Tets Revisits: Final Fantasy XV

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Wow fuck Costlemark I spent literal hours in this fucking place and then got fucking one-shot while switching to Prompto and wasn't even allowed to open the menu to revive or heal myself because ?????
anyway, game over, back to the last fucking save like it's an RPG from the fucking 90s, do it all over again fuck you game holy shit wow


wow






holy shit




fuck you
 

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
Btw those Taelpar shots are gorgeous, you should be a photographer lol
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Correcting myself, turns out I actually spent a little over an hour in Costlemark rather than hours (felt like hours though) :flipmonster:
Still enough time wasted for me to be salty lmao
I was close to the boss too

Anyway, attempt 2 went fine. I think I have all of the optional royal arms now.

What a weird dungeon though. I don't get the idea behind those moving blocks. It's not really a puzzle or a maze, it's mostly linear paths where you need to click on a block and then wait while it agonizingly slowly moves out of the way. It's just a time waster. Why???

First playthrough back in 2016 was worse though, I remember getting stuck in a loop and it would keep throwing me back out into that room with the Red Giant and a ton of monsters or something. There's this one bit with the block maze where it actually isn't linear but it forks. I'm sure I didn't realize that and kept choosing the same (wrong) path.

I thought I was going mad. :wackymonster:
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Oh fuck off I figured why I died in Costlemark

The menu didn't open as Prompto because it wasn't on :triangle: like it is for everybody else, it's now on FUCKING :r2: WHYYYYY

YOU STUPID GAME :rage:

edit: ah but of course, R2 is also the default menu button except I have been using button config 2 where it's on :triangle: but then Prompto switches everything back to default whereas that doesn't happen with everybody else? I assume it's because of his TPS controls but it's kind of counterintuitive and I don't think you can look up the control schemes for other characters in the main game either. Hmph.
 
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Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
More progress has been made. I have a backlog of stuff to write about, heck! :flipmonster:

So I've collected all the royal arms from the open world section and only three mandatory ones are left so it's time for me to move on EXCEPT...there is one more crossover event thingy to distract me from the main path :monster:

I go back to that weird plate and I'm greeted once again by that strange voice yelling "Hiso! Hiso!" at me.

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This one's a bit different than the XIV quest as this one tells me once the quest starts I will not be able to save and once I'm done it'll yeet me back to the title screen. It's also replayable. Neat, I guess.
So this is the Terra Wars crossover thingy and what I know of Terra Wars is that it's a Sakaguchi thing and of course it's mobile only so I'm immediately disinterested :P
Apparently there were three games (Terra Battle 1+2 and Wars) and they are all discontinued now because mobile games. So I guess if you ever want to play any kind of Terra Battle/Wars content...uh, buy FFXV.

Been listening to the Terra Battle music on the car radio on occasion too. Thought "this is Sakaguchi, so the music's gonna be Uematsu right?" *prog rock battle theme with organs and keyboards and shit begins playing* "...yeah that's the good Uematsu shit." :neo:

So Noctis gets whisked away into a different world. If he had a gil for everytime that happened...well he would have 2 gil by now. Maybe 3, I don't know where Dissidia NT fits in. :P

We meet a new character, Sarah.

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Thoughts:
1) she's really pretty! I like her design
2) her voice is really pleasant
3) ...wait holy crap is that Ashly Burch?! (yes, it is indeed)

She's from a different world too apparently. Both her and Noctis have been brought here by these litte fellas:

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They're called Hiso aliens and only say Hiso! Hiso!+subtitles which is kinda cute for two seconds but quickly becomes annoying. :monster: Sarah understands them, Noctis doesn't. Idk why, I have no idea what's going on. :hohum:

I kinda like the environment here. It's like an all new place and everything. There aren't too many locations here and the quest is pretty short but it doesn't feel entirely cheaply made which is nice considering it is "just" a free update content thing.

Noctis gets assaulted by Hiso alien kids:

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Aww, cute! :lol:

So like, idk, the aliens tell us we've been pulled here to fight an evil entity called the Eroder so that's what we do. Is this from the games? I have no idea.
In the brief time of this quest, Noctis and Sarah learn how to work as a team. Now I've read people online saying they kinda ship it and that the two of them have more chemistry than Noct and Luna. Considering Luna is barely in the game, that is very low bar to clear but I kind of agree.
Sarah comes off as pretty likeable and Ashly Burch's performance adds further charme.
...I think I ship it too. :P

The equipment here is predetermined and unfortunately, the camera feature does not work. Still tried to capture a few images.

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Performing certain attacks triggers this anime image thingy which is kinda cool

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There's one with both Noctis and Sarah for a team-up attack but I could never time the screenshots right :P

I cracked up when I gave Sarah a command in battle and Noctis said something like "Come on, Prompt-UHH nononono, I mean, uh, Sarah!" and she's just like ???? Funny delivery of that line by Ray Chase, 10/10 :P

So basically we just fight a few monsters, talk to a few Hiso aliens and move on to the boss and that's about it. The boss is this evil Hiso alien that copies Sarah's power and turns into a 2B knockoff version of her.

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A simple boss battle follows, we kick her butt and both of us get sent back to our respective worlds

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...and they never saw each other again. Aw man.

Credits roll. This quest has its own credits roll? Huh!

Yeah I don't know, this was an alright quest, nothing too special though. It's neat experiencing something in XV I hadn't played yet at least. It's probably more interesting when you're invested in Terra Battle/Wars. I'm not even sure the aliens are from those games though? Did some surface-level research and read something about them being a Mistwalker mascot. Idk.
Good a few Uematsu tracks in there though so that's always good. Man's still got it. Should look into whether there's soundtracks for these games.

