Final Fantasy XV SPOILER THREAD
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
Broadbandito
Member
the scene after the credits (campfire) has me straight weeping. I loved this game.
its just a titanic scene
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Prompto's alive, learning that the woman Gladio was gonna ask her hand in marriage, is Cindy.
NTR'ed!!!
NTR'ed!!!
Guess Iam too cold. Felt nothing especially after Noctis went SSJ after that lol Soured me on everything
NTR implies that Prompto and Cindy were actually at some point a couple
Not always, there's also NTR-genre work focused on a man's intended romantic partner in a relationship with someone else, regardless of whether the woman ever reciprocated or even knows about the first man's intent. That's typically the "betrayal" aspect focused on in subgenres like 'little sister' NTR.
It's like the X ending
Xv2 is gonna be the 3 bros bringing him back to life
Just him
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Will also include a pop song and Gladio, Prompto, and Ignis dancing and singing on stage in skimpy outfits.
♫♫So darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh stand by me♫♫
Just Gladios and Cor
It was damn powerful visually.
Her voice actress is fantastic.
Fully admit that it got me good.
Well at least then Luna will have a nice empty throne to sit on in the afterlife instead of having to lean against it and lay her head on the armrest.
To be honest, I have never crashed it, not once! I'm always extremely careful with my landing.
It reminds me of my young days while trying to land the plane in Top Gun: The Second Mission on the NES. I was a master of that.
There's two sides to an airship - one is the experience, the other is utility of getting from one place to another fast.
FFX nailed the latter (HEHE), FFXV nailed the former. Even if the experience usually is a turning point in the story and a sudden sense of freedom to explore the entire world map.
Ah fuck.
I haven't completed FFX yet, but now I imagine it ends with either Tidus or Yuna dying and then they are together in heaven or something. Please don't correct me if I am wrong lol.
Tribes of Trusty
Member
Forgot to say but mad props to the French localizing and voice acting team - the whole dub was stellar especially compared to a lot of localized games. Last time I didn't play a game with Japanese dubs was Xenoblade Chronicles.
Also, I want to confirm something : in the French localization there is a loading screen basically explaining the Starscourge (which is never referred as more as "the plague" in French) is due to a mutant of the malaria agent, Plasmodium tenebrae. Is it also explained that way in the official guide ?
Also, I want to confirm something : in the French localization there is a loading screen basically explaining the Starscourge (which is never referred as more as "the plague" in French) is due to a mutant of the malaria agent, Plasmodium tenebrae. Is it also explained that way in the official guide ?
The whole thing gives me Nier vibes
I expected the guys to dance and sing like one of these Korean boygroups in the credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa7QfiKGvfk
That would have been epic. XDDD
Bloody hell. The fact that anyone considers that a betrayal is pathetic.
Devilinthiscity
Member
Awesome review. The stuff you pointed out is exactly how I feel about the game.
Devilinthiscity
Member
Lol, it looked cool, ill give you that. I felt more emotion when Iggy got his eyesight taken away and his struggle of coming to continue on like that for the rest of the game.
Damn, I think I'll replay it in French dub for NG+. Cannot stand the English dub at all so I played in Japanese.
I just rewatched it and it was pretty identical. Not sure what you're talking about
I agree, Austin's great! But then again, him and I are almost the same person. He pretty much loves all the same things I do, so watching his review and completely agreeing with it wasn't a surprise to me. I knew I liked him after watching his Persona 4 Dancing All Night review.
It was the same, it's just that the guy demoing it couldn't parry to save his life.
I guess most of the FFXV-Crew is in this thread now, so I'll repost my review from the OT, if that's okay. Got some questions I have to ask here later, like the whole Prompto thing, lol, or the origins of Ardyn. See y'all later.
So. From the 28th onwards I stayed away from GAF completely, filtered my whole Twitter timeline, and haven't read any review until 2 days ago or so when I finished the game.
I was thinking of making a long-ass post, but then I realized that pretty much everything you could say about the game has already been said hundreds of times and perfectly well by many here and in reviews/podcasts like the ones from Easy Allies, Game Informer, Kotaku, VG247, USGamer & Co. I found most reviews really fair and they mirrored my thoughts almost exactly. I'll try to keep it short:who am i kidding, it won't be
[!!! DON'T READ ANY OF THE SPOILER TAGS IN THE FOLLOWING IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE GAME !!!]
