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Final Fantasy 15 guide: tips and advice for your royal road trip

Alex Donaldson avatar
Guide by Alex Donaldson Assistant Editor
Published on

After the better part of ten years in the oven, FF15 is here, and it's massive. You might need some help.

It was a very long time coming indeed, but Final Fantasy 15 lives up to a lot of its promises. While the original release had some issues, Square Enix has valiantly kept chipping away at it - and now with the release of FF15 Royal Edition on console and FF15 Windows Edition for PC there's a more complete, impressive version of the game now on store shelves - and it's very easy to get lost in its sprawling open world.

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Lots to do inevitably means there’s going to be a number of questions, especially in an RPG of this scope. We've spent quite a lot of time with FF15 - first reviewing it, then following its progress as it's been upgraded, updated and tweaked over the last year of its release. Now we're at Royal Edition there's more to do than ever, and so we figured we'd resurrect this, our guide to things we think the average FF15 player is going to want to know.

Rather than a complete walkthrough of every single aspect of FF15, we figure we'll let you figure out much of what the game has to offer for yourself - it's a sprawling open world, after all. Instead of that we've built in-depth pages on specific topics that our play-through left us feeling some players will want some assistance with, plus some more general tips pages on how to tackle the game's mechanics.

So – before you jump in to your quest to reclaim the throne of Lucis and the city of Insomnia, here’s some stuff you should keep in mind...

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Final Fantasy 15 guide: tips & strategies for beginners

As with any RPG worth its salt, Final Fantasy 15 has quite a lot going on. There are a ton of interlocking systems - some of them plain in their utility, some not quite so kind to the player in explaining what they do.

Here are our tips for beginners on how to get to grips with the game in general, plus how to power yourself up right and do it quickly.

  • Final Fantasy 15: the best skills to unlock in the ascension grid early on

    It doesn’t really matter if you’re just starting out or if you’re a more experienced player who has simply hit a brick wall of indecisiveness – Final Fantasy 15’s character progression is full of choice and as a result can sometimes be rather paralysing. These are some must-have skills to make your early choices easier.

  • Final Fantasy 15: how to level up quickly to reach the level cap

    Final Fantasy 15 features all the EXP and level-up based shenanigans you’d expect for a big-budget, large-scale RPG, though it does take something of an interesting approach to how experience works in the game. Allow us to guide you through how to make the most of these mechanics.

  • Final Fantasy 15 guide: how to get AP quickly to unlock new abilities

    Experience Points and levelling up are one thing, but Final Fantasy 15’s character progression is actually divided into two distinct segments. The first is levelling up, which we’ve already covered in detail. The second is AP and the Ascension Menu – an important system to understand and correctly exploit if you want to get the most out of the game.

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Final Fantasy 15 guide: secrets and other hidden details

Hidden away deep in parts of FF15 are some features that aren't exactly made obvious but are pretty damn important either way.

  • Final Fantasy 15 Royal Arms locations: where to find all the optional Royal Arms

    Final Fantasy 15’s main story introduces you to the concept of Royal Arms, powerful weapons that once beloved to the long-dead kings of Lucis. Across the course of the story you’ll be given a few in a compulsory manner, but there’s actually far more than the game points you to out there for you to find in the world. We've listed them all here - compulsory and optional - so you can make sure you gather all of the weapons.

  • Final Fantasy 15: how to unlock the mysterious dungeon doors

    If you’ve been getting stuck in to FF15, chances are you’ve spent a decent amount of time in its amazing dungeons. If you’ve done that and made your way all the end to a few of these dungeons, you’ve probably found a mysterious door. How do they open? What's inside? Allow us to explain...

  • Final Fantasy 15: how to find and kill a Cactuar for massive experience

    It’s slightly strange to think that an excitable, dancing cactus is one of the most iconic enemies of one of the biggest RPG franchises of all time… but it is. Go figure. Cactuars also appear in FF15, but they’re remarkably rare. We explain how to find them and get their precious loot.

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Final Fantasy 15 DLC guides

After the rocky but ultimately successful launch of FF15, Square Enix has rightly turned their focus towards adding to and expanding the game - and one major way they're doing this is through large story DLC drops every now and then. Each major story drop focuses on one of the major members of Noctis' Royal Guard - one each for Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis.

Each has its own unique gameplay and so will require a little getting used to... but we've gone ahead and dug deep into this so you don't have to.

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