Tets Revisits: Final Fantasy XV

[Tetsujin]

I actually wanted to play Forspoken at launch but money is tight, inflation sucks and therefore I'm gonna wait until it's cheaper. So I decided to play the only other Luminous game instead, Final Fantasy XV.

I have only played XV once, when it released. I never came back for all the updates and patches and DLC and all that live service limited event stuff because I was like "bro I'm done with the game, stop it"
Well actually, I did play the Moogle Chocobo Carnival stuff (which was inexplicably made a limited event that is now permanently inaccessible because somebody thought that's a reasonable thing to do in a single player, non-online, non-subscription based game because uh....????)

Now my opinion of FFXV is that it is overall fine, however noticeably messy and with a disappointing plot. It's kind of a weird Frankenstein's monster FF, a patchwork of Versus XIII concepts and whatever Luminous Productions threw at the wall and tried to make stick.

Now, over six years later and with the launch of XVI around the corner, I thought it'd be a good time to revisit this game to finally find out how different the current version is from the launch version. I bought all the DLCs and the Royal Pack when they were on sale a while ago.

The trophy whore part of my brain was happy to get rid of that 45%. It's kind of annoying to have 100% and the platinum trophy for a game and then a bunch of DLC brings the percentage down again. A completionist's nightmare!
Except...it gets worse!

I learned that at this point...it is literally impossible to get a 100% again in FFXV.
The reason is the Comrades multiplayer DLC. For whatever reason Square Enix decided FFXV needs multiplayer or something and it should be DLC and then for whatever reason decided, nevermind, make it a standalone product instead. So the DLC version was made inaccessible and you can only play the standalone version. The trophies for the DLC will however still be in your list, forever unachievable.

At the end of the day it is a minor thing but it bothers me nonetheless. Nyeh!

Whatever, let's begin.

I decided to start chronologically with Episode Ardyn.

Some unstructured train of thought impressions so far:

Spoiler: Episode Ardyn

Was an alright DLC although a bit repetitive. Was cool being able to explore the streets of Insomnia a bit though. There was a bit of a lore dump at the beginning about the Astrals and the history of Eos which I'm sure excited fan wiki editors but lack of lore wasn't my main complaint about the story so like, whatever.

The backstory of Ardyn in this DLC plus that anime prologue is overall pretty decent though and something I wish had been in the main game from the get go. Makes him a lot more of a tragic character. But I assume they wanted to make him more sympathetic for that alternate ending or something? Idk. Dude was a genuinely good guy who was royally screwed over by destiny or whatever. Can't fault him for harboring just a teensy bit of a grudge.
Fuck Somnus. And Bahamut.

I kind of enjoyed Ardyn's rampage just messing up billboards and freakin' balloons and shit lmao
So petty! /aerithvoice

The purchasable stat gear being an assortment of ridiculous hats is stupid and inspired. I like it.

Being able to summon Ifrit was dope. The implementation of that interestingly was more like how it is now in VII Remake, with him fighting alongside you for a limited time and commands being available. Neat.

The music choice though. I don't know if they needed to play that rap rock song nonstop, would've been nice to have a more low-key instrumental version for when you are outside of battles. Exploring the city while the dude goes "THISISTHE- THISISTHE- THISISTHE-" for the nth time gets really grating after a while. Like, stop rapping about revenge and shit for a second, I'm just buying a fancy top hat here.

There's also extra stuff like that mode where you battle the bros. Seemed kind of annoying and not very fun though so I abandoned that quickly.

Spoiler: Kingsglaive

I also rewatched Brotherhood and Kingsglaive again for the first time since 2016. Kingsglaive is actually kind of fun for what it is. At last, a Final Fantasy movie that has recognizable monsters and magic spells in its action scenes!
The acting though. On one hand you have Sean Bean giving the role of Regis some extra gravitas. On the other hand you have whatever happened with the casting of Libertus. Dude did not have a single line delivery that should've made the cut. Yikes.

The finale of the movie is kind of insane. Giant kingly dudes fighting Diamond Weapon Kaiju with Nyx and whatshisface duking it out on top of them. It's bananas! Which is kind of a letdown to think that the climax of FFXV is nowhere that bombastic lmao
On the other hand, it's a lot harder to follow the action here imo than it was in something like Cloud vs Sephiroth in Advent Children.

I wonder why they decided to give this movie a different art direction to the game though, with the movie giving every character the 3D-scanned face of an actual person. It's kind of jarring going to the game and some characters looking completely different (Luna, Ravus) and then others randomly get to keep their Real Human! face (Regis).
Kingsglaive Luna >>>>> FFXV Luna btw

Speaking of Luna, the problems with her character already start here, don't they. I remember the devs invoking the "Strong Female Character" trope (in those exact words!) before the release but it doesn't amount to much except "My duty!! I must see it through!!" or whatever. It's kind of noticeable that whenever Luna is about to even get a small piece of the action by getting on the driver's seat of an airship or car, usually five seconds later you have Nxy or whoever come in and literally shove her out of it again like "NO I'M DRIVING" lmao

Anyway, next up I'll finally dive back into the main game proper.

I'll probably slot the DLCs into my playthrough where it makes the most sense chronologically. Kind of excited to play some new content and find out what changed. I remember all characters being playable now, there being an offroad Regalia and the entire final chapter having been expanded with new bosses or something. I don't know if there was anything beyond that. There may be changes in cutscenes too but considering the last time I played was in 2016, I might not even remember what those were like originally. We'll see!

 

[ForceStealer]

Ooh this should be fun

I like whenever TLS'ers do stuff like this

 

[Sprites]

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts Tets!

I'm relpaying FFXII at weekends and if I can get my bottom DS screen fixed (need the right screwdriver to do it) I'll replay Revenant Wings directly after its always nice to revist one you haven't visited in a good while!

 

[Torrie]

FFXV my love This game will probably live in my heart rent-free for the rest of my life. I was finally able to play it while we were still suffering from lockdowns and travel restrictions, and FFXV allowed me to make friends, travel and explore the world, and all of that with a touch of magic and drama.

Also cool that you're breaking it down in a separate thread, Tets! I was posting my impressions in the XV thread and now they're buried under other updates. Should've opened a thread too but oh well.

