Am I missing something with the Regalia? I have the component installed that keeps it clean and it still gets dirty, very quickly I might add. I'm getting sick of driving it to Cindy only to hear Prompto and Ignis bitch that it's dirty again a literal hour later. Just what does this component even do?
Its not too bad on HR. At least it didn't bother me at all. Tho its a lot smoother in Lite mode for sure. But its not like Bayonetta where your timing needs to be perfect, you can get away with a lot in this game.
I just like the upscaled 4k look on the 4k display, rather than a blurryish image. Specially with HDR on.
Either options are fine tho. Just try them and see which one you like best.
I was just about to say how I was on Tour with Gladio at Veserpool for a fish..... I had the fish so close then the line broke..... I tried to redo the Tour over and over but the fish isn't coming back so I gave up.
He has a lot of pent-up jealousy over Noctis' fishing skills. You snap a line? "Just what the hell do you think you're doing" in a legitimately angry voice. You fish well without much incident? "Hey let me have a turn once in a while." Noctis is like okay sure but it NEVER happens. Camp at Vesperpool? Son of a bitch wakes you up at the crack of dawn wanting YOU to go catch the Liege of the Lake knowing damn well HE can't and I'm almost certain that if I catch it the meat locker will drown me in the fucking lake right there on the spot.
He has a lot of pent-up jealousy over Noctis' fishing skills. You snap a line? "Just what the hell do you think you're doing" in a legitimately angry voice. You fish well without much incident? "Hey let me have a turn once in a while." Noctis is like okay sure but it NEVER happens. Camp at Vesperpool? Son of a bitch wakes you up at the crack of dawn wanting YOU to go catch the Liege of the Lake knowing damn well HE can't and I'm almost certain that if I catch it the meat locker will drown me in the fucking pond right there on the spot.
Gladio does love pitchin' the tent every now and again. I'm sure there are a few others, but I think Ignis kinda whipped all the fun out of those penis jokes.
I'm going through endgame content closing in on 80 hrs, and I'm baffled at this point. There is so much extra content they could have weaved through the story. I can't imagine there's some players that will just skip all this content when they 'beat' the game and finish the story.
Also, the combat is fking amazing. It is a learned thing though, and a few of the upgrades in the ascension trees absolutely are vital to how awesome it can be. It's entirely possible to get through the game and never experience the amazing combat potential.
Once I unlocked the limit breaks for the characters, and fully upgraded magic, sht got real.
A couple tips I found that can help anyone struggling:
During a warp hang, call one of your friends to do a link strike ability, your magic and hp recover gets buffed to the point you can survive practically any encounter, regardless of level.
Unlock warp strike Ascension ASAP. Warping around is essential in hard battles, and you are impervious once you start the warping animation.
To do the AP shield trick, you should be killing the dogs without getting xp. If you're getting xp it's taking too long and you are wasting so much time. You have to kill them before combat even begins, and then you can immediately do it again. AP starts rolling in heaps when you do it right.
If you're struggling with Gil, play the pinball game at Altisia till you get 99 treasures. You will then get an item you can sell for half a million Gil. Only takes about half an hour and it's repeatable.
put moogle charms on everyone, eat xp buffing food, create and use as many experiacasts as you can, rest in the 3x xp hotel in altissia. You will be level 99 in 30 minutes.
put moogle charms on everyone, eat xp buffing food, create and use as many experiacasts as you can, rest in the 3x xp hotel in altissia. You will be level 99 in 30 minutes.
Just had some random heart-to-heart with Prompto after staying at some random inn. I've also had a few scenes after camping randomly. Why did they think it was a good idea to handle character building in this way? The talk I had with Prompto is the first time I felt any kind of connection with any of the support characters. Do these scenes trigger at specific inns/campsites? Will I eventually get them all during the course of the game?
At this point, Ignis is the neo-Penelo. Who even is he? Why should I care? Awful character. Glad is barely any better, but at least he's cute. I am on chapter 8, so I guess they still have time, but they've dropped the ball so far.
Random aside, but I don't know if it's just a texturing glitch or something but Sania has like chocolate brown teeth on my game. It weirds me out whenever I talk to her.
are some enemies immune to the Death spell? How do I know which enemies? There have been some where I used my entire MP bar channeling the spell and then nothing happens.
Costelmark's not that bad really. The moving platform stuff and hidden rooms were kinda cool, though I could have used more light to see the actual scope of the dungeon.
