FINAL FANTASY XV

Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game

I ASKED FOR A WEAPON, NOT AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET.

WHO?

Louise Blain’s Final Fantasy knowledge goes as far as being able to pick a Chocobo out of a police line up. She also wears as much black as Noctis and co., but will it help?

Full disclosure: the last time I played a Final Fantasy game was for this column. Corridors, boredom and an exceptionally strong hair game are my lasting memories of XIII-2 – seriously, who gives sequels a decimal point? – and I swore I’d never go back. And yet, here they are, the words “a Final Fantasy for fans and first timers” splashed across my TV. Here goes nothing. Wait, what? Can anyone else smell hairwax?

After surviving the tutorial (where I decide to just accept the combination of a mobile phone and tiny, adorable fox telling me what to do), it becomes apparent that there are two ways to play this. One, accept the beautiful leather-clad boys on their mission to look as pretty and angsty as possible in the desert while wielding absurdly sized weaponry, or two, repeatedly scrawl the letters WTF across a notepad as you catch a first glimpse of Cindy the mechanic’s assets before going to pick some peas for you and the lads’ dinner.

I start out with the latter approach, I really do. Flummoxed by the cutscenes/ montages of the boys spending a night in a campervan, disturbed by Cindy’s hick accent and pissed off at how many buttons I have to press to equip anything new (I asked for a weapon, not an Excel spreadsheet), but then… it turns out that the combat is really slick. Teamwork attacks feel amazing as the boys rally together with hipster battle cries, and, more importantly, Prompto’s showing me his pictures from the day and they’re reallygood. Hey, and Ignis has made us dinner and we’re all eating rice balls together under the stars… and it feels great after running across the desert wearing black all day. And, oh God, I’m a traitor to everything I know and love but I think my road trip might just continue. Hey, guys. Wait up.

Even after losing horribly to a Bandersnatch and howling in anguish at the death of the entire crew, Louise managed to fall Through the Looking Glass into actually enjoying herself.