Final Fantasy XV Game Review

 

Pros
Likable core characters
Fascinating conflict
An excellent world to investigate
Many Quests and side-quests

Cons
Not the most comprehensible or well-told narrative
Rotten fight camera
Lousy magic system
No save points in certain dungeons
Around


About the Game
 

Final Fantasy XV introducing its new activity-oriented real time battle system that's excellent, but it’s reliant on a camera that appears hell bent on losing track of you, enemies as well as the action completely. Your hero, Noctis, has a fantastically useful Warp skill which should play a core part in nearly every fight, but could just use it when there’s a special point to warp to, as well as lots of the battlegrounds feature no such thing. When there is, locating it together with the aforementioned camera is generally a nightmare.

Gameplay

This is a game that’s designed to be reachable, yet includes lots of nested systems, a few of which you’re ensured to forget for hours at a time. Dungeons usually come with no checkpoints or save points, but then feature a tough manager right in the ending including all of the possibility to send you back to square one, all advancement and encounter will reset. The whole magic system is a near-catastrophe, first dismissing later commanding your use of the chain’ touch summons while focusing on an elemental form of sorcery that looks purposefully made to wipe out your comrades as good as your foes. Both the PS4 and PS4 Pro versions have problems with noticeable framerate issues, though nothing that may make the game unplayable.

Later, there’s the storyline, FFXV’s storyline seems to lurch from one beat and item to the next with only the lowest effort at any given causality. You’re frequently left guessing whether the motivations of essential characters are cryptic or simply incomprehensible, while the abrupt shifts of tone between happy go lucky and dark and mournful or furious and vengeful. Lots of the real storyline seems to be happening elsewhere, glimpsed only indirectly, and there’s no uncertainty that FFXV has something of a villain issues.

By establishing a quartet of likable men on the path to open world experience, Square Enix has assembled a game with room to breathe, laugh, find and explore.

It helps the world is a great one, combining the show’ conventional sci fi, sword, and sorcery using various gold-hued 1950s Americana, swapping route 66 for meandering highways linking up remote outposts, dungeons, wilderness areas, and cities. Your automobile might not be much fun to drive – even when you drive it manually it directs itself – but it’s a good method to get from A to B while shooting the breeze and listening to classic FF soundtracks. Go off the street on foot or on Chocobo and there’s always someplace to go and something to do, whether that’s fishing, hunting for meal fixings, taking bounty hunts on colossal critters or finding the treasure caches scattered liberally about.

Characters

Meanwhile, it’s hard to think of another RPG where the party feels less like several characters with distinctive gameplay and story functions, and much more like a genuine number of pals. The more you play the more you’ll come to adore Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis – even miss them when they’re absent for a time.

Each has a function, thanks to the battle system's Techniques, but even then you never view them as the healer, ranged combatant and damage dealer, only the guys you trust to get your back. Their extracurricular duties – cooking and photography – should be irritating, yet getting a fresh meal from Ignis or a different mountain of candid photos from Prompto is among the extraordinary well-being of settling down to camp. And while this focus in your core group comes at the expense of other characters – even people who get a guest slot in your party – FFXV still finds time for some other memorable faces, despite some dubious wardrobe selections for essential female members of the cast.

Game Controls

Most of all, FFXV is compelling, regardless of the stupid camera, it makes each conflict fast paced, intriguing and astonishingly tactical, with a real emphasis on positioning and resource management. You're expected to recognize where and when to utilize Noctis’s summonable royal weapons and when to stick to more fundamental arms, when to activate power moves and when to hold back. There’s a real art to using warp and warp strike moves, and making nearly all the Techniques that enable you to call in your buddies as well as their abilities, and after that mix them with your own. It needs becoming used to – and more old school RPG fans might choose to make more use of the pause-able tactical way – but this is the first Final Fantasy in years that'sn’t felt bogged down by the fighting.

There are a few nicely-designed dungeons and assignments in here also, even if some leave you wondering why Noctis doesn’t make more use of his Warp abilities to sneak past guards or get through chainlink fences and over walls. The set piece fights and main conflicts in many cases are astonishingly powerful, the creature hunts may be nervous and exciting and just the eccentric, badly-given stealth and driving sections enable the side down, although these are, at least, happily short. And though the construction grows more linear as the game goes on, there’s a corresponding ramp up with intensity, and you’ll still find minutes of downtime where you’re free to investigate.