I liked Sarah. Bring her back. :P

Well, time to move on to Altissia. Not before I snap a few more photos of Cape Caem though!

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Also, love this Prompto shot of Noctis creeping on Gentiana:

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...kinda has the same energy as this:

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ForceStealer

Double Growth
So Noctis gets whisked away into a different world. If he had a gil for everytime that happened...well he would have 2 gil by now. Maybe 3, I don't know where Dissidia NT fits in. :P
Also possibly Tekken. I dunno if that game gave him a story explanation for his appearance or if he was just there, though.

Still a shame that Sakaguchi does only mobile stuff anymore :/ Or that Lost Odyssey won't get freakin ported anywhere.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Also possibly Tekken. I dunno if that game gave him a story explanation for his appearance or if he was just there, though.

Still a shame that Sakaguchi does only mobile stuff anymore :/ Or that Lost Odyssey won't get freakin ported anywhere.

Oh dang, I forgot he was in Tekken as well lol
I briefly looked into it and I think he's just there??

Finally moving on to Altissia. Put everyone in casual clothes. We're incognito posing as tourists right now. Snapped more pics, as I do.

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^I rather like this one. Too bad that the camera does not have a depth of field slider or something like that. I think some background blur would be nice here.
Altissia at night still looks pretty darn good:

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I completely forgot there is an arena here where you can bet on monster fights and shit. I don't think I ever got into that during my first playthrough. I might not get into it during this one either :P
...I lost all my bets anyway so uh, screw this.

So anyway, new stuff. After arriving, Cid hands me the keys to the boat so of course I give that a spin. Seems like there isn't much to do but fishing and you can walk around the boat and stuff. But there's a few new photo ops as well.
They all seem to have unique poses here so that's pretty fun!

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It's nice seeing the boys have fun, knowing that things are gonna go to shit soon. :monster:

Of course I took more manual photos as well.

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^Contemplative Prompto.
...only afterwards did I notice how the sole of his foot is completely twisted lmao

Also, stepping out onto the boat the first time I had Gladio's feet hovering above me suddenly and briefly thought I just got a funny glitch or something but nope, he's just working out :flipmonster:

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I quite like that you can somewhat freely change the time of day while on the boat. That's especially useful for taking nice pictures. Sunset/sunrise on the open sea is quite magical. Once again, the lighting in this game did not age badly at all.

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Approaching Angelgard island gave me a weird vision cutscene.

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Noctis hears a voice that is completely inaudible. Without subtitles, you're screwed. I should've known better since this isn't the first time but I prefer playing without subtitles (this will not be the last instance of bad audio mixing in a cutscene either) :mon:

I also did the new sidequest given by Wesker Weskham, something about spotting the "Sea God" Bismarck who is not really a god but just a whale. Once you find him, you get a brief opportunity to snap some pics while he splashes about.

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Seems like this triggers a bunch of fish to spawn. According to my research, there is some kind of superfish you can catch now. Which doesn't seem to be Bismarck himself unfortunately? That would've been fun. :monster:

After my excruciating 20 minute battle against the Liege of the Lake back in 2016 though, I'm not sure if I wanna catch more of these superfish. Maybe once I'm done with the story? Idk, I started this a month ago and thought I'd be done before Octopath II releases but here I am, still not done but ready to move on so I'm not sure how much post-game content I wanna do but at the same time, checking out the new content is the reason why I'm playing this again so I guess I should give it a try at some point at least. :P

Adding the boat as a controllable vehicle is one of these additions that seems kind of huge at first but ultimately doesn't amount to that much. It's just...hey, you like fishing? Here's more fishing.
For me the appeal will likely be more to take some more screenshots of the scenery.

It's kind of amusing how it's breaking the immersion/canon ever so slightly though. After all, Altissia introduces the mechanic of going back to the open world by way of Umbra at hotels, by reliving "memories" meaning canonically everything on the mainland takes place before the departure since they would have no reason to ever go back from this point.
Here you can straight up take the boat all the way back to the mainland and start cruising around the open world again though, from either Cape Caem or Galdin Quay.

Anyway, after cruising around the open seas and catching a few fish I continue the main story and meet up with idk, Angela Merkel I guess

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And then it's time to face an actual sea god(dess)

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As a setpiece, I still enjoy this fight. It's not very interesting mechanically but I think it does well enough in just getting you hyped for fighting a god in Super Saiyan mode while Shimomura goes full epic on the music. :monster:

Unfortunately, Luna still gets fridged. The tragedy of it all still feels fairly unearned, even if the CG cutscene itself is done beautifully and Shimomura does some heavy lifting here to elicit an emotional reaction.

More shocking was the reveal of Ignis having gone blind. I always imagined he might have just gone burnt by some Magitek troopers while evacuating people from Altissia or something but it turns out there was more to that and the DLC will tell me all about it :monster:
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
With Altissia done I get right back into it by starting the Ignis DLC. Yay, new stuff. :awesomonster:

Straight away I'm pleased that unlike Gladio's episode, this one is not just a linear corridor but gives you a full map to explore.

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It's pretty much the entire Altissia map, except ruined and with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. There's a bunch of items, most of which seem to be there to be resold for gil. No one is manning these stores obviously so I guess the idea is that Iggy is such a good boy that he'll not take stuff without at least leaving an appropriate amount of gil in the cash register :lol:
You can buy different glasses for Iggy!
...except you can't. They were all greyed out at every shop, boo. Looks like this is only for repeat playthroughs? Weird.

