The Levelling System in Final Fantasy XV Slaps

Because the idea of starting a new game is too overwhelming at the moment, I'm revisiting Final Fantasy XV instead. I enjoyed it enough on release to get the Platinum trophy on PlayStation, and that's without the story making a huge amount of sense in the latter parts of the game, so I'm keen to see what it's like now. I've got no way of knowing if my interest in it will hold out, but I'm having fun.

Of the very many systems that Final Fantasy XV uses, with the car being the thing I have the most mixed feelings on, what really stands out to me is the levelling up. Not the actual levelling up, you don't even get stats to apply or anything, so it's really just a number. However, as you run around gathering experience points, they all sit there in the experience point bank doing nothing until you go to sleep.

I really like this for a few reasons. For starters, you get a big old “number go up” if you do enough things before you go to sleep, and we're all here for that, right? It also mimics how memories and experiences are processed in real life, converting that into our very own real-life levels every time we go to sleep, so that's fun. The best part, though, is that where you sleep dictates how efficiently those experience points are converted.

Going to sleep in a camp outdoors lets them be converted normally, yet staying in swankier places nets you a bigger bonus. For much of the game, the best you can do is chuck down 5-10k on a little resort hotel on a dock to the south of the map, which doubles your experience points. It's a good incentive to save up money and keep doing jobs, and it's just a cool system I wish would show up in more games like this.