Summary: Some brief final thoughts on Final Fantasy XV. After six years, the end of (this phase) of “Coldrun Plays the Final Fantasy Series.”
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Protagonists
Noctis: I was ready to dislike him. I saw his character design, dressed in all black. I expected him to be gruff and surly, a generic action protag. What a pleasant surprise! He was caring and emotional, his struggles were interesting and reasonable… I liked him.
He’s probably in my second tier of favorite FF protags (this may be a common theme for where I find XV sits in my series ranking), behind Terra, Lightning, and Zidane.
Noctis art by pontea, posted by djinn87.
Ignis, Prompto, Gladiolus: Another pleasant surprise! In an all-male main cast (we’ll come back to that in a minute), I think it’s admirable that the game managed to avoid putting in any assholes.
It sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I mean it genuinely. The images of masculinity were quite beautiful at times! Loving and open, and across the different media of XV, it was wonderful to see the main cast grow up together.
Episodes Ignis and Prompto were especially great in building depth into those characters.
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The Feeeeeemales
Major disclaimer: I’m male. The perspective from which I’m coming at this issue is naturally limited, so take it with a shakerful of salt. This is my attempt to put my perception and experience on XV’s women into words. I’d love to hear more from those with different experiences, perspectives, and identities on how you found these characters.
Lunafreya: Let’s get this out of the way. The main woman of XV was badly underserved badly. (I initially wrote “women,” but the game doesn’t attempt to spotlight any character beyond Lunafreya. The rest are side characters.)
We spent basically no time with her. It was all flashbacks or brief cutscenes until she died, and not even that much. Most of her screen time was posthumous! How many times did I see her as a ghost, reaching out to her fiancée or her brother in attempts to elicit sadness?
Luna art by zeroshadows, posted by djinn87.
The worst are the glimpses of what could have been. Seeing her as a badass main character in “Kingsglaive” and hearing about the Episode Lunafreya DLC that never was highlight for me just how many chances the main game had to include her, and how many times it actively chose to not do so.
Cindy: I don’t really know what to think about Cindy. I HATED her design. (Note: I see a difference between someone presenting that way in real life, which is 10000% fine, and game designers whom I assume to be largely male choosing to design one of the game’s characters like this.)
It felt like she was specifically designed to titillate, right down to the pin-up calendar style decals of her you could (creepily) make her draw on the Regalia.
I found this FANTASTIC drawing of an alternate character design for Cindy, but I can’t find the artist:
The Google reverse image search led me back to an article in Portuguese here: https://www.arkade.com.br/tribuna-arkade-gamers-r...
Still, I liked her earnest, driven, and skilled character. (I head canon her as ace btw.)
Iris, Aranea: These two, though? These two I love. Really strong side characters. Iris was adorably awesome as both the sister and (in my headcanon) love interest. I liked her probably more than her character wanted, but I’m a sucker for childhood friendships.
And Aranea had a full frigging arc! Granted, we only got the highlights of her path - how she didn’t get a DLC over Gladiolus is BEYOND me – but it was still rewarding. Still wish she got some better armor coverage for someone fighting at close-quarters.
Prompto and Aranea art by MonkeyHazard.
p.s. I still ship the EVERLIVING FUCK out of her and Prompto.
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Antagonists
Ardyn: What a strong villain! Much like Noctis, I rank him in the second tier of FF villains, just below the likes of Yotsuyu, Emet-Selch, and Kefka. Probably tied with Kuja.
Even just in FFXV, he was a great antagonist. Unlike Ravus, where they tried to just shoehorn all his development into Ignis’ DLC, Episode Ardyn worked well because it added depth and perspective to an already robust character.
Ardyn Izunia art by Wisnu Tan.
I especially liked how they treaded the tricky border of making Ardyn both likable and STILL a villain. The embodiment of “cool motive, still murder.”
One of my other concerns as the game developed was how similarly they were making Ardyn to Kefka, from the clownish personality right through the Emperor they manipulated. So BRAVO to XV for dodging the temptation to just make Kefka 2.0!
