Final Fantasy XV Day One Edition (PS4)

I've only finished 1 Final Fantasy and that was X. I have played 7/8/9/X-2 but never finished them. So as you can tell I'm not a fan boy but because I'm a gamer I know 'of' Final Fantasy and it's many things that are common knowledge from Square Enix's flagship game that made them famous in the first place. I saw a trailer for this and before I watched it, scoffed heartily thinking it's going to be something that wouldn't interest me. But then I saw 4 dudes dressed in black, driving what looked like a Rolls Royce past a huge tortoise thing. Pre ordered soon after. Now as you all are aware or should be, this is a stand alone game, not the 15th edition of "Final Fantasy" The only things you'll find in common with the previous games are big yellow birds, a weird teddy, a cactus with a shocked expression, magic, summoning gods, something about crystals being really important and usually a love story doomed to fail due to sudden death. Everything from the characters, theme, time setting and many other things are new. FF has usually been a turn based game, this can be (through selectable options, similar to X-2) but the free flowing attack system is similar to Xenoblade and countless other jrpg's... seriously it's nothing new. What makes it brilliant is you only control you, Prince Noctis, they only time that is false is when you order your goons to use a special technique or to heal themselves with an item. When fighting, your friends will join you in attacks, act on their own accord and generally try to help you. This is a breathe of fresh air for a franchise like Final Fantasy and it's very engrossing, not hard to do but hard to master. You'll be actually wanting to do missions where you know you will fight just cause it's fun. And the developers know this, the best way to earn currency is to hunt dangerous creatures so it's a win win. People kept telling me the graphics are amazing. I disagree. I played this on the PS4 and the Pro on a HDTV and a 4K TV with HDR. There is a difference but it's not something that makes me drop my jaw. The scenery is pleasant with many nice places to explore with some variety so you'll never got bored travelling around to each mission. The best graphical thing in game is the hair, hands down. As a JRPG they really understood that the main characters needed awesomely animated hair. I haven't finished the game, from what I can tell I'm half way through, I am doing a lot of the side quests, which can get repetitive (Go to quest start, go to place, find item, encounter enemies, go back to quest giver, hand in item, repeat until you realise that they didn't put too much thought into this) so be prepared for some grinding... of the level kind. One mechanic I do enjoy is the stat boosting meals you can have when camping out or at diners. This ties in with our 4 hero's humble beginnings and what their interests are. So you'll find that Ignis (blonde with glasses, speaks like the butler from Richie Rich (If you get that, well done)) likes to cook and as you go through the game he'll announce he's come up with a new recipe with the same programmed responses. Gladio (big buff guy with Wiggo style side burns) likes the great outdoors and camping outside makes him better at finding rare items picked up during fights, Prompto (blonde hair, looks malnourished, sad backstory for comic relief) takes random photos throughout your journey. The 4 really get a long well and as you follow them as a unit you grow to like them as this band of friends going on a road trip to save the world. It's great, apart from Noctis who's just a stuck up whiney piece of royalty. He does have some redeeming features (He wields weapons of the ancients and can warp) but the fact that he likes to fish is something I realise is a tie in with Ignis's cooking but apart from that I dislike fishing. So as a game overall it's flawed in many different area's. But the fighting mechanic is so good it dominates all the other problems and it ties everything together. It's almost as though they've done it on purpose........... So for a studio that was struggling I feel like FF XV can help redeem Square Enix. It's an engrossing game and I keep coming back to it (I'm playing BF1, Need For Speed, The Division and Destiny as well as FF XV) so it must be good. To the hardcore FF fan this is either the best game they've done or the worst. But to the casual gamer with some knowledge of the franchise, this is a good game. it's a 8 or 9 out of ten so in 5 star format I guess its's a 5. I'd give it 4 and a half out of 5. Look out for Cindy.

