Find the perfect Final Fantasy Xv stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Select from premium Final Fantasy Xv of the highest quality. Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition tested using the High Resolution Pack turned on and off.Game was set to the High Graphics Preset at 1080p at 100% resolution.
Few games have been through ten years of development hell, and come out the other side in good shape. Final Fantasy XV has been through numerous platforms, names, and directors in the last decade, but it’s finally made its way to store shelves this week.
Final Fantasy XV began its life as Final Fantasy Versus XIII — a PS3 game in the same setting as Final Fantasy XIII. The dev team spun its wheels for years under the Versus XIII banner, but the game was eventually internally rebooted as the 15th numbered installment in the series. After a bit more turmoil, and some lackluster demos, we get to see for ourselves if all of this time and effort was worth it in the end.
Over at our sister site IGN, the game received a “Great” rating of 8.2/10. The reviewer spoke highly of the characters and environment, but the real-time combat and limited magic system were a bit disappointing. Similarly, the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XV currently holds an 84/100 on Metacritic based on 35 reviews. Sadly, the Xbox One version hasn’t been widely reviewed yet, so there’s not a great apples-to-apples comparison available.
Square-Enix put out numerous demos for this long-awaited release, and each one ran into some meaningful technical snags. The frame rate was often rough, the resolution was sub-par, and the anti-aliasing was kind of a mess. Things are looking much better for the finished product, but every version of the game has some unfortunate compromises.
Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry examined the performance on the PS4, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One, and found that each one suffers from a slightly different issue. Playing on the baseline PS4 gets you a mostly stable 30fps, but the game has some egregious frame-pacing problems. Even though we’re seeing 30 new frames every second, they’re being delivered inconsistently, so the image appears to stutter. On the PS4 Pro, you’ll have two different rendering modes to pick from: High and Lite. The High mode runs at a 1800p with checkerboarding, better textures, and improved effects, but it sees a similar level of stutter as the base PS4 version.Drop down to Lite mode on the PS4 Pro, and things are slightly better. You’re limited to 1080p30, but the frame-pacing problem mostly goes away. You’ll still see it pop up during some cutscenes here and there, but it’s probably your best experience for the time being.
Running on the Xbox One, Final Fantasy XV’s pacing problem disappears completely. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of a lower resolution and some torn frames. There’s a dynamic resolution in place, and it tops out at just 900p on Microsoft’s platform. And when the engine can’t keep up, you’ll see screen tearing show up at the top. It’s imperfect, but it’s still smoother than the base PS4 experience. None of these technical issues make the game unplayable, but it’s frustrating that there’s no singular “best” version of the game — not even a PC release to throw horsepower at. For now, our recommendation is to sit back, and wait to see if Square-Enix ships a patch in the next month or two.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy XV brings fresh fodder for Fantasy Series players on the PC, on top of the recently released remastered titles, which were of mixed quality. This PC port is decent (not perfect) and shows that Square Enix did take their porting work seriously. Gameplay is good, with a vast open world to explore even though the new combat system seems to focus more on fast-paced action combat than refined tactics. The story is alright and ironically picks up only in the more linear parts towards the end of the game. Witcher 3 is the reference for how awesome sidequests should be done—Final Fantasy XV is not even close. I enjoyed progressing through the main story much more than doing side quests. Overall, the game is definitely worth picking up if you are a Final Fantasy fan and haven't played FFXV on a console yet.Graphics quality is top notch, definitely among the top 10 for what we've seen in PC gaming. Vehicles are incredibly beautiful, as are the models and textures of the main characters and NPCs. Once you progress through the game, you will encounter some low-poly models and low-res textures in the world, but these are not a huge deal. The optional 4K texture pack is a welcome addition even though it weighs in at 70 GB, most of which is due to 4K replacements for cutscenes. 'Only' 10.4 GB of those 70 GB are actual high-res textures. The big issue with the texture pack is that the draw distance for these improved textures is really low, so as you walk up to an object or a wall, its texture will become blurry before the high-res version pops in at the last moment, which can be more distracting than just having normal-res textures, especially during cutscenes. This is something Square Enix should address as soon as possible. After playing through most of the game, I have to say that the keyboard and mouse controls are alright, but they will take some time to get used to, just like the new combat system, which feels overwhelmingly complicated at first. Keyboard remapping options are available, but why the menu's navigation doesn't support a mouse puzzles me.
In terms of settings, Square Enix has covered most bases. The only missing options are field of view adjustment, borderless windowed mode, and an option to completely disable the FPS limiter (which can be done by manually editing the config file). Graphics card requirements at the highest settings are demanding, but not overly so. A GTX 1060 will almost get you 60 FPS at 1080p, but you had better have a GTX 1070 Ti for 1440p. Achieving 60 FPS at 4K will be difficult with the highest settings since the GTX 1080 Ti only gets 44 FPS here. The game features a bunch of NVIDIA Gameworks technologies, so it's not surprising to see NVIDIA cards do better relative to their AMD counterparts, but the differences are similar to what we've seen in other titles.
VRAM usage of the game looks massive at first with 6–8 GB at the highest settings, but our performance numbers show that even cards with smaller memory amounts will be fine. The only scenario where VRAM size has a significant effect on performance is 4K with the high-res texture pack installed, on cards that have 3–4 GB VRAM. It seems the game engine will load as many textures and models into VRAM as possible, even if those will not be used for rendering any time soon. This behavior is similar to the Call of Duty series, for example.