Ardyn’s motivations were so much more personal. Not nihilism, but rather rage and jealousy and frustration and a valid sense of having been unjustly screwed over.
Ravus: The embodiment of “I guess they ran out of time/money.” It seemed like they sketched out a neat arc and set of motivations, but just forgot to show us. They tried with Episode Ignis, and it showed promise.
The Empire: Disappointingly disposable. I wish that the game had done something other than just THE EVIL EMPIRE, VERSION 712 if they were just gonna be a vehicle for Ardyn’s rise. They never were more than an annoyance, and Aldercapt himself felt like a joke.
As a unit independent of Ardyn, they should’ve either done more or less with the Empire. Either give it more depth and heft or just avoid relying on it altogether. I would’ve preferred the latter.
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A Few Other Side Characters
FFXV had a number of delightful side characters I have to shout out, even if I don’t have a lot to say about them. The Meteor Media dude! The weird biologist! The badass Altissian leader! Biggs and Wedge (as always)! Cid! Taka, the gruff diner cook! Some nice flavor.
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Story Stuff
Plot: The big political plots, like Noctis’ attempts to grow into a king and Lucis’ conflict with the empire, were meh. Same thing with the idea of the Six saving the world from the Starscourge. Seemed like they were trying to stick with the basics, given that whole “a game for new and returning FF players!” message that appeared every time you booted up.
Ignis art by Hinoe-0.
Some of the character arcs rose above that, specifically for Ignis, Prompto, and Ardyn. I enjoyed those individual arcs more than the wider plots.
Setting: Big fan of it. The modern-day and high fantasy conceits blended well for me. It took some getting used to, but I really felt the cars chocobos aesthetic worked well!
Well, mostly. I’m still annoyed at the moments of product placement, like that ridiculous noodles advertisement quest.
Pacing: This was… bad. Weird and bad, in two main ways:
1) The first two thirds providing a world you can explore as much (or little) as you like followed by a linear experience to wrap up the game.
I wish they had given a bit less exploration/fluff on the front end and more on the back end.
2) The main story difficulty versus side story difficulty. I like playing these games by doing a lot of the side quests as I go, and that meant that I DRAMATICALLY out-leveled the main story. It trivialized the difficulty, effectively punishing me for playing the main game.
It could’ve been solved by something like an optional system to scale you down to main story quests, like FFXIV uses. As is, it definitely detracted from my engagement with the main quests.
The XV Extended Universe: I’m not generally a fan of extended universes, unless what’s being shown is super tangential to the story (like the Gladiolus DLC). XV putting so much crucial story and character arcs into DLCs and side media was a strange choice.
The party in “Brotherhood.”
It was only a theoretical downside for my playthrough, since all those were available when I started. Thanks again to my friend hatstand for providing such a wonderful walkthrough of when to do watch the anime and movie and play the DLCs! I know there’s still parts for me to experience, like the multiplayer thing and the novellas, which I plan to check out at some point in the future.
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Gameplay
Combat: I’ve been a bit harsh on the game at times in these thoughts, so let’s take a second to heap GLOWING PRAISE on it. Holy SHIT did I love this combat system.
I was ready to hate it. I saw in the tutorial that it was leaning into the action systems, and those have never been my favorite. I preferred the turn-based systems that FFX perfected, and felt frustrated with faster systems like in Crisis Core, XII, and XIII.
Warp Strike art by Joshua Sektr and Joshua Donze.
I’m DELIGHTED to have my mind changed. Playing as Noctis and warping my nimble ass around the battlefield was super fun. Phasing out to dodge incoming attacks was super fun.
(I still hope future games explore slower combat that build on FFX.)
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Ascension Points: The AP system was pretty fun too! Reminiscent of X’s sphere grid in a good way. Gave me a regular and tangible sense of character progression. So many of those abilities granted both passive and active power.
Group Control: Yessss! The AI was good (when the party members didn’t get lost in the corridors of a dungeon). I felt comfortable just controlling Noctis and ordering technique attacks from the others.
Magic: Unintuitive and bad. The best thing I can say is that I was able to ignore it and not feel punished. Hated that it was a crafting system, hated that it was so hard to track and predict what different catalysts would do, just hated it.