One thing about bros' respective DLCs. As far as I can remember, when you launch one, the game tells you that you're not supposed to play it until you're through this or that chapter in the main game because they contain some spoilers, and the gameplay experience may seriously suffer otherwise. Besides, it just hurts better when you know what's gonna happen but the characters don't

 

[ForceStealer]

And of course Ignis' goes on to spoil the rest of the game, lol. But that's probably okay since he's already played the game once

 

[Tetsujin]

Okay, first chapter done.

Spoiler: Chapter 1

I remember not being a fan of the cold open with Ifrit ten years into the future and I'm still not
Honestly seems kind of a weird and random way to start the game. Storywise, I think it'd have been better to not reveal the time skip and actually leave that as a surprise and gameplaywise...well, there's nothing here.

You'd think they would use this as a sort of tutorial boss but...you just walk three steps forward and immediately start another cutscene and then it's over. *shrugs* Also, it always bothered me how the animation when Gladio grabs Noct and pulls him into cover is just them sort of...sliding a bit across the floor to get them where they need to be since the starting point can vary a bit.

I also remember the game allowing you to choose different outfits but then the game kind of disappointing me in that regard since you start with like, two sets of outfits and mostly just keep those without unlocking more except maybe one at the very end.

I open the menu here and

...oh

woss all this then? This isn't even NG+ or anything. Well, the Choco-Mog tee and Assassin's robes are clearly being thrown in there because you cannot actually play any of these anymore (but why though??).

I also find myself wondering whether equipping the others with secondary weapons was always a thing but I believe it was. Oh, but I am pretty sure this was a new addition to the game:

There are character viewers, a bestiary and a datalog. I do not remember this at all. Also, the zoom is disabled for the female characters. Anti-perv measures?
That's a bit funny because you can't even zoom in that far regardless. No tilting characters either. Also funny: Cid's profile mentions the "late king"...um, spoiler dude, technically he is still alive at this point!
The datalog records all those little lore entries you find across the world. I'm pretty sure most of these were there at launch but the datalog seems new.

There are also "Timed Quests" in the menu, which come with their own fancy menu music that I have also not heard before. Seems these timed quests are still a thing where every day it cycles to a new quest you can do or something?
I think there used to more of an online element to it, maybe? There are titles you can unlock, but they all seem to already be unlocked for me?

Which I can only assume is because these would otherwise be unachievable or something? Idk, Idgi

I have been taking it slow this first chapter, just getting re-familiarized with the controls and doing a few hunts and stuff. The nice thing is playing this on PS5 BC, which of course unlocks the PS4 Pro graphics options.
I play on "Lite" which is the 1080p 60fps mode. I've been too spoilt with all the 60fps options on PS5 lately and playing this on PS4 there was a lot of judder (which apparently wasn't framerate drops but uneven framepacing which is different bc blahblah idk I'm not Digital Foundry )
Here on PS5 it's a consistent and judder-free 60fps which is nice. The other options are the higher resolution 30fps mode which certainly looks nicer but brings back that weird judder that was there on PS4. The third one is a 1080p 30fps mode which seems kind of useless here but was probably to give people a stable framerate option on PS4 Pro as the judder in the high res option would've undoubtedly be there as well and I assume the 60fps mode probably used to be "up to 60fps but in actuality fluctuating between 40-50 all the time" on the Pro.

So 60fps is nice but the downside is...the game's graphics haven't aged that well. It actually looks a bit...grody? There's a lot of dithering used and plenty of textures that seem a bit low-res, especially stuff in the distance:

The textures further away seem to devolve into N64 quality almost. This was 2016 of course although it's insane how well Horizon Zero Dawn aged, which released only 3-4 months later and still looks incredible. What witchcraft does Guerilla employ I wonder.
The lighting in this game is still pretty good though. I always give FFXV credit for making its nights look actually dark, no raised blacks or mysterious moon light that just happens to light everything evenly at all times or whatever. Even better playing this on an HDR tv, which I did not have back then.

So continuing the game, I make my way to Galdin Quay and I am greeted with this ever so slightly immersion breaking sight:

Ah yes, the photo contest. I do recall reading about that at the time. So here at Galdin there are a bunch of screens now that display the winning entries of the photo contest. Seems like something that would've been up my alley normally but here it's more about hoping the RNG gods bless you with a good picture from Prompto rather than doing anything yourself, of course.
Still wish we could've gotten an actual photo mode.

Further on, we meet Ardyn for the first time. To this day I wonder how none of the main characters know the face of the literal chancellor of Niflheim. Not like his face was a secret, Regis immediately knew who he was in Kingsglaive! Idk, this one's a bit of a weird plot point tbh.

I meet Dino at the docks and man, I forgot about this dude. Gotta run an errand for him because of course I do. This really makes me miss the concept of Niflheim's invasion being the playable opening to this. The game's first chapter doesn't really do much to draw you into the plot. Your car breaks down and you run errands in the desert and then you get a few clips from Kingsglaive spliced in and read about stuff in the papers. Not a lot of excitement just yet.

 

[Wol]

Okay, first chapter done.

Spoiler: Chapter 1

I remember not being a fan of the cold open with Ifrit ten years into the future and I'm still not
Honestly seems kind of a weird and random way to start the game. Storywise, I think it'd have been better to not reveal the time skip and actually leave that as a surprise and gameplaywise...well, there's nothing here.

You'd think they would use this as a sort of tutorial boss but...you just walk three steps forward and immediately start another cutscene and then it's over. *shrugs* Also, it always bothered me how the animation when Gladio grabs Noct and pulls him into cover is just them sort of...sliding a bit across the floor to get them where they need to be since the starting point can vary a bit.

I also remember the game allowing you to choose different outfits but then the game kind of disappointing me in that regard since you start with like, two sets of outfits and mostly just keep those without unlocking more except maybe one at the very end.

I open the menu here and

...oh

woss all this then? This isn't even NG+ or anything. Well, the Choco-Mog tee and Assassin's robes are clearly being thrown in there because you cannot actually play any of these anymore (but why though??).