Anyone who's been paying attention to Square Enix for the last decade or so should come to any new Final Fantasy game with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Final Fantasy used to be the best JRPG series out there, but after IX or X the series went downhill rapidly with a series of disappointing games that pleased no one. Particularly XIII with its endless corridor, vapid characters, and needlessly convoluted and overexposited plot. Which means that a lot of people are relying on this game to restore the series to its roots and bring back the fun, adventure, and sense of exploration that used to define the series. No pressure, right? Obviously no game could live up to those lofty expectations, but XV is still a great game, and even a great Final Fantasy game. And a lot of that is because it doesn't play it safe and dish out a generic Final Fantasy designed to hit all the old nostalgia buttons and nothing else. It takes risks, some of them quite radical and unexpected. The chief of these is the open world. Making the game a sandbox was an obvious way to reassure after XIII's endless corridor, yet it also risked turning the game into just another Fallout clone with Anime characters. But it really works. A large part of it is that the game's built not around a quest so much as a road trip with a gang of friends. Naturally there's some rush off and save the world stuff that you need to do, but the real pleasure here comes from the little things. The discussion over meals, the comfortable banter, the endless photographing... It's like going on holiday with that cool crowd you always envied in school but never quite got in with. The three basic strengths of this game are the gameplay, the characters, and the visuals. Gameplay is first rate and offers something new to the whack and slash genre of fighting games. Noctis can summon weapons at will and teleport himself into attacks or out of combat. He has four different weapon types to choose from at the touch of a button and different weapons work better on different enemies. It's both an awesome visual and highly functional system. It's been vastly improved from the Duscae demo they released a year back. Weapons and magic are fully customizable and easily used in combat, although being realtime does limit some of the spells. Your teammates are not directly controllable, but you do need to monitor and coordinate them. They also help you out. Even though you've lost complete control it does feel like a group battle rather than just one player vs. the world. This game is all about character, to put it mildly. If they didn't work nothing else would. Fortunately, the characters are a lot of fun and have amazing Latin names. Noctis Lucis Caelum (Literally: Heaven of the Nightlight) is the prince of Lucis and your typical moody teenage Anime protagonist. That said, he's never so moody it's annoying and he has good reason to be morose given that his kingdom was just taken over by the badguys and his father killed leaving him to reclaim his throne and save the world. The other characters are a part of his retinue. Gladiolus (lit: Dagger) is his big brother type bodyguard, Ignis (lit: Fire) is his calculating tactician/butler, and Prompto (lit: with eagerness) is a schoolfriend/comic relief. And contrary to expectations the comic relief never becomes too much of a whiny git to entertain. Each of them fits a fairly clear archetype, and on their own they're not very memorable, but when together (and they always are) they form an awesome band of bros out having themselves a fantastic road trip. Oh, and saving the world on the side. Every effort is made to keep their character interactions real and fresh. They even give the characters a personal life outside of you, such as Prompto's interest in photography (which works well with the PS4's sharing system) and Ignis' fondness for cooking. You really feel like part of the band. The best thing I can say about these guys is that when you're separated from them at various points it hurts. You feel isolated and alone. I even found myself worrying about the fates of the other guys. And the reunions left me genuinely moved. That's a well done game. The visuals are one of the game's other high points, and a major difference from earlier games in the series. They worried us all by their obsession with realistically recreating parts of Tokyo for the capital city of Insomnia and giving our leads mundanely realistic costumes of black leather, but Insomnia barely features at all and the matching costumes make the quartet look like part of the same boy band. You do get modern gas stations, but they're right alongside chocobo farms and giant stone arches that make no sense. The monsters are inventive too, with my favorite being the lake monsters that look like hairy brachiosaurs. All of it is rendered in stunningly lifelike graphics that almost make you believe this is a real place. Real and magical sit side by side unnoticeably. It's perfect. If this game has a fault it's that the main plot isn't very well established. It feels a lot like XIII in that way. It's never clearly laid out why you're doing what you're doing (and the parts that are explained certainly aren't emphasized nearly enough) and too much of the lifting is left to the lore. Unlike XIII though, the plot is basic enough that it's not a problem. You know early on what the end goal is and if some of the stops along the way don't particularly make sense you never feel completely lost. A lot of people will probably comment negatively on the second part of the game. There reaches a point where the open world dries up and the game adopts a more linear approach. It's necessary, although I'll concede that it could probably have flowed more naturally. I didn't find this part fun, not because it was badly done but because it was painful. Things go wrong and the game starts to feel pretty harsh. It's a measure of the feeling you have for these characters that you're unhappy when they are. I didn't realize how much I cared about these guys until they started suffering. The ending is satisfying if bittersweet, and the character moments at this stage feel truly earned. There are a lot of other things I loved about the game, including the music, dungeon design, and various technical features. But it would take all day to describe them. It's a great game, far better than I feared it would be and up there with the core of brilliant Final Fantasies (basically, VI-X), even while being nothing like them. I think I even prefer it to X, although X had a stronger overarching plot. Well done guys and well worth waiting for.

(MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD - do not read unless you have clocked the game) I class myself as a Final Fantasy fan having played over ten titles. Loved VII, VIII, and X. Struggled out of boredom to finish XII and then didn't even bother with XIII. Since the first FFXV trailer in 2006 I've been eagerly anticipating the release of this title! I had pre ordered it on Amazon years in advance and on the day I received the copy I was ecstatic to say the least, even bought a new TV as the screen did not fit on my current one. The game starts off great and gets even better. I am a pro turn based gamer but I have to admit the actual gameplay is amazing with an engaging combat mechanism and countless extras you can do from racing your car in a high speed chase to shooting machine guns at robots. I actually loved the summoning mode (although initially confusing on how to trigger it), and appreciated how the archaeons would come in times of need in a tough battle giving you a sense of relief whilst struggling against a feared enemy rather than any tiny powered gimmick that you could call countless times in a minor battle against a little chicken fiend. All of this awesomeness is varnished with an outstanding soundtrack to match (hats off to Shimomura-san). A downside evident fairly on however is the lack of cutscenes. Final Fantasy is loved by many for its wonderful storytelling in its high quality scenes but this desperately lacked those moments. At first I thought it was as they had transferred all the early scenes to the Kingsglaive movie and that as you passed that point in the game, the story would pick up. It never did. The game was left with so many gaps in the story and events happening off screen it was hard to understand the plot let alone enjoy it. Despite ten years in making, after a certain point in the game it felt completely rushed and unfinished. Don't get me started on how annoying and tedious Chapter 13 was. The brief story telling they did have was still completely inadequate. It seemed as though all the epicness of the XIII versus trailers had been totally lost. The one scene where Noctis meets Stella had more chemistry than the entire game with Luna. I felt so little for Luna that after her death I actually hoped they'd bring Stella into it and Noctis would forget all about his penfriend who he was told he should marry. The character Noctis previously portrayed was a strong, confident prince now turned into an annoying spoilt brat. It would have worked if his character developed over time, but it hardly did. Then came the ending, leaving me completely disappointed. *your final warning, major spoilers ahead* With the ten year time jump, they had so much opportunity to give us some emotional heartfelt scenes. With the King returning ten years on after being thought dead (just like Simba). The moment his friends first see him alive and are completely stunned with joy. The moment he meets Iris, and Cid, and all his old friends. The moment he returns to the now refugee camp of Lestallum and his people heartily cheer his return with a newfound hope. None of that happened however and you were left with a complete anti-climax. Then came Insomnia, the home I was so longing to explore and renovate back to its former glory. It however served nothing but a stage for the final boss. Why can Square Enix not finish a game without killing off the hero? I get that tragedy works in bringing tears and all but not when they do it every single time. If you think about it, the whole game was a waste as Ardyn actually got what he wanted and Noctis lost everything. How ridiculous. An epic scene towards the end would have been the first Versus XIII trailer ever. They could have left it as Noctis losing all his friends from Chapter 13 and then returning to Insomnia. Sitting on the throne in depression, thinking he had lost everything. Empire sending in all their troops after him and he comes outside and kills a few handfuls of them without any emotion and then returns to his throne as he did, now yielding the power of the ring (which for some reason had become a weak toy in the game compared to all its power in Kingsglaive when wielded by Nyx). That would have really pleased us with the trailer nostagia. Then continued with whatever story and ended with him restoring Lucia back to its days of former glory as a bad ass king. Allowing you to explore the open World once more in the present day. Despite all these criticisms I still enjoyed the game. After clocking it I'm still finding loads of new stuff to do even though i had completed all the sidequests previously. I'm looking forward to the updates now. I know this would probably be very cliche and annoying but I actually want Square Enix to release another game via DLC suggesting Chapter 9 onwards was all just a bad dream and rehash the entire second part of the story to how it should have been.

