Final Fantasy XVI (Pt 2)

neonreaper posted...

What song plays in Norvent Valley?

"Histoire" is the general Sanbreque area theme, but when I googled "Too Bloody Quiet" turned up for that location (plot-related for a specific time in the game). So probably assuming you're referring to the latter but just in case, got both below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEcIj7XDiJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CroyD1kH3AM

Did pretty much everything in the first playthrough

Great game! Having slept on it yeah its at least 4th in the series for me. Might be higher but my opinion on T/X/VII has basically stayed the same unless I try them again and realize yeah I enjoyed XVI way more

only real critique is the side quests until like the last stretch are really dull, and the last stretch is primarily whatever plot they have

Ive obviously been going slow. Some chapters are great and others are super slow.

Making progress. Wish you could kill NPC's in this game, though!

oh - which NPCs we talking here?

surely not my good man Quinten

MartinFF7 posted...

oh - which NPCs we talking here?

Pretty much all the quest givers so far with a few exceptions! I never killed any civilians in Skyrim, but I really want to rip a new one of most of the NPC's and make the world a better place.

I feel like I'm getting old, cause that Titan Fight felt like it lasted forever .

MartinFF7 posted...

oh - which NPCs we talking here?

surely not my good man Quinten

All the racists, I assume

oh yeah I forgot to reply

Ashethan posted...

Pretty much all the quest givers so far with a few exceptions! I never killed any civilians in Skyrim, but I really want to rip a new one of most of the NPC's and make the world a better place.

I swear after the game came out I probably sought out and watched like 30+ streams of people for the best streamer segment of the game, after leaving Northreach/heading to the first mothercrystal in Oriflamme (probably don't need to spoiler tag it at this point but just in case), lots of great reaction moments starting with
-Scumbag quests w/ the wolf and the girl "losing her pet"
then I skip ahead to the nonstop series of reaction bangers:
-Typhon appearance out of the black hole/attack on Ramuh
-Excellent song in 2nd phase of Typhon fight
-"Demon Wall"
-jumpscare Ultima appearance
-Joshua appearance & and conversation w/ Ultima
-attack on the hideaway
-FIVE YEARS LATER!!!

it's pretty great, anytime someone didn't react to that song it made me think less of them, frankly. When the beat drops as the fight begins, don't think it gets better than that...

Ashethan posted...

I feel like I'm getting old, cause that Titan Fight felt like it lasted forever .

Nah you're not, it really did. It might not even be the most everlasting one but will leave that to you to judge when you eventually get to it...!!

Okay, I swear finding this last piece of stardust is impossible...

edit finally found it... geez

I was going to say I had a distinct memory of really having trouble finding it in at least one of my playthroughs, if not both.... always nice to know I didn't suffer alone there, lol

The quest marker is WAY off for some reason. Wonder if they'll ever patch that.

Also i keep forgetting to put points into my abilities. Really need to start doing that more often.

https://youtu.be/s-t3tj_lJWg

puppy torgal is pretty cute

Okay that Bahamut fight was awesome . Also nice to see Anabella get her karmic fate. I do wonder how though she would've treated Clive if she knew he were Ifrit's Dominant from birth.

Just got there myself. Awesome event!

The channel that puts out one-hour loops of XIV songs started doing XVI tracks on a weekly basis and they've been pretty weak so far other than On The Shoulders of Giants but this week he put out Control and I am loving it!!! Hopefully he follows this with more loops for the Eikon battle tracks... I assume youtube isn't counting the view counts from me playing it on repeat, damn.

