Poll of the Day > papercup plays every Final Fantasy game returns! Part XV: On the road again

(+) Yeah! (+)

papercup posted...

They're putting both Balmung and Mateus in the new DC. Those mad men, those absolute mad men.

It will be the (e)RP data center. xD
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Didn't get to watch the live letter, but apparently a "fan favorite" or something to that effect is showing up in the final 24-man. And they already showed that MCH is getting Balthier's gear.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/File:Fran.png <_<
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Also they misspelled "Aether" XD But apparently Aehter(heh) is going to be a big raider DC, and Crystal will be the RP DC. That leaves Primal to... be... the uh... whatever else there is to do lol.
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papercup posted...

Didn't get to watch the live letter, but apparently a "fan favorite" or something to that effect is showing up in the final 24-man. And they already showed that MCH is getting Balthier's gear.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/File:Fran.png <_<

You totally missed a moment where the Four Lords was brought up: silence. Hildibrand: loud cheers.

"Really? You like Hildibrand more than Four Lord?" More cheers, and some laughter.
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papercup posted...

Also they misspelled "Aether" XD But apparently Aehter(heh) is going to be a big raider DC, and Crystal will be the RP DC. That leaves Primal to... be... the uh... whatever else there is to do lol.

It'll be the second sibling. You know, then one that gets not enough attention, tries so hard to be noticed by senpai, and barely anyone actually minds it.
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Oh, RIP. BLU is going to be solo content only. There are too many skills that can completely throw off the balance of the game, and only taking those skills into a raid would defeat the point of learning all of them.

There is no L5 Death because it would be 100% broken. Gotta say, as much as I'll miss it, good call there.
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Beast Tamer is a possibility for a future Limited Job.

Damn. =/ I guess it's cool they can implement these Jobs in some capacity, but I would love to see them do something to make them playable in regular content.
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Translation: "Our imagination and logic are limited, so classic jobs will be thrown into the limited job system, and called a day."
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Maybe when the game is ending in 6 years they'll just go "fuck it, do whatever you want" >_>
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At this point I hope the Ishgard reconstruction is actually decent, and not some stupid weekly thing you can complete in five minutes' time for barely a decent reward. My faith in XIV is dwindling, despite being on break from it. Thanks, Yoshi.
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Oh, also, I finished the third step of my first Pyros weapon. :) So, I'll keep doing Pyros to farm light and crystals, but pagos is such a trainwreck that in 2 months I finished 1 weapon there. it took me 2 weeks in Pyros. lol so I have to go back to Pagos to build more weapons. I'm very surprised they didn't nerf the grind in 4.45. Also... I think I'll build the DRK weapon next.
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Yeah, I kinda get the feeling rebuilding Doma in Stormblood was a test run for future content. I'm pretty sure Ishgard is the new Doma. But I want to live in Ishgard so I'll do it. lol
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papercup posted...

Yeah, I kinda get the feeling rebuilding Doma in Stormblood was a test run for future content. I'm pretty sure Ishgard is the new Doma. But I want to live in Ishgard so I'll do it. lol

Right, I'll probably do it for a while to make sure our server's in good shape for allowing Ishgard housing. However, the list of XIV content I'm probably never touching again is growing instead of shrinking during my time on break. This does not bode well.

If I lose my house then I'll never sub again. If I decide to let the house go then that should be a sign of how I feel about the game at that point.

So here's to hoping the Ishgard Reconstruction is good, and BLU turns out better than it looks right now.
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Expansion announcement slides:
https://imgur.com/a/sA3Jq3V

Live Letter slides:
https://imgur.com/a/9gaAIjD

I mean, most of what they talk about here is fine. It's just, BLU got the shaft, and it's all I'm thinking about lol
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Hit me up if you ever want to do xi

I can give you a social/events linkshell, power level you to 99 on whatever job you want to try, and help you rampage through the mission/story content so can at least get a feel of the story without needing to spend months and months trying to accomplish it yourself

Thanks, will do!

BTW, anyone curios about the server redistribution, here's population sizes before, and estimated after:

https://imgur.com/a/rmSk16P

Edit, oh, and some of what I've been hearing on reddit totally suggests SE wants the data centers to represent different subsets of the population. Aether and Chaos totally raider data centers. People are saying the servers moving to Light aren't really known for raiding, so if you're on one of those servers and you raid you should probably move to a Chaos server.
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Hmm, had a thought. I hope "player farms" are a way to raise mobs to farm pelts and whatnot without having to farm them over and over in dungeons or the open world.

