Happy Anniversary to Final Fantasy XV! November 29th is the day the game has been released to all over the world for PS4 and Xbox One in 2016. Who would have thought this game will leave a big impact on the world and us fans. In this post, I want to talk about how this game affected me and made me a hardcore fan and also reflect on the past and what to expect on the future. To be honest, I didn’t plan this post out, so as of right now, I am writing from my head. I was actually going to title this Matthew vs Final Fantasy XV based on a video I saw called Johnny vs The Street Fighter series in which the YouTuber Johnny talks about how Street Fighter has affected him and giving us a brief history on the series.  Another title name was going to be Final Fantasy XV Retrospective. Anyway let’s  start!

Final Fantasy XV is the recent installment to the Final Fantasy Franchise and it’s one of the most popular RPG games in any video game. Final Fantasy XV was actually going to be released for PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2006, but under the title Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The game is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy with other games such as Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-0 (the 0 is a zero). You can take a look what this means but from I understand, it means that these game worlds live in different universes but they both have a the same rules, mythos, ideas and concept with each other. You can comment down below and educate me what the heck is this mean because I still don’t have clue.

Anyway back to FFXV, this game was going to be really different in regards to story in Versus XIII. You can read it in the wiki, but according to the site, Versus XIII story was going to be darker. The story and trailer revealed that Noctis’s kingdom is still from Lucis but his role was going to be played like a mafia/yakuza style story. It is also revealed that he was supposed to do the peace treaty instead of King Regis from FFXV and he has to do it with the head of Tenebrae Stella Nox Fleuret. However, just like in the movie Kingsglaive, things would turn grim when Noctis is faced and has to fight against a mystrious hooded figure (assuming it was a prototype version of Ravus) and even Stella. On another trailer, we got to see the combat style of Noctis and how the action is more violent than the FFXV. The trailer is different because it feels like watching Final Fantasy VII Advent Children and the way Noctis fights feels different especially when he teleports.

Fast foreword later and Square Enix decided that instead of making this game a companion to Final Fantasy XIII, they decided to transform Versus XIII and make it XV and thus making it the next installment. I forgot to mention, unlike the past games, Final Fantasy XV wasn’t going to be played like its past games where it’s turn-based and instead, it will be played like an action-adventure RPG game like Kingdom Hearts or Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. As a fan of Kingdom Hearts, after seeing some gameplay trailers of FFXV, I was ready to order my copy. At this time, the only Final Fantasy games was familiar with was FFVII and Dissidia. In 2016, Square Enix announced the release the date to be on September 30th, unfortunately the game was delayed because they wanted to get of bugs and thus resulting the game to be sold on November 29th. It’s ironic or funny because at that time, I got fired from my first job at Amazon and then started working at FedEx for the season and now we are in 2017, I am back at FedEx again. I reserved my copy for the Deluxe Edition and it came with nifty DLC and the Kingsglaive movie. I got it from GameStop and I even got a free game called A King’s Tale in which you play as King Regis in his younger days in a old school side scrolling game.

This game was getting so much hype because of Square Enix did many promotional tactis. The game Final Fantasy Type-0 gave players a demo of the game called Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae. I never played the demo and I would like to try it because I heard the controls were very different than today. The story of demo shows the English Dub cast of Noctis, Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis and the newly revealed hottest video game character Cindy (fans were dubbing her Cidney or I like to nickname her Daisy Duke). I believe that now she exist in the FF series, she is tied against Tifa for most attractiveness in assets. In the story, the guys need gil (FF currency) to fix their car the Regalia and pay Cindy. When they see a bounty to kill the Behemouth monster Deadeye, the guys take on the objective. This mission returns in the official game but it is altered.

The only demo I played was Platinum Demo. In this demo, we see the child Noctis trapped in a dream and he is led by a cute pal named Carbuncle. As you finish the demo and learn the gameplay, you can even nickname your Carbuncle and he can show up in Festival events or in easy mode if you are about to get killed. Another hype booster is when Square released a trailer of Final Fantasy XV and played the iconic and one of my favorite songs.

