The Weekend Hangover: Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition

The Weekend Hangover is our Monday rumination of the games or game we played over the weekend. Sometimes there is alcohol involved in the hangover we’re nursing, but most other times there’s just too much gaming.

A friend gifted me Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition for my birthday and like any good achievement whore, I’ve been burning through as much of it as possible as to ensure my average achievement percentage on Steam doesn’t go down. Famously known as “that game where you go on a road trip with an anime boy band,” Final Fantasy XV is probably one of the messier games I’ve played this year.

Not only was Final Fantasy XV’s third act rewritten and redesigned, but much of the game’s story is spread across so much peripheral content like anime episodes, post-launch DLC and a CG film. It’s a brutal reminder that between the stillborn “Deus Ex Universe” and the confusing Fabula Nova Crystallis, Square Enix longs to become the Marvel Cinematic Universe of games.

The best thing about Final Fantasy XV isn’t its plot, and despite being a game that’s outright terrible at being Final Fantasy – chocobos, summons, cactuar and tonberries be damned – it’s also the most interesting Final Fantasy to date, eschewing everything that had become rote in every Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy VII.

So while you do save the planet and take part in a war, the true, pure heart of the game is its initial focus on four male “totally not gay, it’s bromance, okay” friends. It’s about the food, fights and the photos, oh god, the photos that they have to remember everything by. And once everything kicked into high gear, my easy-going road trip came to an end.

Right now, as I stand before Leviathan, I think well, this plot seems exciting enough and there’re mysteries yet to uncover, but one thing remains on my mind: Where did we park?

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