It's probably just going to be gardening for homeless players lol.
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papercup posted...

Hmm, had a thought. I hope "player farms" are a way to raise mobs to farm pelts and whatnot without having to farm them over and over in dungeons or the open world.

It's probably just going to be gardening for homeless players lol.

if it's like ffxi... https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Mog_Garden

papercup posted...

Hmm, had a thought. I hope "player farms" are a way to raise mobs to farm pelts and whatnot without having to farm them over and over in dungeons or the open world.

It's probably just going to be gardening for homeless players lol.

Plot twist: We American players are being reduced to the gil farmers, while the Chinese players actually start to play the game and buy from us.

<_<

>_>

(No, mods, I'm not condoning rmt)
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So, FFXV, I went down to the bottom of the Belouve Mines or whatever they're called and killed the Samurai that's 20 levels stronger than me. lol And I found the Bow of the Cleaver, which is actually a crossbow, but who's keeping track? :P
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Started Castlemark Tower. I got all the way to the bottom, and did the first descent into the bottom floor. The Red Giant or whatever took forever to down. I looked it up, and I have to do it 3 more times, each with more red giants... uh... I'll do this later. lol

Also I rested in the resort with a little over 200k saved up and gained 25 levels. lol So I'm 55 now.
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What's the actual gameplay to sort of gameplay (just exploring, walking around, item/party management) to story ratio?

I like FF games and I feel that previous ones have done balancing well, but most modern RPGs have like, 20 hours of real gameplay and another 40 from cutscenes and travel time.
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Well, a little hard to say I'm still pretty early in the story, chapter 3. I spent the last 20 hours doing sidequests and hunt marks and optional dungeons. But there's not much left for me to do, so I'm getting back to the story pretty soon, and just try to power my way through it.
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That's not ALL the side content in 20 hours, is it?
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GanglyKhan posted...

That's not ALL the side content in 20 hours, is it?

Nah, I still have a bit left to do, but some of it is in parts of the map I can't get to yet(I think at least) or I just haven't found it. And I assume more will open as I continue with the story.

Edit: What I meant by "not much left" was just what I know about.
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But this game has a lot of problems. The camera is horrendous. It gets caught on walls all the time, the open areas have a lot of trees and bushes that get in the way often. There are enemies that are just not fun to fight, either because in groups they're frustrating to fight, or their attacks animations seem lacking, or the tells aren't clear enough. Or the attack will lock on to an enemy you're not looking at, or can't even see sometimes.The battle system is just lacking all around.

But, I actually like some of the dungeons, and some of them are seamlessly integrated into the world, and have branching paths and stuff like that. Needs more puzzles though.
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GanglyKhan posted...

What's the actual gameplay to sort of gameplay (just exploring, walking around, item/party management) to story ratio?

I like FF games and I feel that previous ones have done balancing well, but most modern RPGs have like, 20 hours of real gameplay and another 40 from cutscenes and travel time.

It definitely took me over 60 hours to beat the game. 90 actually but I can't account for how much of that was sitting with the game paused while I did other things. That's including all the pre royal edition side quests/hunts. Story is short I'll tell you that much. I personally liked what was there though. Travel time I don't think is too bad think in the car it takes 5 minutes at most to get to one side of the map to the next (maybe longer but there is no reason to travel from side to other in one go) but once you've been somewhere you can "fast travel" costs gil though but like only 10. And you have to use the car for fast travel but there is a option to fast travel to wherever your car is. Or if your on a road have your car brought to you via tow truck. Sure that costs too but I never really used it.

To clarify there is far more gameplay than cut scenes but most of that is side content. I didn't really play the story straight through so it's hard to recall how much main story gameplay there was to cutscenes. Wanna say there was still more gameplay though as a lot of dialogue goes on while you are playing that explains story points
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I'll just bump to keep this alive. Due to the holiday it will be a couple days before I get back to XV
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Cool beans. Meanwhile, I'm deciding what to do today since my .hack// project is complete, the guide files uploaded and approved.
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...I think the author of this article might have issues.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/11/20/final-fantasy-xiv-fan-fest-2018-report/amp/

He's apparently some kind of video game journalist, but he's fucking baffled that people would cosplay at a FF convention. Imagine if a sportscasters saw football fan dressed in a jersey and facepaint, and they didn't know what they were seeing and thought they were a pervert. I'm not particularly into cosplay, it's not my thing at all, but I understand the reasons people do it. This guy seems to think the entire FF fandom is some weird kink thing, and he's really insulting about it too. And he clearly doesn't know anything about the game, and instead focused on ERP and brothels, something that only a very small subset of the playerbase participates in. WTF RPS, next time send somebody that has a clue.
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I'm on Asura in FFXI if you ever want to try out that game... :)
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papercup posted...