Also, he steals a Magitek troopers hookshot arm thing and you can zip on top of rooftops now? Well damn, that is a gameplay mechanic that I did not expect. Ignis becomes Batman in this. I like it! Getting around Altissia is a lot of fun like this. This is very similar to Episode Ardyn (I mean, obviously it's the other way around but I did play Ardyn first, so...:P)

There's a bunch of documents to find too, seems like I missed a lot of them even though I felt I was fairly thorough...v.v

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You can even swim in this? Wasn't there swimming in the early Versus XIII trailers or do I misremember that? Seems they tried to bring back at least some of the stuff promised from the early days, even if it ended up being more limited.

Really like the war-torn scenery and lighting here too. Also, disheveled Ignis gets extra points in attractiveness :P

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I really like the music here too. Yasunori Mitsuda's theme for Ignis with Tadayoshi Makino's dramatic arrangements is good stuff.
The battle system here is pretty much how I already know it from the main game, elemental daggers and all that. This one has the addition of being able to use the hookshot on specific enemies though, like oneshotting Magitek armors so that's neat.

Another thing I noticed is...slowdown? This DLC had frequent framerate dips which is interesting seeing as I'm playing on PS5 and FFXV was otherwise a mostly solid 60fps. I'm not that well versed in tech but seeing as the PS5 has run more impressive looking and higher-res games at consistent 60fps I feel like this has to be an engine/optimization issue. That's okay though, as soon as I complete my playthrough I'm sure they'll announce a native PS5 complete edition running at up to 4K/60 or something :flipmonster:

The most interesting part for me in the beginning was this mechanic of different districts being occupied and you being able to go into some kind of tactical view mode.

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I thought there might be some kind of strategy element involved but then it turns out it's just "you can go here and kill a bunch of enemies and clear the district" and that is pretty much it. Seems like this is entirely filler to pad out the playtime, you don't seem to get any rewards for this except a good score? There's not even a trophy for liberating all districts! I am disappointed. =P

Oh, but seeing Titan in the background there fighting the army is dope.

The setpiece with Ignis trying to reach the altar by boat was awesome, I did enjoy seeing Titan smash Magitek engines out of the air even if he did inadvertently sent them my way. I actually leaned to the side in real life trying to avoid them lmao I don't know why this part had me that immersed

Oh yeah Caligo whatshisface is in this. Remember when I saw him in my character datalog thing and I was like "who the fuck is this guy"
He only makes an appearance during the mission where you fight Aranea and it's kind of awkward as it's like "oh we gotta capture him" and then you do, except at the end Ignis is like "oh yeah, he ran away again" and that is literally it. He never appears again in the story! Also, he implies that he killed...*looks up notes* Jason? Jacob? ...Jared! Ah, yes. Old man Jared. Very sad that.

Anyway, I guess someone remembered him and that he is kind of a loose end so he appears here in a gaudy golden Magitek armor and after the battle, Ravus comes in and just frickin murders him lmao.

So looks like Ravus right now is more concerned with protecting his sister so we team up to reach the altar.

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Love myself some uneasy allies.

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We reach the altar eventually and uh, Luna is already pretty dead. Her doggo Pryna seems to be dying too but gives Ignis a vision of Bahamut posting unmarked spoilers for the rest of the story so Ignis actually knows that Noctis will have to give his life at the end. Ravus meanwhile is not happy and blames Noctis and us and all and of course we gotta fight him. It's a pretty decent one on one boss battle. The sun has set, it's raining, tempers flare and stakes are high.
There is some neat fight choreography here in the cutscenes!

Then Ardyn shows up and starts to drop his "man of no consequence" facade as he easily dispatches of Ravus.
Now unfortunately what happens next is something that was spoiled for me a few years ago now which is a shame because this would've been exciting to experience blind.
...uhh phrasing. Sorry, Ignis.

Anyway, Ignis takes the Ring of the Lucii and makes a bargain with the kings of old. Unfortunately, we do not see him actually talking to them like we did Nyx in Kingsglaive but I presume this is something that happened.
Speaking of Nyx, Ignis references him here saying that if a Glaive could wield this power then he should be able to as well...but uh. How would he even know this? :P

Ignis gets power but also his eyes burned. A smaller price than Nyx having to give his life. Might have to do with the fact that Nyx got power for the rest of the night and Iggy got power for uhm, only two minutes or so? Kings and gods like doing shit arbitrarily it seems.

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So you get a bit of a taste of power with Ignis having way higher damage output and being able to warp around the place and shit. Cool. :monster:
Except yeah it only lasts two minutes and Ardyn gets the last word in. :P

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Overall, this was a pretty decent DLC chapter. In terms of story, presentation and gameplay it was several steps up from say, Gladio's. Gladio is just boring filler comparatively. Sorry my dude, it's the truth.
I kind of wished this could've been in the main game to be honest (minus the endgame spoilers :monster: ). There was some good stuff in here, including giving Ravus more needed screentime. And most importantly, revenge for Ja Rule. I mean. Jared. :awesome:

I have not looked into the alternative ending stuff yet, will probably do it later. I am familiar with the soundtrack and was excited to hear Apocalypsis Magnatus in context but it was nowhere to be heard here so I assume it's for the other ending.

But so far, so good. Only one DLC left to go and then it's onwards to the apparently new and improved Royal Pack version of Insomnia.
 
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Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Moving on to Cartanica, we enter the Sad Part. Luna is dead, Ignis is blind, Noctis is sad, Gladio thinks Noctis needs to get over it, I think Gladio is a bit of an insensitive prick and the tough love approach doesn't work here. Also, hands off Prompto ya jerk :monster:

All that doesn't stop us from getting yet another fetch quest in.
Whatevs, have some photos.

