The Future of Final Fantasy

I Just finished playing Final Fantasy XV after over 100 hours of game play. I am a completionist. and didn't want to finish until I had done absolutely everything. That means all the dungeons, all the sidequests (monster hunts) all the upgrades, weapons, clothes, everything.


That is the beauty of a Final Fantasy game. I love to avert my attention from the main quest and take on all the side quests, which usually happen near the end of the game. Take Final Fantasy VII for example. Near the end of the game there are three optional boss fights, one against Ultima Weapon, Emerald Weapon and Ruby Weapon. These fights are insanely hard and at least one of them is timed. In order to remove the time limit you have to go on a whole separate side quest. There are other quests that happen through out, like getting a gold chocobo and acquiring everyone's final limit break, some of which are found in game and others that, most likely, you've started at some point or another.


The point here is that, while Final Fantasy XV had side quests, most of them were fetch quests. Not to say I'm complaining, I did them all because I wanted to do EVERYTHING before I moved on to the next chapter in the game and I had a ton of fun doing them. The quests really aren't the issue here. In fact, I enjoyed the game a lot, much more than Final Fantasy XIII which I admit I only played some of XIII-2 and just couldn't really get into it. I think the Kingdom Hearts combat sorta ruined turn base battles for me, but anyway....


My problem with Final Fantasy XV actually had nothing to do with the game play. I will agree that the game is super easy and that they made dying next to impossible, but whatever, less load times. My gripe with Final Fantasy XV actually comes in the form of the story. To put it simply: I didn't get it.
SPOILERS AHEAD READ AT YOUR OWN RISK


I understand that Noctis and Luna were childhood friends/ lovers, and that when she died Noctis was upset, and I get that Arydin or whatever his name is, is playing the long game, finally revealing his plan to Noctis and locking him away for ten years.


Here's the thing though. Noctis and Luna's relationship is glossed over, at best. What's more, Noctis's attitude makes it seem like he's not really into her at all. So when she dies, while sad, I wasn't grief stricken in the least. Compare that with Areis's death in Final Fantasy VII, and I was a mess. I'd spent time with her, leveled her up, been on a date with her in Gold Saucer, even found her final limit break. Then the game stabs you in the heart as she falls dead. I'll admit, I cried, I'm not ashamed of that.


But with Luna, I didn't really care. Even after watching King's Glaive, which I made sure to watch right around the time I got to that point in the game, I still didn't really care that she was dead. Then, after her death, I'm supposed to believe that Noctis is grief-stricken despite the fact that he barely talked about her, and no, sending messages via dogs did not help me care in the least.


Then we have Ardyn. You could tell from the word GO that he was a bad guy. I have no problem with his character. He's the one who captures you on the train. Can't remember how he got there though, or if it's ever even explained. He steels Prompto who by the way turns out to be a demon or something, oh and by the way Ignis is blind after Luna dies. Yeah, that's never explained.


So, anyway, Noctis saves his friend and meets up with Ardyn who turns out to be the original King Lucias Ciam something something, I don't know. I'd lost the story some way back. I had to look it up. the jist is that he was supposed to be king, but after taking on the demons via sucking their souls into his own body, he became corrupt, and the gods told he couldn't be king so doomed him to live forever, or at least until the True King showed up to kill him. That, of course, being Noctis.


Before that, however, Noctis is shoved into the crystal and spat back out ten years later. There were are treated to a scene of him in a world of night/ ruin. We start out at Cape Ciam and are picked up by another NPC. As he drives us to Hammerhead (the starting point of the game) we see a world in darkness. In Hammerhead we meet up with our old friends and then head straight for Insomnia and the end game. No more exploring, no more talking with Cindy, no more side quests nothing.

That is, not until the end credits roll. Let me back track a little. The only other game in which there was a world of ruin was Final Fantasy VI. That whole scene starts out with one of the main characters thinking all of her friends are dead. She climbs to the top of a cliff and jumps off. The current carries

her back to shore where she finds the scarf of one of her team mates, prompting her to search the world for her friends. The scene is touching and dramatic, and there was no voice acting in the series at the time. What's more, you get to travel the entire world after it's been destroyed. I feel like Final Fantasy XV should have let you explore. Also, It talks about how Cindy had done all this stuff to help people, but when you get to Hammer head, she's not even there.


