Finally I managed to play it and as I expected it was the most fun, consistent and dramatic dlc. The combat system is the most immediate and enjoyable, all the scenes are gorgeous
Ardyn/Gladio ..it was amazing and unexpected
and I appreciated that they also gave space to the drama of Ravus
when Lunafreya disappears we can really feel his loneliness.. the feels
which proved to be a great square mate. The Extra Verse and the possibility of choice it was unexpectedly a great idea and very well managed
the battle with Ardyn was much more satisfying here than the final boss battle in game
but still I don't know what to think about the alternative ending.
And please, someone has to tell the square that it's not enough to put a beard to grow old
December 13th commemorates the Festival of Saint Lucia, a 3rd century martyr who became the patron saint of the blind and those with eye trouble. It marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Swedish custom.
Saint Lucia also symbolizes bringing the 'light' of Christianity back into a world of darkness.
Comrades Versiona 1.1.0 got some balance changes in the weapons:
Shields:
No longer automatically triggers Vacuum Wave with the Warrior's Sigil. They now function like normal weapons do with that Sigil, although you can still block with them.
Some attacks have block frames that reduce incoming damage by 80% (might have been a thing pre-patch.
Katanas:
Reduced damage on Charge Strike: Savage Swipe
Greatly reduced recovery time on Flash of Steel
The projectile of Flash of Steel now has a hitbox (bug fix)
Spears:
Greatly reduced damage on Charge Strike: Savage Swipe * Slighly reduced damage on Charge Strike: Clearout. However, the melee hit on it now always crits
Daggers:
Charge Strike: Clearout now always deals crits on every hit
Crossbows:
Greatly reduced damage on Charge Strike: Savage Swipe
Greatly incresed damage on Charge Strike: Clearout
Shurikens:
Left analog stick away from the enemy + attack now triggers a new attack instead of just making you jump. In this attack you take a big backstep and throw the shuriken.
Left analog stick towards the enemy + attack now uses the warping attack that used to be a combo starter. Because this attack is no longer a combo starter, you can now start throwing shurikens even relatively close to the enemy.
Charge Strike: Clearout and Charge Strike: Savage Swipe now always deal crits
Maces:
Charge Strike: Clearout now consumes 5 MP on every hit.
I hope they don't retcon Lunafreya's death. The scene where she gives Noctis the ring and falls into the abyss is the high point of the narrative for me. If she doesn't die by drowning that scene really loses its impact. The idea of Ignis putting the ring on being canon (and not alternate reality as some have suggested) means he would possess it between Luna and Noct. That's not as bad, but still messier than I'd like. This DLC seems like it's going to fundamentally change the way I perceived Ch. 9. Hope it's worth it.
Random thoughts from a fun episode. They definitely retconned Iggy's power level here, even without the ring he is something to behold. Didn't feel that way with Gladio and Prompto. If those two episodes were about defining strength and identity this was definitely about loyalty. Iggy's life's work really is Noctis. That's admirable, but kind of sad too.
Ravus got fleshed out a bit more and it was easy to empathize with his anguish. While I'm still not pleased that Luna dies on the altar and not in the water, her transferring her last bit of life force to Noct with the ring was a great visual. The part where her body disappeared was strange, but I prefer this as it does away with that silly notion that the bodies in Ardyn's throne room were the real ones (Nyx turned to ash, Iedolas was daemonized, and ten bloody years, they'd all be skeletons) and not illusions.
I really hope we get an episode Luna, I've seen it posited that the blank space of Noct's ten years in the crystal would be a good place for at least part of it. When Gentiana says "the girl holds the true power" in the OG it gets my mind spinning that Luna's biggest contributions might yet to be seen.
Ardyn is such a bullshit artist. The way he toys with Ravus and Iggy is riveting. People want to complain about dubs and script choices, but Darin De Paul's voice makes me believe in his evil manifesting for over two millennia only to be unleashed on our heroes. His DLC is probably going to be my favorite, if only because Darin could read a phone book with malicious intent.
The AU verse is interesting, but negates the message of the OG that isn't particularly satisfying. I don't hate it, but it felt like they wrote it backwards from the ending they thought people wanted to see.
I do wonder if future DLC's will have alternate endings. Business Division 2's inability/unwillingness to age up character models (Ravus' beard and lack of costume change as well as the comrades avatar bullshit immortality) doesn't give me a ton of hope.
Finally the friendly match makes me want a battle attack mode before they wrap everything up. Using/fighting against all the different characters would be fantastic. A definite pipe dream.
Ok, so mine and Geo's FFXV Limited Edition artbooks arrived. The signatures that they came with were on individual certificate proofs rather than being on the books or prints themselves.
– however –
Hers had a tiny Cactuar on it, and mine had a little blob guy, and when we compared them, we realized that THEY'RE SIGNATURES FROM TOTALLY DIFFERENT ARTISTS.
I went from being a little non-plussed by the odd-page-specific signature, to totally amped. Also, the artbook and all the packaging is huge, and I'm getting my FFXV prints & this little signature page framed.
Ok, so mine and Geo's FFXV Limited Edition artbooks arrived. The signatures that they came with were on individual certificate proofs rather than being on the books or prints themselves.
– however –
Hers had a tiny Cactuar on it, and mine had a little blob guy, and when we compared them, we realized that THEY'RE SIGNATURES FROM TOTALLY DIFFERENT ARTISTS.
I went from being a little non-plussed by the odd-page-specific signature, to totally amped. Also, the artbook and all the packaging is huge, and I'm getting my FFXV prints & this little signature page framed.
