Review: Final Fantasy XV: Monsters Of The Deep VR

Finally — the game I’ve been waiting for has arrived. Yes, Final Fantasy fishing in VR is real, and to my surprise, it’s not just a fishing simulator. There’s even a storyline woven into it… If you can call it that.

FFXV: Monster of the Deep VR is essentially the virtual‑reality version of the fishing and hunting side‑activity from the main game. Your goal is to catch enough smaller fish in each area to unlock a boss encounter. Along the way, there’s a light narrative, various challenges, tournaments, and a handful of extra activities to keep things interesting.

One of the first things the game throws at you is a surprisingly solid character creator. You build your avatar right away, and trust me, you’ll be seeing that digital self a lot — particularly in the camera mode, which loves showing off your creation.

Cindy from Hammerhead makes a return, and she’s just as striking in VR as she is in the main game. Her presence definitely grabs your attention, and it can be a bit challenging to stay focused on the storyline when a fan‑favorite character shows up with her signature style and confidence.

Monsters of the Deep makes a strong first impression with its visuals — most locations are bright, colourful, and genuinely pleasant to look at in VR.

The fishing mechanics are surprisingly solid across both control schemes. The DualShock 4 works perfectly fine, and while it’s obviously less immersive than using the Move controllers, it still delivers some of the best fishing gameplay I’ve experienced on a standard controller.

Using two Move controllers feels even better. One hand handles the rod, the other the reel, and the whole setup feels intuitive and natural. Huge credit to the developers here — the system never breaks immersion, never gets in the way, and never limits your movement. It just works.

There are quite a few locations to explore in the story mode, and unlocking them is tied to your fishing performance. Catching enough fish — sometimes ten, sometimes fewer depending on size and type — opens up a boss‑style encounter that lets you progress to the next area.

Every location you unlock can also be revisited freely in Free Play mode. As you advance, you’ll gradually open up Tournaments, Hunts, and additional side activities across most (if not all) of the areas in the game, giving each location more replay value than you might expect.

These Demon Fish are some of the wildest encounters in the game. You actually have to fight them with a crossbow first, before you even get to the part where you reel them in with your fishing rod.

It basically plays out like a two‑phase mini‑game: first, a fast, arcade‑style shooting segment, then a proper fishing showdown once the boss is weakened. It’s a crazy idea — the kind that shouldn’t work on paper — but this is Final Fantasy, where anything goes. And somehow, they pull it off surprisingly well.

Here’s a screenshot from the boss battle itself. Aiming becomes a desperate little war of its own — the fish darts, thrashes, and mocks you with every missed shot. Yet somehow, even in my clumsiest moments, I never fell in battle. No matter how chaotic things got, I always clawed my way through to victory.

You’ll eventually run into more familiar faces from the Final Fantasy XV universe. Each new location brings a new character, a few fresh tips, and some extra challenges to tackle along the way.

The visuals hold up really well, and one of the biggest surprises for me was that the characters even have full Japanese voice acting — provided you selected that language earlier, of course.

Meeting the gang in VR was genuinely fun, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary for the experience. It still adds a nice touch of nostalgia to the journey.

And somehow, it keeps getting better — as you can see in the screenshots. Cindy eventually shows up at your cabin, which acts as the game’s main hub. I genuinely have no idea what she was talking about regarding my car; I even switched to English voices and subtitles to try to follow along. No chance. I was far too distracted trying to look out the window… and, well, at her. You know.

It’s a little strange how a fishing game manages to lean into fan‑service this hard, but then again — it’s Final Fantasy. At this point, nothing should surprise me.

You move between fishing spots in every location, and every now and then, you’ll stumble across little items like this. They’re collectables you can use to decorate your cabin — the game’s main hub. It feels a bit half‑baked, but still a nice touch that adds some personality to the place.

The immersion does take a hit, though. There’s no full locomotion support, so even if you’re using the DualShock, you’re still stuck with snap‑turning and point‑to‑point teleport movement. It works, but it definitely breaks the flow a little.

The hub area includes all the usual essentials: an upgrade station, a shop, your equipment loadout, and a display for all the random items you’ve collected — which the game proudly calls “decorations.” You can walk around both the hub and the fishing spots, but unfortunately, movement is limited to snap‑turning and point‑to‑point teleporting. No full locomotion here, which definitely takes a bit of the immersion away.

Leaderboards are always fun… in theory. But remember, this is Final Fantasy, and some of the players out there are absolute monsters. I never stood a chance — completely impossible for me to climb anywhere meaningful.

You do get to sit in the car and soak in the atmosphere, but there’s no actual driving involved. It’s basically a stylish submenu — a little hub where you pick your next activity and decide what kind of fishing challenge you want to tackle next.

The in‑game videos and cutscenes look gorgeous, as expected. They’re presented in Cinema Mode rather than full VR, which does break immersion a little, but the visual quality is still excellent. You can zoom in much more than I’ve shown here, but I kept the window at this size for now because of the screenshot feature and for the sake of this article.

It already looks great in screenshots, but it’s even better inside the headset. Whenever you hook a new type of fish, you can’t help but lean in and inspect every little detail — far more than you ever would in real life or in any flat‑screen fishing game.

The models are surprisingly detailed, and while this isn’t a full‑on simulator, it’s still genuinely fun to examine each catch up close.

These shots are pretty random, I’ll admit. I probably should have taken more screenshots of the actual locations, but I didn’t want to spoil the whole game for you guys. Still, the ones I did grab show off a nice variety of things — and one thing is absolutely clear: the game looks great, right?

This is pretty much the standard pose you’ll find yourself in when using the DualShock controller in the game’s photo mode — unintentionally hilarious every single time.

For the best experience, though, I definitely recommend using the Move controllers. They give you far more freedom and make the whole mode feel much more natural.

I’ll wrap things up with this final screenshot — yep, another one of those Demon Fish creatures. It looks fantastic, but honestly? I never found it challenging to catch. The game practically plays itself during these encounters, and while it’s fun, there’s definitely room for deeper mechanics. An underwater camera mode, for example, would have added a whole new layer of excitement.

Final Fantasy XV: Monsters of the Deep shines at its best moments. It looks and sounds exactly the way I want an FF spin‑off to feel — stylish, polished, and full of that unmistakable Final Fantasy charm. But the experience is held back a bit by the teleport/snap‑movement system, and there’s definitely room for more depth and variety in the overall gameplay.

That said, there’s plenty of replay value. Online modes and Free Play offer a ton of reasons to return, but it’s the Hunts mode that I know I’ll keep coming back to. It’s easily the most addictive part of the package.

In the end, this is a proper VR experience for Final Fantasy fans — a quirky, charming, occasionally brilliant detour into the world of XV. If you’re into FF and you’ve got a VR headset, you should absolutely grab it.