Final Fantasy XV Game Play.

This is a collection of all my game play in Final Fantasy XV showing off various parts of the game and some of the bugs I've come across while playing. Check it out.

Final Fantasy XV: A Buggy but Good Game.

Final Fantasy is one of those games you can find yourself burying hours of your life into, and that's exactly what happened to me. The game was released on a Tuesday, I picked it up on Wednesday and proceeded to spend that day, and the next playing non-stop. I was fortunate enough to have both days off, and in that time I put about 30 hours into the game.

So where do I begin with a review of this game? I guess we could discuss mostly the story, which I'll attempt to keep spoiler free, despite the game already being spoiled before it even came out. For the most part it's a jumbled mess, kind of going all over the place and is really frustrating to watch; the only good bits of the story were those focusing on the relationships between Noctis and his companions. As you progress through the game the group really comes together and they feel not just like friends, but people who really trust one another. Later in the game their bonds are tested when one of the characters is irrevocably blinded and has to be escorted around as they use a cane to navigate through a dungeon and it completely shakes things up. The characters feel human as they chat amongst themselves while you travel the world and kill monsters.

Combat in this game at times can be really satisfying, and at others really annoying; especially when the camera locks in place. Some of the game play elements are weird as well, mostly the QTEs. I remember when I first fought Titan just being completely unprepared for all of the QTEs in that fight and getting my ass kicked, which leads me to the next complaint I have about this game; It's kind of on rails. You have to be trying really hard to lose. This is the first time I've played a Final Fantasy game where I seriously did not dread dying in the middle of a boss fight and most of the bosses were a mixture of "Press 'X' to win." Does it kill the game for me? A bit.

Other than that there's also the spotty "Press 'A' to activate," aspect of the game. I often find myself jumping in place for minutes instead of turning on a switch, or later in the game, "hiding," to avoid those annoying Axe Men. Some of the mechanics, like Summoning took me a bit to get used too as well and were not exactly intuitive to figure out.

Next there's the graphics. This game looks flippin' great, even locked at 30 FPS. The level of detail in this game is something else, though I am kind of disappointed with some of the textures showing up in low-res like the Nissin-cup cart in Lestallum. The world that this game takes place in feels alive and you can spend hours in it just admiring the wild-life as you drive in your car, or hop on the back of a Chocobo and ride across the land traveling far and wide. It's a great adventure really, though sometimes it feels a bit dull and repetitive. As you travel the land you can also find places where you can fish, which is actually one of my favorite activities in this game, I enjoy the hell out of the activity and it feels great to reel in an 80 lbs reef grouper. Or you can get mini-quest from Prompto to take pictures of land marks through out the game.

Which leads to my next point, you can spend a lot of time completing side missions, all with their own objectives and locations that you have to head too. A lot of them are varied and different and don't feel samey. You can participate in Hunts where you can take on elite monsters for money and special loot. There's a lot of things you can find yourself focusing on rather than the main story line.

The game's far from prefect though, I've had the game hard crash on me a few times and lost hours of game play, or I've had entire dungeon just lock up on me and prevent me from progressing because they did not finish fully loading. I've experienced some really weird and annoying bugs through out the game.

Would I recommend this game to anyone? Hell yes, for all its faults it's a truly worthwhile game with a lot to offer and it's a return to what people have come to expect from a Final Fantasy game; an over all good experience. I have a feeling that with some time, and maybe even some updates from Square the game will actually get better and they may actually flesh out some bits that they completely ignored the first time around. If I had to give this game a rating on an arbitrary scale, I'd say it's an easy 7/10. It's got all the stuff a fan like me likes, but the fact that there are still so many bugs in the game still, it's hard to look past them. Anyway, if you've got some spare time watch some of my gameplay to see what I mean:

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