Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Art & Design of FINAL FANTASY XV

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2019

While the Game was incomplete and i still enjoyed it and will eventually get FFXV Royal Edition; this art book is beautiful. It has some art from the Kings Gliave movie and mostly from the game. The Paper is Glossy and the dimensions aren't you typical 8x10, which is not a bad thing; its more like a HD TV . Its about 14L inch x 9H inch. Its very thick and heavy which mean its high quality. I enjoy Video Game art very much so this was a must buy for me.

4 people found this helpful

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KirbyMVP

Awesome design and great graphics contents

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2021

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With this beautiful art book specifically designed for Final Fantasy XV universe, you could learn a lot and get deeper into the story while playing the games and watching the Kingsglaive movie. Highly recommend this for ones who want to know more about this project and also collect stuff

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Ooga booga broke buyer

Better than the new official book

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

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It's bigger and has more in the making of art, and has notes from the artists, now there is quite a bit if kingsglave stuff but it's still nice to see more of insomnia :)

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Bryan

The quality of the pictures.

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2018

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This book is 100% worth the money if you are a fan of FFXV. The art is book is HD almost 4k. The pictures have depth, theh have character, they feel real like you can reach out and touch the person. This book astonished me with how amazing the quality of the pictures were. I highly advised getting this book if you are fan.

2 people found this helpful

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Susan Seki

Absolutely beautiful!

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2021

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This time the book arrived fast and in great shape!
It’s a gift and she will love it!

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Mike

Top-tier aesthetics but perplexing content selection

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2020

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Art and Design: Final Fantasy XV primarily has screenshots from the final game, and some concept art. It really depends on what you want in a video game art book, but overall this is a good one. This final grade is probably more polarizing than most of my reviews.

Quality of Physical Book - Exceptional
-It’s wide format, baby! 16 inches wide and 9 inches high, which means some images are 31 inches long.
-It has about 215 pages with either art or words.
-It has a good quality cover and decent pages, which are made with silk.
-The images are quite sharp, especially for how big the actual prints are.

Content/Innards - Poor
Variety of images and image types
-Is there much image variety? No. While there’s some final concept art, and some cool things like transparent pages, almost all of the images are final CG renders.

Organization, does it make sense
-I think the book is organized in kind of a weird way for a video game art book. The contents are in chronological order from the story point of view. However, this includes the Kingsglaive movie, the game, and the anime. I would imagine that most people are familiar with the game and not the other two mediums. There’s an outline of the story at the start of the book, which I appreciated since I’ve only played the game.
-While the chronological order often makes sense for these kinds of books, it lends itself best to looking through the whole book in one or a few sittings, and might seem completely all over the place to a person who just wants to thumb through it at your house. There might be a picture of a doll right next to a cityscape.

Is there writing or insight from the artists and developers themselves?
-Not really. The introduction is actually pretty good. Apparently the authors interviewed the developers, and they do a good job of translating some of their message to the reader in lay terms - mostly about how in Final Fantasy 15 they tried to meld real life with fantasy with their designs. However, other than the introduction, there are few words and none of them are from the developers.

Quality of writing.
-I think the quality of the writing is fine, the little there is. The names in the game continue to sound ridiculous when written down or spoken - they’re just so verbose it’s obnoxious, but the authors of the book can’t be held accountable for that. But just to remind you: “In Final Fantasy XV, we follow Noctis Lucis Caelum, crown prince of Lucis, en route to marry his fiancee, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, former princess of tenebrae, accompanied by his best friends Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis.” And that’s legitimately the setup for the game!

Does it have what you want it to have?
-What would you like to see in an art book for Final Fantasy 15? It’ll be different for everyone, but I’d think high on the list are the monsters from the game and the great landscapes. There are almost no monsters in this entire book. It’s really disappointing. It’s like they focused so much on the chronology of the story that they simply forgot to include things that come up in the course of actually playing the game.
-One of the main problems is that there is just way too much from the movie, even if some of it is cool. The book is a little over 200 pages, and it’s in chronological order, and the start of the game is on page 90! That’s almost half of the way through the book! I, and many others, are really only interested in stuff from the game. Maybe like 20 or 25 pages for movie stuff would have been better.
-The authors wrote that there was an emphasis placed on the characters in Final Fantasy 15. There’s a lot of artwork of the characters, which are mostly final CG renders. While impressive, it isn’t really was I’m most interested in seeing. For example, while important to the story, Lunafreya isn’t really all that major of a figure over the course of the 70 hour game, yet she is a major focus in this art book. She makes an appearance 25 times. For comparison’s sake, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto appear about 16 times. They’re the main characters!
-There is only so much space in this book, and if they are making decisions about what to include I would have cut out a lot of stuff like an extreme close up of a hair pin.
-I’m mostly interested in monsters and huge, breathtaking landscapes. While there are some, I wish there was a lot more.
-I also wanted much more writing, explanations, and iterative art. There’s talk of how much work they went through the recreate classic monsters, for example, but it would have been nice to SEE what they were talking about.
-There’s basically no input from the developers or artists themselves. It would have been so great to read about why they made the design decisions they did and how they thought through things, but sadly that is not really in this book.

