Final Fantasy XV (previously Versus XIII)

Square fell into the common pitfall of open worlds.

Making the world so big without actually putting shit to do in it aside from boring busywork (repetitive & uninteresting side-quests.)

Its like a Ubisoft game except Ubi usually puts a bit more variety in their busywork than XV did.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Thing is people will want another open world for XVI.

Mileena Madness

Ugh. I'd like to think that games like Persona 5 have taught people that RPGs don't need to be open world to be good.

At this point open worlds are becoming actively detrimental.

edited 17th Mar '18 10:29:36 AM by LordVatek

This song needs more love.

I don't think they are, but there are a lot of game developers that don't seem to get that the open world alone doesn't make your game any deeper or more fun to play.

If it's not going to be content dense like Yakuza, it needs to be extremely content rich and well crafted from top to bottom like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild. XV's just a big, bland open field with nothing worth talking about in it.

XV's open world is close to being good. It just needed more dungeons, important locations and maybe more biomes. Instead of the 10 or so dungeons there needed to be like 50.

My biggest problem is the cities are FAR too big to be supported by such a small world, the 'world map' is dumb as shit. They really should have gone with a more XII style of just a small cross section of a much larger world.

Yeah but the Regalia tho

you can make it into a monster truck now

that fixes everything right ?

That doesn’t help the real lack of progression in the combat and reward in the game. It’s been like 30 hours since I have seen a weapon upgrade and the hunts just keep giving useless gil and dupe accessories.

Speaking of pointless... wtf was up with that treasure hunt... 50k Gil and that’s it for so much hunting... not even an achievement.

edited 17th Mar '18 7:48:14 PM by Memers

There's no vaired play-styles here.

Like open worlds usually give you the option to play as say a sneaky rogue, an up front warrior, or a long range magic caster.

Here there's none of that, Noctis just plays the same all round.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

but monster truck tho

He has other weapons, but every weapon sucks besides the shortsword and the greatsword, so it doesn't really matter. Monster Hunter this game is not.

This game really needed to get rid of the combat, the collection of incomprehensible events that likes to pretend its a plot, and the Final Fantasy label and just be a standalone game with the four characters on a road trip. It fails at everything besides that stuff and the game would only improve by just being that.

This song needs more love.

I would go farther in the other direction and double down on the plot and make it make sense as an RPG plot.

Possibly keep the road trip but make it going home to Insomnia then the city is taken leading to an escape sequence and hooking up with the army retaking territory and opening room for main quest, side quests and dungeons. Have random skirmishes happen on the map as you pass by which you can join in, it would make the air drops make more sense. It would make Cor’s role more clear as well as having sections with him joining make more sense when there is an army as support.

Have the whole Gods war thing solely a Luna thing and going on at the same time as a dual plot then later connect on how the two plots are connected. Promote Luna and Gentiana to party members for this.

Iris should have also been promoted to a party member, instead of being ‘Miss I cant do anything by my self escort me around’ she would be trying to be like her brother and learning to fight after Insomnia, despite Gladio trying to keep her out of it. And her arc is proving herself to her big bro then backing off the warmongering, kinda similar to Hope.

TLDR they just needed to channel FFVI...

edited 17th Mar '18 9:24:48 PM by Memers

It would be neat if XVI was space-themed because I can see open-world possibly being done better with many worlds to explore giving a real sense of exploration with the story.

Mileena Madness

So I tried out Comrades... more people need to play I can’t find anyone to play with.

I fought Prompto though and well he took this and gave it to the photographer guy... the fucker turned me to stone then took a selfie of it! Seriously Prompto.

Also do those pullups gladio!

edited 19th Mar '18 6:08:32 AM by Memers

I beat Comrades.

Got all the up till now released trophies as well.

Took a bit of doing.

Comrades works best when you have a friend(s) that also plays the game.

Come to think on it, I did grind a lot. I may just be bad. Or I didn't optimise my equipment upgrades - which I didn't, I must admit.

Oh damnit, so if you have FFXV on PC steam cloud does NOT save your saved pictures if you reinstall the game... reinstalled it after I had to reset my OS and saves work fine just the saved photos are now 200 black screens.

Ok, I just beat the game (base game, no DLC) and had some questions/complaints about the plot and characters that hopefully tropers can answer for me. The game was fun, but not fun enough to spring for the DLC in search of answers.

First, the hell was with the so-called "romance" between Noctis and Luna? I'm supposed to believe that they're deeply in love, but they haven't seen each other in over a decade, barely talk by letter, oh and Noctis is taking Gladio's sister out on dates and giving her flowers. Plus, outside of the closing credits scene, Luna treats Noctis more like a younger brother she's taking care of, and that makes more sense given how she's older than he is.

Second, the whole bit with Ignis losing his eyesight. Just take a Remedy and walk it off, like you do with literally every other injury up to the point of death, bro. Gameplay and Story Segregation usually doesn't bother me quite this much, but that might be because I got tired of being yelled at for running a short distance away to pick up a blue shiny and running back.