Not without its flaws... But ultimately the most fun, and emotional, Final Fantasy experience I have experienced... And the most fun I've had playing a game for years. (Spoilers Follow) Myself and Final Fantasy have had a troubled relationship over the past decade. Ever since the PS1 era, I have felt they have never quite matched the quality I had known from the series. With FFX it was the awful voice acting (all I'll say is: HA-HA-HA). With FFXII it was the fact it didn't feel like Final Fantasy as much as Star Wars combined with Dungeons and Dragons (although being an amazing game with a brilliant cast in its own right). And Final Fantasy XIII felt like the ultimate minimal input, beautiful port of ProgressQuest... With convoluted, ultimately unrelatable story (but amazing mythos), forgettable stereotypes for characters and almost literally corridors with minimal exploration for 80% of the story. So Final Fantasy XV landed with my patience pushed to the limits. Although XIII-2 and Lightning Returns were much better, they still lacked that feeling I had from the past. And I will start off saying this: If your heyday of Final Fantasy was back in the days of PS1, you will probably love this game as much as I did. You are almost straight away plonked into the open world, which both encouraged and wowed me. The world of Eos (Final Fantasy XV's world) is a beautiful, beautiful place; For the first time it feels like they have been able to fully match the graphical quality of cut-scenes of FF8 and 9. Noctis and his retinue realise the huge difference between the modern Crown City and the 50s-style world we can actually explore. It reminds me of the disparity and rustic beauty of Cuba in comparison to the rest of the world. So you travel through this beautiful world... A world you can get lost in (something missing from the series for a long time)... Sometimes pushing the story along, sometimes taking part in side quests... Broken up by camps each night, which act almost like the beating heart of the game; giving your characters the chance to level up and have one of Ignis' fabulous, status-boosting meals. They sometimes act as an opportunity to take part in optional side quests with one of your party (although sadly this happens less than the Episode Duscae demo made me think it would). Things take a turn for the worst for our crew in the second half of the game, when tragedy hits nearly everyone. The game takes a much-criticised linear route from Chapter 9. A route which, personally, I absolutely loved. Even though you get the feeling it is (literally) a whistle-stop tour of the remaining assets they were able to complete for the game, it hits all the right narrative beats. You straight away feel the more sombre tone from the death of Luna and the loss of Ignis' sight, and our tour completes in the very Midgar-styled city of Gralea. This is one of my favourite parts; Darin De Paul's brilliant portrayal of antagonist Ardyn makes up for probably the best villain of the entire series. He leads you condescendingly down the dark corridors and eventual horrors you learn in the city. "Bah, I knew you'd go that way" he says as you explore the room to your left instead of your goal in front of you. "You're such a tease". Everything from the end of this chapter onwards is a beautifully directed feels train of reminiscence, nostalgia and regret, and almost a metaphor for a world 10 years on from the very first trailer for the then-titled Final Fantasy Versus XIII. I can personally say it made me very reflective. I remember having just left home and starting university when I first saw that trailer, thinking I knew everything about life. 10 years down the line, and the biggest lesson I've learned is I still barely know a thing about life... None of us do... We all just make it up as we go along. Underscoring these moments is the beautiful soundtrack, and I wish to commend Yoko Shimomura on creating the best Final Fantasy score I have heard. It manages to evoke feelings of the old games without feeling like it is trying to copy Uematsu's style from them, something which I have felt the series has struggled with since his departure. There are around 6 main themes which run throughout the game, and these evolve for their respective characters/institutions as the game progresses. The best example of this is the epic Magna Insomnia; the final boss theme which also acts as a combination of Somnus and Ardyn's Theme. The chorus of Somnus teases throughout the song before being fully realised as you battle Ardyn above Insomnia's Citadel; and has a chilling choral conclusion as Ardyn finally shows his true rage in telling you "10 years is nothing... I have been in darkness for ages!". The game isn't without its faults. But I have already spent 200+ hours on it... Every battle is a joy to play, feeling more interactive and fun than FFXIII.. Making it take much longer to complete quests than you would think. Worth every penny

