Project: Final Fantasy XV playthrough pt. 1.

Playthrough - Part 1.

First thing first. Our Final Fantasy XV journey is experienced on our PlayStation 4 Pro. We are playing on easy since this is our first playthrough (and LarkiChan is playing ... ).

Because we are two noobs, we accept the tutorial and are ordered to train with Gladiolus, a big manly man with very bad tribal tattoos. Here we learn about fighting, warp-techniques, elemancy, gear-equipment, and teamwork.

We are introduced to our main protagonist Noctis Lucis Caelum, a prince from Crown City in Insomnia who is to be married to Lady Lunafreya of Accordo. He and his entourage of three other young men from the Crownesguard - Gladiolus Amicitia, Ignis Scientria and Prompto Argentum - are to drive to the capital of Accordo, Altissia, to see Noctis and his bride-to-be get married. Orders from the king.

Our first stop is in Hammerhead - a "full service station". Our stop is not intended but the consequence of a bad motor in the Regalia (our super awesome car). Here we meet Cindy, a quite busty mechanic, who offers to fix our car. Since we use our last credit on repairing (aren't we royals and loaded?) Cindy offers us some slaying-work.

Busty, right?

While killing a bunch of Reapertails (mutant dessert scorpions), we are introduced to a very, very pretty scenery. Final Fantasy XV is a very well-made game (well done Square Enix!) But it's not just the graphics that are really good, but also the music. Final Fantasy XV is epic.

On our killing-spree, Cindy asks us to locate a man named Dave since he has gone missing. We locate him in an old shack surrounded by a bunch of Sabertusks (large demon-dogs). Dave tells us to go kill some mutant beast, which we accept - considering our economy.

Before we head out to kill the vile beast, our dear group of fighters advises us to set up a camp before it gets too dark - Daemons (as they call it) appear in the night. And since we're cowards, that's what we do.

At sunrise, we head out to slay the beast. It is a giant rhino called Blood Horne. Easy pray!

And what a surprise - our car is fixed! Our next stop is the Golden Quay, a beautiful sandy beach with a restaurant out on the lake in a pavilion. Here we meet Dino, an annoying reporter-gone-jeweler-at-night who blackmails us - what a jerk. He wants us to go fetch him some gemstones in exchange for us to be allowed incognito and get a passage on the boat we need to catch.

And, of course, mining, here we come! But wait, he didn't tell us that the gemstone was protected by some giant-ass bird.

Luckily for us, that bird just flew away.

At our return, Dino (that prick) tells us to spend the night at the Quay, and then head out on the boat first thing in the morning.

As we sleep, we see a cinematic cutscene of the Crown City getting attacked. Our good King Regis is murdered by some tech-dude. F*** 'em.

Waking up to this news, Noctis and Co. decide to return to Crown City to see if the news is true. And my god is it true!

Fighting our way past imperial troops, we reach a vantage point. There, we find out that everyone thinks that our main protagonist is dead as well. Luckeeeey.

At perfect timing, Cor - the Crownesguard Marshall - calls Noctis and tells us to meet him at Hammerhead.

And that dear reader, is the end of chapter 1.

since this is a playthrough and a review of the game, we will give our thoughts on the game so far.

After playing this first part of the playthrough we noticed that a lot of people felt that the game was lacking on a lot of things and was really disappointed with it. We, however, didn't really get into all the hype when the game first launched - and as you know, we haven't really tried any of the other FF-games. Considering we don't really have any other FF-games to compare it to, we think that we can review it with an open and fresh mind.

The game is very well made! The graphics are beautiful and the soundtrack is equally so.

the music is AAA material. It is beautiful and fits perfectly to the settings of the world.

The game runs smoothly on the PS4-system. Even though we pushed up the resolution of the game as we were playing on a 4k screen, we didn't notice any framerate problems at all.

But as we expected, the best part of the game was its story. The Final Fantasy-franchise is known for its story about good vs. evil. But even though we loved the story, we wouldn't say it was on part with, as an example, The Witcher 3 or The last of us. But! those are whole other kind of games in a whole other kind of world. So considering the world and the type of game FFXV is, we think that it is indeed very good!

As of now the game is really exciting. A lot of things are happening, and we are introduced to a bunch of cool characters that wouldn't really fit well into any other kind of games. Even the brute Gladiolus, whom we would hate in other games is kind of cool in the world of Final Fantasy.


For a first timer though, we think that we are lacking some explanation about the Final Fantasy universe. We didn't really get an introduction to the lore about the war between Niflheim and Lucis, nor did we receive any information about the crystals of light. Tbh, we did find some pieces of information in the game confusing. The only reason we know some of this stuff is because of FFXIV and Google. But, since we only played through the first chapter of the game, maybe we shouldn't be so harsh on the game, and carry on - hoping to accumulate more data on the world of Final Fantasy.

Points: 8/10

Why not 10/10 then? well, for one, as we mentioned, the information given in the game is kinda non-existing - at least in the start of the game - and it is therefore pretty hard for newbies to understand the lore of the universe.

Another problem was that Noctis' followers were pretty much constantly in the way of the camera - pretty annoying while taking screenshots. And whenever we find ourselves fighting in the bushes, those bushes won't be transparent. These are minor issues but are actually pretty annoying in the long run. Tbh we didn't really see if there was any way of changing the camera-options - so that is our #1 priority on our next playthrough!

Watch out for chapter 2 (hopefully coming tomorrow!).

Written by SamFanKun and LarkiChan