Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition HD

Genre: Action-RPG / JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Final Fantasy XV is a game whose long trip to the Nintendo Switch is pretty convoluted, so buckle in.

After Final Fantasy XII was mostly well-received, Square Enix decided to get really ambitious with the series moving forward into the next generation of consoles (that would be PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, for those keeping track). Prior Final Fantasy games were mostly self-contained with completely separate worlds… well, not including direct sequels Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy IV: The After-Years, and countless Final Fantasy VII spin-off titles, as well as Final Fantasy XII itself which, while a self-contained story, did take place in the world of Ivalice from Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story… and also got its own direct sequel, Revenant Wings… Okay, so there were a lot of exceptions to the “all of these games are self-contained” rule, sure, but even so, Final Fantasy XIII looked to step it up a notch, with multiple games planned to be set in the same world.

Announced as Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy, this sub-set of Final Fantasy games would include Final Fantasy XIII and its two sequels, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns, Final Fantasy Type-O (renamed from Final Fantasy Agito XIII), Final Fantasy Agito (not to be confused with Final Fantasy Type-O/Agito XIII, which this game was designed to be a companion to), Final Fantasy Awakening, and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. If you had a hard time keeping track of all of that, welcome to the club.

In the time it took all of that to be produced, Square Enix went ahead with the production of Final Fantasy XIV, an MMO. They also opted to change the name of Final Fantasy Versus XIII to Final Fantasy XV (which would now be releasing on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox One) and de-emphasize the connections to the other games (though XV still shares those games’ lore). To be clear, every single one of those Final Fantasy games released after Final Fantasy XII and before Final Fantasy XV have not been ported to the Switch. In fact, technically neither has Final Fantasy XV. Instead, Switch owners get its chibi-ified mobile port, Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition, with an “HD” tacked on to the end to remind people that they’re playing the game on a TV screen instead of a mobile phone.

tl;dr regarding this game’s place in the series – After Final Fantasy XII, a bunch of other Final Fantasy games came out, none of which made it to the Switch. One of these games, Final Fantasy XV, had a version made for Smartphones, and that version got ported to the Switch. That’s what this game is. The game has thematic connections, as well as shared lore, with a lot of those other games, but you don’t need to be familiar with them to play this game or understand what’s going on in this game’s story.

You know the funny thing? This game is actually one of the most newbie-friendly Final Fantasy games ever made, but because of its convoluted history it seems like one of the most daunting.

Okay, so, with that out of the way… ahem… Final Fantasy Pocket Edition HD is an Action-RPG that takes the story, setting, characters, and core gameplay ideas of Final Fantasy XV and shrinks them down to fit on handheld devices. The result is a game that loses its predecessor’s open-world elements, has a much shorter, linear, streamlined, “abridged” campaign, and most notably, it vastly simplifies the game’s graphics into a chibi art style. If you’re wanting to experience the story of Final Fantasy XV without having to contend with dozens of hours of gameplay or distracting visuals, you may find this version to be preferable… though that’s a big “if”.

Let’s get the graphics out of the way, because it’s undoubtedly the one thing that’s most likely to frustrate or disappoint fans of the series. While Final Fantasy games have long been known for their cutting-edge graphics, Final Fantasy XV goes in completely the opposite direction. While the environments are okay, they’re nothing special. And the characters… well, like I’ve already said, they’re all chibi-styled. While this art style is not my favorite, I wouldn’t be quite so put off by it if it wasn’t for the fact that even with the simplified graphics, these characters still have expressionless faces that don’t move to talk or emote, making it look really bizarre when they pantomine as they talk. Oh, also, even with the simplified art style, there are still some really ugly low-resolution textures here and there. Even when we accept that the game needs to sacrifice a lot to fit onto a less-powerful game platform, this still feels really underwhelming.

At the very least, the sound from the original game is largely intact, and probably one of the biggest saving graces of this release – the soundtrack is fantastic, although thematically odd, to go along with its eclectic setting that combines the medieval, the futuristic, and… rural backwater America? Yeah, early on you visit a car repair shop with a harmonica tune playing in the background, just to give you an idea. The voice acting here is also superb, really helping to ensure this game has a personality that the graphics fail to deliver. As much as the visuals detract from the experience here, the sound still does a fantastic job conveying the game’s decent story about a crown prince and his entourage of friends going on a road trip to get married and seal a peace treaty, or at least so they think before the entire thing goes off the rails.

As for the gameplay, what’s here is decent, with the game working in the protagonist’s teleport ability to make for some unique mobility and stealth kills on the battlefield. However, this action can still get pretty repetitive, that the linear nature of the game detracts from the RPG elements – you won’t really be doing much exploring in this game. And while the action here isn’t bad, it’s not really strong enough to hold up the rest of the game when so much of its core identity as an RPG has been ripped out of it. It’s also not without its frustrations – controls in combat can feel a bit sluggish, and players have no control over the camera, which is often placed in a way that makes it difficult to see all of the action.

The other problem here is the price – with this being a much lesser version of a game originally released in 2016, the $30 price tag seems pretty ridiculous, especially with the full PSOne-era Final Fantasy games sell for $20 and you can get the Final Fantasy X/X-2 collection for $20 more and get multiple full-release games. And while those prices definitely seem inflated for how old those games are, all of them still feel like a better deal than this does, by a long shot.

In the end, if you’re a Switch owner wanting to experience the story of every Final Fantasy game available to you and you don’t have another gaming platform, Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition HD is still a decent experience with a good story to tell… but it’s heavily overpriced for a game that’s lacking the visual splendor of its source material, as well as a huge amount of the content.

tl;dr – Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition is an Action-RPG that is a shrunk-down chibi-ified reworking of the original Final Fantasy XV. This version loses much of the exploration and depth of that game, and scales down the graphics so much that even those who saw the word “chibi” and went “oh no” will be disappointed. However, the story, music, and voice acting are all still very good, and those who don’t have access to the original game may still find this version worthwhile.

Grade: C+

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