I also find myself wondering whether equipping the others with secondary weapons was always a thing but I believe it was. Oh, but I am pretty sure this was a new addition to the game:

There are character viewers, a bestiary and a datalog. I do not remember this at all. Also, the zoom is disabled for the female characters. Anti-perv measures?
That's a bit funny because you can't even zoom in that far regardless. No tilting characters either. Also funny: Cid's profile mentions the "late king"...um, spoiler dude, technically he is still alive at this point!
The datalog records all those little lore entries you find across the world. I'm pretty sure most of these were there at launch but the datalog seems new.

There are also "Timed Quests" in the menu, which come with their own fancy menu music that I have also not heard before. Seems these timed quests are still a thing where every day it cycles to a new quest you can do or something?
I think there used to more of an online element to it, maybe? There are titles you can unlock, but they all seem to already be unlocked for me?

Which I can only assume is because these would otherwise be unachievable or something? Idk, Idgi

I have been taking it slow this first chapter, just getting re-familiarized with the controls and doing a few hunts and stuff. The nice thing is playing this on PS5 BC, which of course unlocks the PS4 Pro graphics options.
I play on "Lite" which is the 1080p 60fps mode. I've been too spoilt with all the 60fps options on PS5 lately and playing this on PS4 there was a lot of judder (which apparently wasn't framerate drops but uneven framepacing which is different bc blahblah idk I'm not Digital Foundry )
Here on PS5 it's a consistent and judder-free 60fps which is nice. The other options are the higher resolution 30fps mode which certainly looks nicer but brings back that weird judder that was there on PS4. The third one is a 1080p 30fps mode which seems kind of useless here but was probably to give people a stable framerate option on PS4 Pro as the judder in the high res option would've undoubtedly be there as well and I assume the 60fps mode probably used to be "up to 60fps but in actuality fluctuating between 40-50 all the time" on the Pro.

So 60fps is nice but the downside is...the game's graphics haven't aged that well. It actually looks a bit...grody? There's a lot of dithering used and plenty of textures that seem a bit low-res, especially stuff in the distance:

The textures further away seem to devolve into N64 quality almost. This was 2016 of course although it's insane how well Horizon Zero Dawn aged, which released only 3-4 months later and still looks incredible. What witchcraft does Guerilla employ I wonder.
The lighting in this game is still pretty good though. I always give FFXV credit for making its nights look actually dark, no raised blacks or mysterious moon light that just happens to light everything evenly at all times or whatever. Even better playing this on an HDR tv, which I did not have back then.

So continuing the game, I make my way to Galdin Quay and I am greeted with this ever so slightly immersion breaking sight:

Ah yes, the photo contest. I do recall reading about that at the time. So here at Galdin there are a bunch of screens now that display the winning entries of the photo contest. Seems like something that would've been up my alley normally but here it's more about hoping the RNG gods bless you with a good picture from Prompto rather than doing anything yourself, of course.
Still wish we could've gotten an actual photo mode.

Further on, we meet Ardyn for the first time. To this day I wonder how none of the main characters know the face of the literal chancellor of Niflheim. Not like his face was a secret, Regis immediately knew who he was in Kingsglaive! Idk, this one's a bit of a weird plot point tbh.

I meet Dino at the docks and man, I forgot about this dude. Gotta run an errand for him because of course I do. This really makes me miss the concept of Niflheim's invasion being the playable opening to this. The game's first chapter doesn't really do much to draw you into the plot. Your car breaks down and you run errands in the desert and then you get a few clips from Kingsglaive spliced in and read about stuff in the papers. Not a lot of excitement just yet.

FFXV's presentation is a mess unfortunately, and many events, small to big ones, were edited as development went along, including the invasion sequence (I'm just talking about XV here lol).

I really enjoyed the down to earth intro, but as soon as the invasion happened, the tone should be tragic and tempered with desperation but then it returns to the usual road trip mood fast.

 

[Tetsujin]

Ah, I missed Ignis saying the line. You know the one.

Good lord, I forgot how hungry this game can make you with all that detailed food imagery. Actually mouth-watering stuff. Could go for some of those Garulessandwiches right about now...

 

[Tetsujin]

Help, I'm getting sidetracked by chapter 3 again

Finished chapter 2 a while back and got my first two royal arms. I forgot about dungeons having that annoying forced slow walk. You can still sprint which is good but it's like, two extremes. Be all sneakysneak or GOTTAGOFAST! Whyyyyy.
Also, jumpscares. I forgot this shit has jumpscares!
I forgot taking on one of those Iron Giants at night can be a bit risky early in the game. Beat my first one just before sunrise though, clutch.
Had several times though where the car would stop and do the whole "omg Daemons!" thing only for there to be...nothing. Not in front of me, not behind me. And I can just get back in the car and keep going. Happened about three times so far. Weird.

Oh hey, Cross Chain attacks are back. I actually would not have realized those were patched in if I hadn't read some of the patch notes. I clearly remember doing those...except that would've been in the Episode Duscae demo. And then looking into it further, they weren't in the launch version of the demo either!

After chapter 2 you get a cutscene with a bunch of the imperial rogues gallery. I remember this was the only time you pretty much get to see the Emperor in the entire game and then at the end he's just a generic daemon or whatever. That old scientist dude voiced by Steve Blum also just says a few lines and never appears again. Well, I've seen a bit more of him in Episode Ardyn by now, as his younger self.
Aranea is there! I will be looking forward to playing your DLC- oh nevermind, that was one of the canceled ones

Anyway, chapter 3. The one where you drop the plot and just go driving around in circles on the open world faffing about and going fishing or whatever.
I've been accepting multiple hunts at a time and stuff and would've thought that's how it always was - but apparently that too was not a thing in the launch version. You could only accept one hunt at a time?? That sounds so tedious and annoying I am shocked I don't remember this at all.

 

[ForceStealer]

Finished chapter 2 a while back and got my first two royal arms. I forgot about dungeons having that annoying forced slow walk. You can still sprint which is good but it's like, two extremes. Be all sneakysneak or GOTTAGOFAST! Whyyyyy.

