The empire of Niflheim attacks the capital of a prominent kingdom on the eve of peace negotiations. They steal a magical crystal protected by the Lucis royal family. Without the crystal a plague that absorbs all natural light will engulf the world and turn people into nocturnal monsters. The Lucis heir, Noctis, fights back against the Niflheim forces in order to reclaim the crystal.
The story is fragmented across three different mediums: games, novels, and films. While the core video game is self-contained enough to make some sense, there are plenty of plot elements that are abruptly dropped or never explored as well as they should have been; such as several NPCs that I can't remember the names of (this game is a confusing mess). The side quests also had no connection to the story, being either fetch quests for NPCs, hunts, or picture requests. The storytelling was basically a series of "payoff" scenes with no buildup or context. Even the underlying theme of bromance amongst the group lacked any meaningful development because Square-Enix wanted that paid DLC money. There are very clear placeholders for character related DLC that likley expands upon the characters, but I wouldn't know because I never bought it and several were cancelled. There were a few rare moments in the base game's content, mostly near the end, when I felt a little for the group, but on the whole I just didn't care about what happened them. I knew almost nothing about them, their families or backstories in general. I knew even less about where they were from and why I should care about their world. Heck, even their own gods didn't seem to care:
- Titan makes Noctis kneel in pain and fight him. Although it was supposedly to get his attention.
- Leviathan straight up vows to eat all of Altissia.
- Ifrit despises humanity.
- Ramuh, Shiva, and Bahamut seem to willingly let you have their power.
A major location, the kingdom capital of Insomnia, doesn't even appear except at the very beginning and end of the game. Fences, rocks, and other barriers killed exploration for me, and aside from two superficially large cities, the entire world felt barren.
For the first 20 to 30 hours I knew almost nothing about what was happening in the narrative, I didn't know who the enemy was or why they wanted this crystal. I moved from quest to quest carrying out the assigned tasks without understanding the significance behind them. A lot of important world-building information is provided in books scattered around the game, and that was what gave me any inkling as to what was going on.
The storytelling started to make a little more sense when viewed from the myopic perspective of the main character, Noctis. He's a spoiled rich kid who has no idea what life is like outside of his literal ivory tower. The only thing that matters is how something might affect him; the details are unimportant. With that in mind, the lack of critical background information starts to make sense.
The arranged marriage between the childhood friends, Noctis and Luna, never felt like the genuine love story the game tried to make it out to be. There was no character development for either person and I found it hard to believe that they were truly in love like the story kept insisting they were. Their relationship seemed to be based wholly around the time they spent together as kids, which involved a lot of sitting around listening to info dumps, and not... you know, bonding. As adults they spend almost no time with each other in person and even less communicating. At times it seemed as though Noctis didn't want to marry Luna because they are so distant - physically and emotionally. Noctis can even flirt with Iris, which ironically gave him more chemistry with her than with Luna.
Did the spirit-dogs(?) really have nothing better to do with their time than pass notes between Noctis and Luna? This world has cellphones and postal service.
Lingering questions and missing content:
Why did Gladiolus leave the party when they went to get mythril?
Do I have to buy the "Episode: Gladiolus" DLC to find out?
Why was there no explanation for how Ignis received the eye injury that caused him to go blind?
Do I have to buy the "Episode: Ignis" DLC to find out?
Prompto is revealed to be a Magitek Trooper but we're never given further details on this. How is he alive if he's an MT? Does that mean he dies when Noctis cures the world? Is he a daemon/person like Ardyn?
Do I have to buy the "Episode: Prompto" DLC to find out more?
Noctis is gone for ten years but we're never told what happened to him during that time.Do I have to buy the "Episode: Noctis" DLC to find out? Episode: Noctis was cancelled.
When Ardyn explained he was part of the Royal Lucis bloodline, did anyone immediately understand the significance of what he said? Or manage to hear it over Noctis' screams?
He said his full name like it was important and I thought "Is that supposed to mean something"? Did I miss information on his character somewhere?
A different weapon can be assigned to each of the directional buttons and swapped between in the midst of battle. There is one button to attack that can easily be exploited by holding it down for the entirety of the fight. This will cause Noctis to stun-lock enemies and automatically jump to the closest target. You can also parry attacks, but only when prompted to do so. Parries did not even work for me 90% of the time. I noticed it was worse for certain weapons types, mostly the heavier, slower swinging ones.
Annoyingly, there is no directional dodge, which made it difficult for me to successfully avoid enemy attacks. To make matters worse, enemy attacks were often very poorly telegraphed and it became especially troublesome when fighting groups. The camera also had this nasty habit of creeping behind the nearest bush, obscuring your view of the fight. Magic is almost absent from the game; only Noctis can use "Elemancy"
(magic). Magic also takes up a weapon slot and acts like a grenade. You
have a limited number of uses with a particular spell before it "runs
out" requiring the player to get more.
There are "Summons" - giant deities powerful enough to wipe the battle clean of foes. New Summons are obtained through main story missions and have a chance of triggering when certain conditions are met in specific regions of the game. To trigger a Summons you have to spend several moments holding down the correct button when prompted. As awesome and awe inspiring as they are, Summons are rather tricky to employ in battle and have long grace periods where no further Summons can be used unless the the main story calls for it. I found it rather confusing without further research online and only ever managed to trigger the story-related Summons.
I don't have much history with the Final Fantasy franchise. I have tried a few of the games before but never completed any of them until FFXV. The gameplay was serviceable; simplistic, lacking in depth or player agency, but serviceable. The narrative, however, was a nonsensical patchwork that made little sense without the DLC, books, and movies to fill in the gaps. The pacing is all over the place with the first half (Chapters 1 to 8) being open world and very slow, relaxed. I was able to mess around at my own pace. The second half (Chapters 9 to 15) was linear and moved lighting fast. I couldn't take anything in or understand what was happening and why. I was so confused.
FFXV was supposedly in development hell for 10 years and it shows. I'm honestly impressed that it isn't as bad as it could've been. I enjoyed the long rides in the car just to take in the pretty scenery; its an easy RPG to space out in.
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