While at the SquareEnix booth at GameStop Expo, we also got some hands on time with A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV. A title of which we were unaware. And, judging from the responses our video got, so were many others.
It’s set up as something of a prequel to the main game. Noctis is a child, and asks his father to tell him a story unlike those he’d been read before. Regis eventually relents, seemingly making up a story centered on himself in his youth.
“The only way you get it is by preordering Final Fantasy XV through GameStop”
The game takes the form of a side-scrolling beat-em-up. You fight off waves of enemies, from the familiar Final Fantasy fare to newer monsters. To beat many, however, you’re required to use proper combos. Some need to have their guard broken before you can deal with them, others need to be juggled and so on. The controls wouldn’t have been unheard of during the genre’s heyday, though they would’ve been unusual.
The graphics are pretty decent. The spritework certainly is a throwback, though I will say the characters are clearly not designed to facilitate accurate sprites, but that’s easily forgivable. I keep trying to mentally pit it against the last few sprite-based games Square made, but it’s difficult to measure something I only had a little bit of time playing against something like, say, Legend of Mana.
That’s the good news. The bad? It is a retailer exclusive preorder bonus. The only way you get it is by preordering Final Fantasy XV through GameStop or related retailers. Though it’s really anyone’s guess as to how long it will stay that way. Considering the fact that I personally don’t have any means of playing the game, I don’t consider it likely that I’ll get another crack at it. I suppose we’ll just have to hope for digital to pull through eventually.
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