Hajime Tabata
Final Fantasy XV

Ifrit, the witch, the little mage Vivi. These are images fixed in the firmament of my childhood, and no one will ever corrupt them. However, playing the latest chapter of the saga carries a big risk.

A great technology at the service of a lousy story, that's what I must say. But more than just being ugly, it is narrated in an absurd manner: most of the time, it’s hard to understand why we are heading to a specific part of the world, who the characters we meet are and their roles, and what our objective is. A narrative catastrophe born from an evident cut and paste: an ambitious first part, albeit opaque and dispersive, followed by a forced narrative tunnel that tries to tie the loose ends as best as it can to close an otherwise unsolvable mess.

If only the story were the problem. FF XV has the ambition to bring in both strategic and real-time action dynamics, and in the early moments, it seems that the combat system is spectacular. Over time, you understand that the only formidable enemy to fight is the camera, which continually tries to mess up battles that are often messy already. A disgraceful spectacle, especially in narrow spaces or forests. But in general, the system fails because it aims to encourage the thrill of real-time action, with dodges, blocks, and quick counterattacks, but the chaos of the skirmishes and the poor response precision (it’s not clear when you should block, or maybe it's variable) make it tough to give meaning to the strategies, and the battles are reduced to a sequence of blows given and received, so much so that to win, just having many potions or elixirs is enough.

Additionally, the magic spells are few and cumbersome to use, and – hear ye, hear ye – the aeons cannot be summoned. This choice gives an idea of the madness behind this videogame. The guardian forces are few and beautiful, well integrated into the story, but once obtained, we can only wait for them to decide to intervene. There are indeed specific conditions that favor their intervention, but at least a couple are acquired only along the final stretch and cannot be used much; they become unpredictable plot events, certainly not a weapon in our arsenal.

Failing in its classic components, the game also fails in its innovative and modern ones. An open world with many optional missions (how many are interesting and stimulating?), but that only make the main story slower, boring, and dramatically diluted. If, for example, in Horizon Zero Dawn, arriving at a location to complete a mission meant necessarily facing monster battles, crucial to leveling up and gathering materials, here we have the Regalia (which even has a navigator), making us spectators of panoramic trips (lasting up to seven minutes...), without thrills and with dialogues on the edge of the horrid. And leveling up is not necessary because just doing the main quest leads you to the final boss almost effortlessly (I died only twice in 25 hours of gameplay, but only because I didn't realize I had to use the phoenix down. Parenthesis within parenthesis: the fight is so confusing that you constantly die from cross-attacks, but potions still work even if you're at zero. However, in some cases, you die "more," and a cross appears next to the name: in that case, you need the phoenix down).

For some missions, the biggest obstacle is enduring the road segments you must travel by car or on chocobos. This is because the roads in the daytime are free from deamons, so you travel peacefully. At night, it’s better to rest at hotels, camps, etc. And here our little friend Prompto shows us the day's photos; the kingdom is on its knees, we might be fighting a huge behemoth, and he’s taking pictures. But it gets worse; our protagonist Noctis loves fishing. The designated ruler who must save the kingdom from invaders (perhaps, it's not clear) has all the time to sit by the lake and have fun. You understand that the open dimension doesn't help the plot, it unravels it with silly music, while Final Fantasy was and is Final Fantasy even with menacing music. A much better linear but intense adventure, better to keep the open world for when you get the spaceship. Here we find ourselves able to travel the world without knowing almost anything about who we are. Not good.

In short, I only finished it out of curiosity to see the final bosses, there is something nice in it, but nothing spectacular. Encountering random enemies eventually became more of a nuisance than fun. And remember when you couldn’t even see them on the maps? It was annoying, but back then, fighting a lot was necessary, not so much here.

Thinking back to the many hours as an enchanted child in front of Final Fantasy VIII and IX, I want to say something perhaps banal but necessary. The limited power of the first PS (not for the time, of course) meant a videogame was great also and above all for the excellence of the story, for intense narrative, film-like cutscenes (minimized here, who knows why), the beauty in the design of creatures and dizzying cities, absurd worlds and terrifying forests, the anticipation of a new creature to join the alliance, space ships and flying galleons. They were beautiful things because they were imagined with passion and fantasy, not just for the graphical output of the processor. Here the situation is reversed: there’s powerful machinery, but lacking creativity to exploit it.

Moreover, the patience required from the player was important: in the battle turns, in leveling up, in buying increasingly powerful weapons, in managing the parameters of your heroes. Here it's not needed, the game can be easily finished even going straight ahead.

This especially disappointed me, there’s a fear of putting the player in too much difficulty, so better to make everything easier, with indicators for everything, even in the mazes, there's always an arrow pointing to the destination. So even dungeons become harmless and predictable. In the long path before the final battles, this game mechanic reveals all its stupidity: a maze almost with signs telling you where to go. A repetitive procedure: take the key, move up a floor, take another key, and so on. The only worthy thing, among poorly executed jumpscares, is the enemy's menacing voice, which adds much atmosphere, an atmosphere almost always lacking in this video game.