That is why I said you can still be blind with other things being healed. Like for example his ability to open his eyes.Originally Posted by Marshall Banana
That is why I said you can still be blind with other things being healed. Like for example his ability to open his eyes.
If I were to manage a re-write, I definitely wouldn't have Luna join the party early on and just hang out with the bros. It would ruin the brotherhood vibe going on throughout the game, and much more importantly, it would defeat so much of the purpose of the first half of the game, which is to reach Lunafreya. It would be too big a change for my liking.
Having said that, I like the idea of Ignis retiring from the party and someone like Aranea filling in. What would be really great is if you had a choice and it basically decided between Dragoon Aranea joining you later or having Ignis go 100% mage.
I don't mind that we didn't see how Ignis was blinded. These things happen, and it's nice that they actually did something. I also really felt that chapter where you go around with him learning how to walk as a blind man. It does impact gameplay because you have to walk extra slow and his effectiveness in battles is next to useless until the end of the Malboro fight. He literally just swings wildly up until that point, rarely connecting, sometimes not even being close to an enemy. Well done, I'd say. It was effective in giving me the actual thoughts of "Crap, can he really go on like this? Is he hindering us? Is this okay?" and I think any chapter that can give you feels is a good chapter. It was an extremely uncomfortable chapter for me to play through because I felt guilty for running ahead, angry for how Gladi was treating me, frustrated at how slow everything was but knowing it's not exactly Ignis' fault... well done, imho.
Him suddenly going full Daredevil was a bit absurd but hey, this is a Final Fantasy game after all. I think he should have sat out a chapter or two and then rejoined with slight eyesight but also enhanced senses to make up for it, making him an effective mage.
As for Gladi leaving the party for some reason... honestly I'd also like to know what that was about. But I guess we didn't find out why Gandalf left the hobbits alone for quite some time. Perhaps it'll be DLC.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Does anyone find it funny how the background of EoFF is from FFXV with one hooded character that we have never seen/never seen hooded (Ravus?)?
Yeah, definitely think that's Ravus. That's from the E3 2013 trailer right? So many characters we never see anything of, really... specifically the emperor and... the other dude. You know the one. Old guy with a cape and weird headpiece. I can't remember his name due to his only having 2 lines in the game.
I just finished it, I can finally hang out in this thread! I don't think it's as awful as has been implied but not the greatest game I've played either. Better than XII and XIII at least, so that's something.
Positive
I agree with everyone that the bro-bond and the Ignis blinding were the strongest bits storywise. That was a really difficult dilemma but it was also a great way to have an escort character in a game you don't feel pissed off with. I was also really worried about poor Prompto! I know some people aren't fans of the photo taking gimmick but I unreservedly love it, and was really thrilled to see a montage of the ones I'd taken to Stand By Me in the ending. The ending itself was neat enough too.
A few more quick points:
- Ardyn was also a delightful and thrilling villain.
- World design - Altissia especially - was smurfing gorgeous.
- The big set pieces were great - eg the Leviathan battle or the train warping battle. They were great changes of pace!
Negative
I totally agree with Fox that more explanation of what the smurf was going on was necessary. It's a fantasy world with new concepts, explain them to me a bit more, I'm okay with it! I genuinely had no idea where I was going or why half the time and just went along with it. I also agree that Luna's death had very little impact at all. I thought she wasn't dead at all because of how wishy washy it was, and the radio and some NPCs said they were still searching for her so I thought she'd pop back up again.
I also absolutely loathed Chapter 13 - Noctis on his own in the imperial base. Ugly and sameish level designs, irritating backtracking puzzles, weird game mechanics thrust on you out of nowhere, no other characters to interact with and overstayed its welcome waaaaay too long. Lowest point of the game for me.
It was especially grueling how they took away your combat abilities for a huge stretch. "Hey, you know the absolute best feature of the game? Let's cut that for a chapter!" Reminds me of Ultemecia's castle in VIII where all your abilities get locked. It sucked there and was worse here.
I did like the Holy spell on the ring though. I didn't really use the others but Holy turned phasing into an offensive power and that was neat, especially in large groups of enemies.
One of my favourite parts of the entire game was probably the ride into Altissa. We got a ton of entertaining exposition on the ship, and then as you go around the rocks and see the city, and then sail over that elevated waterway into the harbor? That was fantastic.
