"an aggressive waste of time" (ffxv)

this is one area ff14 is rly good at. turn off the music and you can hear like, ships creaking in the swell

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yeah ambient sound design in 14 is really fantastic. kind of amazing how this game has little to none? Like Lestallum literally has no ambient sound going on at all.

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Elements:
Fire/Fira/Firaga // Flare
Blizzard/Blizzara/Blizzaga // Freeze
Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga // Electon
Unicast // Maxicast

Modifiers:
Dualcast/Tricast/Quadcast/Quintcast
Venomcast/Cursecast/Stopcast/Killcast
Healcast
Freecast
Expericast
Failcast
Powercast
Blastcast
Limit Break

Submodifiers:
(x) casts 1-99
chain level 1-99


I wanted to make a post about this with more gusto and detail and maybe I will later, but: the battle system is way more coherent than anyone here seems to be giving it credit for. Itā€™s mechanically sound and as if not more clever a novel abstraction of the JRPG blueprint as any of Squareā€™s last several efforts. Unfortunately the camera can only keep up with what it expects of the player about 40% (generously) of the time. Thatā€™s not the same thing as it being systemically incoherent, though.

Itā€™s not unlike FF13 in that every fight falls squarely into the slot of either unrepentant slopfest or genuinely satisfying manipulation without much room in between.

In case I donā€™t get around to talking about it: I actually think I really like that the plot is a bunch of isolated story beats with nearly no connective tissue; a greatest hits album that doesnā€™t openly introduce itself as such. A lot of what the game tries to get away with is probably unearned, but I like that there are very few primary players in the story and even amongst them half of them barely seem to do anything youā€™re privy to firsthand; they have internal lives independent of the player. I like that basically every character suffers some sort of permanent personal consequence and the game doesnā€™t ever use the dragon balls to wish it away. I like that the majority of these major consequences happen off-screen.

The game lingers in the mind like the photo album Prompto keeps of your exploits throughout the game. Fitting then that the last thing you do before the final battle is sifting through your photo collection to select the name on Raidenā€™s dogtag memory Noctis will take with him in his ascension to kinghood.

Itā€™s a real weird game. I think if you digest it simultaneously through the lens of What If I Were 13 Right Now and What If It Was Ten Years In The Future And Iā€™m Remembering That This Existed thereā€™s no way to not come to the conclusion that itā€™s pretty good

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i really donā€™t get what the thinking behind spells causing friendly fire was tho

i think this is what reminds me so much of what mgsv (fails) to do with itā€™s second chapter. i donā€™t think the failure in mgsv is down to budget constraints as much as some people make it out to be and both these games purposefully take on this more ambient and fractured approach to narrative as their first major forays into an open world structure. itā€™s not directly acknowledging that the player is maybe avoiding the main storyline for sidequesting, but it fits in alongside that playstyle.
i do believe ffxv handles this a lot better with that being the first half of the game rather than the second half like in mgsv though.

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oops I probably like it in mgsv too

there definitely has to be a few dozen paragraphs worth writing about how theyā€™re basically the same design philosophy applied to two different genres

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The most important Final Fantasy news IMHO

http://www.allgamesdelta.net/2017/01/ariana-grande-to-be-guest-character-in.html

SQEX just canā€™t help themselves, can they.




Still, Nomura will claim that as a victory, I assume?

Chapter 13 man, what the hell?

I didnā€™t mind the isolation and narrow linearity of Chapter 13, aside from it going on about 20-30% longer than it needed to and getting pretty repetitive because of that. The feel of it all was fine enoughā€¦however, some of the plot dump spread across searchable papers and ā€œoh hereā€™s the deal with Prompto and the Emperorā€, hella sloppy.

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chapter 13 is a drag, and then youā€™re in the world of ruin and you advance to the next area via loading screen. i havenā€™t played the game since that part. will finish it eventually, but god what a frustratingly incomplete mess of a sometimes brilliant game.

I think in MGSVā€™s case it was due to budget constraints. The intro trailer for chapter 2 selling it to you as something completely different than the experience you get is the biggest tip for me.

This game has left me with a odd fascination with it mainly because it seems like there was so much misdirected creative energy, though that seems par-for-the course for the Final Fantasy brand.

Someone was able to glitch out-of-bounds at Cartanica and explore most of the map of the second continent. Whatā€™s interesting is that, while parts of it are unfinished, most of it is traversable, the town/city actually has a kind of organization/layout and there are quite a few meshes that have multiple LODs (they were made to be viewed up close as well as from far away). A fantastic amount of effort was put into what ended up being a backdrop!

Lucis as a content felt pretty sparse, a few copy-pasted diners and gas stations. It didnā€™t really look like anyone lived there (with the exception of Lestallum), but Cartanica actually has some density. There are high-rises and worker apartments. There are factories and other signs of industry. It would have been nice to explore it, parts of it are quite lovely.

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With the stated intent of FFXV staying around as a game the player can keep revisiting, Iā€™m really holding out for some of these more interesting areas coming out as DLC or something.

is this pop?

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So I just got this with a PS4 I bought and decided to give it a shot. I love everything about it! ā€¦ except actually playing it. I love the road trip idea, I love the world and exploring it, I love how youā€™re just a bunch of dudes hanging out (mostly), I love the food, blah blah. Itā€™s great! But the quests are really horrible and so far it really has been an aggressive waste of time with a bunch of fetch quests and crap, and I donā€™t find the combat too interesting either. Iā€™ll play it a bit longer but I canā€™t see myself sticking out for much longer if the actual game part doesnā€™t get any better.

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The silly fetch quest stuff is the best part of this game, imo. It becomes more linear and typically jrpg-y, for good or bad, eventually. Iā€™m not quite sure if it eventually opens back up because I got distracted and stopped playing once things got more serious.

I just started playing this! Man is it a pile of nonsense but I wanted boy band roadtrip monster hunter and I like the boys and I like the trip and the hunter is uhmm not terrible.

This and Last Guardian started a deluge of amazing Japanese games that has been going on ever since.

Still have not touched Nioh or Gravity Daze 2. I apologize.

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FFXV is FFVII Disc 3 The Video Game.

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Iā€™ve never heard a better sales pitch

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