I actually thought this was a pretty elegant way to demonstrate where you have and haven't already been in a dungeon that didn't force you just constantly look at the map, especially in the more mazey ones like the sewers.
And yeah, since they were often scary, I didn't want to go that fast anyway

Anyway, chapter 3. The one where you drop the plot and just go driving around in circles on the open world faffing about and going fishing or whatever.
I've been accepting multiple hunts at a time and stuff and would've thought that's how it always was - but apparently that too was not a thing in the launch version. You could only accept one hunt at a time?? That sounds so tedious and annoying I am shocked I don't remember this at all.

I was always annoyed how the quests basically precluded efficiency. You couldn't clear one area and then move on, because every single quest sent you back and forth 700 times.

 

[Tetsujin]

I actually thought this was a pretty elegant way to demonstrate where you have and haven't already been in a dungeon that didn't force you just constantly look at the map, especially in the more mazey ones like the sewers.

I swear it forced me to slow walk even in places I've already been to or maybe I'm going crazy.

Update: I'm still in chapter 3 :')

Thought maybe you unlock the other playable characters at some point in the story but turns out, there are nodes on the techniques branch of the skill tree for that. So I've unlocked Gladio and Ignis. Sorry Prompto, ran out of AP.

One thing I wasn't too hot about with the battle system is the "hold down the button"-style for both attacking and dodging and stuff. Noctis only gets to parry specific attacks and they give you a big red prompt that'll let you parry from miles away which is kinda meh.
I generally prefer more reaction-based parry systems and the likes. You know, block in the last moment and it turns into a parry and that.

WELL, looks like Gladio is my guy now because his playstyle is literally that.
He also builds up a rage meter with every blocked attack and stuff which lets you unleash different special attacks. He might be a bit OP? The thing with the big Gladio swords as Noctis is usually "powerful, but SLOW" but now you can play as Gladio and he's pretty swift with those! All the power, none of the slow.
It's fun though. Parrying an overhead swing from an Iron Giant feels pretty badass! I think I'm gonna like the Gladio DLC.

Ignis gets to infuse different elements into his daggers so taking advantage of enemy elemental weaknesses is pretty easy now. The lightning-infused daggers just make you teleport from enemy to enemy, it's kind of nuts. This all feels a bit OP but I might also be overleveled already from hoarding those EXP and cashing them in at Galdin Quay for that sweet 2x bonus

Only downside is that switching characters always comes with a little animation whereas I'd have prefered it to be more instant.
So far the game had felt like "same old, same old" but the character switching just infused this with a bit of extra fun and freshness going forward. Just need Prompto now for the full set.

Camera in this game though can still be ass. Seems like everytime I fight some varmints in the open world, there is some giant shrubbery right in front of my face.

 

[Tetsujin]

I'm up to chapter 5 now.

I have prepared a massive post and got a lot to say and I'm only gonna say it once, so pay attention!

Spoiler: Stuff

So what I wanted to get off my chest is that I really w-














IMPERIALS ABOVE US!!!

Whew, that was a lot! Thanks for reading all that.

 

[Tetsujin]

As you can probably infer from the above post, the obnoxious cutting off story dialogue while in the field has not been patched or anything in all this time. Makes me appreciate how titles like the God of War games handle this where dialogue can be interrupted and dynamically resumes. This game really needed that. It seems like it always spawns IMPERIALS ABOVE YOU right when someone's like "so anyway, time for some exposition about who the fuck Gentiana is"

Spoiler: Chapters 3, 4, 5 done

In the end, I didn't spend as much time in chapter 3 as I did my first time around. Back then of course I was eager to explore and see everything the game has to offer but knowing how much of it is just pace-breaking time waster fetch quests with no interesting plot lines or payoffs, it's easier to ignore it this time around and just focus on the main story.
...which now makes me realize how *fast* you actually go through the open world portion of the game if you just mainline it. There actually is barely any plot happening on the open world besides "go here, get a royal arm; go there, get a summon; go to an imperial base, retrieve your car" etc.
...which basically means even the MSQ is fetch quests

Taking out Deadeye was an example of an okay side mission at least.

There is a whole build up to the encounter and stalking it through the fog is very tense and atmospheric. And the reason this one feels a bit more high budget than other side quests is likely just because it was the main mission and setpiece moment for the Episode Duscae demo. Everything else is just "catch frogs" and "pick up crap from the ground" or killing a bunch of monsters.

Anyway, I'm probably just repeating stuff here I might have said about this game six years ago already

Been looking at some more of those character dossiers:

who??.gif

I...I don't know who this is lmao
Literally hasn't appeared anywhere yet and I have no memory of him from my first playthrough either. WHO IS THIS RANDO D:

Oh yeah, I have unlocked Prompto now as well. Unsurprisingly, his playstyle is straight up third-person shooter. Even though he normally only has a revolver and whatever secondary gadget you equipped him with, playing as Prompto suddenly gives him grenades, a machine gun and a freakin' rocket launcher. Goddamn, Prompto doesn't fuck around. Seems like the rifle and launcher have limited ammo which does seem to refresh after a certain cooldown period though.

Have cleared out entire swarms of Magitek troopers by just hanging back at a distance and picking them off with the rifle from afar lmao

His playstyle feels the most out of place next to the other ones. But I do recall the early Versus XIII trailers that showcased a playable TPS-style Prompto. Having everyone be playable in general at the very least is a Versus XIII promise that has now been fulfilled, hooray

Anyway, can't help but taking screencaps so I'mma just throw a bunch in here

Purple/black Regalia is the way to go

I remembered that they also added a camera feature for Noctis. The closest thing this game has to a "photo mode"
You can either do first person or have it orbit around Noctis. You can zoom in and out. That's it. It is very, very limited. Also, it is mainly meant to save photos to the in-game album of course. I get why, but the in-game images are horribly compressed and I'd rather use the share button and save to the HDD. Which means I generally have to go to the menu and turn off the HUD so that all the camera UI stuff doesn't get in the way and then turn everything back on when I'm done.
Somewhat tedious but eh.

A couple of Prompto shots:

^This one was a particularly annoying encounter. I thought "fuck it, we'll drive at night. I can deal with Iron Giants" but I forgot that the encounter rate can be absolutely out of control. Basically everytime I beat the giant, a Magitek engine would spawn. Once I dealt with the troopers, it was time for the next giant after which I'd get the Magitek troopers and so on. I was stuck in this loop until sunrise, I wanted to tear my hair out lmao

^idk, Prompto does not know how to set the exposure on his camera correctly. Just set it to auto my dude!