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It's interesting they had to essentially model this entire map just to have some background scenery for the train. :monster:

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^I think this one is pretty nice if I do say so myself :mon:

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Somehow, Cartanica station kind of fascinates me. I just really like the concept of a train station built on a ridiculously high bridge. Impractical as it may be. :P

There are two sidequests here. I don't remember there being any sidequests, and going into the dungeon the uh...David Faustino or something...no wait, Fodina Caestino.
One of the quests required me taking pics with Noctis' first-person camera which confirms to me this was indeed patched in later.
Internet tells me this is exclusive to the Royal Edition which is uh. Hm. Bit weird that they decided this is where they need to place additional content. It seems rather appropriate at this point to *not* run errands for randos anymore.

Some dude going "yo, can you take some pictures for my article/book/whatever it was" should just elicit a "fuck off" response from the group, we're done with this shit and also still busy moping :mon:

Also, one of the pictures for the quest needed strangely accurate framing, I tried taking it a dozen times before it would finally get accepted.

EXP get, put it in the bank. Oh yeah, I've been stashing EXP since like...chapter 6 or 7? Everyone is lvl 55 which should be more than enough for the end of the game and I didn't wanna be more OP so I'm pretty much keeping the Nixperience Band on at all times to be safe. Gonna be fun eventually seeing all the numbers go up when I cash in several hundred thousands EXP at the Altissia hotel for the 3x bonus. :awesome:

I also just remembered I got a new ability for Ignis after beating his DLC, "Quick Recipeh". Except I cannot use it for obvious reasons. :closedmonster:
In fact, character switching is now disabled for everyone. I assume it'll be back for the final chapter though.

Not much else to say about this chapter, we move on to Tenebrae.

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*sighs*

I distinctly remember watching a trailer back in the day where they showcased the locations of XV's world and seeing Tenebrae made me especially excited to explore it.
Probably the only reason we stop here at all is because the devs just felt obilgated to include Tenebrae in *some* form at all lmao

Being here just makes me bitter again, what a tease this place is.

After talking to a bunch of people there is a little girl approaching Noctis who is all like "Lady Lunafreya loved you so much!"
Thanks kid, you saying that definitely makes up for the lack of Luna's characterization or interaction with her. :mon:

Moving on to Shiva's corpse

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Nowadays this just makes me remember all those out of bounds videos people posted where you can see Shiva's enourmous, mountain-sized booty.

:pervert:

I'm still unsure about the whole "dead Astral but also they're not dead" thing. Felt like this wasn't explained well and still isn't? Unless I missed a lore document somewhere.

Oh, speaking of lore. They did change the cutscene where Gentiana reveals herself as Shiva. She now randomly dumps some backstory on the Astrals on you including that she and Ifrit used to boink. I think that was only mildly implied in the launch version if at all. The part where she shows Noct a flashback of Luna is also extended and now has an additional bit of Luna and Gentiana talking and then Luna cries and then Gentiana cries, Noctis cries, everybody cries. :mon:

Going into this and having read about all the patches and updates and them adding lore and cutscenes to the game, I was under the impression that the additions were a lot more substantial but so far this only seems to be the second new scene in the game. The first one was a rather inconsequential scene with Ardyn and the boys talking aboard the Magitek engine after fighting Titan. Didn't even realize that was new but I'm watching a Let's Play of FFXV in parallel to my own to remind myself what the launch version was like and the scene wasn't in there (that cutscene was also ridiculously low budget in its staging btw :flipmonster: )

I'm not finished with the game yet of course but I guess I was given the impression the current version of XV was a bit more of an extended/definitive edition but as I approach the end it turns out it's more of a "oh, that's it?" kind of deal, heh.

Oh and once again: When Shiva starts loredumping, the music is mixed SO FUCKING LOUD that she becomes inaudible. Subtitles are a must especially as I remember having had the same problem in a key scene in chapter 13 with Ardyn and Noctis back at launch. I can understand audio issues during gameplay where conditions can differ with incidental dialogue in noisier environments becoming hard to hear but there is honestly no excuse for a bad audio mix in a cutscene. That is literally as controlled an environment as you're gonna get. This isn't just a XV issue either, I feel games in general tend to just not tackle this problem as much they should but that's a whole 'nother topic.

We move on and get attacked by a bunch of demons in a tunnel and shit and Leviathan swoops in to save our butts. I'm sure that justifies us having engaged her in battle and wrecking Altissia in the process. :P
Honestly, it feels like the Astrals are kind of underutilized in the actual plot considering the trouble you go to to get some of them (particularly Leviathan). You get Titan and that'll pay off when he helps you out with Leviathan, and you let an entire city be wrecked to get Leviathan with the pay off being she was helping you wash away some goblins.

Idk, always felt like there should have been something bigger, maybe them all helping you out fighting a demon army at Insomnia or a bunch of Diamond Weapons. Like I said, Kingsglaive has a more bombastic climax then the actual game, that ain't right!

Anyroad, Promtpo fell from the train because of Ardyn's shenanigans so off to Episode Prompto I go.
 

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
A lot of those updates were hack jobs, that's why you have lazy side-quests copy-pasted from the Chocobo festival in a chapter supposed to be sad. That lore dump power-point presentation doesn't help either despite the info being interesting. You'll definitely feel the relevant additions in the last chapter.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
I briefly tried that friendly match thing in Episode Ignis where you fight against Noctis. Well I guess that's where Apocalypsis Magnatus plays then :monster:
Got my ass handed to me and gave up quickly, I don't have time for this. :P

Also, wtf there is a first-person view mode? I only just now learned this and I don't think the game ever told me unless I missed it. This would've been somewhat helpful for taking screenshots. Although it'd be even better if I could move around in the actual first person camera mode.

Anyway, Prompto stuff.

So Prompto's just wandering through the tundra in his new winter outfit and gets abducted by imperials.

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In terms of gameplay it's a bit different from the main game in that outside of Prompto's main handgun which has infinite ammo, none of the other subweapons just auto-refill. Instead I have to either find weapons or snatch them from MTs with stealth takedowns or finishers. There's now a machete for CQB and sniper rifles as well, neither of which are available in the main game.