Story & Presentation:
I rolled my eyes when folks in the early-copy thread said it would have PSP-level cutscenes, but man... they weren't wrong. Some of the worst editing I've seen in a modern game. Too many janky, automated cutscenes, that should be reserved for less important stuff like NPC/quest-giver dialog, in situations where I would've expected a dedicated scene. This is the one aspect of WRPGs you shouldn't take inspiration from, lol. With the exception of Witcher 3, of course, which was much more consistent even with most NPC dialog.
A lot of awkward scene transitions and abrupt changes of music where an emotional song plays for, like, 2 seconds, suddenly stops when it cuts away to another scene with silence for a few seconds, then the cutscene's over just like that with a big, tonally-unfitting "Mission complete" screen and a loading screen.
Most of the emotional moments fall completely flat and lack any weight because often there's no proper build-up and characterization.You know what I actually felt sad about instead of Luna's death at the end of Chapter 9 in Altissia? Ignis going blind. That really hit me somehow, even though we speculated about it a few months ago after the TGS trailer. And WTF@the anti-climatic Prompto reveal in Chapter 13. And according to the strategy guide (here) apparently he's the son of Verstael, Niflheim's head of research who could be seen in old trailers and one cutscene in the game? LOL. I still don't get it, but let's discuss that in the spoiler thread. Feels like it was supposed to be a much bigger reveal in the original script, but other scenes were cut and then what was left in didn't make sense anymore. Seems to be a consistent theme for many story beats in the game.
Characters:
The main characters' relationship was undoubtedly the game's (only) narrative strength. Many of the smaller moments were really lovely. What surprised me the most was to see relatable, natural-sounding dialog and interactions in a FF game. The situations followingand theIgnis going blind, especially in the train,scene felt sincerely touching, like, it was the first time SE came remotely close to something intimate that you would see in a Naughty Dog game. Of course they're still far away from it, but some moments showed potential. At least in the German dub I played with, which I never would've expected if you asked me back in March when they announced the dub. This is the first time in my life that I played a game in German when given the choice and I must say I'm positively surprised. I mean, Prompto is still annoying like in any dub - what can you do - but everyone else sounds much more nuanced most of the time. The English dub is absolutely terrible, except for maybe Noctis, and after 20 hours or so I decided to switch to German. I honestly think even some of the Tales of games I played were better directed (ironically Prompto's VA voiced the main protagonist in Tales of Zestiria and he was fine there). Tried the Japanese one, but I felt it was too distracting to read subs all the time in a dynamic game like this where you're constantly moving, jumping, driving and fighting chaotic battles etc., especially with the subs being so small (devs, please give us a text magnifying option like LR had in all RPGs).mid-credits
Unfortunately there are some weak moments in the later chapters where I thought the script wasn't doing their relationships justice, like when theyYou can clearly feel that a lot was cut to make the release date. And I can totally understand why. All the time I wondered how the fuck Tabata is supposed to salvage the Versus-trilogy mess, deliver an huge, ambitious open-world FF, while also creating their first own modern engine and turning the whole dev team structures on the head, all in just 3 years. Now we know how. It's a miracle they turned out something more than just servicable at all, so kudos to that.reunite after not seeing each other for 10 years and they're just like "Hey dude, wassup.". Anti-climatic af. This is where I could actually see the 4chan rumors being true (or maybe I just want them to be), which said there was supposed to be more in the World of Ruin, like Noctis looking for his bros seperately and visiting Dark Lestallum etc.
Just from a script standpoint I think FFXV is actually one of the better and more believably written FFs. What do you guys think of it? I told y'all to give the new writer a chance to prove herself. It's not her fault the general plot and structure is the way it is. Her job was to flesh out the dialog inbetween the story beats and given what she had to work with and the constant rewrites and cuts I think she did fine. The relatable party dynamic is one of the unanimously well-received aspects of the game.
Found the main antagonist entertaining. Side-characters are a joke. Was that really, though I still don't quite understand his origin and background story. Will have to read the spoiler threadIedolas who looked like the other generic daemon monsters in Chapter 13 and we killed just like that without any build-up? LOL.