Costelmark's not that bad really. The moving platform stuff and hidden rooms were kinda cool, though I could have used more light to see the actual scope of the dungeon.
I quite didn't get that ending up at the bottom would be bad. So i ended up doing each of the corners all the way down thinking it would unlock the passage from down there. I probably fought the double red giant plus snake and flans like 6 times. By the end, i tried to cheat and run to the tunnels and wait it out to trigger a summon. It backfired as the snake bugged out and would not exit its water pillar follow attack. So it would just keep following me trying to kill me and the Summon never triggered. Lost probably around 2 hrs of gameplay plus 70k xp? Hated it haha. Went back, did the puzzle right away and only had to fight the down giant once.
put moogle charms on everyone, eat xp buffing food, create and use as many experiacasts as you can, rest in the 3x xp hotel in altissia. You will be level 99 in 30 minutes.
Did the 4 corners in the floor in Costlemark Dungeon but now I dont know where to go. The square in the middle of the floor doesnt have a progress button and ive checked off every other corner in the map. WTF lol.
Finished the game a few days ago, so here are some impressions. I might go a little overboard with my wall of text though, so be warned and bear with me
Note that most, if not all of this is my personal opinion, so don't take any of this as a fact. You're allowed to tell me that my opinion is shit though
I try to avoid spoilers as best as I can. There might be some stuff that I don't consider a spoiler though, so if you're sensitive to spoilers, consider this to have minor spoilers.
I've been playing Final Fantasy games for almost all my life now. There are few games in the franchise that I didn't like and a few I consider masterpieces. Judging a Final Fantasy game without comparing it to your favourite one might be impossible, so I feel like it needs to be mentioned. Every entry is quite unique in some aspects (like Gameplay) of course, but there are some aspects almost all of them share. I basically skipped Final Fantasy XIII for quite a few reasons (I only played the game for a few hours), so there won't be any comparisons or "this game is so much better" comments, for better or for worse.
I've become very careful with my anticipation for anything coming from Square Enix over time and I feared FF XV would be a mess and that I'd be too frustrated with it. I wanted this game to be good and to be some kind of "apology" for everything SE has "done to us" last gen. News we got over the past few years only made my fear stronger, but in the end... I have to say that I liked this game quite a lot. In fact, I liked this game a lot more than it probably deserves. There's no justification for me to like this game as much as I did, but that honestly speaks in its favor
There's quite a few things the game does a lot better than previous games and of course a lot it does (way) worse. What bothers me though is that I see this game as an... accumulation of wasted potential. This game could have become a masterpiece given the right amount of time and a lot lot money, but it turned out to be "just" a good game. You could also feel how this game wanted to be so much more on quite a few occasions. I can't get into that without spoiling stuff though, so I'll come back to it later.
All in all, I'd say that taking into account the development hell this game went through and the bad news surrounding it, this game came out a lot better than one would expect. It delivers, even if it has flaws that prevent it from being GOAT material.
As every review starts with graphics, I guess I'll do the same. I play on an OG PS4 and the game looks pretty great in my opinion. I definitely spammed the Share button for screenshots occasionally. Very clean image and vibrant colors given the right scenery (Duscae looked great for example). The lighting was superb although it lead to some derpy scenes at times (some of Prompto's pictures came out hilariously bad because of that). Still, it seems the lighting is one of the game's strongest parts. Yes, some textures looked a little weird and washed out and as I said, the lighting made some scenes look very weird but overall, I think this game looks great. I also haven't seen a better looking Open World game on PS4 yet, but feel free to prove me wrong.
The game really shines when it comes to animation, there's absolutely no denying that. Subtle movements gave the characters so much personality. It made battles look cooler, it made character interaction look more natural and it made emotional scenes a lot more powerful (which is especially true for a certain scene at the end of the game). Sometimes when camping or staying at a hotel I just watched the characters casually interacting with each other. The way they were animated made them feel more human and that alone makes it easier to empathize with them.
I complained about the hair dithering quite a lot in the past and it's still there for Gameplay sections. For important cutscenes though they mostly got rid of it which is more than enough for me so that's not an issue anymore.
Speaking of cutscenes, the CG cutscenes in this game are a joy to watch. There are very few of them, but the ones we got look amazing. The one that stands out the most to me would be
Luna's farewell to Noctis
. It was pretty damn good and it wowed me to some extent, partly because of the emotional impact and partly because it looked so damn great.