^Ardyn being a creep, lol

^this one's kinda cool. Is Gladio dying here? I don't remember what happened, heh.

^enemy encounter right after the second runestone in the Ramuh part of the story. This one was kinda tough but the EXP was worth it.
Most of Prompto's shots are kind of random and a bit shit but this one is pretty good!

^Tooks this one myself on the way to get the Regalia back. Looks like they're filming the climax to your average 2010s comic book movie over there.

Kinda failed most of these stealth kill segments in that base, whoops.

At the end of the chapter you go back to Lestellum and oh no, Jared is dead! Not Jared! Anything but Jared!!!!

...who was Jared again?

Actually I do remember but Jared became a bit of a meme because a lot of people didn't lmao
Well, praise the patches because they inserted a little flashback cutscene to remind you it was the old dude who owns the hotel.
I don't blame people for not remembering, he appears in like one or two scenes and I assume most people get immediately distracted by a billion hunts and side quests for the next 20 hours afterwards.

Afterwards, Noctis goes to bed and has a random CG dream.
Yeah I still remember the "Omen" trailer. Rewatched it very recently too. Very flashy and cool animation but with barely any relevance to the actual plot of the game. More of a concept trailer. I still don't understand why they put this into the game. It's not even mentioned when he wakes up or anything. Someone just went "idk, it looks cool, throw it in there somewhere" *shrugs*

Oh, and I keep getting texture glitches during cutscenes where textures frequently switch back and forth between low detail and high detail versions. It's kind of distracting and I don't know why it happens and whether it happened back in 2016 as well. =/
I play from an external HDD on PS5, maybe that's causing some issue in loading textures or something. Bah.

 

[ForceStealer]

As you can probably infer from the above post, the obnoxious cutting off story dialogue while in the field has not been patched or anything in all this time. Makes me appreciate how titles like the God of War games handle this where dialogue can be interrupted and dynamically resumes. This game really needed that. It seems like it always spawns IMPERIALS ABOVE YOU right when someone's like "so anyway, time for some exposition about who the fuck Gentiana is"

It really is maddening. At least as bad, if not worse, is that it also always cuts off whatever nice area theme has just started playing (Wanderlust, or Sunset Waltz, for instance). Any time one of those songs would play I would be paralyzed with indecision of what my best chance was to hear more of it - standing still, or finding a somewhere out of the way or something. You can't even open the menu because that has it's own theme

...which now makes me realize how *fast* you actually go through the open world portion of the game if you just mainline it.

When I played Episode Ardyn back when it came out, the lore dump made me want to see the story again, and so I did just "mainline" it. And yeah, it really is crazy how fast you can coast through the open world chapters, haha.

 

[Tetsujin]

It really is maddening. At least as bad, if not worse, is that it also always cuts off whatever nice area theme has just started playing (Wanderlust, or Sunset Waltz, for instance). Any time one of those songs would play I would be paralyzed with indecision of what my best chance was to hear more of it - standing still, or finding a somewhere out of the way or something. You can't even open the menu because that has it's own theme

Oh yeah, menu theme. I really don't like menu themes, when you visit the menu several times back to back like, when you forgot you wanted to check something else so you keep going in and out etc. you just get this constant start/stop of the music. Not a fan.
For the area themes though, I noticed they resume playing after encounters. I've been wondering whether this is different from launch because I do seem to remember music being cut off completely.

 

[ForceStealer]

Hm, yeah I don't think they used to resume. That's good to know, whether it got patched or I was just wrong

 

[looneymoon]

I remember I killed the car when I put Cindy's ass on it

 

[Tetsujin]

It tickles me that one of the NPCs in this game is straight up frickin' Hurley from Lost

I miss that show. I liked the ending too, screw the haters

Got myself some OSTs for the car and hey, somebody mislabeled FFXIV's "Torn from the Heavens" as "Hard to Miss", fix your tags Square Enix

I kind of forgot about those new Timed Quest thingies so I checked out the currently active one and went to the place it said but the enemies were about 30-40 levels above me and uh, it did not end well for me.
Probably meant more for late/end game. Looks like you earn quest points or something and can exchange them for rewards, including a boatload of EXP and AP and such. Hm.

Let's try again later, I guess.

Spoiler: Adventurer from another World

Pulling into a rest stop, we hear a female voice calling for help. A side quest gets accepted automatically and a familiar jingle plays.

Wait, I accepted no sidequests.

...wait, I'm also not playing FFXIV right now.

Following the voice we meet a peculiar catgirl in distress.

That mahusive Chunkoborb will not move without some food so we go off to get it some premium greens from Wiz' Chocobo Post which is annoyingly the place I literally just came from but oh well, back and forth we go.

She introduces herself as Y'jhimei and she came here through some kind of teleportation shenanigans and warns us off an impending Primal summoning.
Primals? We don't do that here!

We make towards an imperial base where shit is supposedly going to go down and queue into the instance

Now I can't help but notice that this is a level 45 quest and Y'jhimei clearly still wears lvl.1 starter gear and is still an Arcanist, no job stone equipped. This is griefing and we should probably vote kick her.

We follow Y'jhimei up to that crate to get a better view of the Keep. Some light platforming is necessary but after XIV's Kugane platforming puzzle, this ain't nothing we can't handle.

So it looks like a bunch of Ixal tribe people got teleported here too via some kind of ancient device. Not sure how exactly that happened but I blame the Allagans.
From up here we can clearly see a bunch of Ixali balloon thingies, a bunch of Ixal trying to use a meteor shard to summon their Primal, Garuda; and a strange statue that looks Garuda-ish but also not really.

Looking around some more we also come across

...Allagan tomestones? Fuck me, not here too!! WE DON'T DO THAT HERE

Anyway, we fight a bunch of shit including a Magitek armor apparently piloted by one of the Ixal or something. Y'jhimei actually helps out here and uses healing spells. Prompto asks Noct why he can't do that. Idk man, I would've wished for a "proper" magic system in XV as well instead of the magic grenades that we have but it is what it is.

Moving on, we try to stop Garuda's summoning.