Also small mechanics like Ignis's cooking and reviewing Prompto's daily photos, which sounded silly at first, turned out to add a nice personal flavor and both of those were worked into the plot during two moments in a subtle but effective way that I found surprisingly touching.(the cast only having canned food after Ignis turned blind and couldn't cook anymore, and choosing your favorite photo right before the finale)
Structure:
I actually like the idea of going from open-world to more narrative-focused, linear because it suits my gaming style where I only do side content in the first half and then get tired half-way through and just want to finish the main story. In FFXV I had been playing for more than 70 hours before I reached Chapter 8, so pretty much half of the game, and probably would've done more if there were any hunts and dungeons left. Will also do the post-game stuff when I have the time, which is really not typical for me and a sign of how much fun I've been having with the gameplay.
The thing about FFXV's structural change is just that the execution here wasn't as strong as it could've been and obviously rushed. I liked thesection. It was different. Would've loved it to be even longer and something like a chamber playtrainfor a few hours, going from drama to horror to action. Also thein the trainhad an interesting atmosphere and it's a shame it wasn't fleshed-out more.World of Ruin
Also come on, the hate on Chapter 13 is typical GAF hyperbole like Witcher 3's combat being the absolute biggest pile of trash that ever graced the earth and all these other "common conceptions" that are just repeated so often until everyone believes it and propagates it even further without questioning it. I mean, is the chapter at least 30min too long? Yes. Is it one of the better parts of the game? No. I actually liked the break after 70 hours of open-world questing. To be fair, I was also over-powered at level 74 or so and could easilykill most of the enemies with that timed "dodge-attack". I saw that some who had issues with the section didn't even know you could use R1+Circle for Ultima or timed dodges to do damage instead of trying to use Death, which is super slow and uneffective, which is why they said they'll increase its power for the next patch.
World:
The open-world is beautiful. Loved the variety of mountains and rocky areas, forests, rivers, coasts etc. Had a blast exploring everything early-on and finding the secret dungeons without knowing about them. I like how exploration isn't spoiled by markers from the get-go, at least until you get the specific quests/hunts. I literally had one of the often joked about "You see that mountain back there? You can go there!" moments, and it felt so cool when I realized there actually was some kinda mini-dungeon with a big area that looked like a boss-battle would be taking place in, but it didn't when I first found the place and so I anticipated and wondered about it for a long time until I had to return to the place later in the game. Not even Zelda games gave me that feeling of discovery/wonder anymore in the last decade (fortunately BOTW seems to do things right again).
I only drove the car in the first 20 hours or so and after I covered every road and parking spot I only used fast-travel and Chocobos. I wasn't expecting to enjoy the automatic car rides, but I actually thought they were relaxing, especially with the radio music turned up (as I said before, set the radio music to twice the volume of the voices/sound-effects in the audio settings). Didn't care about driving being limited. This is not GTA. We have Chocobos for fast and free traversing.
You should've been able to take on multiple hunts from your phone or something like that. Maybe after talking to every hunt-giver at least once. I mean you already can collect your reward for any hunt at any other hunt-giver, so why not the same for starting hunts. Would reduce all these loading screens inbetween every hunt (start hunt, warp to car, choose destination, fast travel, wait a minute or so, walk to the hunt, warp back to car, fast travel to hunt-giver again, wait a minute, rinse and repeat).
Quest design is hot garbage. I won't lie though, I still did every quest because I couldn't stop ("This is the last one I'll do, I swear!"). Witcher 3 forever spoiled me. The problem is not having fetch-quests - every sidequest is one if you break it down - but how well its nature is masked by creative and engaging writing.
Great dungeons and I haven't yet done the optional post-game ones, especially the crazy one that was praised by Jason Schreier and many others here.
Combat:
I used Control Type B because it felt a lot more comfortable to me, though I wonder if it's not also much easier than the default Type A that probably most played with because I honestly could just hold L1 to dodge all the time while mashing Attack and I almost automatically activated many parries/counters - of course I had to stop attacking when the Guard prompt popped up, but the timing felt more lax to me than with Type A. Also switched L2 and L3 through the PS4 remapping feature, so Sprint is on L2 and the less-frequently used Summon on L3.
When I got into the combat's flow after a few hours I loved it. It has something addictive about it and I just couldn't stop doing hunts, lol. Keeps you on your toes and looks flashy. The camera and target system, especially when fighting large monsters, is trash. Camera too frantic. Hard-locks aren't hard enough and soft-locks are too soft, constantly causing targets to change accidentally between the different body parts of monsters and it's super annoying to concentrate on only one part if you also want to control the camera at the same time, which causes the target to change. This was easily the most frustrating aspect of the combat.