When I played the Platinum Demo, the first thing I noticed was the sense of scale and how BIG this game could make things look. This was true for the final game as well, especially in certain boss fights. It does a great job at making the character look small compared to his environment and the level of detail was enough to convey that feeling of "wow, I can see stuff miles away". I don't know how to put it, but I hope you get the idea.
The bad frame pacing was definitely noticable for me. The issue is way overblown in my opinion, but I can see why it bothers people. It's not game breaking for me, but they should have improved on it. Maybe we'll see a patch in the future, but I wouldn't be too hopeful.
I'm not too versed when it comes to sound so I can't comment on it too much. The voice acting was mostly done well (Japanese voices) and I didn't notice anything unusual about sound effects or anything, so I guess it's okay. One thing that comes to mind is everytime you want to rotate the camera near a shelter and it would play that annoying sound effect. God I HATED that. It's nothing that would diminish my enjoyment for the game, but seriously, I HATED it.
The music on the other hand is something that needs to be talked about. Not really because of the quality of the OST, which ranged from "good" to "amazing", but the implementation of it. The game had very nice soundtracks, but they were used so infrequently that I forgot some of those soundtracks even existed when I visit threads on OST or listen to random tracks on YouTube. In most cases music in the background was way too muted and I didn't find an option to change that. Turning down voices and soundeffects would only solve part of the problem since battles and dungeons had the music playing at a normal volume.
Everytime I opened the menu or map the music would just stop abruptly and the menu theme (don't know its real name) would start playing. It's a good track, but the way it was implemented made me hate it and dread using the R3-button or touchpad.
I still have no idea when the music would start playing on open fields and how to trigger it. Sometimes there was music (very muted of course) and sometimes there wasn't. Very frustrating, especially since those were some of my favourite moments. Overall I'd say that the music wasn't in any way underwhelming or anything, but the technical issues lead to frustration and made part of the OST very forgettable. Even Valse di Fantastica wasn't as prevalent as I had hoped. Somnus was, of course, saved for special occasions and came out great because of that.
All in all, I'd say I liked XV's OST better than XII's, but it's not on par with X or anything before that. FF XIII's OST was all over the place and this game is quite similar in that regard. Being able to play older tracks while riding the car only confirms that. Still, very nice soundtrack that I'll probably listen to for the next few weeks before getting sick of it and hating it.
Gameplay, especially combat, seems to be a hit or miss for a lot of people. I liked the combat to some extent, but I wouldn't consider it revolutionary or great in any way. It's an okay combat system that is a tad bit too easy in my opinion. At no point in time was I on the verge of dying and the only difficulty was trying to stock on enough items to spam potions whenever I was in danger. My companions were helpful, not because of their AI (which was problematic in most cases) but due to the fact that commands were very strong, dealt a lot of damage and gave invincibility frames. I haven't really started the post-game yet, so I don't know if the strong enemies pose a greater threat to you than bossfights in the game
including the final battle, which was one of the easiest boss fights in any Final Fantasy game I've played so far
.
Saying that the combat is "press A for Awesome" is an exaggeration though. You still have to watch enemy patterns to block at the right moment and attacking meant commiting to an attack animation which was more or less long depending on your type of weapon. Attacking while holding down your stick in different directions also meant different attack animations. It looks flashy and fighting big enemies with your giant sword feels great, but there's no need for you to strategize or prepare for certain enemies in different ways as much as you did in Final Fantasy XII for example. Attack -> heal -> attack was your typical pattern when engaging in a fight and that's enough to make a fun game, but for a great game that people will speak fondly of in 10 years, that's not enough. It is worth mentioning though that stuff like warping indeed made the game extremely fun, so they definitely succeeded in creating a "fun" game. I ran out of MP pretty fast early in the game just because warping around felt so great.
Now that we got all that technical stuff off the table we can finally concentrate on the important stuff
The game took a lot of flak for having an all-male main cast. I honestly didn't mind too much since the cast was introduced when this was still a spin-off for FF XIII and I didn't mind playing an all-female cast in FF X-2 either. I'm just speaking for myself though. I don't want to force my standards on anyone else, I just wanted make my position on this clear.