Overall, in terms of gameplay it's like...well I can say it's a better shooter than Dirge of Cerberus but that is a fairly low bar to clear. :lol:
Prompto's gameplay is not terribly exciting to be honest. The crackshot thing when an enemy is vulnerable feels good to use but that's about it for me.

Storywise we're pretty much immediately getting into him being a clone of Verstael, yet another character the main story forgot about after his one scene and shoved in here instead. :monster:
So like, all the Magitek troopers are just daemon-clone spawn of Verstael. That's fucked up.

Verstael turns himself into a daemon, Prompto shoots him, Verstael gets absorbed into his latest evil Magitek invention or whatever. I'm sure that's not gonna come back to bite me in the butt.

Initially it seems this is just gonna be a boring corridor shooter but after escaping the facility with a snowmobile, you get into a somewhat open area. It's nice to see some snowy environments in FFXV.

Also, we meet up with best girl Aranea who's donning her superior snow outfit. :awesomonster:

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So again it seems like the actual story portion is fairly short and instead the DLC gives you sidequests to extend the playtime. They pop up at specific times in specific spots which is a bit weird but I go check out the first quest which is to save a Garulet from a bunch of wolf enemies or something and so anyway, I started blasting and I'm pretty sure I shot the Garulet myself. Whoops. :whistle:

I check out the next quest and it's uh. A lvl 99 Magitek armor. :rclosedmonster:

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I go into the battle with only my pistol and maybe 2 or 3 grenades and no other subweapon. Now in hindsight I realized there was a shed nearby where you can restock on weapons and ammo but at the time I didn't know that so I spent like 10 minutes taking it down with just a handgun and Aranea's Highwind ability.

It was a pain in the ass and I only got 10 CPUs for it. Boo.
So I can use CPUs to upgrade my snowmobile's speed and jumps and stuff although I kind of wonder what the point of that is. :P

Well I got nothing better to do so I do it anyway, while trying to take some more screenshots on the side

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I come across another lvl 99 enemy, the Kaiser Behemoth. Both the lvl99 bosses weren't really hard though, just took a while. Aranea practically tanked the Behemoth 90% of the time and it barely even attacked me lmao
This time around I also used the shed to stock up on rocket launchers etc so it didn't take forever. Even got a selfie in :awesome:

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After an hour of messing around in the open snowfield I decide to head back to the main story.

Aranea and Prompto infiltrate the base, kill a Magitek...monkey daemon thing and then fight Verstael's final form.

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Was wondering what he'd turn into, did not expect it to be an oversized tunnel digging worm machine. The boss is just a turret section. Idk, those are never all that exciting to play imo. Verstael is a letdown to the very end. :mon:

Overall, the DLC was "alright". Nothing too exciting but I do like me some pretty snow environments and speeding around in a snowmobile is kind of fun. Was nice getting a bit more into Prompto's backstory as well, the main game just kind of brushes over it. Once again, this feels like something that maybe shoulda been included in the actual plot to some degree.

I don't know how to end this post so have another Aranea pic:

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This thread's caught up now with my gameplay progress, haven't started chapter 13 yet and XV will be on hold for a while what with the TLS weekender starting tomorrow. :mon:

Also if I hadn't made it obvious yet, I will not be checking out Comrades at this time because I think that'd be breaking the pace too much to play in-between chapters 13 and 14 since it's like, a whole expansion thing.
Not sure if I'll touch it any point after finishing XV either because I'm not even sure how fun that's gonna be in solo offline mode (at least I think it can be played solo and I think online was shut down a while back...right? cba to check right now :P )

That might have been a fun thing to do with other people from TLS but I think I missed the boat on that one. :P
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Back from Amsterdam, got to see Apocalypsis Noctis performed live at Distant Worlds and met TLS people, it was dope. Time to continue FFXV. :mon:

The infamous chapter 13, slog extraordinaire. I don't think I hated it as much as most other people but it did go on a bit longer than it needed to. Let's see how it holds up with the changes that were introduced though.

So we begin as normal with the train being assaulted by daemons and Noctis' powers being disabled. Weapons don't work, magic doesn't work, but the Regalia does so let's Fast and Furious our way out of here.

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The car gets trashed and we say goodbye to our trusty steed forever.

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Right after, Noctis gets separated from Gladio and Iggy and immediately there's a prompt that allows you to choose one of two paths:

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Oh right, one of the fixes to chapter 13 was to just let you bypass it almost entirely by just playing as Gladio on an alternate path. :mon:
Since I assume it skips over some of the important Noctis stuff (like him finally putting on the Ring of the Lucii) I chose to play as Noctis. Especially since the alternate route can just be played separately from the main menu and ofc I wanna see how different the Noctis route feels!

How different is it? Well...the ring being buffed was certainly no understatement. The MTs patrolling the hallways took a good while to take down with Death initially since after all they were supposed to be kind of a problem to the player. Now? It pops their heads right off. :awesome:
In addition it does regular damage while you use it so even if Death does not take effect for a while, it is not entirely useless.
Alterna seems to fail less in sucking up enemies and the Holy dodge/counter thing has a new, much stronger version if you press the dodge button at the last moment and I think it recovers more MP.

The hiding spots throughout this chapter serve no more purpose pretty much. I actively seek out the MTs just to see them pop. :muhaha:

Which makes Ardyn's taunt a bit out of place. At one point he will comment "that spell is a royal disappointment"

Not anymore, bitch!

Oh, and you can sprint now. Chapter still feels a bit long in the tooth but you can get through it much quicker now!

