What Exactly Is The Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition?

Square Enix's Final Fantasy XV turned out to be a huge seller after spending a decade in development and having to restart on the concept several times over. Well, Square appears to want to milk the game for as much as possible, as has been evident with all the DLC, but now there's a new Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition on the way, and it's leaving gamers asking what exactly it is.

According to an ESRB entry, it's set to arrive for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and it's rated 'T' for Teen. The entry goes through the process of detailing what to expect from the game, noting that it will contain language, mild blood, partial nudity and violence.

The rating summary reveals that Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition is still a traditional Japanese role-playing game, where players take control of Noctis and the rest of the boy band as they attempt to save the kingdom from the daemon scourge. The basic gameplay description sounds identical to the standard release of Final Fantasy XV that came out back in 2016, where players traveled around open-world environments battling monsters, animals, and titans along the way.

What might be new in this entry is that it's mentioned that players will have swords, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles at the ready, along with magic attacks. Now, if you remember correctly, you weren't able to use machine guns, rocket launchers or sniper rifles in the base game of Final Fantasy XV. However, you were able to use those weapons in Prompto's side-story, where he had access to a number of different weapon types used by the Imperial forces. Thus, many believe that this will be a GOTY edition, but since it's two years removed from release, it's being called the "Royal Edition," where it contains all of the previously released DLC combined into one package.

It's likely that this is what the new SKU would be about, but we don't exactly have confirmation yet from Square Enix, so, until we do, then it's just speculation as to what this new version of the game would be.

Square was also supposed to be releasing Final Fantasy XV onto Steam for PC at some point during the first quarter of 2018.

The game was quite polarizing when it originally released back in 2016, because a lot of people felt as if the story was kind of slow starting out, and then three quarters of the way through it took a really, really, dark turn. The game then kind of went in a very different direction that a lot of people didn't expect and some complained about, especially the infamous Chapter 13.

Square sought to remedy some of the complaints with additional DLC and a fix-up of some of the more controversial chapters.

It would stand to reason that perhaps Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition is a combination of all of Square's efforts to make the game more accommodating to everyone by combining all of the previously released DLC and making the game a complete experience from start to finish. Once Square formally announces the details, we'll be able to get an idea of what this new version will feature.