Why you need to download A KING'S TALE: FINAL FANTASY XV

I have always loved side scrolling beat em ups. Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Double Dragon, Golden Axe, I guess it is one of the reasons that I see the 16bit era as a sort of Golden Age of games (amongst other reasons), I am not going to say that you dont get these kinds of games anymore but I dont think they get anywhere near as much attention. Now and again an absolute belter of game comes along and at a good price, I for example am a massive fan of Castle Crashers, it is a fantastic game that not only stands amazingly on its own legs but also tips its hat to so many other games with little refrences here and there.

Now Castle Crashers was amazing value for money, the sort of low cost big bang for your bucks title that doesnt come along often at all, before it came out I watched trailers for the new Power Rangers game with baited breath, I was kind of hoping that it would be my next big fix for walk along beat em up action, but then the reviews poured in and they were not good at all, and so I left it alone with very little idea of when something else would come along to scrath this itch, this need to walk from left to right and punch enemies in the face.

One day I found myself clicking around in the Xbox store, I had already spent time looking on the nintendo Eshop and figured id hit the Xbox one before going on to the Playstation store, this is when I came across a title called A KING'S TALE: FINAL FANTASY XV, my instant thought was ''I bet this is some new multiplayer online MMO type thing that will have in game purchases and the like, yet I was incredably suprised to find out that it was in fact a walk along beat em up, a free walk along beat em up and whats more it had a very Super Nintendo style set of graphics when I looked at the screen shots, so I did what anyone would do in my position and claimed and downloaded it as quickly as I could.

I read up on the game, did a quick bit of research mostly because I just couldnt believe my look and when I did this I found out that this game was revealed during the Square Enix Active Time Report at E3 2016, and that originally it was a pre-order bonus exclusive to various stores in diffrent parts of the world (GAME in the United Kingdom. The game was later released as a free download for all on March 1, 2017. I dont know if I didnt see this get announced or if I had forgotten but I have to admit I really like the idea of getting a indy style game as a freebie for preordering, if I had known about this it might have even pushed me to take a look at Final Fantasy XV.

So a King's Tale takes place before the events of XV  (just incase you plan on playing both of these) You play a character called Regis who is apparently the dad of the main character from XV as far as I can tell. The game starts with Regis in the present time telling bedtime stories to his son about when he was a younger man, it is rather intresting that it is stated that these tales are embelleshed, this is kind of cool because if you were going to tell tales to a young kid to grab there attention then you proberbly would add a pinch of flair to them but it also means that the games creators are not backing themselves into a corner and making the events of this side game pure cannon. It is story wise a very enjoyable game but what about the other parts of the game?

Well I have to admit that I really love the music, there are not a lot of tracks really but they sound like they have been dragged right out of the past one of them has this sort of NES feel to it, it reminds you of the great tunes from those days, and as for the art well it feels like its a brand new SNES game when you look at it, the cutscenes kind of make me think that the creators of this game went and looked back at the classics from this genre such as those made by Capcom back in the 80's. If I have any issues with this game its just that I wish there was more to it, I wish it had multiplayer, I wish it had more characters, basically I wish that this had been a full on project in and of its own right, basically because every beat of what is on offer hits its mark straight and true.

It has a surprisingly good combat system, one which given the nature of this game as a mere preorder bonus is shockingly deep. You have the obvious quick and strong attacks, then a shield bash, a cool rolling dodge move and then well it wouldnt be a final fantasy if you didnt have some magic. It plays brilliantly you cant just bash buttons and win, you have to think about what you are doing with diffrent enemies needing to be tackled in diffrent ways.

All of the things I can say which would be negatives about this game I find hard to complain about what with the game being free and everything, my basic complaints would be that the game is kind of short and that it would be so much better if there was multiplayer. I want everyone possible to give this game a look though, to play it, experiance it and talk about it, because well I wouldnt only like to see more nice little bonuses like this, I would also like to see this game get a sequel, one I would happily pay for if they throw in multiplayer and lengthen it, come on Square-Enix you know you want to.