go HAM on your enemy. Honestly, when the camera is cooperating battle can be kind of fun with its reliance on properly defending and parrying attacks, but all too often it's a giant headache.
With Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix put the open world cart before the game design horse. It is not the ultimate flavor experience. Its mechanics are overdesigned for its level of difficulty and are pasted on top of an open world that remains almost wholly separate from them. Overall, though, I can't hate it; combat frustration aside it's a remarkably chill and very pretty game that emphasizes even in most of its main quest that you're just hanging out with the boys, and one particular story beat late in the game involving an inter-friend group conflict was quite effective, I felt that one at least. The worst thing I can say about the overall experience is that it's just kind of boring a lot of the time. There's something really off-putting about such an obviously AAA title in every production aspect putting seemingly very little effort into making its combat feel good or at all utilizing its massive world for the purposes of furthering the story rather than existing in spite of it. For all its aesthetic bravado the end result is inexcusably sloppy.
Final rating: 3/5 (Average)