Current mood: (chapter 1) I'm going to cry (chapter 2) I'm going to cry (chapter 3) I'm going to cry ... (chapter 9) ok I'm crying
After (finally) getting the platinum for Tales of Graces f, I was thinking of going back to a PS4 game (I alternate consoles between games to keep things fresh) but I didn't want to play another action game... and here I am, playing exactly that.
This game is nearly 7 years old! Man, I'm really slow on the uptake. It's the infamous 10-year development hell game -- Final Fantasy XV! Usual disclaimer: getting spoiled on things does not make me immune to feels.
A simple round of 'guess that character' this time, as we only have 4 main 'party members' (barring guest characters and DLC). Sadly we can't differentiate everyone by their colour scheme because edgy early 2000s boyband vibe amiright... Our main playable character is Noctis, crown prince of Lucis, always front and center with the most anime hair known in Eos. Ignis is also known as specs; Gladiolus is the big guy who guarantees a semi-walking shirtless scene whenever he is on screen; and the happy baby of the group is Prompto.
This game is one big ticket to feels city so forgive me if I lose it at some point.
Not much in the first chapter or so and they put in some clips from the tie-in movie Kingsglaive, but seeing the movie is not a requirement. We follow Prince Noctis as he departs his home of crown city Insomnia with his posse to meet with Lunafreya, his betrothed, in Altissia where their wedding is to be held. This, as a peace signing is scheduled the very next day in the crown city, between Lucis and the Empire.
Of course the peace signing is a trap, Insomnia is in shambles, the King and Luna are reported dead, and Noctis goes fucking ballistic. Thankfully Luna's death is fake news, but King Regis... not so much. All the while Ardyn, who dubs himself 'a man of no consequence' stalk the party and show up at the damnest of times. Noctis and co meet up with Iris (Gladio's sister) and other crown city refugees to plan their next course of action, which happens to be the same as their initial objective -- go to Altissia. So they do, using a private boat.
Shit hits the fan after the party arrives at the beautiful city of water. Luna attempts to forge a covenant with a god and gets shanked by Ardyn, Noctis goes super saiyan and Ignis shall never be referred to as four eyes ever again. A sombre mood clouds the usually friendly bunch but it resolves soon enough for things to get worse. Noctis attempts to reclaim the crystal but is vore'd for some reason and there's nothing his posse can do about it. With the Oracle (Luna) dead and the King (Noctis) MIA, eternal darkness befalls Eos.
Noctis is spat out by the crystal 10 years later with a scruffy beard and mustache. He has no time to even catch up before he goes off to Insomnia to fulfill his destiny as the chosen King of Light. After his showdown with Ardyn, Noctis prepares for his ascension while Ignis, Gladio and Prompto sends him off one last time. With the power of god and anime on his side, Noctis purges the starscourge and brings the first light of dawn in a decade...
I've played my fair share of video games with no happy ending, but boy does this take the cake. This game guarantees a non-stop crying experience starting from chapter 9. My lacrimal glands are swollen from all the crying I've done in the last 3 days. This doesn't include all the sad stuff from supplementary materials like the movie, anime, novella, and trailers. Yes, the CGI trailers count. There's also the character episode DLCs, which makes the sad worse. I've already seen Kingsglaive (the movie), I've finished Brotherhood (the anime), so the only thing left for me is the novella. I'm not paying extra bucks for the DLC, you can't make me buy that shit unless I already have it pre-packaged in the Royal Edition.
Gameplay: surprisingly entertaining. Did not vibe much with the battle system as I wanted to play a turn based jrpg but it's acceptable. Plus I don't have to actually button mash to attack (you just hold the button down) and Noctis can fly around as long as he has MP left. The exploration in this game makes me go feral because it is so fucking beautiful, doesn't matter if you travel by foot, chocobo or car, the environment is unlike anything I've experienced before. And then you can observe the whole of Lucis from above using the flying car?! There's plenty of sidequests and hunts to keep you busy, passages and dungeons hidden behind thickets or under boulders, other activities like fishing and chocobo races, and my personal favourite -- driving! This game is also infamous for all its various product placements and collabs so there's Final Fantasy XIV, Terra Wars and Assassin's Creed (the first two being permanent quests in game and the last a limited-time one). I had a lot of fun with the ff14 quest despite getting my assed kicked. As a player of the mmorpg, that quest gave me so much anxiety...
Story: as much as it made me feel like shit (in a good way), I can't give the story a thumbs up. You can enjoy the game without knowing any lore from the extra stuff but some things are just ???? especially towards the end. Like, alright, we need to purge the world of a scourge and only the Chosen One can do that, sure, standard jrpg trope. Overpowered accessories and weapons? Yeah ok, if we can have swords that determine a hero, a ring aint that different. Covenant with Gods, arranged marriages, peace treaties, all easy to understand tropes in the genre, but there is no exposition as to why and how. It took me going to the tvtropes page to know some of the lore, and I still don't know how the 'purge the starscourge' business works. Buuuuut they also got me real good so something has to be working...
Music: ahhhh, it's really good. Since its first release as a versus XIII trailer in 2005, the music has captivated me. It's criminal that they didn't use Somnus as much as they should in the game itself. The only times you can hear it are during the title screen before you clear the game (the instrumental version) and in the last area of the game before the final boss fight. It is also featured in the title screen credits, alongside Too Much is Never Enough by Florence + the Machine. Speaking of, her cover of Stand by Me is phenomenal and the aforementioned original insert song is basically told from Noctis' pov. There's another track in the collab album that isn't featured in the game. This mini album had me in a crying fit when it was released. For the soundtrack we have full-on latin chanting thanks to piano-suplexer Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Parasite Eve) on composing duty. And if you're wondering when did she do that, may I direct you to this piece of artwork:
and this video shitpost about her musical prowess:
The DLCs and patches have other composers working on them, with Shimomura contributing a few tracks here and there. The notable one was Keiichi Okabe's signature latin chanting (different from Shimomura's) in Gladio's episode... oh... I LOVE IT.
Overall rating: it's enjoyable and entertaining, and despite the story being shaky at best it did manage to make me feel something. I can't stress this enough but I literally cried every night for 3 days while playing chapter 9 to chapter 14, and this is after knowing spoilers. It is an amalgamation of all the things I love in storytelling: A father's love for his son and how he grieves for his fate? Ouh love that shit! Brothers through thick and thin? OMG someone must be out to get me! STARCROSSED LOVERS????? Imma fucking die! Then again it doesn't take much to do me in. The gameplay and music managed to save the rating, so a 7 for the fun and all the other things that could have been.
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| Why would they do this to us. Why. |
This game has gone through so many changes since it's first announcement in 2005 as versus XIII, it's a miracle that Noctis is still named Noctis. We'll never see Nomura's original vision and I'd really like to know what he had intended for the third entry in the FNC mythos. Apparently it was going to have death motifs everywhere which was eventually scrapped during the switch to XV, but the theme still persists. Like I mentioned in a short review post way back in 2016: Noctis thought he was groomed to be king, when in fact he was groomed to die. Such is the tragedy of one chosen by god. He has no time to grieve the loss of his loved ones while simultaneously being forced to grow up into the role of the chosen king. It's the most heartbreaking thing, but he is king, and a king always moves forward, so he does.
I will have this tragedy stuck in my head for weeks to come thank you for the depression squeen.
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