Final Fantasy may not have been the first prominent Japanese role-playing game ever released — that honor goes to Dragon Quest (or Dragon Warrior in the States) — but it was arguably the game that propelled the genre into the international gaming spotlight. Virtually every J-RPG released within the last 30 years is in some way indebted to the first few Final Fantasy titles.
The series continued to be an industry bellwether well into the ‘90s, even setting precedents for games that fell outside the RPG idiom. 1994’s Final Fantasy VI (which was confusingly released stateside as Final Fantasy III — you can read about the series’ confusing chronology elsewhere) pushed the Super Nintendo’s limited hardware capabilities to their limits: it overhauled and refined its predecessors’ relatively simplistic battle systems — a seemingly boundless over world map allowed for hours of exploration — and its most memorable, cinematic scenes, such as the infamous “opera” segment, are among the first examples of a video game advocating for its artistic legitimacy. This was not your parents’ Pong cabinet.
Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the Japanese role-playing experience, and there’s not a lot to say (or write) about it that hasn’t already been thoroughly chronicled. Its marriage of anime tropes and cyber-punk grit made it the first extraordinarily successful J-RPG with the non-Japanese gaming mainstream.
Since then, the series’ canon entries have been slightly hit-or-miss. Most “gaming pundits” agree that the last truly great addition to the franchise was 2001’s Final Fantasy X, a jam-packed composite of everything that made the series so memorable up that point. Final Fantasies XI and XIV were lackluster forays into the realm of massively multiplayer online gaming that hardly did justice to their suffixed roman numerals. XII — while a return to form in some ways, suffered from being onerously narrative-driven and featured a battle system that was almost too complex, and its successor — Final Fantasy XIII, the last bona fide installment in the series — went in the opposite direction, belittling experienced players by placing them in prohibitively linear (albeit gorgeous) worlds.
In short: there’s a lot banking on Final Fantasy XV. It’s no mystery that Americans’ deteriorating patience for J-RPGs has coincided with the Final Fantasy games’ diminishing quality. But thankfully (for gamers and for developer Square-Enix) there’s a lot to suggest that XV will be a massive hit. Here are five ways in which Final Fantasy XV looks to get the series back on track.
It Feels Like a Final Fantasy Game
The most recent entries in the Final Fantasy series have lacked an ineffable atmospheric component that made the worlds of VI, VII and X so compelling. Eos, the world in which Final Fantasy XV occurs, evokes VII’s Gaia: it’s a slightly futuristic, vaguely dystopian take on our own present-day earth, but it’s filled with enough of the series’ signature lore (e.g. crystals, summons, Chocobos) to still feel distinctly like a Final Fantasy game.
Its Battle System Is Forward Thinking
Final Fantasy XV will do away with the turn-based battle system that the series has seldom deviated from in its three-decade long history, which finally feels like a step in the right direction — and it’s definitely a huge improvement over the barely interactive battle system of XIII. Like the most recent canon entries in the series, enemies appear on the overhead map (as opposed to the classic “random battles” of early Final Fantasy games), but this time, battles aren’t separate gameplay segments: XV’s battle system, which is being termed the “Active Cross Battle” system, has more in common with the lightning-fast, action-oriented battles from series spinoff, Kingdom Hearts.
The Main Characters Aren’t Merely Lifeless, Goofy-Haired Automatons
Early RPGs deliberately made their protagonists as nondescript as possible, so the player could project their identity onto the character they were controlling. MMOs and modern single-player RPGs like Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls games have taken this concept and evolved it drastically, giving the player a basic model at the start of the game that they can mold into a reflection of their corporeal selves. J-RPGs — and the Final Fantasy games, by extension — have taken a different route over the years, becoming more linear and story-focused than their western counterparts. But it’s hard to stay invested in a story anchored by wholly unmemorable characters, and protagonists from the past several Final Fantasy games had pretty much the same amount of personality as their 8-bit forebears, even if they looked way cooler (see: big hair).
XV’s lead Noctis already seems more interesting, based on what little we know about him: he’s the heir apparent to the Kingdom of Lucis, the last country in Eos whose infrastructure and society still relies on old-fashioned magic. Noctis is sympathetically reserved, but he doesn’t seem disinterested or “mute” like the series’ weaker leads. Plus, he doesn’t have big hair.
It’s The Same Old Story, But Told in a Much Bigger Way
Magical crystals have long played an important role in the Final Fantasy mythology, but they seem more important than ever in Final Fantasy XV. Every kingdom in the game’s world once possessed a crystal, but years of warring resulted in only Lucis’ crystal remaining. This creates a schism between the technophobic Lucis and its rivaling countries, who have overcompensated for their lack of magical power with advanced, manmade weaponry. The game begins with Niflheim — the country particularly desirous of Lucis’ crystal — launching an invasion on the magical kingdom.
At Least Half of the Game is Open-World
The series’ signature overhead maps notwithstanding, gamers have long been tempted by the premise of a sandbox Final Fantasy game (that wasn’t an MMO). With XV, the series will finally deliver, at least partially: according to the game’s director Hajime Tabata, the first half of the game will take place in an open-world environment, but will become more linear during its latter half for reasons related to the story.
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