I am a long-time fan of Final Fantasy. I first played FF7 on launch in 1997 and I was instantly hooked. I cried during FF7; scenes were powerful. FF8 was a great experience, but FF9 was almost as good if not better than FF7. Whichever game you think was the best, be it FF4, FF6 or any other game in the series - you'd find plenty of people who agree that the more recent games e.g X-2, XIII and XIII-2 have been awful in comparison to early FF games. Storylines have been dumbed down to the point where they're not even vaguely interesting anymore and unlovable characters. FFXV knows it has to change that, or the Final Fantasy name will be tarnished forever. I purposefully didn't read much about FFXV, I wanted it to be a surprise. And what a surprise it was. I popped in the disk and it took a good 30 minutes to install on my PS4 but I persevered and once installed, started the game. I was greeted with some of the most beautiful graphics i've ever seen in a videogame. My PS4 Pro seemed to be using all of its power to render the images on my 4k TV. This, my friends, is what Final Fantasy is all about. Industry-leading graphics along with carefully told, layered storylines that "hit you right in the feels" as the youngsters say nowadays. And then I was greeted by Florence and The Machine's rendition of Stand By Me. WOW. It was like if James Bond met Final Fantasy - this is what you'd get. An epic song as the game opens. Think of when you opened FF8 and you heard Liberi Fatali or Balamb Garden for the first time. It was very, very powerful indeed. The game shows Noctis and co pushing their broken down vehicle as they need to get help to fix it in order to get to Noct's wedding. Yes, sure, he's a Prince and he should have just used his mobile phone (which he does have now) to get help, but this is Final Fantasy and we need to let little things like that slide. I continued playing the game for approx 30 minutes when I saw Cid. Oh, my, goodness. Cid has never looked so good! Well, let's be honest, he looks a bit old, but he appears in every single Final Fantasy game as a cameo and my goodness, it was fantastic to see him. It only seems like yesterday he was working in Rocket Town. Anyway, I digress. LunaFreya - I had to laugh. Luna (think Yuna, FFX) and Freya (FFIX). The game is a nod to every other FF that came before it. The game even nods to the demo. If you look at my attached screenshot, even the cars have the number plate of 'Duscae' which was the demo of FFXV released with another FF game. From what I hear, if you run through FFXV really fast, it'll still take approx 30 hours to competition. If you take your time and do all of the side questions, you can end up racking up approx 60-90 hours. And talking of the 'quests', FFXV seems very "World of Warcraft". There is now a pointer telling you how many meters away from your objective you are so you don't get lost in the large open world. The battle system feels strange, I must admit. As you run around in the open world you'll get to battle in real-time. I'm still not convinced. I think there is 10x more strategy in turn-based or an ATB system, but I can understand why Square-Enix want a real-time system. Square-Enix want it to feel like an epic anime rather than a strategy game, which I get. I'll have to play much more before I can like it but who knows, maybe i'll learn to love it. For me, it feels like Final Fantasy is slowly starting to realize what made them great again. So if you aren't sure whether to buy this, I say go ahead and take the plunge. Update: Having now played the game for upwards of 15 hours, by all accounts i'm 50% through the game. I've done a fair few side-quests and i've got a different opinion of the game now. We HAVE to compare this to previous Final Fantasy games - after all, they're the reason Final Fantasy has this fantastic reputation. Final Fantasy 15 starts out with the King getting killed. I must admit, I was somewhat dubious about the main character being a Prince, it just doesn't sit well with me; maybe it's because we can't have a rags to riches story? Or maybe it's because it's harder to relate to royalty? Final Fantasy 9 had Princess Garnet but Zidane was a thief whom at first glance, might have been seen as an unlikely hero. I didn't really feel like Noctis was an unlikely hero - it seems he knows he was going to be a savior. I think the strangest thing about this game is the leveling system. To improve your stats, you must eat food. Ok, that's an interesting concept, but it means that now, you have to buy food or pick it up from monsters you kill. You'll constantly get Ignis, one of the supporting cast telling you he has "found a new recipe" in the most annoying, posh British accent you can imagine. And this is where things get strange. The King has been murdered - wow - ok, let's set off and go and seek revenge! But before you can seek revenge, you have to now embark on "Quests". Think "World of Warcraft". You get a quest location (and some are optional, but some aren't) and you go to that location, do the quest, which is usually going to a certain point on the map and pressing 'X' and then going back to whomever gave you the quest and handing it in. You get EXP and gil. Quests often are a few minutes journey in the car then you have to run to the quest location. Then you fight, or take a photograph (yes, the King has died but you must take photos of things). It's a strange game. I feel as if Square-Enix have saw the success of Skyrim and World of Warcraft and thought: "Wow, let's morph Final Fantasy into that!" but they've basically taken Final Fantasy away from what it was originally. There's a part of me that desperately wants to see ATB return. ATB, or active time battles were 10x more strategic. Now, you must battle in real-time, it just feels like a generic button basher. It's a shame, because the game has some good, redeeming features. Music is ok for the most part, albeit not the best in the series and graphically, it's the best game i've seen on a console. But as for the storyline? Forget it. As I said, i'm 15 hours in and i've probably been fed about 30 minutes of actual storyline. The other 14.5 hours have been spend in the car, killing monsters and running between quests. In short, i'd say that the storyline is a 2/5, the gameplay is 2/5, the music is 3/5 and the graphics are 5/5. It's a small step in the right direction but to be honest, you could skip this and not feel feel like you're missing out. This is not a must-have game, it's a Final Fantasy that ditches key elements that made it great in the first place and has borrowed too many Western-RPG elements in the hope it'll reach mass sales.

