Final Fantasy XV: Chapter 7 to 9
The bromance gets real
Written by A.J. Maciejewski for Play Journals on
Noctis and his close-knit gang of bros have been on a wild ride so far. Although I took a few-week break, I'm back to provide a summary of the next few chapters of Final Fantasy XV as well as some opinions. Enough with the intro, bro; let's get to it!
Chapter 7: Party of Three
When we left off, Noctis needed to fix a ship. Exciting, right? So, we journeyed in search of mythril sans Gladio for some unexplained reason. Ardyn then pointed us in the right direction and Aranea joined us as we searched some ruins for the much sought-after mythril. We found it after an easy boss fight then Aranea took off after giving encouragement to Noctis. Well, that was a short chapter.
Chapter 8: Seaworthy
Cindy knows someone who can help refine the mythril to a useful form. However, her plant was taken over by monsters so we had to clear them out first. Gladio showed up to give us a hand but now he has a scar on his face. What has he been up to? Chocobo wrestling? Anyway, Cid helped us repair the ship then we finally headed to Altissia. And I thought the previous chapter was short...
Chapter 9: Callings
Seeking the power of the Hydraean and the love of Luna, Noctis soon found himself in Altissia. Shortly after arriving, Noctis met with Camelia (the leader of Altissia) and formed a diplomatic alliance with her. The bros then decided to check out the wedding dress that Luna was going to marry Noctis in. I don't know about you, but there's nothing I love more than looking at dresses with my buddies...
Anyway, the citizens love Luna as she's an Oracle who has the power to heal and prevent the darkness from coming so watching her speech to the masses was actually pretty neat. She then started to communicate with Leviathan (the Hydraean) to request her power to be granted to Noctis although she refused to do so. Ardyn and his imperial army then showed up to try and defeat Leviathan yet they got decimated in the process. Meanwhile, Ardyn stabbed Luna but before dying, she endowed Noctis with the power to fight Leviathan himself. He defeated her and became wounded yet Luna healed him before passing away. It was a sad moment for sure. However, I didn't feel that much of a connection to her as she's been mostly a background character up to this point. It definitely wasn't as tragic as what happened to Aerith in Final Fantasy VII. Ignis going blind while evacuating the city was pretty sad, too.
How do I turn off autopilot?
In my first play journal, I complained about being thrust into the story without the game making me care about the characters and in my second one, I expressed my disappointment in the time spent waiting around for things to happen. Unfortunately, neither of these two issues has been remedied yet. Additionally, I'm finding the combat and gameplay in general to get extremely tedious and monotonous. Basically, I'm tired of Final Fantasy XV playing itself. Most battles can be won by just holding the circle button then tapping other buttons when prompted. This makes combat feel more like a series of quick-time events than a comprehensive battle system. Even the epic battle with Leviathan wasn't much more than an extensive quick-time event. At this point, Final Fantasy XV is starting to be more like a movie than a video game and that isn't a good thing. I'd honestly rather play the original NES game.
There you have it; another three chapters done. Although I'm not having a good time playing through Final Fantasy XV so far, I'm going to stick it out to the very end so stay tuned for more coverage and my full review once I'm all done. As always, leave a comment and let me know what you think of Final Fantasy XV. Maybe I'm just being dumb and you can convince me that it's actually a good game.
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