Final Fantasy XV Day One Edition (PS4)

Anyone who's been paying attention to Square Enix for the last decade or so should come to any new Final Fantasy game with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Final Fantasy used to be the best JRPG series out there, but after IX or X the series went downhill rapidly with a series of disappointing games that pleased no one. Particularly XIII with its endless corridor, vapid characters, and needlessly convoluted and overexposited plot. Which means that a lot of people are relying on this game to restore the series to its roots and bring back the fun, adventure, and sense of exploration that used to define the series. No pressure, right? Obviously no game could live up to those lofty expectations, but XV is still a great game, and even a great Final Fantasy game. And a lot of that is because it doesn't play it safe and dish out a generic Final Fantasy designed to hit all the old nostalgia buttons and nothing else. It takes risks, some of them quite radical and unexpected. The chief of these is the open world. Making the game a sandbox was an obvious way to reassure after XIII's endless corridor, yet it also risked turning the game into just another Fallout clone with Anime characters. But it really works. A large part of it is that the game's built not around a quest so much as a road trip with a gang of friends. Naturally there's some rush off and save the world stuff that you need to do, but the real pleasure here comes from the little things. The discussion over meals, the comfortable banter, the endless photographing... It's like going on holiday with that cool crowd you always envied in school but never quite got in with. The three basic strengths of this game are the gameplay, the characters, and the visuals. Gameplay is first rate and offers something new to the whack and slash genre of fighting games. Noctis can summon weapons at will and teleport himself into attacks or out of combat. He has four different weapon types to choose from at the touch of a button and different weapons work better on different enemies. It's both an awesome visual and highly functional system. It's been vastly improved from the Duscae demo they released a year back. Weapons and magic are fully customizable and easily used in combat, although being realtime does limit some of the spells. Your teammates are not directly controllable, but you do need to monitor and coordinate them. They also help you out. Even though you've lost complete control it does feel like a group battle rather than just one player vs. the world. This game is all about character, to put it mildly. If they didn't work nothing else would. Fortunately, the characters are a lot of fun and have amazing Latin names. Noctis Lucis Caelum (Literally: Heaven of the Nightlight) is the prince of Lucis and your typical moody teenage Anime protagonist. That said, he's never so moody it's annoying and he has good reason to be morose given that his kingdom was just taken over by the badguys and his father killed leaving him to reclaim his throne and save the world. The other characters are a part of his retinue. Gladiolus (lit: Dagger) is his big brother type bodyguard, Ignis (lit: Fire) is his calculating tactician/butler, and Prompto (lit: with eagerness) is a schoolfriend/comic relief. And contrary to expectations the comic relief never becomes too much of a whiny git to entertain. Each of them fits a fairly clear archetype, and on their own they're not very memorable, but when together (and they always are) they form an awesome band of bros out having themselves a fantastic road trip. Oh, and saving the world on the side. Every effort is made to keep their character interactions real and fresh. They even give the characters a personal life outside of you, such as Prompto's interest in photography (which works well with the PS4's sharing system) and Ignis' fondness for cooking. You really feel like part of the band. The best thing I can say about these guys is that when you're separated from them at various points it hurts. You feel isolated and alone. I even found myself worrying about the fates of the other guys. And the reunions left me genuinely moved. That's a well done game. The visuals are one of the game's other high points, and a major difference from earlier games in the series. They worried us all by their obsession with realistically recreating parts of Tokyo for the capital city of Insomnia and giving our leads mundanely realistic costumes of black leather, but Insomnia barely features at all and the matching costumes make the quartet look like part of the same boy band. You do get modern gas stations, but they're right alongside chocobo farms and giant stone arches that make no sense. The monsters are inventive too, with my favorite being the lake monsters that look like hairy brachiosaurs. All of it is rendered in stunningly lifelike graphics that almost make you believe this is a real place. Real and magical sit side by side unnoticeably. It's perfect. If this game has a fault it's that the main plot isn't very well established. It feels a lot like XIII in that way. It's never clearly laid out why you're doing what you're doing (and the parts that are explained certainly aren't emphasized nearly enough) and too much of the lifting is left to the lore. Unlike XIII though, the plot is basic enough that it's not a problem. You know early on what the end goal is and if some of the stops along the way don't particularly make sense you never feel completely lost. A lot of people will probably comment negatively on the second part of the game. There reaches a point where the open world dries up and the game adopts a more linear approach. It's necessary, although I'll concede that it could probably have flowed more naturally. I didn't find this part fun, not because it was badly done but because it was painful. Things go wrong and the game starts to feel pretty harsh. It's a measure of the feeling you have for these characters that you're unhappy when they are. I didn't realize how much I cared about these guys until they started suffering. The ending is satisfying if bittersweet, and the character moments at this stage feel truly earned. There are a lot of other things I loved about the game, including the music, dungeon design, and various technical features. But it would take all day to describe them. It's a great game, far better than I feared it would be and up there with the core of brilliant Final Fantasies (basically, VI-X), even while being nothing like them. I think I even prefer it to X, although X had a stronger overarching plot. Well done guys and well worth waiting for.

(MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD - do not read unless you have clocked the game) I class myself as a Final Fantasy fan having played over ten titles. Loved VII, VIII, and X. Struggled out of boredom to finish XII and then didn't even bother with XIII. Since the first FFXV trailer in 2006 I've been eagerly anticipating the release of this title! I had pre ordered it on Amazon years in advance and on the day I received the copy I was ecstatic to say the least, even bought a new TV as the screen did not fit on my current one. The game starts off great and gets even better. I am a pro turn based gamer but I have to admit the actual gameplay is amazing with an engaging combat mechanism and countless extras you can do from racing your car in a high speed chase to shooting machine guns at robots. I actually loved the summoning mode (although initially confusing on how to trigger it), and appreciated how the archaeons would come in times of need in a tough battle giving you a sense of relief whilst struggling against a feared enemy rather than any tiny powered gimmick that you could call countless times in a minor battle against a little chicken fiend. All of this awesomeness is varnished with an outstanding soundtrack to match (hats off to Shimomura-san). A downside evident fairly on however is the lack of cutscenes. Final Fantasy is loved by many for its wonderful storytelling in its high quality scenes but this desperately lacked those moments. At first I thought it was as they had transferred all the early scenes to the Kingsglaive movie and that as you passed that point in the game, the story would pick up. It never did. The game was left with so many gaps in the story and events happening off screen it was hard to understand the plot let alone enjoy it. Despite ten years in making, after a certain point in the game it felt completely rushed and unfinished. Don't get me started on how annoying and tedious Chapter 13 was. The brief story telling they did have was still completely inadequate. It seemed as though all the epicness of the XIII versus trailers had been totally lost. The one scene where Noctis meets Stella had more chemistry than the entire game with Luna. I felt so little for Luna that after her death I actually hoped they'd bring Stella into it and Noctis would forget all about his penfriend who he was told he should marry. The character Noctis previously portrayed was a strong, confident prince now turned into an annoying spoilt brat. It would have worked if his character developed over time, but it hardly did. Then came the ending, leaving me completely disappointed. *your final warning, major spoilers ahead* With the ten year time jump, they had so much opportunity to give us some emotional heartfelt scenes. With the King returning ten years on after being thought dead (just like Simba). The moment his friends first see him alive and are completely stunned with joy. The moment he meets Iris, and Cid, and all his old friends. The moment he returns to the now refugee camp of Lestallum and his people heartily cheer his return with a newfound hope. None of that happened however and you were left with a complete anti-climax. Then came Insomnia, the home I was so longing to explore and renovate back to its former glory. It however served nothing but a stage for the final boss. Why can Square Enix not finish a game without killing off the hero? I get that tragedy works in bringing tears and all but not when they do it every single time. If you think about it, the whole game was a waste as Ardyn actually got what he wanted and Noctis lost everything. How ridiculous. An epic scene towards the end would have been the first Versus XIII trailer ever. They could have left it as Noctis losing all his friends from Chapter 13 and then returning to Insomnia. Sitting on the throne in depression, thinking he had lost everything. Empire sending in all their troops after him and he comes outside and kills a few handfuls of them without any emotion and then returns to his throne as he did, now yielding the power of the ring (which for some reason had become a weak toy in the game compared to all its power in Kingsglaive when wielded by Nyx). That would have really pleased us with the trailer nostagia. Then continued with whatever story and ended with him restoring Lucia back to its days of former glory as a bad ass king. Allowing you to explore the open World once more in the present day. Despite all these criticisms I still enjoyed the game. After clocking it I'm still finding loads of new stuff to do even though i had completed all the sidequests previously. I'm looking forward to the updates now. I know this would probably be very cliche and annoying but I actually want Square Enix to release another game via DLC suggesting Chapter 9 onwards was all just a bad dream and rehash the entire second part of the story to how it should have been.

لعبه جميله و رائعه

El juego está en español y me he ahorrado casi 15 eurazos. Por lo demás me está gustando bastante. Destacar que el sistema de batalla es algo raro (me recuerda al de Kingdom Hearts), la historia es buena y los diseños están muy currados. Creo que es una revisión de los últimos FF que hacía mucha falta. Se echa de menos algún personaje femenino, eso sí.

When I first picked up this game, I fell in love with the in-game mechanics. I've been playing Final Fantasy series since FF IX on the original PlayStation. That being said, the story in this game goes by pretty quick after a certain point. Pros: - All the side quests. When my friends were watching me play it, they thought I bought a fishing simulator. For some reason the fishing mini-game was incredibly satisfying, and I would say I put at least 6 hours just fishing.. Take that as you will. - Combat mechanics. You can actually kill high level mobs if you play your game perfectly, whereas in other iterations of Final Fantasy unless you were grinding mobs there would have been no way for you to take down high level mobs. That being said, I did do some leveling and questing because I enjoyed it so much. - Visuals. As always, Final Fantasy graphics are fantastic, this game is no different. Summon sequences are epic, and the cut-scenes look like they're a CGI film [which they also made, check it out if you haven't already]. - Music. The few tracks that are in the game, are very emotional and epic. Cons: - Forced linear progression after a certain point in the story. This is open world but if you're not careful you'll be trapped into doing main story line and will miss out on side quests. - Music. One of the most underwhelming scores in Final Fantasy thus far. Very few memorable songs, and tracks in general. Overall, I have enjoyed the game a great amount. They are constantly patching the game and adding more content, vehicles, and outfits, which is fun!

La caja del videojuego llegó muy estrellada pero afortunadamente el disco estaba intacto así que lo único que hice fue cambiarlo de caja, por suerte tenía una de sobra seminueva que es la que se muestra en las fotos. Por ese detalle le doy solo 4 estrellas.

Un must per gli amanti della saga, che non delude mai. Attenzione che solo i sottotitoli e le voci del menù sono in Italiano. L'audio del gioco, dialoghi, filmati e narrazione, sono solo in Giapponese, Inglese, Francese e Tedesco. Enjoy!