The main cast was surprisingly likeable. Especially Noctis, who I thought would be some kind of angsty emo-Sasuke who always talks about how he never asked to be king and just complains about everyone and everything and always acts super serious... stuff like that. Instead he felt like someone his friends wanted to be around, not just because it was their duty to protect him. Their relationship felt natural and they would sometimes act silly together or take funny pictures. Stuff friends would do without it feeling forced or anything. I even found some of the jokes Noctis would crack now and then to be genuinely funny. Like that one mission in Lestallum where you're supposed to
follow Ardyn in your car and someone asks why he was so clingy. Noctis' answer was something along the lines of "Maybe he goes through his midlife crisis and wants to hang out with younger guys"
. I don't know if it even was that funny, but to me it was the best answer one could give to that question and just made me like Noctis as a character even more. Later in the game there was a mission
in that factory in Lestallum with Noctis and Gladio in their full-body suits. This looked like one of those typical anime-tropes where the other person is oblivious to who is hiding behind the mask and I think they made fun of that in a hilarious way. Both knew immediately who the other person was but they would say stuff like "You seem familiar" or "The way you fight looks so... kingly"
. Again, this might be silly and not funny at all to some or even most people, but I liked these small things a lot
It's too bad a lot of the dialogue was repeated over and over again. The first time Ignis and Noctis talked about how great Ebony coffee was I thought it was funny, the tenth time it was just annoying.
While the relationship between Noctis and his friends seemed cool, there didn't really seem to be that great of a synergy between the friends sans Noctis. To me it seemed like the whole friendship was built around Noctis and I wanted to see the other guys get some time to shine, but maybe we'll see that in the DLCs that are coming later.
One thing that bothers me about FF XV is that aside from the main cast, there aren't too many great side characters. In fact, the amount of side characters is also a lot smaller than what we got in previous games. I'm surprised I somehow came to like Cidney. Her outfit is awful of course, but she isn't that bad of a character if you ignore the Otaku pandering. Same for Aranea. She was my favourite female character in the game, but that honestly says quite a bit about the female cast in general. Iris was okay, but
I wanted to see her as the badass hunter she eventually becomes. I wanted to see 10-years-later Cidney as well
. I liked her as a "little sister" character though.
The time she spent with the main cast was also enjoyable in my opinion and she was a decent support character in battles
. I just remembered Cor. I honestly forgot about him, but that should tell you how great of a character I thought he was.
I don't want to mention every character, so I'll skip to the most important one who has to be talked about in detail: Lunafreya. Easily one of those potentials they wasted in this game. The only thing I remember about her is that she was driven by her duty as a Kannagi (Oracle) and wanted to help Noctis. Oh, and she was pretty. Anything I forgot? It would have been so easy to make her a likeable character. Make her act a little silly now and then, even if it's just in flashbacks. Let her say something cheeky. Her shoving away a gun is not enough to make me find her cool and strong. Everything that made me like Noctis and his friends could be applied to her and it would have been enough to make her a memorable character. But no, she remains a plot device. She could have been replaced with a chair for all I care.
The worst though is that she dies as soon as I find anything interesting about her. They didn't want me to like her I guess...
The main villain is okay I guess. I've seen better (Kefka still being unrivaled) but I've seen worse too.
I'm kind of conflicted when it comes to FF XV's world. Some areas look very athmospheric, Lestallum isn't a bad town and the dungeon design is also great. I wanted to have more of that though. I didn't feel at home in Eos at all while playing the main story. "Going back" to the castle also had no impact on me since the relationship between the player and his environment was not established in any way. Characters were talking about their experience in the castle as kids, but you as a player can't relate at all. In Final Fantasy IX you start the game by doing senseless stuff in the town as Vivi which seems tedious at first, but as you go back to these places there is a strong sense of nostalgia and the redundant tasks suddenly seem like fond memories. The same applies to games like Kingdom Hearts and your time on Destiny Island. I wanted to have that same feeling in Final Fantasy XV. This game should have started the same with Noctis as a kid exploring the castle or scenes with his father and him sitting at the table (as we've seen again and again in trailers).
Even the Platinum Demo which everyone hated would have been cool to have in the main game. Exploring the giant toy room as a kid and revisiting it as an adult would have been great in my opinion.
As this post has already become longer than I had planned, I think I'll talk about story later in a seperate post. I like rambling about video games a lot, but it can be hard to find the right words. I don't know if anyone even takes the time to read this, but if you do, I appreciate that.
I'll be back later for some stuff about story