We fail.

swiggety-swooty, there descends a feathered booty

Garuda is up to some of her usual tricks from FFXIV, with a bunch of feather adds and clones of herself and whatnot. I'm slightly underleveled actually so this battle presents some challenge, some of her attacks instantly get me into danger status. Lots of potions were chugged.

As it looks like Garuda gains the upper hand, Noctis hears a voice in his head who says something about uh. Being a messenger or something. I'm gonna be honest here, I have no idea what the fuck she said as I played with no subtitles and the audio mixing was horrendous. Had to go back and rewatch this scene on Youtube later lmao

The summon music plays and the prompt appears and we call down this new ally who is 100% not an Astral but a messenger of the gods because lore reasons.

Oh look it's the statue lady.

Holy cow

Garuda is beaten, however it seems Noctis has now vanished. Wherever could he have gone?

Spoiler: Meanwhile, somewhere much further away

Somehow, Noctis finds himself stranded in the lands of Eorzea with a fuzzy memory of how he got here and a broken down Regalia-F.
...which is odd, as the Regalia was parked nowhere near that base and it definitely did not have the Type-F flying upgrade equipped yet. In fact, I'm sure it's safe to say the flying Regalia is not even canon to FFXV as that would kind of break the story and you can't even unlock it until post-game but let's not concern ourselves with pesky details for whenever these things happen, a wizard did it.

He meets a certain Warrior of Light

and together with that world's Cid, they try to get the Regalia going again and look for a way to get him back to his home world. But trouble is afoot in the lands of the Ixali. They're all going batshit over some kind of Garuda type entity that is not their Garuda.

Turns out it's our Messenger friend bird person thing.

She tests Noctis in combat and with the help of Eorzea's Warrior of Light who was kindly bestowed his Warp Strike ability for this fight, they beat her.

She is pleased with his strength and reveals that through her, the two worlds are still connected and she can open a portal back to Eos. With the newly fixed Regalia, he drives through that portal and back home.

Only a few seconds have passed in Eos as Noctis reappears out of thin air (without the Regalia because idk wizards). Unsure of what happened, he believes he might have just had a dream. The Messenger speaks to Noctis again, saying she was defeated by the gods and awakened by a traveler from another world. Her name has been forgotten over her long slumber so she takes on the name of the goddess of storms. So our Garuda-lookalike wind power person is now called Garuda. That is convenient.

So this little side adventure comes to an end but not before we take a picture with Y'jhimei

She decides to stick around and opens up a little shop where I can now get powerful Garuda-themed weapons for...the exchange of Allagan tomestones...of fucking course...v__v
The tomestone grind follows me from XIV into XV. There is no god, only suffering.

Additionally, the Garuda battle is now replayable as the regular lvl 45 version and The Howling Eye (Extreme) at level 120.
...think I'm gonna pass on that.

So that's it for the FFXIV crossover quest. Having gotten into XIV over the last almost 3 years, I got a kick out of this. For a free update kind of thing it still had a decent amount of "production value" with proper cutscenes and voice acting and all that. Most of the music here was lifted straight from XIV, with the Garuda battle accompanied by "Fallen Angel" and all that. The minimap within Perpetouss Keep also turns into the XIV one complete with the little weather indicator. That's a nice touch!
Y'jhimei also uses a lot of standard XIV emotes.
And of course getting a whole new summon out of it makes it worth your while, even if you're not into FFXIV. Maybe I'll finally see somebody other than Ramuh!

Only thing that bugged me though is Y'jhimei's accent. She just spoke with a US accent and sounded like most other people in Eos, rather than Eorzea. At least fake a British accent or something lol

But yeah, this was a fun little detour. Especially having played the XIV side of things back in Sep. '21 and now being able to see the other side of the coin. Unlike the event in FFXIV, this is in the game permanently instead of being a limited event. After all, creating an event for a limited time in a single player offline game would be kind of nonsensical, wouldn't it? *coughBringbackMoogleChocoboCarnivalcough*

Progress has been kind of slow for me as I haven't been much in a gaming mood thanks to my mental health being somewhat shit. I'll push on through eventually though.

 

[Torrie]

Tets, I love your sense of humour

Although I've never played XIV, Y'jhimei`s quest had me in stitches. I don't know why I found that whole intro with her heavy birdy bro so hilarious, and the changes in the UI were also very satisfying.

 

[ForceStealer]

Having gotten into XIV over the last almost 3 years, I got a kick out of this.

Spent most of your writeup thinking how much more nonsensical this would have seemed to you before you last Tets-Plays Thread

 

[Tetsujin]

Despite saying earlier I'm not gonna do sidequests as much as in my first playthrough, I looked at my other save files from various points in the game and at this point I used to have less playtime and a much lower level compared to this playthrough. Did my memory betray me? Did I do most of the sidequest stuff after the story? Idk but it seems despite what I said earlier I actually got sidetracked *more* this time around.

Racked up almost 100k EXP and cashed them in at Galdin for that 2x bonus and jumped up 13 levels. From 37 to 50. In my first playthrough I was level 50 by the end of the game; here I am in chapter 6.

Spoiler: Pictures and stuff

I forgot, I got a few glamour prisms from that XIV quest so the boys now look like this (sorry for shitty overexposed Prompto pic, I should disable that filter )

As a catperson player in XIV, I'm envious at the better tail physics that Noctis has. His tail isn't even real!
Funny that Prompto just gets regular human (or Hyur) clothing. Then I remembered the only other option at the time would've been Lalafell, lmao

Had the crossover happened later, I wonder if Prompto could've been given a full Viera getup, bun ears included

Oh, you can walk up those stone arches in Duscae now. Pretty sure that was not possible before, at least not without hax. Although I think there was a thing where they didn't even have collision?
Eitherway, you get a nice view and can find some rather decent items like a Mega Phoenix and the sorts.

After getting Garuda, I've mostly been seeing her now instead of Ramuh, but Titan has made a single appearance while fighting in Leide.

Gotta hand it to XV, it manages to make the summon cinematics appropriately epic while sticking to a reasonable length.

