By Steven Quinones | Staff Writer
It has been 29 years since the first installment of the Final Fantasy franchise was released, and the franchise is still going strong. The last real installment was released three years ago, and the hype for something to come along and revitalize the franchise was overwhelming. Final Fantasy XV went through a lot to come to fruition, but did its difficult journey make it as good as people hoped? I believe the answer to be a resounding yes. Don’t get me wrong, though, the game is extremely infuriating. Having logging over thirty hours into the game, it feels as though there is no end in sight. The Final Fantasy franchise has always put an emphasis on the story and this new installment is no different.
Seconds into the game, you are given the option to go into two different tutorials. The first is a combat tutorial, but the second is a guide on the lore of the world that the game is trying to build. The developers wanted to make the players care about the world from the very beginning of their journey. Now, was this an add-on from the delay the game recently had or was it always intended? I cannot really answer for
sure, but by simply including this, I felt as though the 
producers wanted me to know about what I was getting into. The lore guide really helped to give novices a way to better understand the complicated world that is any Final Fantasy game.
The next major point of the game is the combat system. The combat system has been redone repeatedly in this franchise and the producers never seem too pleased with it. This new system was based on real-time combat. I have always associated the franchise with turn-based combat, so this was a nice change. The main character, Noctis, comes with two abilities that really makes the combat fun and prevents a sense of staleness. The first of these is the ability to switch out weapons to match them up to the enemies you are facing with general ease. The combat focuses heavily on resistances, and this system was a necessity for the player to make sure of resistances and weaknesses.
The second system is the teleportation system incorporated in battles. Noctis can throw his weapon, warp in that general direction, and strike an opponent that the player locks on to. Different environments lead to different ways of abusing the warping process, which means it never gets boring. Noctis not only locks on to monsters, but also he can also focus on areas in the environment he can use to strike an enemy from. These two features make the battle system fantastic, but there are still some issues.
The first issue with the battle system would have to be the overall difficulty of the battles. The franchise should never be accused of being an easy game, but there is no need for level thirty enemies to appear at the very beginning just because the player felt curious and wanted to check out the daemons. The next issue is the camera; it isn’t very responsive, and you can easily lose track of the enemy that you locked on to. It is possible to make the camera work with you, but only after some practice. The last issue that really detracts from the battles are the difficulties of doing summons. As someone who loved Final Fantasy XIII, I expected the summons to be easy to do, but the summons in this game are only possible in relatively dire situations and even then, environmental factors affect who you can summon.
Final Fantasy XV tried something new with the use of the group’s car, the Regalia. It was fun at first to use the Regalia to get around rather than running through the expansive world, but it eventually becomes more annoying than fun. Going to a more open world design becomes an issue for this game as travel takes a long time and the use of the Regalia is more inconvenient. You constantly need to check the fuel, and running out of gas is an absolute nightmare. I like that fact that you get a customizable method of transport, but it could be a little more user friendly.
Overall, Final Fantasy XV is by no means a perfect game. However, it managed to recapture the glory of the golden age of Final Fantasy. Some of the issues can be fixed with patches and updates, so I cannot really hold them against the game just yet. Despite putting a good thirty hours into the game, I still have not done everything I know I can and I look forward to seeing what the game has to offer further down the road. I would recommend the game to anyone as it has yet to get stale and can only improve over time.