Later on when you chase after "Prompto" there was a glitch where he just kind of stood there and you could just clip through him lol

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Awkward. Later, you're supposed to see him sitting on a chair and then it turns out to just be a random MT but there was nothing on the chair there. Whoops. The cutscene still triggered and the MT still appeared however.

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Additionally, I found a few reports talking about some kind of robot thing and I was a bit confused about what they referenced until I checked the archives and saw they were filed under Omega files.

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I try not to spoil myself too much on the expanded Insomnia section but I do know there's an Omega superboss so, yeah I guess that's what this is about. :P
I also can't help but notice there are three more tabs in the archives that are still blank. Wonder what that is? I think I also only found two or three Omega files in chapter 13, no idea if there are more later on or whether I missed anything. Feels like I've been everywhere with how most of the chapter is very linear corridors.

Random aside but I checked the character files and Shiva's character model can't be rotated or moved. Just like the other female characters I assume this is an anti-perv measure but at the same time though, this is the profile pic that they used for her lmao

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After I regroup with Gladio and Iggy I decided to check out "Verse 2"

Right off the bat Ardyn appears and gives both of them their weapons because idk, just Ardyn things.

You get the same UI as Episode Gladiolus and all that and fight through a bunch of corridors that are decidely more simplified compared to Noctis' path.
And whereas Noctis finds Ravus already dead with a bunch of letters scattered about that conveniently describe some of his motivations in more detail, Gladio and Ignis get to watch a surveillance tape that actually shows Ravus' last moments including the only other scene in the entire game where we see the Emperor speak.

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Dude's already turning into a Daemon and just shadow blasts Ravus off the edge of the platform. At the bottom he meets Noctis and acknowledges him as the true king at last, intending to hand over Regis' sword except of course it's just Ardyn in disguise and Ravus gets shanked :monster:

Now the above mentioned letters from Ravus that are just conveniently scattered around Ravus' body for Noctis to find kind of seemed a bit like clunky exposition and I mean, they kind of are but I also just explained it to myself that Ardyn likely put those letters there because he likes messing with shit. Lo and behold, in this cutscene they show him scatter the letters around lmao
My theory has been confirmed. Thanks, game. :P

Later on, there's also a quick boss battle with the emperor in his daemonified form. Afterwards, the two finally hear Noctis' voice and speed off and Verse 2 ends (with an ad for Episode Gladiolus DLC, lol)

The rest of the chapter continues as usual, we find Prompto, we kill the Emperor, we kill Daemon Ravus etc.

And finally, Noctis reaches it.

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Crystalussy.

:pervert:


Ardyn drops the bomb and reveals he is a Lucis Caelum and does so in yet another cutscene with an absolutely atrocious audio mix. The loud music and Noctis' obnoxious grunting completely drown out Ardyn's lines. I remember in my original playthrough I literally reset my game to turn on subtitles because I couldn't hear shit. I think that would be a neat QoL feature: Being able to turn on/off subtitles from a pause menu during cutscenes.

This time around I at least knew this was coming. Makes me think I should just get in the habit of playing with subtitles by default but I always find they distract me from the visuals.

Anyway, timeskip to ten years later. I'm now in the final chapter at Hammerhead and ready to go into the expanded Royal Edition Insomnia. :awesomonster:
 

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
Iedolas was so badly underused and whatever screen-time he had just depicted him as the most generic villain possible that I couldn't even care.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Yeah I also didn't mind the original Chapter 13, and I feel the adjustments were a massive overcorrection. There's now no tension at all. I think just chopping out a segment so it was a little shorter would have been a far superior adjustment.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Oh, I forgot to mention: Ignis said something about the empire's "alternative facts" in verse 2. Now that's a phrase I haven't heard in a while. Immediate reminder that this was made just after the Trump presidency started. Whew, that's one thing I'm glad we're hearing less of these days. :monster:

(Also, just played a bit of Insomnia and yep, this is e x p a n d e d :O)
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Was waiting for you to see the new and improved Insomnia. They went all out to give it a better showing with things to do. Can't wait for your reaction to everything there :monster:
 

Torrie

astray ay-ay-ay
Overall, the DLC was "alright". Nothing too exciting but I do like me some pretty snow environments and speeding around in a snowmobile is kind of fun. Was nice getting a bit more into Prompto's backstory as well, the main game just kind of brushes over it. Once again, this feels like something that maybe shoulda been included in the actual plot to some degree.
Prompto DLC is my faveourite one out of the four, partly because shooting stuff is fun, given I'm not a fan of shooters, partly because Prompto is my ultimate treasure and has to be protected at all costs, and partly because it's spacious, and the music is fantastic. And Aranea is just being a badass as she is :awesome:

Oh right, one of the fixes to chapter 13 was to just let you bypass it almost entirely by just playing as Gladio on an alternate path. :mon:
Since I assume it skips over some of the important Noctis stuff (like him finally putting on the Ring of the Lucii) I chose to play as Noctis. Especially since the alternate route can just be played separately from the main menu and ofc I wanna see how different the Noctis route feels!
Imagine, I chose Gladio's route on my first playthrough and was confused AF when I reunited with Noctis because it felt like I had missed on an important part of the plot. It was kinda underwhelming, as well as all the Iedolas stuff, but ehhh the game is broken beyond repair in that particular chapter, so we have to deal with what we've got, I guess.

Also, just played a bit of Insomnia and yep, this is e x p a n d e d :O
Insomnia is incredible, and I remember crying a lot just walking through the streets and listening to the music and the bros reminiscing about things. The last chunk of the game is super satisfying, fortunately.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Final chapter time, woo.

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In the loading screen to Insomnia you can actually make out a faint, red moon. Gotta be some leftover from a previous version of the story, I remember the red moon appearing in Episode Duscae when you glitch past the boundary and walk towards Lestallum.