...I think the author of this article might have issues.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/11/20/final-fantasy-xiv-fan-fest-2018-report/amp/

He's apparently some kind of video game journalist, but he's fucking baffled that people would cosplay at a FF convention. Imagine if a sportscasters saw football fan dressed in a jersey and facepaint, and they didn't know what they were seeing and thought they were a pervert. I'm not particularly into cosplay, it's not my thing at all, but I understand the reasons people do it. This guy seems to think the entire FF fandom is some weird kink thing, and he's really insulting about it too. And he clearly doesn't know anything about the game, and instead focused on ERP and brothels, something that only a very small subset of the playerbase participates in. WTF RPS, next time send somebody that has a clue.

I know. They need to assign journalists or critics who get that sort of game and is a fan of the genre at least. Remember reading a review for a game where the opening line was "I'm not a fan of this genre in general" then proceeds to shit on the game and give it a low score. While he should have taken into consideration he didn't like the genre when reviewing the game I find more fault in whomever assigned him that game to critique.
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And here's an article by Imran Khan that is completely upfront about not playing the game, and he's completely respectful to everyone he talks to.
https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/11/23/discovering-why-final-fantasy-xiv-matters-to-its-fans

What a novel concept, not shitting all over the people you're interviewing because they're "weird"
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Finally got back to XV. So, I unlocked Rank 5 hunts, and continued with the story again. Went to get the sword behind the waterfall. When I play more tomorrow I'll do a few more sidequests and really get going with the story mode.

So there are things about this game I really do like. I actually like some of the art design. The buildings and cars all look nice and bulky. There's good use of color and shapes. Not everything looks that great though, like NPCs in towns and cities look unfinished and are hilarious to watch in the backgrounds of cutscenes. Also, I generally like the way enemies look, but I wish there was more variety in enemy types. I just did 4 hunts in a row where I fought gigantoads, and I was kind of sick of it by the end, they're easy to deal with, and none of them really did anything to me. There are things about the battle system I like. Like switching weapons mid combo, using my allies abilities to extend combos, all that good stuff. It's just, as I said in previous posts, not all the enemy types are well designed or fun to fight. But, also like I said in previous posts, I like some of the dungeons. Like Castlemark Tower I think for the most part is a well designed dungeon, except for the end bit where you keep going into the basement to fight tougher waves of enemies. Oh, and I actually like the four main characters, though Prompto still annoys me some.

Every time you turn the game on, it says "A Final Fantasy for fans and new-comers alike" or something to that effect, and I honestly hope this wasn't anybody's first FF game. lol I've spent enough time with it, and dealt with enough of the frustrations and weird design choices that if I had to rank it right now, it would be right down there with 2 and 8, but slightly above those. It's actually not a terrible game, it's okay, quality is all over the place, but I wouldn't say it's a good game. And it's definitely not a FF for fans OR new-comers lol. I don't know who this game is for.
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I've been playing this FFVIII mod today. Pretty happy with it, as I've been wanting to play FFVIII for a while but didn't want to deal with the hassle of constantly abusing the draw system:

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=18404.0

It's been 10-ish years since the last time I played the game.
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Judgmenl posted...

I've been playing this FFVIII mod today. Pretty happy with it, as I've been wanting to play FFVIII for a while but didn't want to deal with the hassle of constantly abusing the draw system:

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=18404.0

It's been 10-ish years since the last time I played the game.

My biggest problem with that game was mostly due to story and the characters. The draw system while annoying wasn't the worst part of the game.
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papercup posted...

Finally got back to XV. So, I unlocked Rank 5 hunts, and continued with the story again. Went to get the sword behind the waterfall. When I play more tomorrow I'll do a few more sidequests and really get going with the story mode.

So there are things about this game I really do like. I actually like some of the art design. The buildings and cars all look nice and bulky. There's good use of color and shapes. Not everything looks that great though, like NPCs in towns and cities look unfinished and are hilarious to watch in the backgrounds of cutscenes. Also, I generally like the way enemies look, but I wish there was more variety in enemy types. I just did 4 hunts in a row where I fought gigantoads, and I was kind of sick of it by the end, they're easy to deal with, and none of them really did anything to me. There are things about the battle system I like. Like switching weapons mid combo, using my allies abilities to extend combos, all that good stuff. It's just, as I said in previous posts, not all the enemy types are well designed or fun to fight. But, also like I said in previous posts, I like some of the dungeons. Like Castlemark Tower I think for the most part is a well designed dungeon, except for the end bit where you keep going into the basement to fight tougher waves of enemies. Oh, and I actually like the four main characters, though Prompto still annoys me some.