It was pretty funny how we both went from "Man, that's kind of lame." to "HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO COOL" when we figured out that we had different signatures.
Now I'm curious as to how unique each of the signatures are. How many different artists? Did they do a different doodle for each signature?
Aaaaand here's mine. I'm glad that Geo's the one who gave me the final motivation to get one of the 500 limited copies, so when I got it in the mail, I messaged her about how big the packaging was. So when hers showed up she messaged me about it, I asked if her signature was only on this weird piece of paper, and she asked if mine had a Cactuar, too – and then it was all excitement as we realized what was up!
I still think that design looks hideous, but I'm glad you two are pleased.
I'm a tad confused about the signatures thing, though. Are you guys saying you each only received a signature from one member of the art team or that you got signatures from the whole team with one member providing an additional doodle?
----
In other news, I stayed up way later than I should have the night "Episode Ignis" was released to collect all the items before finishing the story modes, which were absolutely amazing. As far as story goes, this DLC is the best thing to come out of FFXV yet.
On that front, "Episode Ignis" was everything I had hoped for. We got
Iggy being the biggest BAMF on Eos; more characterization with Ravus; the most awesome tag-team ever; Iggy settling things up with Calligo (and Ravus ensuring that it's settled for good this time); confirmation that Izunia was Ardyn's brother (younger brother, actually, as made clear in the Japanese wording); a glance at a course of events where things ended up a little better for Ravus and Noct; and some genuinely touching moments with our bros.
This DLC is to the story of FFXV what "Comrades" has been to the combat, weapon growth and implementation of magic.
Speaking of those aspects of gameplay, I was quite pleased with the combat in "Episode Ignis" as well. It isn't quite on the unsurpassed level as that in "Comrades," while exploration in "Comrades" isn't nearly to the level here, but if Iggy could have a warp-strike along with the hookshot, I'd say the overall combat/exploration of this DLC would definitely be better than that of the main game.
As it stands, it still has more fun factor in a few ways, and it allows for this epic clash I was able to have with Noct in the Friendly Match:
The battle couldn't have ended in a better way or with more perfect timing had it been scripted.
Anyway, back to the greatness that is the story here, I think this installment did an excellent job of contrasting Iggy's sense of duty with his devotion to Noct for Noctis's own sake. And in so doing, it's an excellent contrast of Ignis with Gladio, on top of the parallel we see here between he and Ravus.
There's also an interesting contrast to be made between Ignis and Ardyn, for that matter --
Iggy is prepared to give everything for his little brother while Ardyn hates his so much that he wants to take everything from Izunia's descendant, even 113 generations later.
Anyway, I think back to the random dialogue in the main game when you park at gas stations. Gladio sometimes asks what they're doing next, and Ignis says "It's [pause] up to Noct." Throwaway dialogue at worst, emphasis on royal retainer duty at most, right?
But to Gladio, duty is everything, whether for himself or Noctis, and that's where they butt heads in a few places. Ignis gets that, and duty is where it began for Iggy, but in the end, he would have stood by Noctis for not going through with his. He even struggled with the role intended for him a bit there after
they lost Luna and he had a vision of what may happen to Noctis if he continued the journey.
He wanted to talk Noct out of it, but rather than serve himself by really attempting to, and even rather than following his duty for its own sake, he just left it all up to Noctis in the end. He allowed him to learn about everything and make his own choice without trying to influence that decision for one sake or another, whether it be his own sake or duty's sake. It was Noctis's sake that he cared about, and he recognized that includes allowing him the dignity of making his own destiny, just as Lunafreya did.
That's his motivation, really: doing right by Noct. He's been with this kid and looked after him their whole lives. Not just because it's his duty; not anymore. It's because it's what he wants to do.
Like Adam Croasdell said in his panel at EXP Con, Ignis is the father Noctis doesn't have. Regis had to put duty first for himself and for Noctis. Iggy left Noct the choice and the chance for it to be otherwise.
I still think that design looks hideous, but I'm glad you two are pleased.
I'm a tad confused about the signatures thing, though. Are you guys saying you each only received a signature from one member of the art team or that you got signatures from the whole team with one member providing an additional doodle?
Honestly the outside case/cover is a bit err... "loud", and is going to fit absolutely nowhere, but overall the art book itself is really impressive.
We only got one signature from the art team, but it looks like who signed which copy is somewhat randomized (e.g. he got a CG artist who worked on monsters, I got an Art Director in charge of UNPCs). And without seeing any of the other signatures it's hard to say how unique the doodles were.
^Between the long load times, and the fact that RPGs are "cerebral/strategic" in nature, that's the main reason I usually save my sessions for days when I'm not doing absolutely ANYTHING on my schedule....
It sucks though, if I'm being honest... I'd play games like FFXV more often if they took less "mental energy".
Just to give you an idea, I play Guilty Gear a lot and that takes maybe less than a minute to load up and train in and that's a fightning game... so I can actually play it whenever because of how compact it is.
Other games, like Tetris or Yu-Gi-Oh, are also rather small and don't exactly take much time to start up, but the card game takes "longer" to play, so I save it for times when I'm tired and just need to relax with something engaging mentally.
RPGs in general take a lot of my "brain" as I have to remember what I was last doing on my game save, what my goal was, what I have to do in the next boss fight, etc etc... it's not easy unless you take notes, lol.
and that increased my hype for some reason.
I think Hojo's been fucking around in his lab again.