Renzatic on 22/3/2018 at 17:49
This.
[video=youtube;4RZAd4RZkSw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZAd4RZkSw[/video]
Mr.Duck on 22/3/2018 at 18:37
NEVAH!
GamingDadOfFour on 30/3/2018 at 00:34
I finished this about a month ago and was fairly disappointed. The story felt rushed, particularly in the second half and the gameplay itself was very bland in comparison to the rest of the series.
I still enjoyed it, but I don't see myself replaying it like I have most of the other games.
Sulphur on 24/5/2018 at 10:20
I somehow decided to keep going with this (mainly because grafix), and then decided to pause it for a bit and look up some shit (because anime).
Right. So if you didn't see Kingsglaive, you can intuit there's a bunch of MacGuffins to be collected, there's a big MacGuffin, a small MacGuffin, and some laboured political meandering off the side that boils down to 'the bad guys are bad, so take the fight to them!'. After watching Kingsglaive? None of this changes, but you now know what these MacGuffins do. Hurray. There's also added detail for a few of the more tragic arcs in the game, and the game calls back to the events in the movie, so even though it's too long and tepidly written (I felt few twinges of emotion that weren't boredom or a concomitant anger at being bored), it does add needed context to what's happening and why. The animation's also typically spectacular Square Enix-quality, so at the very least there's finely detailed architecture, faces, and explodey bits.
There's also a 5-episode anime that's decently bite-sized and thoroughly average but gives a nice amount of backstory to the three friends in the game, as well as dispelling part of Noctis's aura of idiot emo boy (or at least justifying it a tad) -- and it should have been part of the main game.
Because, I'm gonna call it -- I'm not seeing it. A game this big doesn't have enough content to justify its grind. It's beautiful, but the sidequests aren't used as excuses to spend more time bantering or finding out more about the crew. They're just there because the world needs reasons to jaunt you from point A to B with nothing except combat happening in between. There's a few quips here and there and random asides that sell you the appearance of friendship, but the actual pencilling in and shading of their relationships is left up to your brain much of the time. Do little cutaways of wordless banter at a campfire every time you rest, or canned animation that repeats every once in a while on a long car journey enrichen the story? No, they're nice if you've already done the groundwork of fleshing out the characters, or in fact use them to flesh out the characters. Barring a few exceptions, this... does not happen.
I was beginning to wonder if a lot of the praise was people projecting their own imagined relationships with friends onto the roadtrip bros, and that may indeed be part of it. Part of it might also be that I missed out on almost all of the 'tour' quests that happen when you camp at a haven. Apparently there's 3 per character for 9 in total, and I've done a grand total of 2. So I'm rewinding back even though I've reached the final act (which, let it be said, has some spectacular set pieces all through), and hopefully it's not more stupid busywork without any actual character. Though, one of them's a fishing mission, which is probably one of the most boring things in the game this side of Desert Bus. Hopefully there's more to it than Desert Bus.
There had better be more to it than Desert Bus.
Malf on 24/5/2018 at 11:11
I think I've done the fishing mission. It ends with catching a really big fish, and everyone jumping in the water to lift it out. Whodathunk?
Every time I contemplate going back and finishing the damn thing off, I just remember how soulless the majority of the minute-to-minute gameplay is.
Then I go back to goofy Bolivian drug shenanigans in Wildlands, centuries of building massive navies and sinking an AI who still doesn't know how naval battles work in Civ VI, or gleefully murdering Orcs in now wonderfully microtransaction-free Shadow of War.
I ain't got time for no emo boyband roadtrip.
Sulphur on 24/5/2018 at 11:27
Quote Posted by Malf
I think I've done the fishing mission. It ends with catching a really big fish, and everyone jumping in the water to lift it out. Whodathunk?
Every time I contemplate going back and finishing the damn thing off, I just remember how soulless the majority of the minute-to-minute gameplay is.
Then I go back to goofy Bolivian drug shenanigans in Wildlands, centuries of building massive navies and sinking an AI who still doesn't know how naval battles work in Civ VI, or gleefully murdering Orcs in now wonderfully microtransaction-free Shadow of War.
I ain't got time for no emo boyband roadtrip.
To be fair, I'm playing it because it does two things well that I've always been enthralled with in jRPGs: large-scale spectacle and an utter lack of restraint with alpha-heavy particle effects. I'm used to having more than just that to depend upon though, which is why I don't mind seeking out actual content if there's any to be found. Even FFXIII had a battle system that made things interesting, but the counterpoint to that was the rest of FFXIII was as enjoyable as having my molars pulled out with a pair of red-hot pliers.
Also, how ironic is it that essentially every single game in these last two posts barring Civ (but including FFXV) is essentially another flavour of Standard Ubisoft Open-worlder?
Sulphur on 3/6/2018 at 19:07
And it's done. While I doubt my opinion is going to change much given enough time to let the endorphin rush fade from the climactic final hours of the game, I'm willing to revise my previous opinion of this and say that, for all its massive flaws, this is probably the first time a Final Fantasy's felt like
Final Fantasy since Sakaguchi left. I don't mean in terms of the overworld, magic, or overarching systems, but in terms of the sort of fantastically epic yet personal journeys they used to be when he was around. It just feels emotionally honest (except for one post-credits scene they should have cut), which is actually a pretty big compliment, all said and done.
Anyway, the game has these procedural photos taken by Prompto that you get to review every time you camp, and while a lot of them are pretty bad, some of them can look pretty damn good. Beyond that, a lot of effort's been expended on making the photos of the group convincing, complete with a mix of mid-emotion facial expressions, goofy poses, casual coolness and silently thoughtful for any given end-of-day-reel. It's a shame, then, that all of them have zero anti-aliasing applied; it's probably because of the way the game generates them in the engine, I imagine. I still liked a bunch of them enough to share.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/X9ab6Nu.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/S4JNU8f.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/gNwU7sz.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/9PslGqj.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/unn5cYK.jpg
Malf on 3/6/2018 at 22:10
While I like the idea of the photo mode, it's a bummer they didn't spend a little more time to integrate it with Steam's screenshot functionality.
Sulphur on 4/6/2018 at 02:51
Yeah, I can't even take Steam screenies because I've turned the overlay off. Ansel is an option, and I want to use it for a whistle-stop tour of the sights, but it makes the game freak out and stutter like mad the moment I exit the screenshot interface. Apparently there's asynchronous loading of the controller and keyboard icons that the game endlessly loops into once that happens, which is really weird.
henke on 4/6/2018 at 05:20
Yeah those are some nice shots, especially the middle one.