Loathed this game at the start, turned it off and was never turning it back on but it was Christmas and I had time on my hands. Glad I did? Yes. I'm an old-school Final Fantasy fan, I'm not used to these modern 'open-world' games and I really struggled with the transition. Then, in a funny way, it all started to make sense. This big open world is your world map but there is no screen change between towns, battles etc it is incredibly fluid. Yes the car you drive is slow, but so were most of the overland journeys we had in the older games. Battle wise, yes it is simplified but it is rewarding and leveling your character is actually quite fun rather than a chore; I've now finished the story and am battling through hours of hunts and side quests which tells you something. The music throughout is wonderfully atmospheric and although I wouldn't rush out to buy it like the classics, it actually enhances the game probably more than any Final Fantasy soundtrack before it. So why no 5-star review? Well... As much as I like the 'open-world' setting, the reality is that the world is actually very empty. You have a couple of major towns, both of which are magnificent, but beyond this it is a series of small identikit outposts, most of the landscape is fairly repetitious and it is irritating to see a house, bran etc and not be able to explore it. I have the feeling that this game was groundbreaking at it's conception but that it has fallen behind competition in this regard during the development period. The story is another issue here. Our four characters are fairly likable, the rapport between them endearing; the first half of the game is a fun exploratory road-trip, but while you are off hunting, eating, sleeping, the game does very little to remind you of your purpose or develop a sense of urgency. What this means is that it can become a little aimless and the plot a secondary concern. I'm not sure about others but for me, this resulted in 25 hours of exploration with virtually no idea of what I was doing. Then of course, we have the 2nd half of the game which couldn't be more different.... After hours of wandering and pondering, Chapter 9 transports you to perhaps the most impressive in-game location I have seen and all of a sudden you are drowning in plot. Yes, some of it happens off-screen, in conversation or via radio updates but for me the back half of the game channels you towards the end, in-turn developing your characters and those around you. It is a definite return to the corridors of Final Fantasy 13 but is, for me, necessary in a game that otherwise lacks direction. And so, after 35 hours the relatively short story was over. There were some powerful on-screen moments, though I wasn't particularly moved emotionally. I think there is room for a number of additional chapters to 'flesh-out' your brotherhood and some of the off-screen action, but for now I am content to travel the world and finish the existing offering. All-in-all I would say that this game is both very good and disappointing. It has all the infrastructure to be a 5-star game but falls short due to a weak story and lack of a spine to hold it all together. For old fans it will take some time to adapt, some of the dungeons are more Resident Evil than Final Fantasy whereas the world has a GTA feel, which will help new fans - though there are some lovely nostalgic moments throughout to keep us happy. Some of the boss battles are as epic as you have ever experienced, and perhaps akin to what you were imagining when playing the series of old. But I had fun, and will continue to. Stick with it and make the most of the world at your disposal. There is room for improvement but I would be more than happy to see Final Fantasy 7 remade in this style.

For starters (previous fans or new players of FF), don't start the game without watching the Botherhood videos, free on YouTube , and definitely, watch Kingsglave. The content of both of these artifacts will give you much context when you start to play. Square says they are optional, I don't think so, it makes your experience much more rich. With that said, my thoughts on FFXV are simple, I've played Final Fantasy since FFV, and no other got to me like FFVII, until FFXV. Square Enix created a magnificent open world, with detailed foes, superb dungeons, breathtaking landscapes from beaches to mountains, and a story-line that allows you to enjoy all that, becoming more linear on the last third of the game (I see people complaining about this, and I don't understand why, you can always travel back, and it's of utmost importance to the story to get more linear). The story itself is not confusing (as some say), I'd rather say complex, with a lot of details, where you need to hear radio broadcasts, listen to NPC caracters conversations, and of course, follow the course of history in regular basis (don't just wonder around the open world, hard to resist you'll see that too), and by following that, you'll be able to achieve a story of pursuit for the truth, the ascension of a king, feel the bond of the four friends grow (it's amazing how you miss on of the guys when you have quests where the party parts), you have an undeclared "love" story between Noct and Luna, mysterious characters, and great villain (can't understand when people say that the main villain ain't a good one... he's a devil in disguise the whole history). The game is pure fun, you won't get bored for sure, after the first 2-3 hours of play you will be totally adapted to the new combat system, even though I recommend the usage of Wait Mode, it allows the combats to be much more tactical, specially with deamons at night. For the only downsides, that don't impact much on the joy of the game, the camera angles, sometimes are funny (NOT), specially when you are in the middle of bushes or woods, surrounded with a lot of foes. Side-quests sometimes become boring, and quite repetitive (fetch and receive payment type), but you gotta work for a living right? Overall, it's an amazing Final Fantasy, great story, great plot, great videos, great soundtrack, is it perfect? No. For me is the best since FFVII, that said, I think Square Enix is on the right track again.

