Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn
Apr. 1st, 2019 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zaliachimeraSo that... sure was a thing...
Massive spoilers below!
It's not really news to say that FFXV was... flawed. I love it to pieces but for a game that spent that long in development, it should have been much more coherent than it was. It felt like plot was an afterthought to the beautiful graphics. The characters were fun though, and seeing them all interact in small moments definitely helped make them feel more like a team than previous games managed.
Episode Ardyn follows this pattern. The director left, they cancelled the other 3 episodes that were meant to be coming out (Lunafreya, Aranea, Noctis), and released this one because I imagine it was further along in development.
It kind of shows.
But... things I like first:-
Darin de Paul is excellent as usual and is obviously having the time of his life playing Ardyn. It's good stuff, and humanises the character which is interesting to see.
It's really cool to get a look at Insomnia from a time before it was ruined by constant war and darkness. They also incorporated some cool stuff they learned from KH3 in terms of getting around and building a place that looks like a real city with rooftops and everything.
It was pretty fun to play... for a while. Not too difficult, some interesting moves that you could use like demonising people. Also I liked being able to cut entire armoured cars in half with a ghost-sword.
Young Regis was pretty damn hot!
And that... that's about it.
It's definitely the weakest of the extra content, and I'm including Episode Gladio in that. It really shows that they were rushing to get it out and had to work with what they had.
You see this most obviously in the models of the enemies and bystanders. Very quickly, like, within the first few moments in Lucis, I spotted 3 identical bystander models in the same vicinity. It felt sloppy when even in Lestallum in the base game, everyone looks different. It felt like they'd all been copied and pasted. The enemies you fight were all the same, and I have a suspicion that they all wore masks so they didn't have to animate faces. And the Guardians you fight - You fight the statues of former kings. Except you only get to fight 2 of them. I feel like they had pretty obviously intended you to fight copies of all the different kings, but they had to work with only a couple - quite possibly the ones that you fight in Insomia in the Royal Edition - and it becomes really repetitive.
That's the feeling of the game as a whole to be honest. It's repetitive. You fight the same enemies over and over again in exactly the same way.
This would have been less of a problem if the controls had been better. Some of the controls were... difficult to make work honestly. I couldn't seem to get the to be consistent. And essentially every fight was done with button mashing. Compared to Ignis switching between weapons, leaping between rooftops and his special moves, it felt clumsy.
But the plot... oh man, the plot.
I'm not saying it was the most awful thing in the world but... it leans hard on the fridge horror of the game. Like seriously, this whole game becomes pretty horrific after playing Episode Ardyn, because it basically says 'Everyone's destiny is decreed by the gods, and you can either submit and make it happen, or rebel, have it happen anyway, and suffer for it'. Bahamut is a *dick*. This pantheon of gods is just... the worst and really, it made me even more want Noctis and Co to team up and take down the Astrals.
It means that nothing you've done matters. It was always going to happen this way. And I guess that is borne out in the choice you make at the end. When you've defeated Regis and Somnus, Bahamut demands that Ardyn kneels, and that he is destined to be the sacrifice that allows Noctis to save the world and banish the darkness. You have 2 choices here - Submit to fate and Rebel against fate.
This choice changes absolutely nothing. I'm actually really mad about this because I went through those 2 goddam boss fights twice to make the choice, expecting *something* different. But nope. There's a couple of lines of dialogue different and then fuck all changes. Ardyn goes even more crazy and determines he will be the best villain he can be.
It sucks. It feels very hopeless and very cruel and bleak as hell, and also makes the quest of the main game feel... worse. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
...It also makes the alternate ending of Episode Ignis even more confusing.
Somnus... Somnus STFU. You are a whiny asshole who locked your brother up for 2000 years alone because you were jealous, and then you claim it's 'for the good of the people'. Really. Just... fuck off.
I feel like a lot more could have been done with the memory absorption and demonification aspects of the game from a plot angle. They're pretty quickly relegated to fight mechanic, when I think it could have been a great thing to explore for Ardyn's character.
At least we found out that Prompto's appalling facial hair in the timeskip is genetic. And I'm mad I was deprived of younger Clarus and teenage Cor Leonis. Damn it.
