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I think it helps a lot that Byron isn't just an old buffoon, but a gifted resistance leader who can actually throw the gently caress down when required. He may not be able to decide what to call his axe, but he knows everything else about what you're supposed to do with one.
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Jul 1, 2023 18:51
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Byron is the best comic relief in the game. World's Best Uncle.
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Jul 1, 2023 20:16
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Byron kicks rear end and his intro scene is one of the moments in the game that made me laugh the hardest The biggest laugh was "Clive Bested" though, that was hilarious
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Jul 1, 2023 21:47
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Finished the game today! I think it definitely peaked at Twinside, up until that point my wife and I were both pretty heavily speculating on what was going to happen next, but afterwards things started to get into "Ayup" territory with how the story progressed. Overall it was a great game to play and we don't regret playing it, but there's a lot of things that bring it down in our opinion. -I think most prominently here is Jill. Immediately after you get her Shiva powers she gets sidelined into "Protect the Ship" territory. Also, I don't think she wins a single Eikon fight she was ever a part of? Which is really unfortunate because she was one of our favorites from the start. Personally I was hoping that she, too, would get a rematch with Odin so that you'd have Shiva + Fenrir vs Odin + Sleipneir, but alas we got the 1v1 vs Barnabas instead (which was still pretty cool, it just sucks that her character gets sidelined after Clive sleeps with her) -Slight aside to the first point, but I was kind of hoping for more Eikon fights that didn't involve Ifrit. I'm okay with this as a limitation of the narrative though. -I was hoping for more from the ending. I don't think it's a bad ending, but I'm a sucker for stuff that goes in-depth on the people that you helped out. I'd like it more if it was more definite in who lives/dies or whatever, because pretty much everyone involved in the final confrontation could both be alive or dead. (Except for maybe Clive, they seemed to be pretty dead with how fast they were turning into stone) -I think the combat system was rad, it would be neat if there were more FF jobs reflected in the eikons (i.e. playing as Odin gives you Samurai, Phoenix Paladin, Titan Monk, etc.) There's also some complaints I have about how the itemization was handled in the game (it's just straight numbers). -While I pretty much loved every sidequest (except for the ending to Lubor's and the Undying ones), it would be nice if they made them all available at once. There were a couple of times when I would clear out six or so sidequests, do a chunk of main story, and then another three/four would open up. (I'm mostly thinking of before & after Kanver here). I'd prefer to just have all seven to clear at once while the area is open. -I kind of wish this game had a party select system similar to Mass Effect. It would be great if I could choose to pal around with Gav and Byron or Jill and Joshua or whatever combination of characters that were available and let them chime in on sidequests. Understandable why that didn't happen but it's still something i'd like -It would have been nice for Benedikta to get more screen time, or at least have another lady eikon villain. With that said, I do like to talk about the things I love about games so i'm going to include that stuff here. -The sidequests were all pretty spectacular. I loved learning more about Gav/Otto/Charon and all the rest of the gang. It was also pretty sweet to collect memorabilia from it all. -Twinside was such a great turn of events. I was not expecting Dion to just straight up kill the little kid emperor. The intro was as well; in fact, this game had a great collection of "holy poo poo" moments. -Ultima was actually a pretty good villain, all things were considered. I loved them getting megaflare'd and going "Oh." when they realized they made a mistake. Isabella was also pretty great in a "can't wait to see them get their comeuppance" sort of way. -Eikon Battles were pretty drat good, too. I really liked Ifrit + Phoenix vs Bahamut, but Ifrit v Titan is a close second IMO. -Clive was a pretty good main character, IMO. I was expecting him to be super gritty grimdark but they ended up growing a lot on me. -Cid was also great. Uncle Byron is one of the top tier characters in just about any game, let alone a final fantasy game. -I did enjoy the combat system a lot in the game, and look forward to trying the whole smorgasboard on Final Fantasy difficulty. I think those  pretty well sum up how I feel about the game. Very enjoyable experience overall but there's a lot of tiny details that bring it down.
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Jul 1, 2023 23:24
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Arrrthritis posted:-Ultima was actually a pretty good villain, all things were considered. I loved them getting megaflare'd and going "Oh." when they realized they made a mistake. Isabella was also pretty great in a "can't wait to see them get their comeuppance" sort of way. A really cool thing about Ultima that I haven't seen anybody talk about is that he spends the entire game talking in a robotic AI kinda way. But then at the end, post eikon fight when you are fighting him in his angelicish form, Clive talks a bunch of poo poo about how you're just as marked with sin and to blame for things as we are, which Ultima of course denies. But as the fight progresses from there, he speaks less like a robot and more and more like a human as he's getting his rear end kicked and Clive is pounding the truth into him. I thought it was a really nice touch.
