Been playing Final Fantasy XV. As a longtime franchise loyalist who noped out of the brand after 12, it’s a welcome reintroduction. In ways it feels like a tribute to the other urban fantasy entries (7, 8, the X and 13 series) in the way that IX was a tribute to the high fantasy ones.

Cute how you can always trace design trends and themes through Square games as some experimental concept from 7 years ago gets developed or revived for a new game.

The “bros on a road trip” thing works better thematically and as a mechanic than I expected; I suspect the thing to do would be contrast it with X-2′s all-girl Spice World vibe but I’m not playing X-2 again.

One thing though, the world visuals. They still have the Square-brand epic vistas and lighting and palettes (seriously, those guys do “the carefree happiness of green fields under a blue spring sky” like no one’s business) but everyone does epic open worlds now and it really shows that they’re forcing legacy technology. Things like terrain and hair look like a “HD update” of a last-gen engine (and probably were, compare how GTA5 went out with story and online half-cooked before the console generation it was built for went obsolete), you see them do foliage and it’s like SpeedTree was never invented.