It's too bad they apparently cut the "monster version" of Ardyn, that's exactly what we were all expecting.
There's no way you can convince me that Ardyn didn't have a One-Winged Angel final battle form that got cut for either time/budget reasons, or because it no longer made sense with his retrofitted backstory and that of the Starscourge.
I feel like they knew there was too little plot to pull something like that with, and they'd have another "Who the hell is Necron?" on their hands.
It was a really janky and underwhelming final battle, too.
The first phase I was kind of excited because some of the best fights in gaming are one-on-one with someone with the same powerset, but it just felt...off.
Then the second phase it really just fireworks while the city scrolls around to to put you in position for the next cutscene.
Then you have a fight that you'd have to pretty much put the controller down to lose, ended with a 12-hit QTE that's all the same button.
And on top of it all, the Bros don't get to back Noctis up during
*any* of this.
Honestly, the way Ardyn just unceremoniously knocked them out was just insulting, and the spell had little skull effects, too.
I honestly thought for a second that Ardyn had cast Death on them and that was it. I was furious, but not in an "emotional payoff" way - in a "C'mon. That's bullshit." sort of way.
The bros deserved at least one super awesome sequence working together, but Bahamut and Shiva steal the Ifrit battle, and then the Bros are pretty much off-screen the rest of the game.
Come to think of it, I bet the reason they show up besides Noctis in the "Ardyn in the Afterlife" segment is a band-aid from the cutscene director so that the bros, the actual backbone and emotional core of the game aren't
completely fucking absent for the climax.