- World design - Altissia especially - was smurfing gorgeous.
certificate
I forced myself to stop exploring and doing sidequests so I could finish it tonight. It's nearly 4am and I finished it about 20 mins ago. Have work in 6 hours (groan). Will post some thoughts later on today.
As Noctis said (a lot): "It's bed time."
I think the game is fantastic. I especially love all the fan service and references for all the old FF fans like me in it. The world is gorgeous and well-made and there are so many things to do. BUT I was majorly disappointed in the story... ESPECIALLY after being shown this stuff in the promo trailer. It seems a lot got cut out of the final game.
- Barely any Lunafreya in the game. I was looking to get to know her. She was marketed as a the heroine of this game... it really sucks that her role ended up being so limited.
-Where is the relationship between Noctis and King Lucis? It was hinted that they had a deep connection in the promo trailers, and other than Noctis' grief over his dad getting killed, we don't see any of this in the final game
I didn't like the fact that Ignis went blind.
Lamia's Tiara- Headgear in FFIX
Lamia's Flute- Weapon for Eiko in FFIX
Lamia in FFV- a enemy
appearance: a lady with long brown hair, wearing a tiara...half woman and half snake.
Lamia in FF3j- A Harp
Lamia in FFL2- An enemy
FF2j Queen Lamia, at one point she even gets Frionel in a bedroom with her and jumps on the bed and says "take me!".. before she turns into her snakey self. She serves as a mini boss in this game (as Queen Lamia).. and after you fight her as a mini boss, regular lamia's become random foes and later on in the game, Queen Lamia's become random foes as well.
LamiaScl. an item that paralyzes foes.
According to legend, she was once a Libyan queen (or princess) who fell in love with Zeus. Zeus' jealous wife Hera deformed her into a monster and murdered their offspring. She also made Lamia unable to close her eyes, so that she couldn't find any rest from the obsessing image of her dead children. When Zeus saw what had be done to Lamia, he felt pity for her and gave his former lover a gift: she could remove her eyes, and then put them on again. This way, though sleepless, she could rest from her misfortune. Lamia envied other the other mothers and took her vengeance by stealing their children and devouring them.
I'm still really salty that the professor who wants you to collect frogs for her and the dude who wants you to retrieve hunters dog tags have more screen time than the Emperor and Verstael.
I wonder if when Tabata took over he wanted to ditch those characters entirely but someone reminded him they were in the E3 2013 trailer so they had to have at least one line. I went back and watched that trailer last night, which was a mistake because now I'm pining again for the game that promised. Remember when it came out and we had that scene of kid Noctis and Regis eating that green soup? And we were all like "Ha, that's kinda dumb but it's sweet to have interactions like that between the king and the prince".
Shame that was 100% absent from the actual game.
Small-thought:
Originally there wasn't any DLC or sequels planned for FFXV. Tabata said as much a couple of years ago.
Of course, now we have the Season Pass, which reaks of marketing coming in and forcing the dev team to gut content so that it can be repackaged and sold separately. There are definite places throughout FFXV where it feels like something was "missing" story-wise, I really wonder if this ends up being where the DLC would slot in.
I'd like that to be true but it feels like there's just a lack of expository information throughout the story from start to finish, and I don't think DLC will fix that. I wonder if there's been a knee jerk reaction to reception to some of their recent titles at Square and they think people don't want super long cut scenes and dialogues and the like.
I mean, it makes sense to assume that when you consider this push-and-pull thing we've had in FFs since X.
Some people didn't like cutscenes were so long in X, so XII came out with a much larger focus on the world and a more sparce story.
We all remember the backlash to that, so then XIII came out and made it all linear cutscene viewer-style again, only even more than in X this time.
Now, I haven't played XV yet, but from all that I've been reading about it online, it seems it goes back to XII's style yet again, as it's trying to win back the crowd that XIII alientated.
You're not wrong in what you say, but oh man. It goes far, far beyond XII in its sparseness. I'm still a fan of that game despite its many flaws and the way the plot lost its way towards the end because they still had a fairly reasonable balance of gameplay and exposition. But the meat of XV's story is reserved for the wikia page.