I don't regret playing it, but I really doubt that it's something I'm going to go back and play again.
Massive spoilers below!
It's not really news to say that FFXV was... flawed. I love it to pieces but for a game that spent that long in development, it should have been much more coherent than it was. It felt like plot was an afterthought to the beautiful graphics. The characters were fun though, and seeing them all interact in small moments definitely helped make them feel more like a team than previous games managed.
Episode Ardyn follows this pattern. The director left, they cancelled the other 3 episodes that were meant to be coming out (Lunafreya, Aranea, Noctis), and released this one because I imagine it was further along in development.
It kind of shows.
But... things I like first:-
Darin de Paul is excellent as usual and is obviously having the time of his life playing Ardyn. It's good stuff, and humanises the character which is interesting to see.
It's really cool to get a look at Insomnia from a time before it was ruined by constant war and darkness. They also incorporated some cool stuff they learned from KH3 in terms of getting around and building a place that looks like a real city with rooftops and everything.
It was pretty fun to play... for a while. Not too difficult, some interesting moves that you could use like demonising people. Also I liked being able to cut entire armoured cars in half with a ghost-sword.
Young Regis was pretty damn hot!
And that... that's about it.
It's definitely the weakest of the extra content, and I'm including Episode Gladio in that. It really shows that they were rushing to get it out and had to work with what they had.
You see this most obviously in the models of the enemies and bystanders. Very quickly, like, within the first few moments in Lucis, I spotted 3 identical bystander models in the same vicinity. It felt sloppy when even in Lestallum in the base game, everyone looks different. It felt like they'd all been copied and pasted. The enemies you fight were all the same, and I have a suspicion that they all wore masks so they didn't have to animate faces. And the Guardians you fight - You fight the statues of former kings. Except you only get to fight 2 of them. I feel like they had pretty obviously intended you to fight copies of all the different kings, but they had to work with only a couple - quite possibly the ones that you fight in Insomia in the Royal Edition - and it becomes really repetitive.
That's the feeling of the game as a whole to be honest. It's repetitive. You fight the same enemies over and over again in exactly the same way.
This would have been less of a problem if the controls had been better. Some of the controls were... difficult to make work honestly. I couldn't seem to get the to be consistent. And essentially every fight was done with button mashing. Compared to Ignis switching between weapons, leaping between rooftops and his special moves, it felt clumsy.
But the plot... oh man, the plot.
I'm not saying it was the most awful thing in the world but... it leans hard on the fridge horror of the game. Like seriously, this whole game becomes pretty horrific after playing Episode Ardyn, because it basically says 'Everyone's destiny is decreed by the gods, and you can either submit and make it happen, or rebel, have it happen anyway, and suffer for it'. Bahamut is a *dick*. This pantheon of gods is just... the worst and really, it made me even more want Noctis and Co to team up and take down the Astrals.
It means that nothing you've done matters. It was always going to happen this way. And I guess that is borne out in the choice you make at the end. When you've defeated Regis and Somnus, Bahamut demands that Ardyn kneels, and that he is destined to be the sacrifice that allows Noctis to save the world and banish the darkness. You have 2 choices here - Submit to fate and Rebel against fate.
This choice changes absolutely nothing. I'm actually really mad about this because I went through those 2 goddam boss fights twice to make the choice, expecting *something* different. But nope. There's a couple of lines of dialogue different and then fuck all changes. Ardyn goes even more crazy and determines he will be the best villain he can be.
It sucks. It feels very hopeless and very cruel and bleak as hell, and also makes the quest of the main game feel... worse. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
...It also makes the alternate ending of Episode Ignis even more confusing.
Somnus... Somnus STFU. You are a whiny asshole who locked your brother up for 2000 years alone because you were jealous, and then you claim it's 'for the good of the people'. Really. Just... fuck off.
I feel like a lot more could have been done with the memory absorption and demonification aspects of the game from a plot angle. They're pretty quickly relegated to fight mechanic, when I think it could have been a great thing to explore for Ardyn's character.
At least we found out that Prompto's appalling facial hair in the timeskip is genetic. And I'm mad I was deprived of younger Clarus and teenage Cor Leonis. Damn it.
I don't regret playing it, but I really doubt that it's something I'm going to go back and play again.