After you return to Insomnia Noctis finds Ardyn and they fight, but Noctis chooses to leave his friends behind, I guess so they can be king when he's gone? Again, never really explained. Anyway, Noctis and Ardyn fight and Noctis sacrifices himself. Then, at the end credits a cut scene Noctis and his friends comes up. I have no idea when this happened because In ever camped out, as far as I know, on the way to Insomnia. If that's when I happened then that scene was totally out of place and didn't make any sense since Noctis was already dead at the time.


At the end, he is reunited with Luna and the logo changes, and so does the music at the title screen. Personally, I like the sad vocals better but whatever.


In the advertising for this game it showed us the flying car telling us you could fly around the world like in the days of the old Final Fantasy. Throughout the game, in the several dungeons of the game, there were closed doors that the characters would talk about needing a key for. It's only now, after the credits that you get any of this stuff.


This bothers me on two levels. The first, is that I can remember a time, even up through Final Fantasy XII that there were hidden areas, treasures, bosses, all within game. Fighting/ getting/ finding these areas would get you ultimate weapons, summons, or in some games just the satisfaction in knowing you'd beaten the hardest boss in the game. What's more, it hall happened in game. You didn't have to wait until after the credits or to get a new game plus or DLC or any of that bull crap. All of that stuff was included. It made the game feel complete.


The second thing is really just false advertising. Sure you DID get the flying car, and you COULD fly around the world, but only after you'd beaten the game. And you could only get into the secret dungeons when you'd beaten the game too. The problem with that is this. Once I beat a game, I'm done. I usually don't pick it up again because, chances are, I've completed everything there is to complete. I don't care about.


I actually really like how Batman Arkham Knight approached this. The game "ended" after Batman beat Scarecrow, but he said something like "When I give the signal, begin Knight Fall Protocol" or something to that affect. This was your chance to complete any side quests that you hadn't finished. I had finished them all in game though (With the exception of the DLC) so by the time "Knight Fall Protocol" happened, I was done. It was only then, that I was treated to the TRUE ending of the game.


I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, while I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV it just left something to be desired. I'm still playing, doing the secret dungeons now, and I'm still having fun with it, but, I don't know, it just feels like something is missing, or that the game was rushed, which is weird, considering they were working on it for ten years. I realize they had to scrap a bunch of stuff. I mean hell, the game was originally part of the Fabula Nova Crystalis and it was called Versus XIII. The story had to be completely revamped. It's still part of it, I think, though the comparisons are Easter Eggs at best.


I hope the next Final Fantasy is not plagued by DLC or by waiting until end credits to go back to secret areas. That was part of the charm of the game. For me, I would get to the end of the game, get everything, and start over because I'd have read about something that I missed previously. That, to me, is the best way to play Final Fantasy. To me, that is replay value. Don't pack stuff in at the end of the game, pack it in WITH the game. Make it so that when people read about some secret weapon or boss or item that can only be acquired by doing X instead of Y they go and start the game over. That is what you want from a game. That's replay value. Sure, you can still have DLC, down the line, but do something unique with it. Don't hide content away on the disk or make people pay for the dungeons. Have all that stuff in there to start, then use the DLC for extra stuff, like a VS mode, or timed trial or something. That's my two cents anyway.


 Even though I had to wait until the end credits to get to fly, and go to secret dungeons, it's still a fun experience. Maybe next time, make a cohesive story, but otherwise, great job Square Enix. You've put my faith back into the Final Fantasy franchise.

Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Final Mix++ HD

“A far off dream that’s like a scattered memory, a scattered memory that’s like a far off dream, I want to line the pieces up, yours, and mine.”

Dammit Square you consistently make it difficult for me to hate you.  After several years of playing Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ and pretending I understand the squiggly lines that make up the Japanese language, you finally cave in and give me one in English. How can I hate you for that? Anyway, This really is the definitive edition of the game. Rather than go through the entire game and pick it apart, as I have done in the past, I’m simply going to go over the new content. If you are reading this and would like to know my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts 2 then you are reading the wrong article.

