After ten years in development,
the bar has been set impossibly high for Final Fantasy XV.
But can it somehow manage to jump over those expec -
Nope.
But it is a fun game, albeit a deeply flawed experience.
The strength of Final Fantasy has always been in the music,
cutting edge graphics,
and the wonderous worlds.
The stories, on the other hand, although brilliant at times,
are often these disjointed nightmares.
I would describe them as the confusing versions of Metal Gear Solid.
"The Golgins, a circle of blind prophets, predicted that one day Gilgamesh revealed his true form."
"But, defeating these enemies only revealed a greater threat."
"They had collectively created the demon Chaos out of the corpse of Garland and sent it back in time."
"Golbez was not their ultimate enemy, as he was also being brainwashed by another Lunarian named Zemus."
"Galuf remembered he was, in fact, royalty from another world, and had a granddaughter named"
"Gilgamesh."
"Sephiroth discovers that he is, in fact, a super SOLDIER created by"
"JENOVA"
"a vampiric alien lifeform that crash-landed in a meteor."
Keep in mind, all of this is very poorly translated.
"Hojo arrives in Nibelheim and witnessing the destruction..."
[ multiple people talking over each other, attempting to summarize FFVII ]
"Bugenhagen,"
[ multiple people talking over each other, attempting to summarize FFVII ]
This one is pretty straightforward in comparison,
although there is this really lame montage at the beginning
of this movie that they released separately from the game.
It feels like they just cut out they key moments from a much longer story,
similar to last year's Metal Gear V.
The story takes an unexpected backseat to gameplay and exploration,
which I thought was great.
Cruisin' around in the batmobile, listenin' to the soundtracks from the previous games,
lookin' at all these gorgeous landscapes...
You see something interesting, you hop out, go check it out, you know?
You see that big-ass mountain over there?
That's actually a big-ass turtle.
Final Fantasy is jam-packed with amazing creatures and monsters.
You got these cactus guys,
you got these big-ass rhinos,
you got some big-ass wongo lookin' ass,
Bubberducky's grandpa,
Gilgamesh,
hoogarimbus,
and, of course, chocobo.
Every time you ride these CHOCOBO, it plays the classic CHOCOBO theme song.
AND you can drift.
You can drift on a CHOCOBO.
The biggest surprise is how likable the Backstreet Boys turned out to be.
When I heard these guys' first album, I thought they were whack.
Turns out, they're hard.
All they do is kill shit and eat spaghetti.
To be honest, some of the new material sounded really good.
[ character singing the victory theme ] Oh, there he goes.
[ Dunkey singing along ]
I like this one.
Square's biggest breakthrough here is makin' these guys feel authentic.
They talk and move more like people than RPG characters.
They get annoyed with each other,
they get hungry,
they get tired,
and get this:
sometimes, they don't say anything.
They just sit there in silence.
Like real life.
That's some next-gen shit.
The combat...
Ah, the combat.
It's very simple.
But when it works, it feels really weighty and badass.
When it doesn't work, it looks like this.
Uh, I don't - I don't know what this is.
I don't know what is happening here.
I don't know -
Then you have this weird issue where every time you talk to someone,
there's this annoying delay.
Then you have these horrible, horrible load times.
Every time you wanna fast travel, fuck you.
Load time, bitch.
Sadly, as you approach the end of the game, it starts running out of steam.
The main quest starts off strong, tearin' through these waves of soldiers, fightin' big-ass robots,
but eventually, it devolves into walking down this endless hallway
by yourself
killing one guy at a time
with the shitty ring that takes three hours.
Nothing that works about this game shows its face during this section.
If you manage to trudge through to the end, you will be rewarded with this amazing flying car.
Just a - just a - just a great car.
Just a beautiful - just a - yeah, just a fuckin' piece of shit.
Even for all its numerous shortcomings, I still enjoyed this game.
It's one of the very few triple-A RPGs that I've actually completed in the past six years.
And I think Square has made a great foundation that hopefully, their future titles will continue to build upon.
I give Final Fantasy XV
a CHOCOBO.