This really is a peculiar one. It’s not a normal Final Fantasy, a traditional JRPG or even one that plays to all the strengths of the genre or the franchise. Yet there’s something really participating and intensely fulfilling about FFXV.

For all its flaws – the dodgy camera, the dearth of dungeon save points, the magic system, the bitty, oddly-organized storyline – Final Fantasy 15 is the top single-player Final Fantasy in a decade. The completely new fight system is more activity-oriented, but still astonishingly tactical, while the brand new focus on open world investigation brings the game and its own world to life. Crammed with character, pick, and interest, it’s an RPG where the good times keep on rolling down the street.

The Last Guardian Game Review

 

The Last Guardian Game Review

Pros
Completely captivating story
Trico actions in an astonishingly lifelike style
Participating relationship between boy and Trico
Brilliant set piece seconds

Cons
Management scheme may be greatly fiddly
Getting Trico to do what you'd enjoy at times is despairing

About the game

 

The Last Guardian game tells the story of a young lad and his ginormous bird-dog-rat partner, Trico. The story begins with both waking up in a cavern, not comprehending how simply they got there. What's immediately obvious, however, is that Trico isn’t actually friendly.

Bound in chains, Trico is initially competitive towards the tat-covered lad – his name's unknown through the storyline – but after the young boy finds nourishment for the creature in a couple of aglow barrels, Trico dampens its standing. This is a fantastic thing because both boy and creature will rely on each other throughout their entirely participating journey.

Gameplay

The Last Guardian operates very much like a medley of the programmer’s preceding efforts. You, as the lad, can scale Trico much like mounting creatures in Shadow of the Colossus, while the recognition of teamwork and non-verbal communication is reminiscent of Ico. As you've got to climb, crawl and jump around this world, finding levers to pull to open doors and direct both of you through the labyrinth. The 15-year old formula has had some tweaks, though not as much as you might expect, and this often results in The Last Guardian’s greatest defects.



Many the gameplay relies on communicating between the lad and Trico. Neither share a common language and for that reason must gesture towards one another in the hope the message gets across. It won’t be long before you’re given the ability to direct Trico using each of the tasks the lad can do – essential stuff like move here, jump up there, shove that, but all essential for advancement – and sometimes the inability for the giant creature to do what you want will bring about great frustration.

Trico’s learning as much as you are, albeit at a slower speed, so of course, it mightn't comprehend what’s going on. Mechanically, however, it may be a crash.

The frustration lies in comprehending the answer to the puzzle, but the game not allowing you to solve it, either through a bug or merely subordinate layout. For instance, within a room Trico was required to move through a particular doorway which was partially obstructed. You've got to ordered it to go through after clearing the means, merely for Trico to get right up to the doorway and then run away, as if there were some invisible obstacle obstructing its path.

Game Controls

It doesn’t help the controls are as fiddly as they were on the PS2, either. Transferring the lad by means of the world is janky and cumbersome, with the platforming mechanisms penalizing a shortage of pinpoint precision. The camera might also be jarring. When caught in a corner or on a piece of scenery, the screen completely fades to black before showing you a distinct perspective of what you were looking at, completely disorientating you.

In place of understand the relationship between Trico and additionally the lad as they solved puzzles through their enriching bond and developing their specific language. This inconsistency is really more unsatisfactory because, when it works, The Last Guardian is striking.

Seeing Trico and additionally the lad slowly develop trust is a real pleasure. The game takes its time to come up with the relationship and is even more powerful for it. The relationship between the lad and Trico increasingly more engaged by this believable bond – almost like a Disney movie. As the player, the link developing more strong through each minute of risk.

At the beginning of the game, Trico got the lad from A to B. However, by the halfway stage, every time Trico was even a hint of threat during the unbelievable set pieces. That need to petted Trico frequently, even though there’s no actual increase from doing this. The Last Guardian does an astonishing job of making you care.

Furthermore, Trico’s features dampen over the course of the game, making it increasingly more adorable with every passing hour. Initially, Trico’s eyes can flash disagreeable white and purple – you afterwards locate this is corresponding to various matters within the game, by means of example, Trico either desiring food or being in ‘strike’ mode. At some point, you can see Trico for what it is: a awful creature becoming really linked to the child it's saved, and who's saved it, in a strange land.

Bottomline

Studio Japan has continued to show how it can do so much while saying so little. The atmosphere, characters and everything about the story is incredible. The Last Guardian gameplay storyline is a simple one, but powerful nonetheless.