I will preface this with the fact that I watched a playthrough of the vanilla game a while ago, so this isn't really the first time I'm experiencing this story. The Windows Edition contains all the content in the Royal Edition, including all the DLC except for the Assassin Festival.
So why the heck couldn't they just call it Royal Edition like a normal human?I did manage to get the game to run at a consistent 30 fps without too much stuttering. Still doesn't look as good as it would on a PS4, but it gets the job done, even if some textures look like crap.
Also I'm not watching Kingsglaive. That's almost as egregious as NieR: Automata having supplementary stage play containing important lore. Actually, scratch that, it's worse. At least N:A's stageplay only contained events that took place before the game started, and you could access a summary of it in-game.
I'll admit, I like the interactions between
the Backstreet Boys NSYNC Sev'ral Timez the four main characters. This is where the game shines, where it's just these four boys on the best worst road trip of their lives.
The gameplay is... well, sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's a bloody mess. When you get hit in FFXV, 40% of the time you feel you got hit legitimately, 20% of the time you got hit by an enemy charging at you from behind the camera, 20% of the time you're being attacked by eight or more enemies at once, and 20% of the time you had enough MP, you already avoided that attack once, but the game decides you weren't holding the block/evade button hard enough. And then you have to manage four party members at once, which would be fine, if Ignis and Prompto knew what dodging was. The majority of the game felt like I had to rely on the ridiculous amount of invincibility frames you get from using Techs.
Warp strike is probably the best thing the game has going for it. The aerial sequence when fighting Aranea, Phase 1 of the Leviathan fight, the bit in Chapter 12 when you're warping between Imperial dropships, that's where the game felt badass.
By the time I got the Regalia Type-D, I had already reached Chapter 8, the last chapter to take place in the open world. I didn't so much need a dirt car, as much as the ability to just manually steer the car.
Also the item description on the Supercharger says the car can reach 60 mph. It only lets you go up to 35 mph.
Luna's death is the part that marks the game getting darker and restrictive, and I almost understand that. Noct (and the player) most likely understands the gravity of the quest, yet if you aren't trying to rush the game, Noct will have likely spent more time fishing, gardening, frog collecting, and chocobo riding than doing the main quest. It's from this point that he realizes that there are consequences to his actions and inaction, that there's far more at stake than just the throne. Except, using Luna's death to mark this doesn't work when we barely know her. All of Noct and Luna's onscreen chemistry amounts to
Naminé young Luna giving a young Noct some exposition, yet we're supposed to believe that this is hugely devastating for Noct. It probably is, but we're never shown enough of their interactions for us to really care. I think I cared more for the Regalia's "death."
Noct's side of Chapter 13. At least let me use the MP3 player. Would have bumped it up from "I could have bought XIII for 20% of the price I paid for XV" to "Dissidia's soundtrack makes things slightly more tolerable."
"Noct I'm already a
daemon MT." This revelation gets thrown in, Noct shrugs it off, and then it is never mentioned again. I'm almost positive that Prompto's DLC was planned from the start.
Ravus fight is only annoying because he had so much health. Chop it in half and you'd have the best fight in the game.
Good friggin god, Bahamut's face is creepy.
No, game, you can't just throw the phrase "Iris the Daemon Slayer" and not follow up on that. What do I have to look at to get something out of this? Tie-in anime? Manga? Novella? Fan fiction?
It's fan fiction, isn't it?So the Royal Edition revamped Insomnia City into a full-sized dungeon. Not terribly long, but enough to leave an impression. Also, difficulty spike. I chose to forego grinding and headed straight for the final boss. Big mistake on my part, since now there are SIX FINAL BOSSES, four of which have two phases. It's especially jarring when Ifrit comes in and is significantly easier than the bosses surrounding it.
Fine, I suppose there is a bit of a nostalgia trip in seeing the Final Fantasy main theme play over a coronation/wedding, even if they're dead.
I would not have paid additional money for the DLC episodes, but they were actually fun. They felt a lot more focused and knew what they wanted to do. Final boss of Episode Prompto sucked, though.
Friendly Match is a mixed bag. It's actually kind of a fitting send-off for the game. A duel with the protagonist in the place where the journey started with some damn sweet music in the background. At the same time, it's bullshit, letting Noct use royal weapons without losing health, giving him the Ring of the Lucii, letting him use and
letting him expose Ignis's true identity as Slenderman.
"You couldn't just eat your goddamn veggies, could you Noct?"
lol Comrades. I played this for two hours and encountered a total of one player. Either the playerbase is dead or the matchmaking sucks.