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Jul 1, 2023 23:43
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I had a stupid solicitor at my door at the end of the fight with the Garuda lady, Benedikta, and missed the cutscene. Did she die or fly away or what?
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Jul 2, 2023 00:29
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Grem posted:I had a stupid solicitor at my door at the end of the fight with the Garuda lady, Benedikta, and missed the cutscene. Did she die or fly away or what? You can pause cutscenes! She has a breakdown as she realizes Clive has stolen her powers and is taken away by her right hand man while the Dominant of Fire sets off explosions all over the castle.
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Jul 2, 2023 00:40
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I also finished the game. I feel a little insane for thinking this, but I really wish the game had been more grounded. I hate to say it, but I thought the game peaked with the demo content. Not because the Benedikta fight is the best fight in the game, but because it captured the game's unique vibes the best--a mix of fantasy super powers and tragic-heroic knighthood that I found really cool and compelling. As the game goes on, the giant gods punching each other really starts to overshadow the rest of the story as it becomes a race to see how bombastic the next eikon sequence can be. I guess another way to put it is, I felt like the game went from Berserk to Super Robot Wars as the story progressed, and I liked Berserk better. I really liked the ending, because Clive is just a good dude who cares about his friends and his brother a lot, and a big part of the story is his balancing his self-destructiveness with a desire to be there for the people who need him. Clive's English VA also just, truly knocks it out of the park whenever Clive is griefstricken, so those scenes really stand out among all of Final Fantasy for me. I really felt like I was just watching a rehash of the plot beats of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann by the last few chapters of the game, so the Ultima fight was a bit of a let-down to me. Like it's a perfectly good fight on its own merits. But when Clive punches the depressed god in the face and shoots a hole through his chest, while talking about humankind's right to self-determination, it's just like... I've seen this a few times already including in FFXIV just a couple years ago. Ultima's backstory was also a little uncomfortably close to some of the major lore in FFXIV to me. I say all of this while also having to admit that I was grinning during the entirety of the Titan Lost fight and the Bahamut fight and was really into the Typhon fight as well. It's just, I dunno, as a whole it felt like too much candy to me. Maybe if the eikon battles had been scaled down a bit in emphasis, there would have been more room to flesh out the ' ' party members ' ' because the game would have room to be more than just the Clive & Ifrit show. The gameplay was kind of lopsided to me. By 70% mark I felt like I had a build that cracked the game open for me, so it became a little too easy. So between the combat feeling too easy and the boss battles being extremely flashy, I couldn't help but feel that some of the game's core premises were based around the idea of style over substance. The female characters in this game were as a whole quite disappointing. Jill in particular feels like a character from 30 years ago. Literally a sad girlfriend who waits behind and prays for her boyfriend's safe return, while also being like one of the 5 strongest beings in the world. I know what they were going for (Clive taking on her burden so she can live), but it's just such a bad look to have all the male Dominants go to fight Ultima while the one girl stays behind with a broken heart. Jote also felt like a total waste of what seemed like a cool character. As a whole all of these criticisms come from maybe having too high of expectations after the successes of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. I think FF16 is definitely a very good game. But it was held back, in my opinion, by the desire to hold spectacle as its highest priority, while simultaneously feeling oddly derivative in some of its spectacles. Torgal is one of the best FF party members though. What a great boy.
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Jul 2, 2023 08:08
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What makes people think/justify that this game is a 9/10? I'm seriously curious. I finished the game today. The overall main story and themes were okay. The characters are good overall and a lot of them get their own arcs and payoffs throughout the game. But the gameplay... the combat system is fun for maybe 5 hours. You have the same basic rear end combos throughout the entire game. The only thing that changes is the few Eikon Abilities you can equip. There are no weapons with different movesets or real combo strings to learn. The combat wore out its welcome very early for me and it was just a slog towards the end. Also the sidequests... the endless padding. The nonexistent RPG elements and boring itemization. This game is carried hard on it's presentation and visual/audio polish overall. If I had to score it it's a 7/10. At least it's much better than the absolute disaster that was 15.
