Maybe it's just because I've played through the full version 4 times, but I felt that the chibi artstyle detracted from some of the more emotional moments in the story. I think the artstyle could work fine if their mouths moved or eyes emoted at all, but as it is, it's tough to get fully invested in these little guys.

It's still a perfectly fine way to play the game if you want to cut out all the open world guff, but come the last third it sort of just becomes a slightly shorter, but still similar experience to the main game.

I actually quite liked this slimmed down version of Final Fantasy XV. I was late to the party with the original release and ended up playing it on my PS5 with the 60fps update. I never thought a handful of years later I would replay that same story on the Switch with an extremely cut down version and walk away liking it more!

I liked how this version of the game cut away a lot of the fat that I didn’t quite vibe with. Combat may have been pared back a little too much - removing a lot of the feedback and choice when surrounding things like magic or more nuanced combos and attack. But it had the heart of what the original was going for. Still, the whole hold down to continuously attack is a little wack.

While the story does have its issues. I actually felt how the story was told in this package worked a lot better! In the original release I felt a lot of the early game open world segments made me feel disconnected from the main story and then to have the story literally on a railroad through to the end felt jarring. But in the pocket version it was a pretty brisk clip through the story from the start so it didn’t feel as rushed.

The only big technical gripe I had was that this thing would CHUG at times. It is wild to see the Switch run Tears of the Kingdom but be brought to its knees with Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD.

In the end I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. I went in with ultra low expectations and half-expected to drop this 2 hours in. But it kept my attention and held it all the way to the end. Good job Square!