Every time you turn the game on, it says "A Final Fantasy for fans and new-comers alike" or something to that effect, and I honestly hope this wasn't anybody's first FF game. lol I've spent enough time with it, and dealt with enough of the frustrations and weird design choices that if I had to rank it right now, it would be right down there with 2 and 8, but slightly above those. It's actually not a terrible game, it's okay, quality is all over the place, but I wouldn't say it's a good game. And it's definitely not a FF for fans OR new-comers lol. I don't know who this game is for.

I'd say the game was definitely more for newcomers. The golden age of final fantasy has been over awhile now and let's face it, they realize us middle aged veterans are only going to carry them so far. Especially with how divided we are on what we want. So naturally they look to lock down the younger crowd.

Unfortunately they are fighting the battle that is jrpgs are a niche genre these days which is why they probably went to open world action combat, but there are other companies that simply do it better. I hope they progress and catch up to those other companies though. I liked XV but I know better can be done.
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Most JRPGs seem to making leaps to modern technology, in a really big way, but for some reason, FF is just struggling to find an identity the last 10-15 years or so. Even though FFXV sold millions and millions of copies, it apparently wasn't enough to continue development of DLC. I really hope for FFXVI they take a long hard look at what isn't working in modern FF, and cut out the fat, and try to reestablish trust with the fans.

Also, #firstworldproblems I pre-ordered the new FFXIV lore book months ago. It released on Saturday, my account wasn't charged, I didn't receive any email about shipping info or anything like that. So I contacted support and they told me they didn't have enough copies to cover every pre-order. :P Isn't that the point of pre-ordering? To gauge how much to print? Whatever Hopefully that means I'm getting a copy of the second printing. Whenever the hell that is.

But, that WAS going to be my Christmas present, but it seems that isn't happening now, so instead I bought Ultimania Archive Vol.1 and 2. so that should be a very nice alternative.

And I didn't play FFXV yesterday because I had a migraine all day, but I'm feeling better, I'm done with work and have a few free hours so I'll do that now.
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Decided I would start out by farming Spiracorns for a Sturdy Helixhorn. Very first horn I broke dropped one. So, Ultima Blade get \o/
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I liked the whole Disc of Cauthess part. Gladio was all "hey, Noctis, grow up" which is always great, and the encounter with Titan, while easy, was admittedly kind of epic. And then Ardyn stole my car, so I've been riding Chocobos around now. I've just been driving everywhere. I had no idea riding Chocobos was actually so useful in this game. >_> And that they can level up. And that I can recolor them. And name them. I colored Noct's bird a dark green, and named him Kwehbec, after my FFXIV bird. The other boys got blue, purple and red. So now I'm riding around in style.
Then I went through Ramuh's trial and killed Naga. I was all "oooh, Naga is a boss in this one?" turned out she was ridiculously easy.(I'm guessing partly cus I'm sporting some pretty strong weapons, and I'm almost level 60) so I'm guessing nagas might become regular enemies later? Anyway, Cindy told me where to get the car back. So I'm going to take a couple hours break and get back to it.
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papercup posted...

I liked the whole Disc of Cauthess part. Gladio was all "hey, Noctis, grow up" which is always great, and the encounter with Titan, while easy, was admittedly kind of epic. And then Ardyn stole my car, so I've been riding Chocobos around now. I've just been driving everywhere. I had no idea riding Chocobos was actually so useful in this game. >_> And that they can level up. And that I can recolor them. And name them. I colored Noct's bird a dark green, and named him Kwehbec, after my FFXIV bird. The other boys got blue, purple and red. So now I'm riding around in style.
Then I went through Ramuh's trial and killed Naga. I was all "oooh, Naga is a boss in this one?" turned out she was ridiculously easy.(I'm guessing partly cus I'm sporting some pretty strong weapons, and I'm almost level 60) so I'm guessing nagas might become regular enemies later? Anyway, Cindy told me where to get the car back. So I'm going to take a couple hours break and get back to it.

