The Curious Case of Comrades: A Final Fantasy XV: Comrades Review
Unsure if it’s my immense desire for a 358/2 Days rerelease that includes mission mode but online or the fondness for the Monster Hunter-esque structure, but as far as bolted-on multiplayer modes go, my feelings towards Comrades is that it is a mode that could be better, but it also could be a lot worse.
Much of my indifference towards this mode is that it doesn’t horrifically fail at the hunt-craft-repeat model it is trying to mirror: resources to upgrade weapons come at a steady pace, missions are exceptionally brisk, and combat was serviceable to propel me into endgame builds. Although, hilariously, I learned after finishing the game that if you play with all bot slots, you miss out on a loot multiplier. Whoops.
Let’s talk progression. Weapons are leveled up by shoving a bunch of resources you get from enemies during missions. These materials can enhance substats on a weapon, as well as imbue weapons with an additional ability, such as stronger spells or additional damage when in specific parameters. Certain weapons will already come with installed abilities that cannot be removed, or you will have to “evolve” a weapon to unlock those slots (more on that in a second). The meticulous nature of prioritizing substats to ensure you are getting the most out of your weapon is gauging which materials should be allocated. Sure, you could go all out on strength, but if you aren’t hitting your max fire resistance level, you will risk losing out upgrading your weapon further and have essentially wasted a bunch of materials. It can feel really dull to have to look at every single material in the crafting menu to see the most efficient way to level up weapons, but I honestly kind of enjoyed seeing how efficient I could get at leveling these weapons.
Once you level up a weapon’s specific substats, the weapon will “evolve’” into a brand new weapon. From here, the weapon can continue to level into either another weapon or stop there. A level cap is in place, generally hanging at around 50 to 60 for most weapons, before you will need a specific material to increase the weapon’s level cap to 120. These, thankfully, do not cost any resource in the leveling bar, so you are free to allocate whatever stats you so desire.
As for what you are doing in the game, you tackle various missions from a quest handler. It’s pretty standard stuff, but you are also filling out a map to unlock more quests. Rather than a rank you need to hit or just going through missions in a sequential order, Comrades has opted into a big resource dump map. You spend earnable kilowatts from missions to power routes to new objectives. These can include weapon unlocks, customization options, missions, and outposts. Some of the kilowatt requirements can be pretty steep, but you are already repeating a lot of missions for resources anyway, so it ends up creating a pretty harmonious loop where you are always working towards something.
Two mission types permeate the game: defending an objective against waves of enemies or killing enemies to summon a boss. The defense missions shift between being either a stationary, a moving vehicle, or just an invisible wall enemies can’t cross. That last one in particular is probably the most engaging of the three, as you need to prioritize your targets quickly to aggro onto you to avoid them making a b-line for the objective. As for killing enemies to summon a boss, it’s, well, as straight forward as it gets. I struggled to grasp why this game is pretty averse to one-on-one boss fights, and that answer lies in how the game handles avoiding death as well as the post-mission buff system.
During missions, you’ll have ample opportunities to get back up. Your character will be downed when their health reaches zero but can be revived by another party member. In the chance that you die during your downed state, the ingredients you picked up either in the pre-mission camp or during combat will be consumed and you’ll be revived after twenty seconds. This is all well and fine, (even has some stakes because you risk not having specific ingredients for necessary post-mission buffs!) but, uh, you can just pick up more ingredients during the mission. There’s no cooldown on the revival, no reset of items, nothing of sorts to give any consequences. Look, I don’t need this to be tough as nails; if the developers want you to not suffer, fine. But this turns any mission into a complete cakewalk if you are drowning in ingredients.
With said ingredients, a post-mission buff via a meal is rewarded. The chefs who will greet you and the meals they cook appear to be completely random, so if you’re hunting for a specific buff, you may be farming for a while waiting to get a chance at a buff window. Most of these buffs enhance stats, while others can decrease costs at shops or provide crafting boosts. Now, because I was playing this with just bots, I couldn’t coordinate them to pick up any ingredients that might have increased my chances with certain meals, so it was a perpetual dice roll that I could barely influence. Not sure how well this would work even with a full lobby of players.
Speaking of players, a baffling omission from Comrades is seemingly the lack of player lobbies outside of missions. Like, you don’t even have a hub where you can invite people to. Any player interactions or recruitment are only done during selecting new missions. There’s a pre-lobby waiting camp once you are actually on your mission, but you have five minutes to get your bearings in order or… actually I don’t know what happens if that timer runs out. Probably kick you out of the mission, knowing this game. I’m not looking for an MMO-esque hub where twenty other people are running around, but just please let me have a way to keep my party after missions!
Finally, we have the narrative. Well, more of a “premise” than a narrative. The story is pretty much non-existent, needing to exist during a specific point in FFXV’s story that can allow for this mode to occur but not meaningfully influence anything going forward. Your player character wakes up with amnesia and must now protect the last stronghold against the forces of the darkness- hey wait a minute. Where have I heard this premise before…
Anyway, with your destiny before you, you must acquire the powers of the royal sigils and go fight Bahamut. Pretty much a story is barely occurring during your missions, and by the time you actually start playing the game, the story is over. Hilariously, after unlocking the final outpost, you are launched into the last missions where the credits started rolling as you are riding off to face Bahamut? It was so sudden that I burst out into laughter over the whole thing. Just truly spectacular.
There is a bit of a post-game to wrap up any missions and builds you hadn’t acquired, as well as some post-mission campaigns concluding with fighting Ifrit. The most interesting thing in this post-game is the inclusion of capturing chocobos out on missions (you basically just complete a mission and earn a chocobo at the end) and leveling them up.
While the story gave me no reason to care, I did end up caring deeply about my character Fiona Fantasy.
As you can see, she is extremely pookie, and I love her so much. She won’t be featured in my greater pantheon of Final Fantasy OCs, but it is nice that I got to make a character I was proud of and take screenshots with.
Is this an egregious mode? Not particularly. It's fine and completely serviceable. I’m not really going to take much away or look fondly back on anything that wasn’t Fiona Fantasy.
What I will take away is an appreciation for just creating a multiplayer mode instead of creating a standalone game with one mode of play that lasts about a few months to a year before inevitably the servers will shut down and everyone losing their jobs. Admittedly, the standalone part is funny because Square Enix actually released Comrades as a separate entity. A deeply hilarious level of confidence, I will say.