This short little beat em, which is an exclusive bonus to people who buy Final Fantasy XV from particular stores, such as EB Games/Gamestop, surprised me with it’s quality. The experience is framed around Regis from the main game telling a young Noctis a bed time story based on events from his younger days.
The visuals are in retro beat em up style, think Streets of Rage and they have high quality sprites and animations, as well as audio. While the environments look excellent, there are only a few of them, but considering the short length of the main story, they avoid being repetitive.
The mechanics have a surprising amount of depth as well. Instead of just having basic quick attack and strong attack, there are on the ground combos, launches and air combos, dodge rolls and shield attacks, as well as summoning team mates by having unbroken combo chains. Certain monsters, such as the skeletons for example, require their own special tactics, like stunning them with a shield mid combo, otherwise they will break your combo chain with a block. The combat, while to some extent a button mashing affair at times still requires a decent amount of skill in chaining combos and dodging to be effective. The combat can also become very fast, especially as enemies fill the screen. Also the most difficult enemy is the cactuar. Seriously. A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV then, is a great little bonus with the main game and is a good way to spend some of the time waiting for Final Fantasy XV to install and update.
8/10
CG Kino 