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Jul 2, 2023 11:03
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I'm playing NG+ and still enjoying the combat. I wish there were more eikon trials.
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Jul 2, 2023 11:04
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Most of the side quests at the end of the game pay off in interesting ways or do a good job of world building/characterization but I just cannot care less about loving L’ubor and this lovely desert town full of racists. Probably the one big stinker in the mix. L’ubor is stupid for not just beating feet with his kids to the hideout, and Clive is stupid for not just nuking the entire town after they act like a bunch of dickheads.
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Jul 2, 2023 15:22
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FrickenMoron posted:What makes people think/justify that this game is a 9/10? I'm seriously curious. I finished the game today. I liked the sidequests and I never really got bored with the combat. I enjoyed the characters a lot and mostly liked the story, minus most of disc one just being too bleak for my tastes. It sure was a final fantasy rear end video game post disc 1 though so it delivered on what I want. Itemization being dull numbers just go up has never really bothered me and honestly I kinda prefer it just to keep loving around in menus at a minimum. Like I will probably never finish SoP because dealing with equipment is such a hassle.
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Jul 2, 2023 16:41
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I think Clive is alive, just not combat capable. The story starts and ends more or less with Ifrit. I think where you stand on his status depends on if you did the side quests. I would like confirmation if Joshua lived or not, it only looked like his wounds were healed, not that he was revived.
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Jul 2, 2023 17:15
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think he had a choice. It sounds like Leviathan got hopped up on Mothercrystal and went bye bye As the resident guy who's too obsessed with Leviathan in this game and why he's missing, does the game ever actually say what happened to him? Literally the only thing was Joshua saying "Leviathan the Lost", didn't even get an ATL entry or anything. Anyway, game cleared, I personally loved it but I can see why people wouldn't, I think Clive and Joshua lived, my final build was Ice Age/Diamond Dust Shiva, Raging Fists/Windup Titan, Impulse/Gigaflare Bahamut.
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Jul 2, 2023 17:32
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The sad flashback to Clive seeing Joshua as a baby, then cut to him holding Joshua's lifeless body, makes me really think Joshua is dead. And the shot of Metia flickering, then Jill and Gav crying and Torgal howling at the moon, is such a "See you space cowboy" moment that I don't really see Clive living. But I mean, they never bury either of the characters so it's all up to interpretation.
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Jul 2, 2023 18:05
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I was in awe of Clive's VA during his sobbing over Joshua's body though, that felt like real grief.
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Jul 2, 2023 19:38
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I think I'd be pretty confident in a "Clive lives" reading overall except for one detail. So much foreshadowing seems to point to him being the one who wrote the book--his narration at the beginning and end, all the stuff with Harpocrates about Clive taking up the pen when this is all over, we've already seen him take on someone else's name to carry on their legacy, etc.--so it's pretty easy to draw that conclusion, at least I think. Except for Metia. Metia going out seems like such a glaring death sign to me I don't have any idea how else to interpret it. Seeing so many people on other sites interpreting that as a sign that Jill's prayer was answered baffles me. It's so far outside of what that looks like to me that it makes me feel like I'm living in a different reality entirely from them. So that leaves me not knowing what to think and it's why I think it's a frustrating kind of ambiguity. I feel safe saying at least one of the brothers survived, probably not both but maybe, but beyond that I have no loving clue. Maybe one day they'll release an Ultimania and drop more hints or even outright confirm one way or the other or something.
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Jul 2, 2023 20:03
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Maybe Dion survived and went home to raise his daughter with his boyfriend
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Jul 2, 2023 20:14
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The game spends so long hammering in that Clive dying for the cause would be dumb as a theme that I think it's the rare case of an unearned death scene if that was the intent.
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Jul 2, 2023 20:17
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I think Metia going out is Ifrit burning out. I don't think Metia was associated with Clive at all.
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Jul 2, 2023 20:29
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Captain Oblivious posted:The game spends so long hammering in that Clive dying for the cause would be dumb as a theme that I think it's the rare case of an unearned death scene if that was the intent. This is how I felt about it, too. Clive dying kind of betrayed a lot of the later development he had with Jill and Joshua. It also didn’t really make that much sense in the fiction because when you think about it too hard, Clive dying means that Ultima’s plan was hosed from the start so the whole loving situation was pointless.