                This game does, most, everything right. Not only are there fun things to collect, like crown pieces, but there are some great, challenging, puzzles to solve as you collect them. Also, there are more conversations between the organization. That was one of my biggest gripes with Kingdom Hearts 2, that, with all the shit that was happening, the player never saw the organization planning anything, not once. And the scene at the end of the game with Siax and Xemnas doesn’t count. Also in this game we get to fight the other organization members. The game kind of just does a half ass job of explaining it saying something like “Hey remember when— oh right you went to sleep for a year and forgot everything, no worries though teleport through these randomly placed data portals and you will get to fight the people you’ve forgotten.” It makes no sense what so ever but it’s hell-a fun to fight them.  In this game you are also given a new form, which is supposed to be Sora remembering his past or something ridiculous. Really, it’s just an excuse to let you use some of your abilities from the first game. In all honesty though, Quick Run makes Dodge Roll obsolete. In Birth By Sleep Quick Run was changed to Air Dash, but whatever, it’s the same thing. Probably my favorite part about this new game is the Cavern of Remembrance. I love that place. It is so fun and so vast and so hard and just great. The main reason for this is because in order to survive you have to utilize all of your skills. I don’t just mean fighting either. One of the other things Kingdom Heart 2 lacked was in making the player use the cool skills they learned in their drive forms. High Jump, Ariel Dodge, Quick Run and Glide were all great abilities but not at all necessary to learn in the whole of the game. Yeah, sure they helped in the final battle, but still, I never really felt like I needed them. The Cavern of Remembrance amends that entirely. Not only do you need to learn all of these abilities, but they have to be leveled up to the max. If not, then you will find yourself stuck in certain areas. Oh and not mention the music in here beautiful. Then the caves open up to a long white hall reminiscent of Castle Oblivion. I have no problems with this, not really. It can be quite challenging trying to get through this part of the game, but it’s also a phenomenal place to level up your characters, especially when you can get upwards of 25000 experience with both experience boosts equipped.

The only real issue in this game is the enemies. It’s a shame that Square couldn’t do something to make them a bit more fun to fight. Half of them just annoy the crap out of you while the other half make you want to break your controller. Sure there are some fun enemies to fight, but they are so few and far between that I can scarcely remember them. Also I’ll admit, playing on proud mode doesn’t help either. The only reason I did it though is because I knew that, in doing so, I wouldn’t have to deal with the utter bollocks that is Jimminy’s Journal. Seriously, that little bastard just makes me want to step on him over and over again. The mushroom quest is a great example of this. Some of the quests are easy, while others jut suck. Trying to land a hundred and fifty hits on one mushroom is just stupid and time consuming and not fun at all. Knowing the ‘secret’ on how to do it doesn’t make it any less tedious, and that goes for all the other ones as well. Once I learned that the mushroom in Christmas town would give me one of every item I opted only to do that one.

Now, this game also came with a Birth By Sleep hd remake, which happens to be the Final Mix version of that as well. As far as I can tell there wasn’t a whole lot added to this. There are some re-colored enemies. I think there might be an extra keyblade somewhere. There are some new abilities and finishers. Ventus has the coolest one called Skydive or something like that. He rains down like comets from the sky. Aqua’s teleport has her moving around the enemies shooting spheres of light around them. Terra’s meteor is the hardest to pull off, having to position where you want it to land while the enemies are still moving, often resulting in hitting nothing. The other thing this game has is a second secret episode. In it we travel the realm of darkness with Aqua until we meet the Behemoth in the world. After that the game flashes Birth By Sleep 2.0 on the screen.

The last thing I will talk about is the much better, and very long, recoded movie. After watching the movie I almost wanted to play the game again. Then I remembered how awful it is and it makes me glad I opted to watch the movie instead.

The only games I have left to play now are Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, which I really want to play, and the mobile version Kingdom Hearts X. I suppose I really should get back to Kingdom Hearts Unchained, but I kinda got stuck in the Hercules world and just haven’t bothered with it since. I have played Dream Drop Distance and Birth By Sleep 2.0 but it’s been a while and I want to play them again before I write about them, so it’s going to be a while.