COUNTDOWN TO NIRVANA: An opinion on Kingsglaive.

Okay, so earlier this month, I had the opportunity to see Kingsglaive (the Final Fantasy XV companion movie for those not following peripheral media for the game) in theaters. While I intend to write a fully fledged review for the game in the (semi) near future, I just wanted to get some less formalized opinions out in the air without being bound to whatever review rules I set for myself.

So, first thing's first, I thought Kingsglaive was "Kinda good" at best, and very definitively "Okay" in general.

The movie is stunningly beautiful, easily some of the most top quality graphics I've ever seen in any video game related media, and if nothing else, it does a solid job of presenting some backdrop for events that will for sure be occurring in-game. But as a standalone tale, it's pretty lackluster.

The acting ranged pretty heavily from extremely strong (good ole' Sean Bean) to nigh unbearable (Whoever the hell played Libertus), and the immense range in acting quality in addition to (in my opinion) some strange casting choices made some of the movie hard to sit through. In addition, the story told in the movie would have been better told in multiple parts as a mini-series or something to that effect, as while the movie does a good job making me want to see how what happens will affect Noctis and his journey, it does rather poorly at making me care for the people the events of the movie are actually happening to.

The pacing and characterization decisions make it so there isn't really enough time to build a relationship with any of the main characters that aren't directly tied to Noctis, and the plight of the characters lacks any emotional punch due to much of their pre-existing strife occurring off-screen, or simply being relayed verbally.

The movie also has a serious uncanny valley problem, with textures and certain animations being mind-bogglingly well done, but general human movement and facial animations striking as distinctly off.

On the more positive side of things, the action in the movie is animated fantastically, and when the movie decides it's time to pull out all the stops in terms of spectacle, there is no shortage of stops to be pulled. When things take off, they do not come back down, and makes for a thrillingly good time.

All in all, I enjoyed Kingsglaive, but it for sure wasn't some amazing experience, feeling more like a nearly 2 hour long expository lore cutscene for the game proper. But Kingsglaive and Brotherhood in tandem give me high hopes for the handling of game itself, as both products have invested me rather strongly in how things will play out for Noctis and his closest friends.


On a separate note, It's Noctis' birthday, according to Square. Woo!

Yep.