While in Leide, I realized I hadn't gone to the Balouve mines yet to get another royal arm. Totally forgot about this guy:

Such a creepy encounter. Pretty annoying how literally every enemy here is just a weak ass lvl 7 Goblin though and then this samurai dude is suddenly lvl 50+ and totally OHKs you every time. I basically prayed to the RNG gods and luckily they heard me. Garuda summon works underground, confirmed.

Speaking of the samurai/ronin type daemons, one thing about the character viewer is that get a really good look at all of them now and notice things that can totally get lost in the chaos of gameplay. I never noticed these dudes have no face! Or no mouth at least. And weird creepy hands on their chest? Wtf is happening here.

Also, I said it before but I enjoy XV's lighting at nighttime. One of the few games that isn't afraid to let night be realistically dark. Look at this!

Can't see jack shit! I love it! And I'm perfectly unironic here. Really increases the spook factor and also makes nighttime something that feels dangerous and something you generally want to actively avoid.

That, and spider ladies with obnoxiously high spawn rates.

The forest after sunset. Somewhere inbetween creepy and pretty.

Hunting a bunch of Necromancer daemons at night. Prompto shot a few neat pics:

Ignis casually adjusting his glasses, Prompto busy taking photos...was anyone even fighting here?
No wonder I got my ass kicked here. Once again, Garuda had to bail me out.

I'm now in chapter 8 which I believe should be the last open world chapter so I might wrap up a few things here first before I move on. There's more stuff from chapters 6 and 7 that I'm gonna post a bit later when I cba

 

[Tetsujin]

Spoiler: Chapters 6 and 7

Continuing the story, we all squeeze into a car to assault an imperial base to avenge...*checks notes*....Jared. Yes, Jared. Who could ever forget Jared. Such an important character, his death really moved me. Jared is the man. Best character honestly. Definitely needs to be avenged

In the base, we get the Aranea boss battle. One of the few boss battles that is actually kind of neat. I like the QTE mid-air fight you can start with her.

I'm a bit OP at this point so she doesn't last very long however.

A few Prompto shots:

Always make sure you're well rested when you drive. Microsleeps can be deadly!

I rather like the composition on this one. Well done, Prompto algorithm!

You're on fire today!

Just a cool shot from the Aranea fight.

We continue onwards to Cape Caem and make a stop for another dungeon. We leave the Regalia behind for colorful Chocoborbs <3

The Malmalam Thicket is a lot shorther than I remembered. A nice breather from the other dark maze-type dungeons though.

A few manual shots I took just outside:

There was a strange voice here out of nowhere that freaked me out. Seems to come from some kind of panel in the ground. Checked the map and it looks like this is where you start the Terra Battle crossover quest. I decide to leave this one for later though and continue the story for a bit.

We reach Cape Caem and I just had to take a picture of this beautiful moonrise~
(Obligatory "love the lighting!")

At Cape Caem we are of course sent to another fetch quest as the boat to Altissia requires mythril ore which of course can only be acquired at some ancient dungeon. Out of all the excuses to send you to a dungeon this feels the most contrived. "Go on an epic quest and vanquish daemons to...retrieve a spare part for a boat" Yeah okay.

Gladio fucks off with no explanation because apparently that's a cool thing to do.

We meet Aranea again except we're allies now. Doesn't even feel like an uneasy alliance, we're pretty much buddies throughout the entire thing and afterwards as well. Aranea's enemy to ally arc is like...instant. I forgot just how immediate it is. Feels like something is missing here.

The central part of Steyliffe Grove looks really nice:

For the most part though, this dungeon annoyed the crap out of me. I've been experiencing party members getting stuck somewhere in several dungeons now and this one is no exception. Aranea at some point just kept running into a wall and several other party members just kept not joining any battles, just weirdly running back and forth outside the combat zones. They were at least close enough to activate their techniques, Aranea was just entirely unavailable though. Throughout half of the dungeon, I practically fought solo. You'd think with all the patches and additions they would have maybe fixed some of the more unpolished parts and jank in this game but...nope.

This doesn't reset until you hit some kind of checkpoint that spawns everyone next to you again. For this dungeon, this didn't happen until the boss. Which hilariously *immediately* gave me a summon prompt, calling forth Garuda who then straight up OHK'd the boss.

So afterwards, we meet Gladio again during a quest at the Lestallum power plant and he's got some nasty scars now. At launch this was like...what the fuck was the point of this? Like...what did you actually do?? Gladio apparently came back stronger but it's not like this is reflected in gameplay or anything. Just a blatant "play the DLC later to find out!" kind of thing. Will the DLC story be worth it? We'll see I guess! (spoiler alert: not really tbh )

Speaking of blatant, immediately afterwards, Gladio prompts us to go on a sidequest entirely based around Nissin Cup Noodles(tm)
So we do the sensible thing and kill an entire Behemoth for some meat to add to it. I'm pretty sure there's enough meat on a Behemoth to feed like, two families for a month or whatever but we kill the entire thing for a little slice of meat to put into our cups.
This seems like a bit of a waste.

Gotta get some Blizzara in, maybe we can conserve some of the meat we didn't use for later

Anyway, we enjoy our Cup Noodle(tm) meal at a campfire. Maybe Gladio can finally tell us what the hell he's been up to...

 

[Torrie]

After getting Garuda, I've mostly been seeing her now instead of Ramuh

She appears ridiculously often compared to the other summons. There's even a mod on Nexus cancelling Garuda completely so that you could keep summoning the others like you did before doing the Garuda quest I remember during my own playthrough I was definitely grateful to her for saving my ass countless times but also annoyed because she was the only one that kept appearing.

We reach Cape Caem and I just had to take a picture of this beautiful moonrise~

It's still one of my most favourite locations in the entire game. If I had to buy a magnet for my fridge to remind me of Eos, it would be Cape Caem for sure. And maybe another one with a view over Hammerhead as the second home.

 

[Tetsujin]

Spoiler: Episode: Gladiolus

So at camp, Gladio tells us what he's been up to in the meantime. Apparently the defeat at the hands of Ravus rattled him so much he has to go on some kind of soul searching quest and fight some legendary Blademaster somewhere at the bottom of Taelpar Crag.

The main game forgot that Cor existed after the first few chapters so he gets to return here I suppose, as essentially an expert on the Blademaster, Gilgamesh. An expert insofar as he's literally the only person who got to walk away alive from a battle.

