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thatdudeguy

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thatdudeguy

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@peachesrcool said:

I hope Brad beats the game soonish since I want a Breaking Brad where he plays through it.

OMG, now I do, too.

@envane said:

it took me 7 hours total ... but it was so satisfying , i got stuck in a few areas but it turns out i was overthinking things in most cases ,trying to make impossible jumps that seemed like the only way to progress , such a surreal experience , so many troll treasures.

the major travesty is the genji gloves item is just terrrible , (it just gives 30% lightning/dark/bullet resist)

So many tip-toeing journeys onto narrow ledges only to receive "5 x Potion" and fall when trying to turn around.

After playing through The Last Guardian as well this week, I'm even more impressed with this dungeon. Both games have fairly sloppy input handling for platforming purposes, but this dungeon used its limited toolset to delight me every few minutes. TLG, in contrast, just kinda asked me to find the next-highest platform or ledge and jump.

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thatdudeguy

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I just finished it minutes ago (on a stock PS4) and can agree with the comments above. It is a technical mess in terms of framerate dropping during random exploration and combat sequences, the camera being very frustrating, and Trico being a general pain in the ass to use efficiently. Also, the "press X to blah" prompts during the final battles (and even several dramatic moments where they literally covered a character) were a bit much.

Buuuuut... if you dig the Team Ico games, this is totally fine to play even on a normal PS4. The combat/action sequences (featuring human-type enemies, the rest are just puzzles) total less than 20 and there were only a couple that really required any strategy at all. The ending is suitably epic and rewarding and I can see how this belongs alongside Ico and SotC as a solid entry in the Ueda-san canon. Ico is still my favorite upon release, SotC was awesome but really frustrating until the PS3 re-release with a higher framerate, and this one isn't as action-heavy as SotC but still suffers from issues that hopefully a patch or much-later re-release will fix.

If you're a casual fan of the Team Ico games, this is safely a wait-for-price-drop game. If you're an Ico nut like me, it was a satisfying experience worth the occasional annoyance.

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thatdudeguy

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After reading Kotaku's sales pitch for an interesting, combat-free endgame dungeon (http://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-xvs-secret-dungeon-is-one-of-the-coolest-1789514516), I've given it a try tonight. I'm still far from finishing, but I'm kinda blown away that this thing is a secret locked away in the endgame. There are some Mario-Galaxy-class platforming concepts in that thing. All I can think is that some poor Squeenix designer really wanted to make a Mario game after 10 years of building an unreleased RPG. I really enjoyed the rest of the game, but this thing is a real gem. I'm curious to know what anyone else who has started it thinks about its puzzles, how well the platforming works with the laggy input, or anything else.

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thatdudeguy

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#4  Edited By thatdudeguy

@poobumbutt said:

Do they at least stop after you beat the story?

Bad news: Nope. They still keep coming.

Good news: By that point, it only takes a few seconds to decimate them.

I was really worried early on in the game that they would be a hassle, probably on the same gem-hunting quest that the OP was on. I really dislike the "find the glowing thing in two acres of animated wilderness" quests anyway, but the dropships were just awful. But aside from the first handful of chapters, I remember the frequency of those fights slowing down and very seldom interrupting my quests. I can't point to any proof, but I remember the drops being most frequent during the chapters where there are roadblocks (big red "no" signs on the roads when looking at the map), which didn't last long.

Some minor tips that helped me with those encounters at mid-level were using lightning spells as mentioned above and switching to my greatsword. Even if the enemies are weaker to javelins, warping in with a greatsword strike and following up with a 1-2 hit combo string would catch clusters of soldier in the wide swings and knock them down. Oh, and there are several accessory items like Bulletproof Vest that dramatically improve poor Prompto's squishiness to bullets.