Aesthetics - Exceptional
Artistic/pleasant layout
-Now time for the polar opposite part of the review, the aesthetics.
-It’s hard to argue that the book doesn’t stand above it’s peers in terms of deliberate art direction. I find the layout very pleasing. It would make an excellent display piece or coffee table book.
-Where most books would line up the fish in an art spreadsheet, this book has a much more aesthetically interesting idea.
-It knows it’s an art book and really shows off the art. I wish all art books had this sense of style. It’s a million times better than plots of rectangles.
-My preference is for art books to show how the art evolved over time, ideally with artist commentary about their design decisions. This has mostly been foregone in this book for, I imagine, aesthetic reasons. So if it comes down to exposition versus pure aesthetics, this book is firmly in the aesthetic camp.

Full pages of art?
-There are tons of full pages of art. And seriously, it has probably the biggest actual pieces of art in any video game art book I’ve ever seen.

Quality of the art itself? Very subjective but notable if extremely good or bad
-Most of it is the CGI in the game, which is a shame. I think most would say the concept art is pretty high quality, though.

Anything else about the book like the cover, binding, feel, etc.
-The wide pages are a dream. It’s ideal for video game art and it’s a shame more video game art books don’t do this.
-The cover doesn’t feel plastic-y like a lot of video game art books. It’s feels “flat” and high quality.
-I like that the book easily lays flat without closing itself, which is actually pretty rare and quite nice.
-There are a few unique pages that are a nice change of pace, like some “half” pages.
-There are a few “transparent” pages, and some of them are used to pretty cool effect. One shows how the city walls are laid out in a square, and another gives a cool red glow to a Cerberus.

Any weird issues like tiny print or annoying layout, like having descriptions in weird places
-Not really.

Nostalgia/Affinity Evoked For The Game - Below Average
-There is a certain feeling that comes from playing Final Fantasy 15. That feeling is not evoked by amazing layouts of a vial. While some images did make me experience nostalgia, a lot of them were so focused on the appearance of the characters and objects that the sense of exploration and wonder was left behind.

Backstage
-Does the book offer any backstage glimpses into the games development? Not really, the intro has a story about how they updated the Leviathan design, and there was an interesting remark about how the developers see certain designs, like the Behemoth, as almost a kind of visual language for the series. I found that an interesting concept to think about - a visual language. Unfortunately there’s no artwork of the Behemoth in the whole book.

Closing remarks
-While the aesthetics are exceptional the overall content selection is way below average. Really high in one category and almost as low in another. However, I will say that video game art books of this physical and visual quality are rare.
-Different people want different things in video game art books, but I hope this review has been helpful in showing you what you can expect from THIS book. For more video game art book reviews, click on my profile picture.

13 people found this helpful

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Jorge Mexicano

Great artwork

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2021

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Loved the game especially the the storyline and design they put into it so I had to get the art book for my collection.

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LOGICverse_gor112

Cook and Becker are awesome!

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

First off this book is flipping gorgeous and amazing art!!! Second the package did come a day late but I’m giving it 5/5 because it’s in perfect condition so 5/5 to Cook and Becker!

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Able Y

Great book. A little long though

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

The book itself is great, lots of fantastic artwork. The problem is is that the book itself is really wide so picking it up from anywhere but the middle feels a little flimsy. Still a nice product.

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Eldweena

Lacks variety

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2019

Verified Purchase

This appears to be a Kingslaive movie art book, and not actually related to the game Final Fantasy XV. There is a ton of Lunafreya, Nyx, and Crowe, but the rest of the cast outside of minor Kingslaive characters is absent. And it has pictures of just two of the astrals, Shiva and Titan. The majority of the cast of this series is missing!

The book is a very awkward size. Definitely a coffee table book. Good luck finding a shelf for it...

My three favorite things about his book are the picture of an arcade where Nyx apparently likes to hang out, closeups and sketches of a magitek trooper, and two recipes of in-game food. Everything else is basically Kinsglaive. They should have advertised it as such, before I got my hopes up that I would, you know, actually see Noctis, Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto...the main characters of the game.

7 people found this helpful

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