The web’s littered with reviews of Final Fantasy XV already, Square’s beleaguered fifteenth entry in its flagship franchise. I’ll try and share information and judgements you hopefully haven’t read a dozen times already. I’m coming from the perspective of a longtime fan of Final Fantasy, as a franchise. I’ve played almost all the mainline games, having started with the entirely iconic and brilliant VI back in 1994, and culminating with XIII, which did its best to break me with its amateur, fragmented storytelling and disappointing design decisions.

My playstyle with FF XV was to tackle the main storyline first, with an odd bit of optional content here or there, and see if the game grabbed me enough to keep going after that. As it turned out, this may not be the optimal way to enjoy this title, which just annoyed me a bit further. This game is definitely more of a road trip. You’ll probably walk away from it with better memories if you don’t blitz through the main campaign as I did, taking the time instead to essentially hang out with your boy band and wander.

If you’d rather skip my rambling and get to my list of pros and cons, hit Page Down like…twice or something.

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