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Jul 2, 2023 20:36
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VanillaGorilla posted:This is how I felt about it, too. Clive dying kind of betrayed a lot of the later development he had with Jill and Joshua. I mean it was. Ultima already hosed up in causing The Blight and continued to desperately find some solution that let him/them keep godhood instead of acknowleding what a fuckup he/they were. Clive fighting back is what gave him the ability to make the choice Ultima wouldn't. It wasn't pointless because Ultima would have kept loving poo poo up. It is like Twitter on a global scale
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Jul 2, 2023 20:42
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Ultimusk
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Jul 2, 2023 20:52
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ImpAtom posted:Maybe Dion survived and went home to raise his daughter with his boyfriend considering all the places that girl pops up in I was half expecting her to be hawking potions right outside of Origin
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Jul 2, 2023 21:01
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ImpAtom posted:Maybe Dion survived and went home to raise his daughter with his boyfriend I believe 
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Jul 2, 2023 21:03
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It took a bit for me to warm to the game after the beginning, and it overstayed its welcome (wasn't crazy about Ultima in this game, but I liked most of what was in the middle. A few impressions I had to share: 1. It's a pretty lonely game, despite Clive being powered by his friends' faith in him. 2. Once I learned Ultima lived in a place called Origin, I desperately needed his defeat to come in the form of an orb, a cube, and a pyramid. 3. There's nothing like debating free will when Ultima speaks so slowly, and they disable advancing the text by hitting X, so I found by accident how to skip the whole cutscene. Boom, the last Mothercrystal disintegrates. I had a sense of losing something vital, but it didn't last long, and I just laughed. I hope other folks had fun with the game. The ending didn't ruin the rest of the game for me, but I'm glad it's over. Maybe let Ishikawa write the next one, Yoshi-P.
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Jul 2, 2023 21:25
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JBP posted:What was everyone's build in the end anyway? I focused solely on doing big numbers while the enemy was staggered. Bahamut w/ Will of the Wykes and Gigaflare Odin w/ Dancing Steel and Lightning Rod. Lightning rod and dancing steel will do a surprising amount of stagger damage if you need it. Probably 50% on most enemies. It will also easily fill the zantetsuken bar to 5 assuming both an enemy and lightning rod are being hit at the same time. Garuda w/ Titan's ult and Judgment Bolt. Could probably replace garuda with titan to make staggering go faster and build up limit bar assuming you perfect guard everything. Work the boss down to near stagger, build up and unleash megaflare lvl 4, use your limit break, lunge to stagger them, drop lightning rod -> gigaflare -> titan's ult -> judgment bolt -> zantetsuken lvl 5. Could probably try squeezing in 2 lvl 5 zantetsukens but meh. Able to pull off 180k+ on most bosses, even without using the str tonic. Staggering bosses didn't take nearly as long as I thought either. And all trash is cleared with liberal use of zantetsuken Failboattootoot posted:Want to shout out Cid, Mid, and Cool Uncle Byron for being the standout characters in this game. The 3 of them had me delighted just about every time they were on screen. Byron in particular was a part of so many incredible scenes, especially his intro with Clive, re-enacting that play they used to do as kids. That was so good!!! List of realest bros: -Torgal -Cid -Gav -Byron Cephas posted:The gameplay was kind of lopsided to me. By 70% mark I felt like I had a build that cracked the game open for me, so it became a little too easy. So between the combat feeling too easy and the boss battles being extremely flashy, I couldn't help but feel that some of the game's core premises were based around the idea of style over substance.  with basically everything you said but especially this. It basically killed my desire to play ng+ too since I had enough AP to learn every ability I wanted and I don't see combat changing drastically.
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Jul 2, 2023 21:59
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On NG+ for FF mode I've only gotten up to the Garuda fight, but I still haven't died and it's not obscenely harder so far than the normal mode. What I've found is that stuff like Odin's kit is underwhelming because any startup animation to get your ability running isn't ideal since it leaves you too open to being punished. I have a setup like this: Phoenix / Ignition / Flames of Rebirth Shiva / Mesmerize / Diamond Dust Titan / Raging Fists / Gigaflare Adamantite Gauntlets / Berserker Ring / Cleric's Medallion +1 Shiva is the best Eikon in the game and it's not remotely close. The big lizard thing early on that I forget the name of can just be permafrost locked for half of the fight because of how easy it is to hit with the glide move. Diamond Dust is the best ability in the game for the obscene initial stagger hit, especially considering how relatively short the cooldown is. Mesmerize doesn't do a ton of damage but the cooldown is stupidly short and easy to spam. I might say using Gouge instead of Raging Fists is an option for the additional stagger, but I haven't tried it because the latter is too satisfying, especially if you parry with it. I'm sure this could change later in the game but I've seen no problems with the moveset.
