It's hard for me to decide which I hate more as a sequel to an FF game I loved, this or X-2. Both of them manage to do what feels like irreparable damage to the epic tales that their predecessors were.

The entire story is founded on a stupid fucking retcon that cheapens the ending of XIII, and it only gets worse from there. I've watched music videos that have a more coherent plot than whatever this pile of shit is. It hamfists in elements of time travel and parallel worlds that are not a part of the original game's mythos at all, brings in an unwanted and unnecessary character for no apparent reason except as the writer's OC in this fanfiction that somehow gaslit its way to official status. Don't be fucking fooled. It's all a sham: the story is nonsensical, meandering and entirely at odds with all that is good in the world. I absolutely despise stories like these that constantly use big words like 'chronicle paradox' and 'forbidden history' and 'spacetime vortex' in a vain attempt to hide the fact that they absolutely SUCK. They suck in every single one of the multiple universes the writers use as an excuse for their storytelling ineptitude.

I couldn't wait for this game to shut the fuck up, I stopped caring entirely. And true, just like XIII before it, it looks dazzling, the visuals are so good that it feels like playing a CGI film, but it's hard to appreciate when it stands for absolutely nothing, and that little shit-gremlin of a moglin keeps yelling KUPO KUPO KUPOOOO in every scene so we can have some kawaii shit to go with the countless layers of obfuscation that drive this plot into the ground. If I had a gun I'd shoot that fucking hell-cherub so fast.

The gameplay isn't good either. I don't begrudge Final Fantasy XIII for its linearity at all; this game on the other hand is filled with false choices that are just time-wasting mechanics posing as open-endedness. For example, early on you're presented with the 'choice' to either fight a boss head-on or walk three paces along an alternative path to get a device that weakens him. My manly nature dictates that I fight him head-on without resorting to trickery, but he will one-hit kill your party, so you're forced to take the second option anyway. Then why is it a choice at all? That's right: to pretend this game isn't every bit as linear as its predecessor, when it is, when it's a fucking SHAM. To waste your fucking time. The game also really likes to recycle its bosses; to interrupt boss fights with cinematic moments and QTEs and cutscenes; to basically do all that video games of this time were derided for in such an especially egregious fashion that even I found them annoying.

The developers go all in on deceiving players into thinking they have any input into the story, by having four dialogue options pop up with a hilariously fancy 'Live Trigger!' splash in every conversation. Fuck them too. I don't get at all what's the appeal of these 'choices' that don't change one iota of the game, and the way they're presented like such a huge feature is amusing to see in the same way watching a Lilliputian attempt to score a three-point field goal would be amusing. Having only two party members and a rotating cast of captive Pokemon doesn't do it for me either. The battle system feels lesser than its predecessor with inconsequential features like Wounds (lowering your maximum HP) put in only for the sake of having more new features.

The music is nice, but I don't feel it melds into the game well pretty often - it's like they composed a lot of good tracks in a vacuum and then overlaid them into the game without too much consideration for context. In a game where the voice actors can't even get the inflections of their lines right, that would be too much to ask.

This game is a disservice and a blight on its predecessor, which I absolutely loved. It should have been left to rot on whatever page of Fanfiction.net it was uploaded to.

In short, I am mildly upset with this game.

Final Fantasy XV is a beautiful game. That's a corny way to start off a review, but saying, "a Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers" is a corny way to start a game, so I must respond in kind. I know it had a long and troubled production, and that it came out unfinished, and it rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. I remember reading forum discussions in 2013 where players would ask, "Do companies think it's right to make us wait ten years for a game?"

Well, if they put stuff out on par with this game, they absolutely fucking can. I'll get on with my life in the meanwhile. I'm a bit more sympathetic to those who played it on release. But I can't really know or care much about how the game was seven years ago, so much as what it was like when I was playing it seven days ago.

It tells the tale of four friends who set out on a journey to obtain a ring and end up fighting a threat that could plunge the world in darkness forevermore (J. R. R. Tolkien should sue). Prince Noctis and his childhood friends-turned-bodyguards are planning to have the best road trip ever before he gets married and saves the world and all that. These lads are a Japanese schoolgirl's wet dream - carelessly handsome, unabashedly silly, and more concerned with the trendiness of their clothes than the gravitas of their destiny.

This is the highlight of Final Fantasy XV - the main cast is a bunch of sheltered dandies who have to come to terms with the greatness that has been thrust upon them. Their personal growth, their earnest moments of brotherhood, and their banter-laden interactions are the heart of the narrative. The hero isn't a po-faced paladin of justice - he's one of the guys. Watching him mature into a true king is quite the journey.

Final Fantasy XV also has one of the most beautifully rendered open worlds I've seen. It caused me to appreciate nature more, because real life looks a lot like Final Fantasy XV. And trust me, you spend about as much time driving in this game as you would in real life. The car, the Regalia, is the fifth main character. If there's one thing I could wish for, it would be that your control over the car wasn't so limited for most of the game. But even with its mostly autopilot navigation, sitting back and admiring the scenery while listening to music from past FF titles was quite the experience.

This open-world design continues for half the game, of which most of your time will be spent doing sidequests. I'm told I generally rush RPGs, but I definitely didn't rush Final Fantasy XV, because there's so much to do - and so much fun to be had doing it. It's enough to put the main story on the backburner, it is, what with all the games-within-a-game it offers. Fishing? Monster hunting? Pinball on steroids? This game has it. And with the game's reward mechanics, plus the promise of interesting conversations with the supporting cast, nearly every sidequest feels worth doing. Even if it's a blatant advertisement for Cup Noodles. Look, they had to get the budget to make this game look so beautiful somewhere, okay?

In an inversion of Final Fantasy XIII, the first half of XV is open-world and laden with sidequests, while the second half is linear. I know 'linearity' is a dirty word to a lot of gamers, but I can't complain about it in either of these games. Once the plot in Final Fantasy XV starts getting funneled towards its conclusion, it also becomes much more focused and much more heartrending. I was almost in tears in this game's campaign as many times as I've been with all the previous games I've played put together. And I commend the game's writing and directing team for being unafraid to commit to the tragedy, something quite a few Final Fantasy stories pull back from at the last moment. For its story alone, Final Fantasy XV is a triumph.

This game also marks a true departure from the Active Time Battle system of past Final Fantasies, something the series has been trying to break away from for over a decade. Finally, the series commits to real-time hack-and-slash combat. There's a wait mode, but it seems to simply be an accessibility option for handicapped players. The combat is a lot of fun. Once you get the hang of the dodge/parry mechanics, and can switch between defense and aggression on the fly, there's a lot of fun to be had, even if the camera sometimes obstructs your view when fighting large enemies.

While I encountered no major bugs during my playthrough, there is no hiding the fact that this is very much a game that spent ten years in development. Final Fantasy XV is hardly consistent, but then again, the Final Fantasy series as a whole isn't consistent. My favourite analogy to make is that if Dragon Quest is AC/DC, Final Fantasy is Guns N' Roses. It's large, unwieldy and all over the place, but if it's a series of very low lows (fuck FF XIII-2), it also has very high highs. Final Fantasy XV is a very high high. If Metal Gear Solid V hadn't come out, on release XV would have been the greatest unfinished game ever made. But it is finished now, with DLC episodes to fill in the blanks and show how adaptable the game engine is to different gameplay styles, and it goes on sale for a fiver. There is no better time to play this game than now.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy XV is a fantastic experience with a lot to do and even more to appreciate. Its emphasis on brotherhood reminded me of my own college clique. I oughta call those guys sometime.