Third, I never felt like I had a clear handle on what Ardyn's motivation actually was. What little I got during gameplay was that he used to be one of Lucian's kings way back in the day, was responsible for curing people of demonic infection, and then ... something happened, he got branded a demon, and decided to go all Omnicidal Maniac. It really felt like there were steps missing there in the explanation. His boss fight was pretty awesome, I'll give it that.

Fourth, what actually happened to the Emperor? I watched the Kingsglaive movie before I bought the game, and they sure make it seem like he's the Big Bad, but then he never appears on-screen in the game. Moreover, once you get into the facility in the capitol, all of the information you find about the demonic infection make it sound like going after the crystal was something of a Batman Gambit for the Emperor - drive the Chosen One into collecting the dozen Mac Guffins, power up the crystal, and cure the world (ie mostly his country) of the demons that they've turned into. Then ... one comment about how Ardyn killed him off-screen and that's it?

Fifth, fishing. Just ... ugh. I have rarely hated a minigame this much.

Sixth, what kind of time travel lets me kill a hunt monster, then travel into the past to claim the reward for killing it?^note Picking up car parts and then travelling to the past to install them, I can totally deal with.

I will note that overall, I enjoyed the game. Warp-throwing around the battlefield^note especially when you get a strong enemy right between two warp points, so you hit-jump-hit-jump back and forth was pretty darn fun. Crafting spells via elemency was super neat, though I wish it had gone a bit beyond the standard fire-ice-lightning trinity for elements, and having them be area-affect-friendly-fire meant I almost never cast spells outside of boss fights and opening ambush^note except when I fell into the level 50 dungeon at level 18 and burned all my elemancy blasting the super-undead after he killed everyone but Noctis because they won't stay the fuck away and use ranged attacks.

The car was ... meh. Setting up to drive across the map was, at best, an excuse to check stuff on my phone (and later, grab a few AP), but it wasn't bad. I mostly liked the more open feel of the game, and spent quite a bit of time just wandering around gathering random items.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

You do see the Emperor... that red demon(I forget the actual name) that you keep running into in the last half of chapter 13, that's what Ardyn did to the Emperor. It's mentioned once or twice around then that it happened, but you really don't see the full picture unless you play Episode Prompto.

edited 11th Jun '18 8:23:45 AM by strawberryflavored

The reason Ignis' eyesight can't be fixed is that his eyesight was taken by the Lucii as the price he paid for putting on the ring to save Noctis from Ardyn. A mere Remedy isn't going to fix what the gods took as their pound of flesh.

Ardyn's motivations are that he was once a Lucis Caelum, and also an Oracle. He went around Eos healing people of the Starscourge by taking the blight into his own body. Note that this was at the behest of the gods. The people absolutely adored him for doing this. Then, for reasons unknown, the gods decided to backstab him and declare his brother to be the rightful heir of the Lucis Caelum dynasty. Not only that, because he had taken so much of the Scourge into his body, they even denied him from the peace of death/the afterlife. So understandably, he was rather pissed at this whole turn of affairs and decided to take it out on the Caelums. The reason he's so "helpful" during most of the game is that only the true King of Light at full power can kill him for real.

edited 11th Jun '18 9:37:47 AM by Cganale

Ah, the annoying git who would only vanish long enough for me to pick up a single damn item before appearing again. Got it. Nah, didn't like it enough to buy the DLC, sorry. Okay then. That part isn't covered in any kind of way during the game. ... Also, how did he get the ring? Did he pick it up from Luna's corpse before they were washed out to sea? His whole arc is an I Cannot Self-Terminate ? I think I like him less as a character now.

Thanks for the answers.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Ignis and Ravus team up to get to the Leviathan altar to try and save Noct and Luna during the imperial attack. Then Ardyn shows up and starts manhandling folks, during which the ring falls out of Noct's hand and rolls into Ingis' reach while Ardyn isn't looking. Ardyn talks some shit, Ignis gets mad, puts on the ring. Kicks his ass.

And it's less that Ardyn can't kill himself, it's that only the King of Light can make it stick.

edited 12th Jun '18 12:28:08 PM by Cganale

The Gods didn't turn on Ardyn for no reason... Its Ardyn choosen method of healing was to absorb the Starscourge into himself instead of kill the ailing victim. Ardyn corrupted himself... I can't remember but He may have been tricked by Ifrit into absorbing the plague.

I'm A Pervert not an Asshole!

Ifrit was dead. He didn't revive until the Starscourge resurrected him. Ardyn and Ifrit are mirrors of each other. Both doing what they could for others only to curse and wage vengeance upon them when said beings turn against them. For Ifrit it was the humans he gave fire and other girfts too turning on him out of hubris, and for Ardyn it was his brother, The Gods, and the people he saved turning on him.

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.