'Captain, my tricorder is picking up a strange signal? That's right Spock it's Final Fantasy but not as we know it...' After some 10 years in development and several team changes my impression is wow! This is a great looking game that goes open world adventuring quickly after the intro. Graphics on my HD TV are very clear with colourful textures, not the muddy mess of Far Harbour DLC for Fallout 4. Monsters look fab with smooth animation and the draw distance is far. The music as with all FF games is First class and you can collect old FF tracks throughout the game to play in your car, as you drive around. Installed size is 44GB with a 9.5GB update file, Masamune Sword and the Amazon pre-order DLC bonus of Mage Masher and Camera Set. 'Should I open a communications channel Captain? No let’s warp strike them, it's more fun!’ This time round the battle system is real time and you start off with your full party of 4, replete with spikey hair. You are Noctis, Prince of Lucis together with your 3 companions, Prompto who takes photographs during your adventures, even during battles!, Gladiolus the tough guy covered in tattoos, and Ignis a serious type with glasses who is a chef. You control Noctis who can warp round the battle field to get a flank attack for extra damage, which looks awesome, the circle key attacks while square defends. Flanking also gives you combo attacks for extra damage. The camera can be a bit useless at times as combat is so quick and it helps to lockon a target. The quality of effects is first rate. The Mage Mashers rock early on with fast attacks, especially from warp points. The tipsters give you quests like hunts you can slay x amount of beasties. As usual your character starts off weak but through spending AP points in Ascension you and your party can quickly become more powerful. Combat really is fun and fluid, you can take a breather by hanging from a warp point and also regenerating HP and MP, then warp strike in and press L1 to get a team member's special attack. Gladiolus's Tempest attack is great for multiple enemies. Magic is a bit weird as there is fire, ice, lightning and wild which you put into a flask and then throw at enemies, however the splash damage hurts your allies so it's a double edged sword. 'She canna take any more Jim! Okay Scotty let’s get her serviced by Cid’s voluptuous daughter, Scrumdiliumptous!’ The game is unique in that the 4 characters bond together as the game goes on and there is a lot of humour and silliness that Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3 lacked. During battles the 4 bro’s are frequently bigging each other up with funny dialogue, and helping one another when a team member is in trouble. Camp fires at night are atmospheric and quite beautiful, Prompto sometimes bursts into song about chocobos! He shows you the snaps he has taken during the day and the guys comment on some of them and you can post them online. I had Ignis say he had found a new recipe after a battle, later on at the camp site he cooks it for the team, giving a stats boost next day. Also in shops there are 16-bit icons of your party that raise their arms when an item can be equipped, a nice touch. The small details in this game are just amazing. 'She’s shaking and shuddering, wobbling from side to side Captain! Stop talking about Cindy Cid!’ So far the game is brilliant and the irreverence makes it a ton of fun, a beautiful fantasy environment to explore by car or walking and a great bonding dynamic between the members of your party, really enjoying it :-) and kudos to Amazon for selling it for £37 with Royal Mail tracked delivery, excellent! nb; gets better the more you play and level, I upgraded the engine sword all the way to Ultima blade and got bioblaster plus as well, it makes battles much easier and quicker. Mixing magic is very useful to get Experia, so at night you camp and eat an Experience boosting meal, during the day battle monsters, do side quests and hunts, use your Experia flasks on boss monsters, then in the evening turn in your quests and go to bed in a hotel or camper for 1.5x, etc EXP. The game is excellent, just needs initial patience to get to grips with it.