Gonna make two other unfavourable comparisons to XII while we're at it. Firstly, XII had one of the all time great localisation efforts. XVs is merely adequate. Secondly, the hunts. They felt so much more special in XII, which is kind of ironic considering XII was the one trying to be 'like an MMO' but XV was the one that ended up with 'kill X of this monster that is all over the place anyway' missions. The hunt that stands out in XV is Deadeye and I am utterly convinced the only reason that exists is because they wanted to make an exciting demo.
I thought the localisation was great myself. I also thought the demo Deadeye was better than the game Deadeye!
Also to be fair there's some interesting side quests here and there, buried under a lot of the boring fetch/kill quests. I liked the one where you had to climb up a freaking volcano!
This game. Where do I start?!
Gameplay, by far some of the most innovative RPG gameplay ever. It's not as real-time as KH series, but it's still very fluid, and a lot of damn fun. Getting the hang of warp strike, spells, the Weapons of Old, the ring - all of that is great!
The moments with the bros, all of these moments, were just great. The end, with Ignis' blindness - I'm conflicted. I get that this story is an extremely close first-person perspective of Noct. So, it makes sense that he doesn't know what happened to Gladio when he left - but Gladio should have told him, and we should have seen the moment in a flashback cutscene. Like-wise with Ignis' blindness.
Lunafreya's death, I think I was impacted by it because I watched Kingsglaive and all the Brotherhood episodes; however, just because Noct and Luna saw eachother on occasion meant that they had some sort of love connection? That I don't buy. And I don't understand this whole Oracle and King of Light nonsense, especially with that woman with the G-name, who is Shiva/God Messenger. This is all fleshed out extremely poorly.
Speaking of Kingsglaive and Brotherhood, how is it explained Prompto is an MT, but also, we know he's known Noct since he was a child... So, when did that happen that Prompto became an MT? It seems like he wasn't infected by those demon cells as a child, as that was a more recent development of the empire, according to the papers you find in the penultimate chapter - so what in the world? I didn't understand that at all, and thought it was bulltrout - but I was pleased with how the bros treated it; although, knowing what I know from Brotherhood - again, it makes no sense.
I don't understand the Omen trailer where Regis communicates with the Old Kings and asks how much will be enough for them.
I don't understand what happened to the empire. We get hints from some newspaper clippings you can find, and if you pay attention to listening to the radio, that's it. The entire "demon cells infect everyone" in an FFVII kind of way, with the "Ardyn - the Chancellor/Emperor's right hand man" being the ultimate villain in the FFVI way could have went really well together, if there was any exposition at all. I'm just really disappointed by the entire dynamic of the story, and why any of these things are happening. When Luna is dying, she mentions to Ardyn something that even the most darkest souls will be saved, and he almost looks encouraged before enraged and he slaps her. That, again, doesn't make much sense in the context of the story. (I also have not actually beaten the game, as I went back in time with the dog to get two weapons I missed)
What else am I forgetting?
Oh yeah, Altissia was beautiful, and the fight with Leviathan was breath-taking. I don't know if Bahamut comes in toward the end, but I'm surprised I haven't seen him yet - unless Ardyn is really a God - I dunno yet. Don't care if it's spoiled either.
I also don't understand what I'm supposed to take-away from FFXV. I mean, other than the idea of "Stand Together" - and that opening with Florence is really damn endearing - I don't know what else I'm supposed to care about. The world? Meh. Luna? Meh.
Oh, dragoon Aranea... She seems more fan service, but I still don't understand her, at all. She's a mercenary, so she has no allegiance - that much I get, and she just blindly follows orders, until Tenebrae is destroyed? And then all the, I assume, human MT's are with her? And you meet some random old lady who was a servent of the Nox Fleuret's who explains Ravus isn't a bad guy anymore, and you get a cut-scene where her and Ravus chat about the ring and Noct. That doesn't make ANY sense. It doesn't make context with the story we received in Kingsglaive or the game proper.
OH! Regis' death is just a passing note in XV proper. Without Kingsglaive, you care because Regis is the protagonist's father, but I mean... they don't even show any of their backstory really. Someone else talked about the King and Noct eating soup, and that was a touching moment in the trailer, but no where in this game. It's as though they developed all this content, and they did nothing with it, but make marketing materials. Again, I haven't finished the game fully, but that Omen trailer was a poor thing to release since it doesn't make sense with this game as well.
And all of this is a true shame, because the gameplay is so damn fun. I'm just confused that I can't understand the motivations of these characters, the gods, the villains, the assist characters - I mean, it's all very lacking.
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