Yep. I spent so much of the game riding around on the chocobos instead of in the car. It led to the epic moment where my rental bird ran in as I was throwing in the powerful lightning spell, as I may have mentioned before. The enemies all died, and my purple chocobo was fried.

https://imgur.com/7dtclle

(I hate that GameFAQs kills the ".jpg" from the link)
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In other news, I am slowly climbing back into playing more Tales of Berseria. I will say that, compared to the other Tales games I've played, it has a small element akin to Metroidvania in that you need items or abilities gained later to go back and pick up other chests in older areas. Other Tales games were like "Oh, you're done with the story for this area? You should have collected everything already." It's kind of nice, though, even if the monsters don't really get any stronger.

I'm hoping to pick up Tales of Vesperia when it releases on the PS4, if only to support it finally being on a Sony system in an English speaking country. *Glares at the 360 version, the Japanese-only PS3 version, and Tales of Graces f*
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Entity13 posted...

https://imgur.com/7dtclle

lol

Entity13 posted...

In other news, I am slowly climbing back into playing more Tales of Berseria. I will say that, compared to the other Tales games I've played, it has a small element akin to Metroidvania in that you need items or abilities gained later to go back and pick up other chests in older areas. Other Tales games were like "Oh, you're done with the story for this area? You should have collected everything already." It's kind of nice, though, even if the monsters don't really get any stronger.

I'm hoping to pick up Tales of Vesperia when it releases on the PS4, if only to support it finally being on a Sony system in an English speaking country. *Glares at the 360 version, the Japanese-only PS3 version, and Tales of Graces f*

I've never really been a big Tales fan. I played Phantasia, Symphonia, and of the Abyss. And liked them all fine enough. About 4 or so years ago I played through Xillia, and I can't honestly say I liked it. It was okay, I played through the whole thing, but it didn't really leave a lasting impression on me. I actually don't really remember anything about it. I just don't really have much a desire to play the newer Tales games.
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That being said, I always hear Vesperia was one of the better ones. If it goes on sale really cheap I might pick it up.

Speaking of sales, I've been on the fence all weekend about buying either Monster Hunter World, or Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age in the steam sale. I'm that weirdo that actually kind of liked XII, and I'd be very much interested in playing a different version of it. MHW I keep hearing is awesome, but Smash Bros. Ultimate is coming out next week, and I can't really justify spending $40 on a 200 hour RPG, while I'm still playing FFXV, and have SSB on the horizon.
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Vesperia is as far as I can tell the best localized Tales game, while being one of the couple I haven't played (And I Have played unlocalized Tales games).

Personal favorite is Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut, a remake of Tales of Destiny for the PS2.
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Ooh, yeah. So I was cleaning out some boxes, looking for old games I don't play anymore to sell on eBay, and I found a sealed copy of FFT War of the Lions, which I had no idea I owned. I think it's actually my brother's. He said he doesn't want it, and I'm trying to decide what I want to do with it. It doesn't go for very much on eBay, and like I said earlier I don't really have time at the moment to play another big RPG. I might just sit on it and play it this summer or something. Also I have no idea if my PSP still works or not.
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You should play the game regardless. Not a huge difference between the PSX and PSP version, I own physical copies of both of them.

FFT was the very first Final Fantasy game I ever owned (and one of the very first games I ever owned).
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Yeah, I might as well. Just no idea when I'll be able to play it.

Anyway, got lots done in FFXV! Went from Chapter 3 to 7 today. So either there's going to be some really long chapters later, or the main story is actually on the short side. I'll be honest, the story is actually really good at making you want to see what's next. The whole "hey, you're a badass, you're going to be king, you're going to marry Lunafreya, you're going to save the world" is a pretty good motivator to move the story along. And there's some pretty epic moments like fighting Titan, or summoning Ramuh. I'm actually kind of enjoying myself despite the fact this game is all over the place and generally low in quality.

So I keep thinking what if they took this open world design, and applied to like an old school high fantasy, sword and sorcery, save the crystals from the four fiends and some big bad cosmic evil style FF game. Would that work? I don't know, they'd have to build a new battle system that actually works to pull something like that off. I'd like them to do job classes in a game like that, but that would be a huge undertaking to pull all of that off. Just something to consider. I doubt that's the direction the series will take.
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omg. I just checked the SE store for updates on my order, and noticed the first lore book was in stock. So I snatched one up. That was a very lucky catch. Who knows when/if it will be in stock again.
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papercup posted...

omg. I just checked the SE store for updates on my order, and noticed the first lore book was in stock. So I snatched one up. That was a very lucky catch. Who knows when/if it will be in stock again.

No idea. I've had the first volume for a while, so I haven't exactly kept track. Maybe in the next year or so, same for the second volume.
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