The party commands really helped making the combat more varied and I often used different combinations of skills. I wish there was a simple way of telling your whole group to regroup. Maybe as Noctis' own party command instead of Ignis' Regroup (so I can use his amazing Overwhelm skill instead) - I mean, technically there would be an empty skill slot on the bottom of the party command menu for this.
I barely used magic because of how inconvenient it was to use. It's used up so quickly and then you have to go into the menu and switch out the valuable empty weapon slot again every time. They should have used a seperate weapon wheel just for magic by holding L2 + D-pad because, let's be real, summons absolutely don't need their own button for the 5 times I used them in 90 hours - instead give them an entry in the item menu like Moogles/Chocobo. In the last chapters I had 12 full magic vials sitting there and never used any of them. Though, I was overpowered at level 77 anyway, lol.
When you're in the flow, dodging, warping in and out, sword-dancing in the air, breaking enemies, activating party skills at the right time, it's a joy, but it can also be super chaotic and finnicky to the point where I almost wasn't watching what happended on screen because I couldn't really see anything anyway and rather just observed the HP bars and waited for the guard/parry prompts. I can understand why some wouldn't find it fun in those moments. I'd love to see an improved version of this system someday. One of the reason I'd like something like a FFXV-2 is that the direct FF sequels always had the best battle-systems, iterating on and improving the base systems. Hopefully the DLCs will do this now.
Music:
remarkable. Best battle and boss themes in the series, whew. The dynamic music system in towns/outposts is really fun. BUT the default audio setting were almost unusable for me. You can't hear the music, especially the already rare and constantly interrupted field music, underneath the voice and sound effects, the sound-effects and music in battles are annoyingly loud compared to the rest, and radio volume too low. First thing I did was setting music and radio volume to 100 and voices and sound-effects to around 40-50. Best decision. I recommend others to tweak the settings too.Un
Conclusion:
So, ̶i̶̶n̶̶ ̶̶s̶̶h̶̶o̶̶r̶̶t̶ in summary, it's a good game, sometimes ranging between mediocre and great, with huge narrative flaws that hold it back from being amazing. What makes it such a shame is that the potential was there, but the nightmarish development history was clearly impossible to escape from and they probably would've needed a year more to make the current version more consistent and fleshed-out at least. You can see the seams left everywhere by tons of cuts and rewrites of the original material. Now all of this might sound more negative than I actually felt about it while playing. I had a blast with it and clocked in nearly 90 hours, which I only did for 2 other games in the last 10 years, Witcher 3 (most likely still my GOTY over FFXV and UC4) and Lightning Returns (yes). And by the way, in all of the 90 hours I played I encountered maybe 3 harmless bugs. Only had to reload once because a hunt wouldn't spawn. Never glitched out anywhere as Noctis. No crashs. Actually pretty impressive for a huge, dynamic game like this.
There's just a certain charm about FFXV for a AAA game and it was interesting to see many reviewers share this same sentiment. Almost everyone used the words "weird" and "strange" in a positive way like "weirdly engrossing", "strangely fascinating" etc. and I think it's a fresh breath of air amidst the Holiday blockbuster season. You could say FFXV is the Deadly Premonition of AAA games. This new Forbes review nails it basically:(okay, please don't challenge me on this analogy, I haven't thought about it more than a minute, but I think it could make sense, lol)
There are so, so many things I hate about Final Fantasy XV. Decisions that were made from pacing to structure to storytelling to mechanics that just seem mind-bogglingly bad in many ways. And yet, despite that, what the game gets right, its visuals, its combat, the bond it forges between its main heroes, that ultimately I sort of love the game. FFXV is heavily flawed, but theres a certain, intangible magic that pulls it all together in a way that genuinely surprised me by the end.
In the end it turned out exactly as I expected a few months ago: not a masterpiece, but a solid foundation for the future, if they learn from their mistakes with FFXV. Can't wait to see what direction FFXVI will be going. Just finally get rid of all this decade-old FNC/Versus baggage. But man... if the new, ridiculous "Versus XV" rumors are true that would be the most hilarious irony of life.
Probably no one read this whole post anyway, but I just had to get it off my chest
And he can finally rest in peace.
Lights and Waves
Member
I have a very big heart but that scene did jack shit for me. Yes, it was beautifully animated, but Luna is such a nonfactor in this game. She could have been hit by a car and I would have been just as apathetic.
I'm not going to reward poor story telling with sympathy tears.
