It truly astonishes me on how much of Final Fantasy XV we have been getting recently. This year we see a release on the PC alongside a Royal Edition and now a Pocket Edition originally released for Android and iOS devices before being released for PC and consoles just to squeeze every single penny out of their consumers as well as the fanbase as much as they possibly can. Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition is a so called mobile version of the game which simplifies the game in every single way removing the open world aspect and turns the characters into deformed chibis turning a flawed but somewhat fun J-RPG into a strictly linear mess.
I will let you guys know that for this review I'll try not to go into too much depth about the game's storyline as I already talked about the storyline in depth in my review of Final Fantasy XV as well as the Royal Edition so if you want to learn about what the setting is about then check out my full review on those. All I will say here for the storyline is that Noctis' country is overtaken by the Imperial Empire, his father is dead and he has to gather the power of kings in order to take back his country alongside his buddies Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus. I do have to give Square Enix credit for being able to cram the cutscenes as well as the voice acting into the game onto a iOS game and it's cool to see all of the familiar scenes from the actual play out with the deformed art style. It doesn't take long afterwards till you reach some parts of the storyline that it enters the whole convoluted stage where parts of the events are either not explained well like you don't see what happened to some of the characters and any kind of character development that the game attempts to have gets flushed down the toilet because of the attitude of another character would just doesn't care about the feelings for another. That I'm talking about is Gladiolus where he tries so hard to be this cool muscle bound character who would be there for Noctis as his shield in times of need but then in the later chapters he becomes instantly unlikeable with his attitude turning more nasty towards the party members including Noctis. Without spoiling too much there is a moment in a late chapter where Noctis gets understandably emotional only and a moment of sadness shown turns into anger when Gladiolus insults his feelings and blatantly starts an argument for stupid reasons. It's that moment where Gladiolus becomes hate-able and you just want the big guy to shut his mouth up completely. In my playthrough of this I would heal Gladiolus up whenever he is injured, leave him with weak equipment and would instead allow him to die and never revive him. May I point out that the game doesn't include the cutscenes from the patches in the main game in which the patches helped a little in telling at least what happened even though the rest of it is a mess anyway. So you are left with a rather incomplete storyline that leaves so much out that anyone playing for the first time who wants in on the storyline will be confused a little into what happened.
As for the looks of the game Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition I said changes the character models from their original looks into deformed pint sized chibis. This is what the game claims to say about the character models but however they don't look as such. Yes I get they are deformed but they don't really look very chib like, instead they just really look ugly. Now I understand what chibis mean, it means making the characters rather pint sized and cute looking and while translates into anime very well it doesn't apply to Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition. The majority of the characters in their chibi form look rather terrible and at times very freakish. Cor who looked cool in the original game looks like a Frankenstein hybrid, and Ardyn looks like a badly drawn character out of a kids Cartoon Network show. Another thing about the deformed character models is that they do not have any facial animations whatsoever. Their mouths don't move at all when talking and whenever there are emotional parts of the story where characters feel joy or sadness they still carry that simple blank stare the whole time. It makes the characters look like lifeless dolls more then anything and they act out like the character models from the PSOne/N64 era. Thankfully the majority of the cutscenes can be skipped if you don't want to watch them.
One thing that has been kept intact alongside the voice acting is the soundtrack which is still incredible. The battle tracks are pretty impressive with my favourites being the tracks played when fighting the Empire, encounter music in the Cleige region and lastly the track that plays during the Ifrit fight. Yoko's musical score really shines through for the release of the game and it's still incredible to listen to.