Fishing: EEEEE!!!! SO MUCH FUN!
Fishing with Friends, by Mariana Souza.
Noctis fishing art by Miss Chibi Artist.
I honestly wouldn’t mind if FFXIV implemented this in some way. Maybe not as the entirety of fishing, but as a more limited mini-game. Big, big fan.
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Music
Huge fan of XV’s music! One of my favorites in the series. The choral and piano pieces mix with the electronic pieces quite well, and fit the game’s chocobos ‘n’ skyscrapers aesthetic.
A few personal favorites that jump to mind:
-The Episode Ardyn title theme.
-XV’s main title theme
-The dungeon theme, “What Lies Within.” What atmosphere!
-The cover of “Stand By Me”
This also wins the “Least Expected Thing To Hear in an FF Game” award.
-The timed quest theme. PUT YOUR HAAAAANDS UP HANDS UP
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Art
Again, super great! It’s a different style than my beloved IX’s cartoonishness, but it does it well. I’m still blown away by just how strong graphics have become, especially since until XIV, my last console was the N64. The cinematics and gameplay were both gorgeous.
I want to take a moment to praise one of XV’s strengths: how it captures the bowel-loosening terror I feel when being around giant creatures.
Playing FF so long has shown me that even if I like a part of a game, it won’t necessarily stick with me. Like, I remember enjoying the Maenads from FFIV: The After Years and Shelke from Dirge of Cerberus, but I couldn’t tell you a lot about them.
Leviathan, by Leslie Oakes.
This feeling though that I got on seeing Leviathan rise out of the water, or sneaking up to that giant bird early in the game and trying not to wake it, or stalking the behemoth in the fog… It’s special. I’ve had moments in gaming that gave me that feelings, like with Sekiro and the serpent god, but nothing with such power, variety, and consistency as XV.
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Length
Final played time was around 107 hours. Felt about right, not too long. I also like how consistent the DLC play time was, around 2.5 hours each. Perfect short story bites.
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Replaybility
I’m not sure I’d want to go back and replay it from the start, but I do have interest at some point in playing the post-game. Stuff like Omega, timed quests, and that post-game chapter. I imagine there’s some pretty cool challenge content there.
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A Brief Ranking of the Main FF Games I’ve Played It’s Just One Small Opinion Please Don’t Kill Me
1T. FFIX
1T. FFXIV – This ascended the ranks for me. It’s so different from the single player games that I can’t put it above FFIX, but the story, music, variety, gameplay, and replay value put it right up there.
3T. FFX
3T. FFVI – Bumping this up into a tie with FFX. I like the story more in VI, but the gameplay more in X.
5. Chrono Trigger
6. FFXV. The story and characters were pretty comparable to some others on this list, but the gameplay and combat system blasted it above V and XIII.
7. FFV – Swapped this up one over FFXIII. It’s nothing against XIII – more that the characters and mind-blowing job system for V have aged especially well.
8. FFXIII
9. FFXII
10. FFVIII
11T. FFVII
11T. FFIV. I like the FFIV story more and FFVII gameplay more.
13. FFIII
14. FFXI
15. FFII
16. FFI
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Project’s End
My project at the outset was to play through the main numbered Final Fantasy games. As a kid I’d played Final Fantasy IV (what I knew as FF2 on the SNES) and played maybe 10 minutes of Final Fantasy 1 on NES, but that was it.
That was about six years ago, in May, 2014.
http://markspoils.blogspot.com/2014/05/weekly-she...
(Also, holy CRAP the threads on Spoils were huge then! I’d forgotten we had like 800+ comments per weekly thread at the time.)
-And now, I’ve made it. It’s done. For everyone who’s been a part of that, whether that means you commented regularly or lurked or even just enjoyed reading a single post: thank you. Thank you so much.
While this project is technically over, I’m going to keep going. It’ll be a bit more scattershot at least to start with (while continuing FFXIV). I’ll play what sounds fun, a combo of what FF games I feel like and what people are excited about/recommend.
This project is done.
On we go.
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Next time: Starting a recorded let’s play of the FF7 Remake!