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Right off the bat, the intro scene to Insomnia is a bit different. The Citadel seems a bit further away and a different angle so immediately you know there's a bit more ground to cover this time around.
Also, when Noctis puts on the ring they added some magic sparkles :mon: In the original version he just slides it on like a regular old ring.

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Heh, the emergency exit sign is a cactuar. They're also the walk symbol on traffic lights. Cute touch, not sure if that was in original Insomnia or if I just never noticed it before.

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So we come round the back of the big train station building and enter the subway from here. Whereas previously it seemed we might be the first in years to step foot into the city again, here it turns out that the remaining Kingsglaive has set up camp inside the city for recon missions etc.

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These guys here didn't have a good day though it seems.

Nitpick time: All the base camp stuff is covered by tents and tarps...despite the fact they're already underground in a subway station. What do you need the tents for! Your equipment is already sheltered from rain etc. Feels like the level designers just placed generic base camp assets without thinking too much about it. :P

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Anyway, we meet up with Cor who I did not expect to see again. He leads us the to the main basecamp and Noctis holds an impromptu kingly speech to rally the Glaives. Our guy has come a long way :mon:
Uematsu's Comrades theme plays here! I have not played Comrades but I have been listening to the OSTs for years now so I immediately recognized it anyway.

We even get a call from Iris here. Didn't expect to hear from her again either! She's acting all coy and like "oh I gotta tell you this thing but I'll wait until you get back" and I'm just yelling internally YOU FOOL TELL HIM NOOOOOWWWWW but of course she doesn't goddammit :mon:

I also remembered the Royal Pack is supposed to give me some sort of souped up Armiger upon getting all 13 royal arms and I still don't have it so I just look it up and I actually need an accessory from a statue near the entrance to the first dungeon. So I call Umbra for a brief excursion to the past and get the Founder King's Sigil

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And boy, that Armiger Unleashed mode is *quite* the upgrade. It lasts SO long wtf. And you get a bunch of new attacks and techniques and everything. Yeah this kinda rules. Even has that Holy counter from the ring and everything.

Insomnia has sidequests now, eh? Well, three of them. Not too different from what we did in the open world; bust-a-base, photo ops and a collectathon.

Moving further towards the Citadel, Ardyn shows up and summons a bunch of...meteors? Because he can do that now I guess.

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Also summons The Wall(tm). Well this is new.

Insomnia is now steeped in fiery red and we get new music to go along with it.

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I finish all the sidequests before moving on to the final boss gauntlet and one mission stood out because you meet up with a random, silent Glaive. It took a few seconds but then it clicked. If you played Comrades, this would be your own character, wouldn't it? That's kinda neat. Well I didn't play it so it's just a generic dude. :P

I briefly wonder if this would still work now that the Comrades DLC had been decoupled from FFXV and made standalone. I decide to look it up and it turns out, no, this does not work anymore. Good job, Square. :awesomonster:
So I guess you get the generic default Glaive eitherway.

The King Behemoth which used to guard the front entrance to the Citadel has now been relegated to a shady alley I see.

I notice the Glaive used shield magic on himself. Oh you mean there's more than magic grenades in your game? Must be nice. :hohum:
The rewards you get from the quests are pretty useful; Ignis, Gladio and Prompto each get their own accessory that apart from stat boosts also does cool shit like giving Prompto unlimited SMG ammo for example.

Upon passing by the main station building, a random Omega appears.

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...it's level 119 so I avoid it like the plague. The boss track on the OST is fire though. A lot of the music here in Insomnia is the work of Yoshitaka Suzuki. More people need to know his name, he's fantastic. :awesomonster:

After doing pretty much everything (except killing Omega ofc) I head to the Citadel for the final showdown. Instead of the King Behemoth, we get the Cerberus. The King Behemoth basically acted like a regular fight more than a boss fight which I always thought a bit odd. The Cerberus fight addresses these complaints by having a proper cutscene introduction, its own unique boss theme (again by Suzuki) and in general feeling more boss battle-y.

We even get to fight alongside Cor one last time!

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^Sleepy helldoggo

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I briefly get worried towards the end that they just killed Cor off but nah, just a flesh wound. I guess they needed an excuse for him to bow out here. Fair enough. :P

We move on to the Ifrit figh- wait hold on, the barrier is still up.

The following scene addresses another complaint of mine. :mon:

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Idk, always felt like there should have been something bigger, maybe them all helping you out fighting a demon army at Insomnia or a bunch of Diamond Weapons.

^Well they don't fight any Diamond Weapon but they do all come together to fry a few daemons and destroy the barrier. It's a pretty cool scene and something very close to what I had envisioned back when I finished the game the first time and thought about what kind of scenes they could've added to improve the presentation of the game a bit. Including Bahamut actually firing a Megaflare from his swords and everything.

Cerberus drops an accessory that makes you immune to fire.
...well isn't that convenient. :wackymonster:

Ifrit's got that daemony black goop on his body now. I still remember reading about that change when they patched it in. He used to look normal in the launch version.
The fire invulnerability accessory plus Armiger Unleased make short work of Ifrit. "Hellfire" is still a godtier boss track btw (again, Yoshitaka Suzuki :mon: )

Having listened to the OSTs I'm aware of a few more boss tracks but was not aware of the context. Kinda assumed they might all be super bosses or something like Omega but I'm pleasantly surprised to get a few more story bosses within the Citadel. Three of them, goddamn.

So I face off against the Fierce, the Rogue and the Mystic.
The battles themselves are pretty good even though I never managed to dodge the Rogue's frickin' shuriken from offscreen :P

And while Yoko Shimomura wasn't too involved with the DLCs, she did compose "Encelevenemus" for the Mystic battle and it's also fire. :mon:

I really like the presentation here, with the bros all getting their moment at the end of these battles to finish them off. Good stuff!