Now Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition's gameplay has been divided into ten chapters, that's right ten, all of which are the actual game's fourteen chapters but however cut down to fit into the limited capabilities of the iOS systems and the camera playing in a overhead perspective this time with controls that were suited to a touchscreen in the iOS release but maintaining the controls of a console game for the release on consoles. The game mostly features a storyline that you follow as well as some sidequests that you can do but however the majority of sidequests have been taken out of the game. You like the hunts or the fishing minigame in the actual game and would have liked to play those in this game as well as explore the whole world well too bad cause they are removed for Pocket Edition. Instead for sidequests all you get are Treasure Hunts that have you looking at the dig point and digging where the X is marked and some fetch quests which involve finding a target item as well as some Cactuars which are just boring to do. You can switch between quests with a press of a button on the Map Screen which makes finding the quests easier thanks to the giant arrow around the character that points to where I'm supposed to go. It seems fine for sidequests but the developers threw the idea out of the window cause there are sidequests which you are not allowed to switch to for some bizarre reason. However like I said these sidequests are boring and just not worth your time at all but the Ignis ones are fine cause you can grab ingredients for his next cooking recipe so that the meal Ignis cooks up gives benefits like increased stats, discounts, or resistances which are temporally but are very necessary for battles. There are also moments where you sneak past a giant beast and all you do is watch the characters move forward and then press a button to stop them from moving so that it doesn't find you and let go of the button to finally complete it simply without any trouble.
Now the main areas of the game have you going from point a to point b of each environment you walk through as you make your way through fields, mountains, empire strongholds and lastly dungeons inwhich the layouts of each are in a very straightforward linear path making them easy to breeze through. Like I said before the game removes the openworld expect of the game and there is little reason to fully explore each area besides breaking boxes which reveal items and pieces of junk that you can sell off so that you can purchase better gear in shops. Each area you explore has wave of monsters that you fight as well as fighting a boss battle at the end and winning fights and completing quests earn you experience points which when you get enough of them level up your characters, instead of camping to tally your current experience points to your characters instead you just complete an area for the experience points you earned to tally up.
The battle system in the game is a stripped down version of the combat system from the original version of the game where four of your party members engage enemies in real time action combat. You control only Noctis in combat while the other characters are controlled by the AI. Noctis can attack with either a Sword, a Greatsword or a Spear instead of being able to equip anything that's up to the player in the original game while the other characters use what weapon they specialize. You can also issue an ally a command with a click of a button when prompted and also when prompted you can press the X button just as the enemy is attacking you to either parry or unleash a counter attack. Later on you'll get access to the Royal Arms which in this version work on a time limit for use and also gain the Armiger which does insane damage to enemies. You also get magic spells but however these are one use only but do a reasonable amount of damage. Then comes the gripes that I have with the combat like I said with the Final Fantasy XV combat system from when I originally reviewed the actual game. The combat for the most part is simplistic now in this game. You can just hold down the attack button and Noctis will keep on attacking and using that with the Analog Stick will have Noctis swing his weapon at whatever enemy is in front of him. There is little to no point of warp striking aside from a few scripted moments where you are forced to use it cause using it in battle will either warping all over the battle arena or at areas you don't want to be. Speaking of scripted summoning a mighty beast, using special attacks and so on, they are heavily scripted and there are also Quick Time Events thrown in that either have you holding down or rapidly tapping the button or using the Analog Stick in different directions. The controls for combat is a little weird in terms of placement instead of circle for attacking it's square on the PS4 version and using the Royal Arms, Magic Spell you have equipped and the Armiger uses a bizarre combination of buttons even though on the console you have enough buttons for the required actions. You can switch between the main weapon types that Noctis has equipped but however you can easily defeat your enemies with just a regular sword and use the Armiger against the tough bosses or if you are surrounded by a large amount of enemies. Yes some chapters like to throw in as many enemies as they possibly can at which can make fights overly chaotic and you can also combine that with the camera which at times make it difficult to see what's happening on the screen. It's also a problem when you use your other character's skill and the camera pans to it and you are not invincible during it. When unlocked you can also the use the Armiger Chain after using the Armiger where the party all unleash a super powerful attack however every single time it's used they all miss the target entirely making it worthless. Some of the enemies can also be very spongy and don't seem to stagger at all specially if you perform a counter attack on them so that they go into a vulnerable state. I noticed that some enemies that can get back up instantly when they just go into vulnerable state despite the sign being on them the whole time when they get up and still take critical damage. Like I said it's much easier to just relay on just on regular attacks with the standard sword and not use the other weapons cause the Greatsword is too slow and the Spears do very weak damage plus the enemies do not seem to be weak to any kind of weapon at all like in the main game which at least gave it some depth but at least some are weak to magic spells.
The Ascension system from the original game is back at least which when you have enough AP unlocks abilities as well as different attacks for each of the four main characters which make them more effective in battle. The AI teammates are capable of fighting against standard enemies although against some of the bosses they are not as useful at times going straight into bosses attacks and often get poisoned. At least the party members no longer nag about friendly fire in this game whenever a character's attack hits them even though they don't take any damage at all from it. This to me is a positive change because it's easy to get annoyed by characters who nag that your attack hit them even though it's their fault for getting in the way. Overall the combat system just isn't as fun just like with the original game as the battles just relay on simply button mashing without that much skill at all occasionally healing with items and using the Armiger or the Royal Arm to finish the fight off. You know how the Tales of Series often get criticism for being very a complete button masher with no strategy. Well guess what Tales of games had strategy cause you had to use the right equipped Artes to deal devastating damage to enemies including bosses that can be immune to certain Artes plus the combat in those games were challenging on the harder difficulties. This is because some enemies acted very differently then others forcing you to watch each enemies' attack pattern closely. They were fun and rewarding for how well they were designed and they were also rewarding for the patience you have with some fights were as Final Fantasy XV's combat system from the beginning is just very underwhelming and still isn't very fun at all.
There are other moments that also weren't all that great like Chapter Thirteen's gameplay which is Chapter Nine in this version which still had you going through empty corridors with nothing more then a ring but at least the ring hardly drains your MP bar and at least the stealth portions are better but they are very easy to breeze through and once you have a sword to fight with it's more better to fight back then go in stealthy.
At least the game performs very well and runs at 60 FPS which is a sign of good console optimization aside from two instances in the cutscenes where the framerate dips down a little but other then that it's a great running port of a game originally meant for the iOS platform.
Once you finish through the game there is literally nothing else to come back to unless you just want to get the rest of the achievements or trophy that you might have missed although you're likely to get all of them on your first playthrough anyway if you are skilled and explore all of the areas very closely. Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition is nothing more then just a simplified form of it's former self and it's release on consoles and the PC is just a ridiculous cash grab from the developers to try and get as much of the fanbase saying “Oh you like FFXV well how about playing it again with chibi characters and with simplistic gameplay.” The gameplay is simplistic and at times chaotic, the storyline of XV is still a underdeveloped mess and the character models just horrible plus the idea of putting it into a mobile game made the game worse from the start. Now I understand that this version was intended for the iOS and Android devices to make the gameplay suited for the touchscreen controls but for a console release it's a shallow mess that makes the actual game superior in many ways specially since this digital release costs £24.99 compared to the original game which you can actually get second hand for way less then that. Also considering that this was originally a mobile game from the start purchasing all of the remaining episodes cost at least £19.99 which makes the iOS release better then the console version. I don't think I'd need to say if wither or not I should recommend or not recommend this game to anyone cause you know Final Fantasy XV has got this many releases in by now and I know people have made up their minds already. All I can say is that I would rather wait for a full chibified Tales of game to be released and play that instead of coming back to that deeply flawed mess anytime of the week and hope that the universe of Final Fantasy XV will eventually come to a sad end so that we can move on and forget about Noctis and his annoying companions.
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Game Score: 4.1/10
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Game Title: Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Square Enix
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 7th September 2018
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The Good Points:
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1. Has all of the voice acting, music and cutscenes from the original game
2. Least the characters do not nag during fights
The Bad Points:
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1. The chibified character models look terrible and have no facial animations at all
2. Simplified combat system that is at times too chaotic
3. The storyline's still full of plot holes that are ridiculous and are not explained at all plus the cutscenes from patches are not included
4. Gladiolus' attitude is very annoying to watch
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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