We enter the Crag and it's already filled with dead people right at the entrance. What a jolly place.

Of course they all come alive.

The battle system here is already familiar to me by now as I've been using Gladio quite a bit in the main story. Build your rage meter by blocking, build the technique meter thing by attacking, parry by blocking at the last second etc.
Only thing throwing me off here is the UI: The main game has the UI for Gladio on the center left side, while here it's a more stylized graphic on the lower right. Muscle memory is working against me here.

Overall, playing as Gladio is rather fun although both the main game and this DLC kinda have the same flaw, it's often hard to parse incoming enemy attacks as they don't always have obvious tells, and so parrying sometimes feels like you're just randomly mashing the block button hoping the timing will line up with an incoming attack, giving you an opportunity to land a strong counterattack. Idk, maybe it's just me.

Keiichi Okabe of NieR fame is the guest composer for this, which is pretty neat. That being said, he only did the title theme and an arrangement of everybody's Uematsu favorite, Battle on the Big Bridge. Most of the gameplay music here is dominated by DMC-style edgelord metal, courtesy of Tetsuya Shibata (who, unsurprisingly, had worked on DMC 2, 3 and 4 in the past).
I like edgelord metal and buttrock, so this is fine by me.

Gilgamesh himself greets us fairly soon after entering his domain.

So basically their take was "hey, you know Gilgamesh, and like, he's got multiple arms? He's got like, so many arms dude. And he's so goofy! How about in this game, and hear me out...he's got ONE arm...and he's SUPER SERIOUS! Whoa dude! Genius!"

I mean sure, I guess. This is the no fun allowed version of Gilgamesh, and he starts one of those battles that you are scripted to lose. Rude.

So we proceed further and have Gladio undergo trials to gain more power.

We also get some cool views from inside the Crag.

Gladio is also able to enter photo mode, canon be damned.

Oh yeah, there's this thing I also enjoy: Ripping out giant columns and smashing enemies with them.

Sometimes, parrying certain enemies seems to initiate some kind of QTE type thing.

At regular intervals there are points where you can take a break and listen to Cor's backstory while he and Gladio share a Sad Bachelor Cup Noodle Meal(tm).

Ignis would never.

After defeating Enkidu, Gladio unlocks a new Glaive Arts technique, Maelstrom. Now I noticed in the main game that his technique bar only fills up two slots and you can never get the third one. I had wondered what was up with that but here is where I finally unlock the third bar+technique. Sweet.

Time seems to progress at scripted intervals as you progress through the DLC, from daytime to nighttime to finally early morning when you reach Gilgamesh, giving us this beautiful view:

Another obligatory "love the lighting!"

We face Gilgamesh and an epic battle ensues:

The battle arena is lined with dozens if not hundreds of swords of presumably fallen challengers. I tried to see if there's any easter eggs hidden here but didn't see any.
Anyway, Gilgamesh decides to just grow an arm out of light or whatever and attacks with a different, katana-style sword.

Gladio also gets his forehead scar in this fight. I actually still don't know when he gets the stomach scar, I must have not paid attention during that cutscene lmao
I just keep parrying the heck out of Gilgamesh like the game taught me to and whoop his ass.

He tells me I'm awesome and worthy or whatever and gives me the Genji blade, which is the same sword that Cor used to cut off his arm. Dope.
This also unlocks Dual Master, a follow-up to Maelstrom.

Aaaaand that's it for Gladio's story. Nothing too interesting, basically just an excuse to wreck stuff as Gladio and get a new version of Battle on the Big Bridge.
Not too bad, but nothing too crazy either. There seems to be a score attack type of mode and also an optional battle against Cor.

The battle against Cor seems quite tough. He easily wrecked me on the first attempt. I almost got him on the second one but he gets tricky towards the end. I might try to win this later because I just want to carry on with the main story and stuff but this seems like a good challenge. The main game's boss battles in general just feel kinda messy and chaotic imo. This one has attack patterns that you need to learn and parry timings to get right etc. It feels very methodical, and a decent but fair challenge with no bullshit.

So, returning to the main game I see that Gladio's Maelstrom ability as well as the Genji blade have carried over. The Genji blade has really good stats and Maelstrom+Dual Arms seems absurdly powerful.
So while the story here was a bit whatever (and mostly revealed more of Cor than Gladio, really) we at least walk away with new abilities. I assume the same will be true for the other two characters as they too seem to be missing a third special technique each.

But that is something for later.

Spoiler: Vroom vroom

Moving back into the main game, I get a new quest from Cindy to find a few offroad tires to upgrade my Regalia with.

I had actually done this on my previous save file back when they released the update because I just wanted to see what it was like. Ended up driving offroad for like, five minutes and called it quits because it was like...yeah cool, but also, I'm done with the game lmao

Anyway, Cindy upgrades our ride.

She does a couple of donuts, presumably one for every time King Regis is turning in his grave right about now.

I throw some hot rod red on that shit and off I go to the races.

Oh yeah, that is a thing now? Offroad race tracks. Initial thought: Oh cool, fun side activity!
Buuuut unfortunately it just seems to be a time attack thing? There are three in total and I got upgrades (and a trophy) for beating each one. They were fairly easy and doable on the first attempt and there doesn't seem to be any reason to go back and do any of them again except better times. Hm. A bit disappointed.

Well at least I get to do more damage now when running over monsters with the car.

Oh, and I did some research and as it turns out...during the initial offroad update, you could upgrade the Regalia as early as chapter 3?! Basically as soon as you open up the rest of the open world! Seems to invalidate the entire intended road trip experience and make Chocobos almost entirely redundant. Apparently they realized this and in a later patch moved this all the way to chapter 8 which is where I'm at now. Huh.

Final word for this update: Crestholm Channels can suck a dick, I hate sewer levels.
There wasn't even a royal tomb, why the fuck did I go down there!

 

[Torrie]

I hate sewer levels.

Me too! 7R sewers were a walk on a field of flowers compared to Crestholm hahaha. I spent AGES looking for that stupid tire and eventually had to look it up because I was running out of patience (and vitamin D for that matter). And later on I had to go there again for one of the main quests. And then AGAIN because I'd missed a collectible for another quest or something like that.