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Jul 2, 2023 22:19
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CharlestonJew posted:considering all the places that girl pops up in I was half expecting her to be hawking potions right outside of Origin I thought she was going to be Greagor or something
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Jul 3, 2023 00:04
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Does Zantetsuken level stay up even if you swap out of Odin? I assumed it reset like Megaflare level does.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:37
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It stays.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:38
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Ibblebibble posted:Does Zantetsuken level stay up even if you swap out of Odin? I assumed it reset like Megaflare level does. It stays up even if you swap out and if you use one of Odin's special moves on a non-Odin Eikon it will still build up the meter even if you can't see it.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:43
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Huh, guess I might gently caress around with it more in NG+ then, not that I'll be doing that for a while.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:43
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Flavahbeast posted:I thought she was going to be Greagor or something I thought she would be Leviathan.
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Jul 3, 2023 02:26
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I thought she was going to be like a secret host of Ultima or something. I hope her and Terence made it out of Twinside safely before it turned into Origin. Now the Ironborn head priest, he's the guy who I thought was going to be the secret Leviathan dominant. I've been pondering the elementals of the mothercrystals. I think these are the elemental aspects of the various mothercrystals: Breath: Fire Eye: Ice Head: Light Fang: Earth Tail: Water/Wind(?) Spine: Darkness/Lightning(?) Horn: Lightning/??? (probably, Ramuh ATL entry says that the Motes of Thunder were in central Ash, though they might mean Spine by that) Dzemykys: Wind/Darkness/Water(?, Garuda ATL says the Motes of Wind were centered in the Isles of Ark, and the big crater is close enough, and Tail is blue which isn't a traditional FF wind colour, but it was the Motes of Darkness who were the children of Dzemykys. Also might be water because maybe the reason why Leviathan was lost was because his crystal got nuked out of existence? Dunno really.) So basically the Ash crystals + Tail + Dzemykys are a bit of a ??? but the other 4 are pretty clear. Ibblebibble fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 02:37
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Spine looked like lightning to me, and I also associated that with Cid.
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Jul 3, 2023 02:43
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The spectacle was incredible, and overall it was a very enjoyable experience. That said, it was far from perfect and so many of its flaws seem to me to stem from the tropey Chosen One narrative exacerbated by the action game playstyle. You know you're going to get all the eikons, just not the order. Party members basically don't exist outside of cutscenes because it was either too hard or annoying to balance. There's a massive bias to including Clive's perspective in the narrative and all the fights which hampers some of the more interesting things they could have done. I think it's a tension they managed to a certain extent, but this disconnect with the grand, sweeping scope of a Final Fantasy narrative felt oddly constrained. I will say it's fun to have a 'let's kill god' story where you personally punch him in the face for a million damage, though. Ultimalius, nice name, dork.
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Jul 3, 2023 03:01
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I think my favourite "oh poo poo it's that move" moment was in the finale when Bahamut, Ifrit and Phoenix are all taking their biggest shots at the same time and Tri-Disaster shows up on screen.
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Jul 3, 2023 03:04
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I'm confused about one small detail in the game. At one point I was talking to an NPC near the giant waterfall crater and they talked about how people in the past (I think it was the the fallen, but I can't recall if he said that specifically or I assumed it) had risen up in defiance and Ultima couldn't stand that so he smashed them and their crystal. But I didn't think Ultima's existence was supposed to be common knowledge? Why was that one dude talking like it was just part of a standard history lesson?
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Jul 3, 2023 03:42
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 01:50 |
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Bugblatter posted:I'm confused about one small detail in the game. At one point I was talking to an NPC near the giant waterfall crater and they talked about how people in the past (I think it was the the fallen, but I can't recall if he said that specifically or I assumed it) had risen up in defiance and Ultima couldn't stand that so he smashed them and their crystal. But I didn't think Ultima's existence was supposed to be common knowledge? Why was that one dude talking like it was just part of a standard history lesson? He said "the gods" in general, not Ultima in specific.
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Jul 3, 2023 04:07
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