But in case anyone's interested in listening to a ~8 minute song seamlessly looped for over 69 minutes here it is (video has spoilers for all Benedikta scenes & Garuda fights)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s2HULu3qkM

Hoping to beat it this weekend

Just finished this game. A couple thoughts:

• I'm not always the most patient with action games, so I didn't mind this being an "easy" game, heh. I was paying more attention to when to use my abilities than watching attack patterns and trying to avoid them, though I did need to learn to avoid a few attacks (I spammed dodge a lot). By the end I think I was starting to figure out an optimized way to use the abilities, so I didn't struggle as much then. I think the combat was better than XV at least, where I was largely just spamming potions. Not as good as FF7R, since that had some better party management.
• People complain about the lack of minigames, but I feel like the Eikon fights had some of this covered. I may not be the best at action games, but I'm better at them than at rail shooters. I was getting really impatient during some of those sections. Glad they didn't make those harder. For that matter, during the final boss, I wasn't able to figure out how to dodge attacks during the Eikon part. I just kinda tried to outdamage him, which fortunately worked. Perhaps I missed a mechanic but I think these sections were kinda too rare and spread apart to get any real practice on to learn.
• The political intrigue was interesting, though pretty brutal. It has to be one of the most brutal games I've played. I suppose the graphical style adds to this. I also played Triangle Strategy, which is pretty brutal too, but being sprite based, it didn't have the same feel to it.
• One thing I felt in this game that's different from other FFs if you spend way more time in these small podunk towns than in big, important cities. I kinda wanted to explore Oriflamme early and never got to at all. There were segments in the other big cities like Kanvar, Crystaline Dominian, Rosalith, etc. but they were all action sections, aside from the very beginning in Rosalith. You never got to really talk to people or do quests there or anything like that. The big cities were basically dungeons. I guess it's possible they wanted to contrast this with FFVII Remake, since that was almost 100% in a big city.
• I think I'm done with this game. Not planning to buy any DLC. I did all the sidequests, which I didn't think were as bad as people say. Actually, I didn't mind the mundane ones because every so often one that seems mundane ends up being surprisingly interesting e.g. the ones in Moore and Theodore dying, both of which caught me off guard . However, I also kinda just was ready for the game to be over toward the end. The action RPG genre isn't one I play a lot, but I figured being a mainline FF and having a pretty good demo meant that I wanted to finish this. It did feel like a complete game at least.

Finally beat the game.

It started off really strong and then fell into bad pacing - boring quests followed by really awesome combat sequences when fighting bosses. Followed by "better go talk to Otto" snorefests. So a series of hallways, some of which are truly spectacular and some of which are really dull.

The last third of the game gets away from that a little bit. The quests become meaningful, you can poke around the world looking for hunts. The eikons you get are fun.

So for me, the game was a slow build, but it was worth it... until the ending. It was "okay" but I really think they had an opportunity to knock it out of the park.

I don't care a ton about trophies... but tying the "collect all curiosities" trophy to the challenges, which already has its trophy, is bad.

Difficulty was fine. There were times I wish sub-bosses had less HP and did more damage, mostly in the first half of the game. After you get Bahamut the game does get easy, but it's also fun and the battles don't feel long anymore.

One other weird complaint is that you can't heal in towns. I feel like talking to the merchant should just be an auto-heal.

One last little complaint - I wish the eikon abilities didn't need to be mastered to be switched around. I didn't have enough AP to really play around in the first 2/3 of the game, and having to refund and re-allocate AP is annoying. I shouldn't have to do that or go to a chronolith to explore all the abilities of an Eikon.

I did all sidequests and hunts and explored the entire map. I got to level 49.

The game packed in lots of references and easter eggs and corny pieces of dialog, I guess I kinda appreciated it, though at times I rolled my eyes just the same.

I guess I'd say 8/10 game. Could have been something special! Big moments in this game felt BIG but the biggest moment did not. I enjoyed the characters, many of the late game sidequests, the hunts, the graphics, big story moments, and the battles were often fun.

DLC.... maybe. In the moment, I don't want to feel like I have to buy the ending to this game.

Just googling DLC, I guess there was a free update and some of those alternate outfits look great. Dang.

neonreaper posted...

I don't care a ton about trophies... but tying the "collect all curiosities" trophy to the challenges, which already has its trophy, is bad.

I agree with this. I did all the sidequests, but I didn't feel like doing all those Chronolith challenges for the last curiosity. I mean, I tried the Shiva one and it wasn't bad from a gameplay perspective, but I have other games I'd rather get to at this point.