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thatdudeguy

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There's a (minor gameplay spoiler, discussed in the QL) section where you have all weapons taken away, and then are given a royal arm alone. The first section finally trained me to effectively dodge and counter while managing MP in warp-point-free arenas, and the second forced me to figure out a good attack -> dodge -> regen health pattern to manage HP and MP. After that, I've used royal arms and magic almost exclusively because the damage output is so incredibly high.

Also, I finished the story before discovering that when crafting magic, after selecting your elements you can select an item from your inventory to inject into the mix as well. This is huge! Added effects range from casting a spell multiple times per use to a chance of insta-kill. The reason I bring it up is that for hard monster hunts, I now tend to craft spells that also heal the caster. This lets me use royal arms with abandon, cast a spell, and continue on with little delay.

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@gaff said:

@dray2k: Well, this game has been in development for 10 years now. Breaking even is probably the best Square Enix is hoping for, even if that's not realistic.

And speaking of the 10 years in development... I'm 15 hours in, on the third chapter and this game shouldn't have been as much fun as I'm having. Barring a few questionable quest design choices, the hitherto useless magic system and the barebones plot and characters, I'm enjoying the game a lot. Driving around (or being chauffeured around) Eos is relaxing, the environment is gorgeous and your companions are good, if inoffensive, company. I just hope I don't burn out on all the side quests I'm doing.

I might regret making this comparison, but FFXV is to the Final Fantasy franchise what MGSV was to the Metal Gear franchise.

I'm a handful of hours in and think you've summed up my feelings well. Like MGSV, everything about the game pre-release turned me off (in MGSV's case, the Peace Walker mission structure and disjoined narrative, in FFXV's, the real-time combat and bro-centric plot), but actually playing the game has been at least as much fun as I've had with any other game this year. It's just so weird compared to other JRPGs and western open-world RPGs out there, and scratches the same itch that FF 6-9 scratched back when I was younger.

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@hunkulese said:

@gkhan: They were arrested for breaking into scumbag Will Smith as a priest's house.

LOL, that reference is perfect!

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#8  Edited By thatdudeguy

@development said:

I think the only thing I really have no clue about is the box burning.

My guess was that if her police officer father had kept something secret and revealed it on his deathbed, it was evidence of his wrongdoing. It's not clear whether he asked her to burn it, or whether she made that decision to protect his legacy. But either way, it was her first act of sweeping something bad under the rug and haunted her.

@sebbodes said:

I am still confused that she popped LSD in the cell and everything moved forward with some explanations of Anne's past. I felt so empty at the end, the story went nowhere, just some "What If..."-scenarios.

Thinking again about the ending sequences, the fact that control is completely removed for the "promotion to FBI assistant director" path might indicate that it is just a daydream before she decides to escape the situation through LSD. So in "reality", she did become an alcoholic, conspiracy-nut drifter with a criminal record.

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I absolutely loved the game. It hit all the right notes for me in terms of Twin Peaks, X-Files, and True Detective inspiration. While the story did meander a bit, I generally felt like the major mysteries were resolved.

The game seemed to be exploring themes of corruption versus transgression, and I saw Anna's jail cell moment as splitting into two separate narratives. Either she flips on her partner and rises through the ranks of the FBI, eventually perpetuating the cycle of corruption, or she drinks the kool-aid and ends up an alcoholic conspiracy nut cast out by society. The ceremony, as well as the body-hopping scenes, were her fevered imaginings of what was really going on behind the curtain. And I think the box-burning scene actually happened before everything else, and drives her guilty conscience as exposed in scenes like the furnace in the middle of the road.

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I'm cautiously pessimistic about this game, and won't buy it unless it receives glowing reviews. But... I'm also open to the idea of future, non-Hideo MGS games. I'd like to see what another auteur director's (or even a committee-designed) entry in the series looks like. So I hope that this signals Konami's intent to keep going with the property as long as profit can be extracted. It won't ruin the existing games for me if all remaining games suck, but knowing that they have the amazing Fox Engine, gameplay design, and at least some remaining engineers from MGSV make me curious to see what might come out.