Review of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016) by Rage K — 02 Sep 2016

Let's first get the obvious positive out of the way. This movie's visuals are second to none. Anyone thats played Final Fantasy should be familiar with the cut scenes in game that they're known for and they're always so vividly detailed and impressive.

Just like Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, Kingsglaive is as well.

Now, I've read a lot of negative critic reviews and my thought is that none of them are familiar with what Final Fantasy is actually about. I can see why a lot of them said what they did. You do need some common knowledge of the series to grasp little things about it and that's really the only aspect that matters in some fashion. However, if you are a fan this movie will go down as a favorite. Square Enix has put so much time, over a decade in fact, into this specific chapter in the Final Fantasy franchise. This movie is an important set up to the game which will, in some span of time, take place after this and revolve around Noctis.

The fight scenes are everything you'd expect from Final Fantasy. It's over the top, of course, but it's not so insane that it can't be followed. The voice acting was actually pretty well done. Advent children was an English dub so this was nice to see as an English script.

Some comments I've seen have said the characters weren't built up well but to me the ones that did matter I feel were. Nyx was a character akin to Zack in 7 (for fans thats know) and was pretty fun to watch. Aaron Paul did a good job with this kind of character.

Overall, the movie is fantastic where it matters. It's not perfect but it's above average for animated movies. Definitely a nice change of pace from the barrage of Disney movies we get every year.