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During the photo selection I made sure to click on as many photos to trigger as many unique lines from the bros as possible. :P
It does kind of feel emotional going through all these photos...I feel like I'm being emotionally manipulated a bit in remembering my journey a bit more fondly than I felt during it. :awesome:
I could go weird with the photo selection here and just get a photo of Cindy's cleavage or something for a hilarious moment later during the ending but I'm a basic bitch and just get the group photo from Cape Caem instead. :P

"Off my chair jester, the king sits there" is a top tier line btw. :awesome:

Which only leaves Ardyn, whose fight is unchanged from the original version. Actually a bit disappointing as this one always felt a bit too easy. The first phase feels pretty basic and once you enter the second phase with them going Super Saiyan and flying around the city it's pretty much the same as the Leviathan battle, just hold down the attack button, maybe chug a potion every now and then. It's a spectacle setpiece fight more than a challenge.

Feels like they could have improved the first phase of this fight perhaps.

Eitherway uh. I guess I beat the game. :P

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Overall, I did enjoy the improvements to Insomnia here. There's more exploration, more boss fights, more cutscenes, good music (although hey, there's a track on the album called "Veiled in Black (Insomnia Arrangement)" that does not actually play anywhere!) and Cor and Iris didn't just drop off the face of the earth (although we still don't get to see "Daemon Slayer Iris", boo!)

As weak as I think the story of FFXV is overall, the ending itself is still pretty well done and that final campsite scene still hits you right in the feels. Integrating your own photo selection into the credits is a great idea too.

I also made sure to watch all the credits to close off this journey. This may not be known to everyone but the main ending credits actually leave out a good chunk and instead relegated them to a second credit roll that needs to be selected from the main menu. This is a whole separate list with different visuals and different music. It's the only place in the game where you'll hear Florence+The Machine's "Too Much Is Never Enough" and the "World of Wonder" arrangement of the Prelude. They also end with this:

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...aaaand then there's even a *third* set of credits for the Royal Edition, damn. This one's a bit shorter and displays your photos once again while "Moonlit Melodies" plays, a combination of Noctis' and Luna's themes arranged by Yoko Shimomura herself. Again, this is the only place in the game where you'll hear that.

There's a few more bits and pics I wanna post and maybe some final thoughts on the game in general but I'm exhausted from typing up this post so I'll do it later :P
 

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
Great photos as always😍

The original Insomnia segment felt kinda anti-climatic and rushed, which is rightly corrected in this expansion. Armiger Unleashed also is miles ahead of whatever crap they cooked for the regular Armiger (press button, character does shit and moves alone).
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Tetsujin said:
The following scene addresses another complaint of mine. :mon:
Tetsujin said:
Idk, always felt like there should have been something bigger, maybe them all helping you out fighting a demon army at Insomnia or a bunch of Diamond Weapons.[/quote

Yes, I had to send Mako a PM after you made this comment because it made me excited and I had to say something but there was no way I could say that without spoiling :monster:
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
I'm impressed no one even vague-spoilered me after that comment :awesomonster:

Anyway, additional stuff:

In Insomnia there is an underground footpath that connects to the Citadel from a subway station. It's got a pedestrian conveyor belt thingy on one side (idk what the proper term is but you also often see them at airports to speed people along :monster: ) In the launch version it was mandatory to go through here and back then I freaked out because I realized just a few months prior during my first visit to Japan in Summer '16, I had actually walked through here!
The very same underpass exists in real life when you wanna go from JR Shinjuku Station to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bldg.
Felt kinda surreal to see a location in a Final Fantasy game and being able to say "oh, I've been here!"

Comparison:
FFXV:

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Photo I took during my second visit to Japan in 2019:

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Just for shits and giggles, I tried recreating a few more of my photos in FFXV:

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I played around for some more after beating the game and they give you the offroad Regalia in Insomnia.

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That's actually useful because the place is pretty big and it takes forever to walk anywhere. It doesn't have many fast-travel spots back to the Kingsglaive camp either.

Also, I fought Garuda again for no particular reason.

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Turns out the FFXIV quest *does* have ending credits as well! You need to speak to the Fat Chocobo to trigger them.

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Lastly, I realized I still haven't done the alternate ending to Episode Ignis.

So I did just that, starting off from the point where you can make the choice. So Ardyn takes Ignis to Zegnautus instead and you fight Ardyn there instead, once again using the Ring of the Lucii

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You get a message that a sacrifice must be made. There is a choice to sacrifice your life, risk your life and give up. I go for "risk your life" instead in which case the fight just continues until the ring runs out of juice. I continue this until after the 2nd or 3rd time, it just gives you two options, "sacrifice your life" and "give up". Giving up sounds like a game over, so fuck it. Sacrifice it is. Ignis gets the full power of the ring and we beat Ardyn.

Noctis and the others arrive and Noctis takes the ring and disappears into the crystal again. Somehow, Ignis does in fact not sacrifice his life and seemingly gets to keep his eyesight? Because I guess Noctis healed him with the crystal's powers or uh, something.
We fast-forward through events. Ravus survived in this version and he too grew a beard because that's the only way you can show somebody having aged ten years in this game :monster:

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So Noctis walks up the Citadel, we see the darkness clear up and...somehow Noctis did not sacrifice himself here?

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Yeah not gonna lie I have no idea what is even going on here. This whole things feels tacked on and kind of confusing. Just randomly going "oh hey, here's a happier ending!"

Uh, okay? The ending wasn't really the issue with FFXV but alright. No clue whether the planned DLC season 2 was yet another alternate ending or just the more elaborate version of whatever happened here but this here was a big fat meh. :monster:
 
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