{"id":126,"date":"2016-12-07T00:05:06","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T05:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=126"},"modified":"2016-12-07T00:05:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T05:05:06","slug":"game-ramblings-27-final-fantasy-xv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #27 &#8211; Final Fantasy XV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/finalfantasyxv.com\/\">More Info from Square Enix<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: ARPG\/JRPG<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Xbox One<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a very special game. \u00a0It may not be the kind of Final Fantasy a lot of people would have wanted, but as usual Square Enix has put in all the effort typical of their top effort titles. \u00a0While\u00a0some performance and balance issues show the scars of its long development cycle, the game they have created is easily one of, if not the best RPG I&#8217;ve played this year.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a long time since I universally liked the story and characters of a Final Fantasy game. \u00a0There have been high points in most of the recent games, but the last few sets of FF characters have always had at least a couple people that just annoyed the hell out of me the entire time, even when the stories weren&#8217;t complete nonsense. \u00a0In FF XV&#8217;s case, this is the exact opposite. \u00a0Right from the very beginning you start off with the entire effective party, and the growth of the group as a team, and the interactions between them as they go on their adventure are fantastic. \u00a0I so wish I could spoil things here, because there were moments that surpassed the death of FF7&#8217;s Aerith for me in their emotional impact. \u00a0Also of note, the use of the song\u00a0<em>Stand By Me<\/em> as both the intro and credits scene could not have been a more perfect choice to end the misadventure of this crew.<\/p>\n<p>Now that said, the battle system is definitely rubbing a lot of\u00a0people the wrong way. \u00a0It&#8217;s been since FF9 that we have seen the same battle system used twice in a row. \u00a0That game was the end of the long-used ATB system. \u00a0FF10 used a more traditional turn-based system. \u00a0FF11 and 14 were MMOs, with 12 using a very much MMO-styled real-time system. \u00a013 then followed those all up with an ATB-like system, with some key changes in how it queued up events.<\/p>\n<p>15 has thrown all that away, going for easily the most action-focused battle system they&#8217;ve ever done in a mainline title. \u00a0Gone are menus, gone are spells, gone are waiting times between turns. \u00a0In this one you have an attack button, a pseudo-dodge button, a warp button, and a jump button. \u00a0The combination of those actions, and the ability to switch\u00a0between weapons and a handful of element-based attacks gives you your entire range of functionality. \u00a0You only control one character, with the other three members of the party being AI-based, mostly ending up being support characters by the end of the game. \u00a0Rather than the skill of the game being asset management, this brings timing to the forefront as the main skill to the game. \u00a0The primary dodge and attack buttons are both hold to execute, so attack chains don&#8217;t require button spamming, and dodge can be held to automatically avoid a lot of simple attacks. \u00a0In the end, the flow of battle is dictated more by which button you are holding down, rather than the more frantic button combo systems that a lot of ARPG games use. \u00a0The closest comparison I can really give is the\u00a0<em>Tales\u00a0<\/em><em>of<\/em> series, but even then\u00a0I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s an adequate comparison to the system in place here.<\/p>\n<p><em>FF XV<\/em> has also shown quite a lot of western influence, particularly with the <em>Elder Scrolls<\/em> series, in the design of the overall gameplay flow. \u00a0If you were to just rush the story, I suspect this game could be easily completed in 15 hours or less. \u00a0However, the overarching story is that the group is on a road trip, and the game definitely plays to that. \u00a0Rather than fast travelling around the world, the group initially drives around the world, radio blaring, going from town to town. \u00a0Each town and rest stop typically acts as a quest hub, giving a number of general side quests, as well as typically more challenging creature hunts. \u00a0There are also fishing areas scattered around the world, and a number of hidden dungeons to explore for extra treasure. \u00a0In doing this, you can easily spend the bulk of your time playing this game just hopping around the world doing absolutely everything but the main story, giving lots of longevity to the game outside of the typical story loop.<\/p>\n<p>So, in the end, this game and its universe are easily something I would recommend. \u00a0There is also some good additional content that will help give light to some of the world&#8217;s backstory in the\u00a0<em>Kingsglaive<\/em> movie and\u00a0<em>Brotherhood<\/em> anime. \u00a0That said, the core of the universe is definitely the game, and it&#8217;s a good one. \u00a0It&#8217;s likely to go down as one of the most controversial games in the <em>Final Fantasy\u00a0<\/em>series, simply due to its departure from the style of the past, but I think Square has made a good decision here in reestablishing that <em>Final Fantasy<\/em> are at their core extraordinarily well produced games of any style at their core, and not just RPGs that have stick to a set of conventions to get by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Square Enix Genre: ARPG\/JRPG Platform: PS4 Also Available On: Xbox One This is a very special game. \u00a0It may not be the kind of Final Fantasy a lot of people would have wanted, but as usual Square Enix has put in all the effort typical of their top effort titles. \u00a0While\u00a0some performance &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=126\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #27 &#8211; Final Fantasy XV&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,2,6],"tags":[4,5,29,70],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arpg","category-jrpg","category-ps4","tag-final-fantasy","tag-jrpg","tag-ps4","tag-square-enix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}