Stand by Me but the artist is sung by Florence + The Machines. The song, played with the game, hinted that the game was going to focus on traveling together with your companions alone in the dangerous world. As usual, Square also released more content that was going to be important and essential to the main game. They teamed up with Sony and team who did Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (with motion captures) to make a movie that acts like a prequel and then ties into the story called Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV. The movie was going to focus on King Regis (Noctis father) and Lunafreya (Noctis childhood friend and soon to be wife. She was also formally as Stella in Versus) on how they were going to bring peace between both kingdoms. Unfortunately, the rival kingdom Niflheim betrays the kingdom of Lucis and attacks King Regis. The movie takes motion when the story shifts to the the Kingsglaive soldier named Nyx Ulric who must stand to protect Lunafreya and help her escape. I like this movie but I need to rewatch again and review it.

Again with Sony, they made a special video that will also serve as a foreshadow to the later in the game. The video is called Omen and it shows a dark future for Noctis and what’s going to happen to him on his quest. King Regis speaks to the Crystal, later to be Bahamut, and asks that the only the way to end the suffering of the world is to end a certain life. Someone out there must die and it is equivalent to many lives.

 

There’s even an anime that focuses on the Noctis and his friendship. The anime is called Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV. There are only 5 episodes and it’s free on YouTube and Crunchyroll. I won’t go much into details but I will save you the trouble if you read my review, spoiler-free! I even used the episode about Prompto in one of my OWLS post in the topic of Mirrors. Like mentioned before, I love his game for the story and characters.

In my review, I mentioned I enjoyed the friendship with Noctis and his friends and how they stuck together to the very end. The story may feel out of place and mixed around due to rushing to completion but thank goodness we have DLCs! We have Episode Gladiolus where we learn about Gladio’s sudden disappearance and how committed he was if he wanted to be strong for Noctis. In Episode Prompto, we learn about the dark backstory behind this loveable and goofy character and how much he really cares about his friends. The current DLC I am playing is Comrads in which I can create my character and team up with random players and fight against monsters during the 10 year time skip. The next and final DLC episode of this year is Episode Ignis.

Previously mentioned, there are festival moments where players can take a break of the story and play minigames. The first festival was the Moogle Chocobo Festival where things are cute and filed with Moogles and Chocobo games in the city of Altissa. Some are unexpected like the collaboration with Assassin’s Creed in which introduced an original story and revealed that Noctis is a fan of Assassin’s Creed. The festival is called Assassin’s Festival and you can wear the Medjay Hood from the recent Origins game. As a way to say thanks, Assassin’s Creed Origins as easter eggs to FFXV by including Umbra in the game as well as hieroglyphs of a man with an Engine Blade.

This is not the first time FFXV has been with other titles. There’s weapon called the Engine Blade where you can use in NieR: Automata, the Regalia in Forza Horizon 3 and Noctis is expected to appear in Tekken 7 in 2018.

I am not sure if anyone remembers but I even wrote out my legacy on how this game has affected my life and how I met other fans in Twitter. I think I have to blame my friends but I also roleplay with them but I pretend I am Noctis and I go on text adventures.

 

As we approach to the end of 2017 and 2018, get ready for new stuff from Square Enix. It is already been announced that Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition is coming to Android and iPhones later the season and we are also getting a PC release next year. As expected, get ready to play as more characters in the story such as the villain Ardyn and possible characters like Cor and Aranea. Final Fantasy XV is my favorite video game all time and it’s the most played in PS4. Thanks to this series, I am happy to try out more FF games and I got to make some friends along the way. If you like FFFXV as much as me, let’s chat! If you need help understanding the story, let’s chat! With all this said, I am going to end this special anniversary post. Let’s enjoy Final Fantasy XV together.

Walk Talk, My Son

Shout out to these artists: