Final Fantasy XV

[Pajaro Pete]

Originally Posted by Violentvixen

The painting in that article implies too many things! Beautifully done, though.

the king and his family befriend a hobo in the park

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by Deptford

Hoo, boy, very disappointed that they really do seem to be prepping a new NOCTIS LIVES ending.

Thaaaaaat just sucks.

I've found literally every single addition to the story since launch to be a detriment to the story of the game. Everything that has been done, has added nothing of value or substance. Most of the information you could infer from elsewhere in the game and just ends up feeling redundant as if they're trying to hammer a point home they felt their audience was too stupid to get. And their addition feels tacked on and like it intrudes onto an otherwise cohesive experience. Like if someone came into your house when you weren't looking and stapled new pages of fanfic into the middle of your Harry Potter book. Written in crayon on construction paper. If the day-one patch wasn't so necessary for things like game stability, I would recommend people just not install any updates to the game whatsoever. Because I actually think the core of the story is really well done.

Originally Posted by Violentvixen

The painting in that article implies too many things! Beautifully done, though.

Hold up, zoom and enhance on Gladio in that picture.

Yeah, that's about how I feel too, man.

[LancerECNM]

Oh. Okay.
So FF15 is the last Final Fantasy game, huh? Can't wait until they add the fourth open world section in 2026.

EDIT: This sounds snarky, but I've got a 70 hour second playthrough on the back burner that I frequently think about. I can keep playing FF15 for a while, I just hope they finish making it soon.

[Zef]

I'm right on the verge of PLOT happening in Altissia. I met Secretary Hillary Clinton Camelia Claustra and was invited to a summit at her estate.

But then I discovered Totomostro and... I've become addicted to FFXV cockfighting

I mean, it's absolutely cockfighting (especially when I get two varieties of cockatrices going at it), but, dammit, I want that Magitek Generator. Also, since I'm completely removed from the action but for blowing a vuvuzela at my monster of choice, it allows me to sit back, and appreciate the ridiculous level of detail that went into * designing monsters, their attacks, their patterns, and their behavior*. I don't know if I can actually recognize their "tells" when I'm back in combat against them, but it's a start.

So yeah, after playing Totomostro for a couple hours yesterday, I can easily spend another ten. Yikes.

Then when I went to install another Regalia component I won there, I discovered that one of the recent updates added offroad race tracks.

At this rate, I'm NEVER finishing the plot of this game.

* Now if only they had put the same kind of effort on their female characters -_-

[Bongo]

I started this game today. I kinda get the basic elements of combat (ran through the tutorial first) but the strategy kind of eludes me. Maybe it's just early, though. It keeps giving me A+ ranks so I must be doing something right.

I already liked the idea of the fantasy road trip aesthetic, but I like it even better now that I'm experiencing it. It's nostalgic.

I had a bunch of powerful weapons in my inventory that I assume comes from the DLC that's bundled with the Windows edition. Speaking of DLC, when should I do it?

[Oathbreaker]

Originally Posted by Bongo

Speaking of DLC, when should I do it?

If you want to do them ASAP I would suggest waiting until you reach Chapter 8 to do the Gladiolus stuff, reach chapter 14 before you do the Prompto stuff, and beat the game before you do Ignis's stuff.

[shivam]

wait, how do you do totomestro? i went in and out of altissa and never got it.

[Zef]

Originally Posted by shivam

wait, how do you do totomestro? i went in and out of altissa and never got it.

The Totomostro (Italian for "all the monsters"? Sounds like it) arena is accessible only via gondola. You need to go to the topmost level of the city, where the giant leapin' whale sculpture is, then head right (East) to the gondola station. There's a stall right before it selling you vuvuzelas that have various effects on your chosen monsters, like raising their attack or defense, removing status effects, etc, but they're very expensive.

Other than appreciating monster design, Totomostro is there to grind money and rare (but non-essential) items. You buy medals at 10 gil a pop, then choose how many medals to bet on a monster team (among anywhere between 1 vs 1 to 4-team brawls). If your chosen team is the last one standing, you get back your wager multiplied by the team's odds. You can make a risky wager of 9999 medals on a bunch of Lv 10 scorpions with 9.8 odds and make almost 100k, or a safe wager on a single Lv 24 Dualhorn that can basically OHK the scorpions and therefore has 1.2 odds and barely make any profit. Then you take your medals and trade them for prizes, from car parts to equipment to loot. If you trade for loot, you can leave the arena and resell it for gil.

[Traumadore]

Yeah, you just kinda have to get a feel for how the monsters stack up. I'm sure there's a guide out there if you don't want to sweat it. The horns are expensive, but they can make a big difference.

I highly recommend the metallic colors pack for the Regalia.

[shivam]

episode prompto is amazing from a story perspective, but a bag of dicks from a mechanics perspective. driving and shooting is exactly why i play final fantasy games, so that i never have to do either of those things.

[WisteriaHysteria]

I kinda hate Episode Prompto from a story perspective. Because from a story perspective, all of the stuff we learn was already implied in the main game, it just happened off-screen/in your imagination. And it turns out, what really happened wasn't as cool as your imagination.

[Destil]

Went through the DLC. Interesting how much these tie into the extended media (movie and anime). Once we get Ravus and Luna I the best way to experience all the backstory will be by actually playing the game, which will be nice.

Gladio... I don't even know. Nothing happened. The entire plot is "Gladio is a bad ass, and so is Cor." I did enjoy the game's take on Gilgamesh (one arm -> two arms morphin' time got a laugh out of me) and Battle on the Big Bridge.

Prompto was good. I love how they give you a mini-open world. The shooting mechanics were... fiddly and it felt like I wasn't doing much a lot of the time; Aranea is doing all the work, you're just there to hammer home damage during the breaks she sets up. They should have lead with this instead of Gladio, it would have established the tone a lot better (and Gladio's episode could have been a light jaunt between the two emotionally heavier ones).

Ignus was fantastic! Of course, Iggy's my favorite. His fight mechanics were simpler than Noct's but I would still play through XV again as Ignis in a hearbeat. This is easily the most overtly villainous Ardyn is in the entire game, and he's a delight as such. I don't recall if we know that Ignis knows what Noct's quest will require at any point during XV proper but it really puts that scene where Noct wakes up in bed into context. Just like the main game the ending hammers the emotions home hard, but it's earnest and earned enough that I don't really even see that as a bad thing.

EDIT: Head-cannon to make Episode Gladious less of a waste of time: Gladio's dad died saving Cor on the bridge. All the approval stuff is actually about his father, not some asshole sword murder god 2000 years old in the middle of some canyon. Glado's the only chocobro with a family (after King Dad gets offed during the movie, anyway), so there's some room for pathos there.

I'm not spoilering this because there's nothing to spoil, Ep.Gl dosn't actually have a plot!

[shivam]

Originally Posted by WisteriaHysteria

I kinda hate Episode Prompto from a story perspective. Because from a story perspective, all of the stuff we learn was already implied in the main game, it just happened off-screen/in your imagination. And it turns out, what really happened wasn't as cool as your imagination.

Yeah, I super disagree, but I played episode prompto before I got to that scene in the main game so it was an incredibly satisfying reveal.

[Zef]

I'm extremely annoyed at the game right now, because I wanted to exhaust every last drop of gameplay before the Point of No Return (the Summit in Altissia) but there's a whole bunch of Lv 9 Hunts scattered all over the place, and I'm only 3 stars away from attaining that level. I thought I may have missed a Hunt somewhere, and I've revisited every tipster at least twice, but nope, according to the guide, the remaining non-Lv 9 Hunts are all unlocked AFTER beating the game. Who does that? Why do it like that? Aaaaargh.

I did fish up Bismarck and the giant tuna he leaves behind, so Ignis can now make four servings of a ridiculously powerful sushi. The ONLY things left to do on the mainland are the Duscae and Cleigne offroad races (yay!), finding every last fish I haven't fished yet (neat, but... tedious) and eating every last meal at every restaurant to fill out Ignis's recipeh book (appealing, but probably boring.)

Yeah I'm 175 hours in and still haven't really started the plot yet. D'oh.

[TheSL]

Originally Posted by Destil

EDIT: Head-cannon to make Episode Gladious less of a waste of time: Gladio's dad died saving Cor on the bridge.

Clarus (Gladio's dad) dies fighting alongside the King in Kingsglaive.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by shivam

Yeah, I super disagree, but I played episode prompto before I got to that scene in the main game so it was an incredibly satisfying reveal.

That's the price of the bleeding edge, I guess. It's wild that this product life cycle now applies to friggin individual video games now.

[shivam]

i mean, it's the eternal debate between reading things in publication order or chronological order, right? in this game's case, i think playing in chronological order makes everything work all the better, mainly because they left so many glaring holes to begin with. Right now, i just got out of chapter 13 (which i accidentally did the gladio/ignis route instead of the noct route so i missed story stuff), and went back to 'real' ffxv to do the fun stuff of getting all the fish and shit.

[Zef]

Originally Posted by shivam

i mean, it's the eternal debate between reading things in publication order or chronological order, right? in this game's case, i think playing in chronological order makes everything work all the better, mainly because they left so many glaring holes to begin with. Right now, i just got out of chapter 13 (which i accidentally did the gladio/ignis route instead of the noct route so i missed story stuff), and went back to 'real' ffxv to do the fun stuff of getting all the fish and shit.