Question regarding the adamantoise:
When I start that quest, can I just leave it be and have the adamantoise crawling around in Leide indefinitely in my game (which would be awesome)? And if I defeat it, will it/the strange mountain be gone from my game forever (which wouldn't be awesome at all)?
When I start that quest, can I just leave it be and have the adamantoise crawling around in Leide indefinitely in my game (which would be awesome)? And if I defeat it, will it/the strange mountain be gone from my game forever (which wouldn't be awesome at all)?
Arc07
Member
You can fight it as many times as you want.
How does this work? Do I have to take on the hunt/quest again or does the adamantoise simply respawn the next day?
formasymphonic
Member
I played it with Japanese audio. He's not as "butlery" there. The english version has a lot of changes like referring to Noctis by title where as in the original audio he calls him Noct like the others do. While he uses formal speech, he is still generally as familial as the others are.
FFXV's dub also bugged me because they are all meant to be from the same place, yet only Ignis got the accent — which made no sense to me. Also as a British guy myself, i hate hearing TV/Theatrical British accents in media because no-one here actually talks like that.
give it a week at mot and i'm sure there will be
.
semiconscious
Member
easily the most touching/effective use of product placement ever. just seeing the word 'coleman' now is enough to get me to tear up a little
...Yep, he completed his main goal.
He spent the entire game toying and messing with Noctis, and although he died, he took Noctis and the Lucis Caelum bloodline with him.
Yeah, as a Brit, I HATED Ignis' voice.
What's even worse is the voice actor is British himself, but the voice director must have told him to put on that accent. If the VA had have done his normal voice, I think he would have been infinitely more tolerable.
That all said, I still kind of liked his character. I mean lets face it, all 3 of the bro's are tropes, but it's the journey and comradery which builds them into such likable characters.
This killed meeasily the most touching/effective use of product placement ever. just seeing the word 'coleman' now is enough to get me to tear up a little
Just finished reading your review. I wondered what opinion you had on the game and you made some good points in your review. Welcome back.
formasymphonic
Member
Yeh I loved them all.
One thing i missed though (others who have played Duscae 2.0 may remember), but there where mini missions you could do that had you split and maybe spend more time with one of the others and you got a little insight into their character.
Also there was some other fun characterisation tat completely never made it into the game - like when Gladio / Prompto (Gladio especially) were trying to hit on Cidney and she is just completely oblivious/uninterested in it.
Its gonna be real interesting to see how much they are willing to put back into the game over the next year tbh...
Edit: and yes as Delaney notes below - the camp scene character stuff for Duscae never made a re-appearance either, which is also a shame. [Reminder for anyone interested]
...I feel like replaying Duscae now
(I still prefer 2.0's combat as well)
There's two sides to an airship - one is the experience, the other is utility of getting from one place to another fast.
FFX nailed the latter (HEHE), FFXV nailed the former. Even if the experience usually is a turning point in the story and a sudden sense of freedom to explore the entire world map.
Agreed! Thankfully the Regalia implementation has both the experience AND the utility. You can take off to the skies and see the overworld from above in a true spectacle, OR, you can use it like the airship of X (Fast travel feature).
I'm really glad they managed to implement the airship feature, even if it's post-game only.
This. I was glad that we didn't fight a screen-filling semi-god with 100 wings and heads growing out of their body again for like the millionth time in the series.
Yoo, where are these from!?It'd help reflect another side of his character; the person he was before becoming 'Izunia.' There's already concept art exploring that side of him, bringing it into gameplay might have worked; especially if it's after Noctis has sacrificed himself.
Actually, call me an old fogey but I felt there's no point taking off, going to another point on the map, lining up over a road, then landing, as a matter of fast travel utility, over just using the actual fast-travel feature. That's why I was bringing up the contrast between XV and X.
What the Type-F is great for is taking aerial shots. Too bad it's not possible to fly over Gralea or Altissia though
Would have been really cool even if you can't land anywhere, but I guess there's just a little too much unfinished terrain or some such. Same for Ruinsomnia.Did they just cut out all the camp scenes from the game? I don't recall seeing any of them.
There also wasn't the beautiful stargazing quest with Ignis and later with all of the bros anymore. :/
Instead we got the cooking minigame with Ignis which I actually never found/tried out.
I read the whole thing! I feel like both you and Kagari hit the nail on the head. I really enjoyed my time with the game but there was definitely some flaws and missed potential. Overall a memorable entry, though.