Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV Episode One Review
Yes, Final Fantasy XV Uncovered may have only just finished but there’s no time to sleep! The first episode of Brotherhood is live and ready
Episode one, Before the Storm, begins with a flashback to Noctis’ past where he’s close to being murdered by a monster, and presumably his mother has already been killed, before someone comes to his rescue by fighting the summon off. Waking up from his terrible dream, Noctis, Ignis, Gladio and Prompto are driving to Caem but stop off at a nearby diner to get food. It turns out Noctis is a picky eater who’s transferring vegetables from his burger and into Ignis’ burger. Other than trailers, a demo and various information, this is the first time we’re seeing the group together in a coherent and complete experience, and I like it.
Being only 11 minutes and 55 seconds long, I won’t talk further about the story as you should watch it yourself, especially as it’s free to all. It’s lovely to see the character’s friendship and it covers why they’re on their journey and is an obvious lead-in to the main game, and I’m happy that Square Enix are clearly passionate about Final Fantasy XV and are actively trying to convince others to be passionate about it too and, you know what, it’s working.
A-1 Pictures, the animation studio behind Sword Art Online, Tsuritama and other anime, does a good job in bringing the characters to life in a new way with humour and action that showcases each character’s unique abilities such as Noctis’ ability to summon various weapons out of thin air. Despite the brief runtime, we get to see a decent amount of varying areas and action and I’m already wanting to see more. It feels as if the budget here isn’t what most AAA anime would get, but considering the runtime and that it’s 5 episodes long and is being produced alongside a full CGI movie, it makes sense that it might not look as good as anime that’s created as a primary source of income – regardless, it doesn’t look bad by any means. A-1 Pictures experience with battles is coming into play here, and I’m sure it’ll only get better!
There’s no English voice-over but it seems that they’ve grabbed the Japanese voice talent from the game, and they do a great job in bringing the characters to life. It’s lively, there’s good chemistry and it’s generally well-acted and it makes for an enjoyable listen. There’s not much in the way of music to speak about yet but I liked what I heard, and I wonder if we’ll see any of it pop up in the game.
Yes, I’ve said very little about the show. It’s one episode that runs at half of the time that a normal anime episode would run for, and I plan to review the five episodes as a whole once they’ve all aired rather than individually. However, I wanted to see if it was worth a watch and it is, and I want to let you know that. I’ve linked it above and the other episodes will be available via that channel too at some point in the future, and I hope you enjoy watching.
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