So I'm in Chapter 9 (as I've been for the last 100 hours), which means I can no longer do Gladio's DLC in chronological order, and I'm free to do it whenever. But what's the optimal point to do Ignis's and Prompto's, then, if I want to do those "in the right order"? (Going by chapter no., that is. I know that the party splits up and there's a timeskip, but not much beyond that.)

[Destil]

Gladio can be any time. (nothing happens)

Prompto fits best between chapter 12 and chapter 13.

Ignis is post game as there cut-scenes from the final chapter intercut into his ending. It takes place between chapter 9 and chapter 10 if you really want it in order.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ignis has two routes you can explore, one which completely changes the ending of the game.

[Zef]

But whatever happens in the DLC, stays in the DLC, right? The main storyline doesn't change, I can't carry treasures or Exp, etc?

[Destil]

Originally Posted by WisteriaHysteria

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ignis has two routes you can explore, one which completely changes the ending of the game.

I think you can only do that route on a second playthrough? I did it last night and don't remember it being an option the first time.

[Destil]

Originally Posted by Zef

But whatever happens in the DLC, stays in the DLC, right? The main storyline doesn't change, I can't carry treasures or Exp, etc?

You'll get some stuff for doing the DLC, but XP won't carry over at least.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by shivam

i mean, it's the eternal debate between reading things in publication order or chronological order, right? in this game's case, i think playing in chronological order makes everything work all the better, mainly because they left so many glaring holes to begin with.

There are certainly areas in the plot that could have used elucidating, and characters that needed to be better fleshed out. But our three chocobros during their times away from the main party are not, IMO. In fact, the game works better as a cohesive, single narrative without those injections of story.

So much of the game's original narrative and framework is carefully structured around the singular perspective of Noctis. And a lot of that just falls apart/loses its poignancy when you begin interjecting the perspectives of others. Take Episode Prompto for example. If you're playing the close-to-launch version of FFXV, there's a whole complicated dynamic involved with his temporary absence from the story. Noctis is fooled into attacking his own friend, something that racks him with extraordinary guilt. Not knowing what happened to him, not knowing how he's being treated, not knowing if he's even alive, not knowing if he resents the Prince, is all very effective pathos that loses its edge if you already know what happened to Prompto from playing his side story. To say nothing of their reunion. Noctis is, in a lot of ways, dreading his reunion with Prompto because he thinks Prompto might hate him now for what he's done. And when they do find him, all Prompto can do is worry about whether the Prince will hate him for being a secret Nifelheim citizen or something ridiculous. And it's a really powerful moment in the game, IMO, when Prompto begins almost having a nervous breakdown about it, and you the player are momentarily like "wait, what??" and Noctis interjects and is like, "Dude, nobody cares about that nonsense, you're our brother and that's all that matters." Having better knowledge of Prompto's ordeal distracts from that moment and pulls the player out of Noctis's perspective.

There's a similar situation going on with Ignis too. The biggest emotional gut-punch of Chapter 9 isn't when Luna dies or anything associated with that disaster. It's when Noctis wakes up. As a player, you've been completely immersed in just Noctis's perspective, so you likely share his one-track mind with regards to his priorities and anguish. And when Gladio gives Noctis a scolding about pain and loss, and points to Ignis, it's crushing because up until that point the player has no idea what even happened with Ignis, but now we're forced to imagine what could have happened and practice empathy. And is often the answer here, like with Episode Gladio, the DLC's answer as to what happened turns out to be a lot less interesting than what you imagined while playing the game.

[Zef]

Reached the Final Boss last night.

Interesting that his opening attack is to glitch out the game so you're either exiled into an endless, bright blue sky above an ocean of shining white clouds, or you're teleported into a sealed-off subway station from which there is no escape. More Final Bosses should do that to the heroes.

[Zef]

[Lady]

Congrats! Now do those Hunts to take your mind off of it.

[Pajaro Pete]

can't wait until square enix gets one of those

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by Zef

Look here Luna, at the wonderful memories of our trip... we fished all day instead of rescuing you!

Also holy moly that playtime. Boss-status

[Zef]

Guys

Guys

Pitiless Pitioss Ruins is AMAAAAAZIIIIIIIIING

Everything after the 2.5D platforming section and until you return to the second room is the game's absolute nadir, but the entire rest of the dungeon is my favorite. Especially the room with the ball. And especially the room with the moving spikes. And especially the room with the stationary spikes and moving platforms. And especially the room with the demon wall. And especially the room with the 45° platforms. And especially the 2.5D platforming section. And especially the first room with the beardo.

I wish I could reset the whole thing and do it over again.

As a bonus: when I got back to the car, the MP3 player somehow timed it JUST RIGHT that the FFV Airship Theme came on exactly as the Regalia took off. I'm glad I got THAT on video