Book Review: Final Fantasy XV Official Works

Final Fantasy XV Official Works is English translated edition of the original Japanese artbook ファイナルファンタジーXV オフィシャルワークス which was released in March 2018. The English edition is published by Dark Horse and covers the 2018 FF XV Royal Edition which includes the DLCs.

The cover art is probably art from Brotherhood: FFXV.

This artbook can be split into two parts. The first part tells the story of the game with high quality screenshots from the game. If you're someone who's expecting the whole book to be concept art, then you may not be thrilled that this story section takes up 97 pages out of the 208 pages of this book.

Next we have the history of Eos, concept art and illustrations of the characters, props, enemies, weapons and environments. There are also food related artworks for the Square Enix Cafe placements. Unfortunately, there are only 50 pages of concept art. So only a quarter of this book is about concept art. Well, the book title is "official works" and not "official artworks" though.

There's also database for items and weapons, extra features from the Royal Edition.

The last quarter of the book covers the interviews with composers and the FFXV staff. These are the interviewees:

• Yoko Shimomura - main composer for FFXV main title
• Keiichi Okabe - composer for Episode Gladiolus
• Naoshi Mizuta - composer for Episode Prompto
• Yasunori Mitsuda - composer for Episode Ignis
• Nobuo Uematsu - composer for online expansion pack Comrades
• Kenichi Shida - director of Episode Gladiolus and Prompto
• Takefumi Terada - director of Episode Ignis and all future aspects of FFXV
• Kazuya Takahashi - director of Comrades
• Hajime Tabata - director of the main game
• Takatsugu Nakazawa - director of the Royal Edition

There are many interviews so there's a lot to read. Those who love to know all things behind the scenes should be get a lot of insight from the interviews with the directors and composers.

Overall, it's a nice book, especially for fans who want to find out more about the game production process. If you're looking for an artbook, you'll be disappointed with FFXV Official Works because this is more of a companion book than an artbook.

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.