From dawn til Duscae: my impression of the FFXV: episode Duscae

[outbackjim21 83]

Okay, it's safe to say that nearly every KH fan should have been antipacting this game, so Im going to try and break down all of the things that made this game great,...and some of the things that made it not so great

 

Combat

Postives-the combat in the game is fun, warping around and dishing out damage with over the top moves, some of them being final fantasy favorites such as Jump was awesome. Seeing how you can set up your combos on the fly with the weapon equipment menu being easily accessible during combat was a nice touch. The enemies were very vibrant and diverse for the most part ranging from bipedal gnomes that will gang up on you if you don't take care of them quickly enough to giant wooly mammoths that help you master the parry system because of how slow they are for the charge up. Overall the combat is fine, but not perfect

 

Negatives- okay, where do I start, honestly the game can be a bit button mashy, but without the flair that KH offers us. The defend system is really unresponsive and that even after the frames for an attack are done you still can't go straight to defend.

The game overall just lacks strategy, the AI, instead of actually giving you a challenge in a small sortie decides to just throw numbers at you until you're overwhelmed and are forced to spam tempest over and over. To be honest, I felt like I was the only one doing anything on the battlefield, the other group NPCs were just there to be bait and keep all of the enemies off my back, but hey, I'm a prince. This game, overall, seemingly lacks strategy, if you're overwhelmed either you warp to towers(if they're available) or you simply spam one move over and over in hopes of getting them away from you, but either way, you spend a lot of time running or hiding from you opponents than actually manuvering around them and getting flank attack (which at this point in ARPGs, should just be a staple).

Boss battles,...I'll tell when I play one that doesn't force me to die in order to win, or fighting a boss that has such high stats that they can turn you into a pancake, but not before decimating your other group members leading you to be the only target. I feel like the game relies to highly on the in danger mode when you're health goes down, using it to run away, using it for summons, it's just kind of w hassle to have to deal with it, especially when the group members are in reactive to when you're down, forcing you to run away from combat to a secluded hidey hole so that you can perk up yourself, only to come back to battle and see that your entire group is now down because you're the only one capable of dealing damage.

 

For all of the coolness that the combos give you, they can't really be considered combos as you're just holding the button down for an extended period time, and throwing in an ability here and there I was interested in how there was a jump attack, but there is no way to orchestrate it into a combo, because it's a seperate attack all together, that is kind of worthless imo. As for the abilities, switching to them is a hassle trying to remember which one comes after the next, but the worst part would have to be how useless each one is, except for tempest. I feel that each of the abilities aside from tempest were designed for fighting giant boss type monsters seeing as the abilities take a good time to charge(except tempest) giving smaller opponents good time to run away making the attack a wasted effort, full thrust would have to be the worst offender, charging up the attack the enemy is right in front of you, yet you still miss because they are the size of a backpack and barely walked to the left.

Overall, there needs to be some changes, the combat need to flow smoother going from attacks to abilities, and being able to switch to defend on the fly, and give us the ability to do jump attacks in the middle of holding the attack button. Make the NPC's more competent, both ally and enemy, don't just throw overwhelming numbers at me that will force my guys to run around like idiots doing nothing.

 

Exploration- when the tag line "a fantasy based on reality" then showing a video of a normal looking city in Japan wS used in one of the trailers, I was iffy on how the game would present the atmosphere of the world, but for the most part, I say they managed to actually blend fantasy with reality. Traveling on the street roads looking around at the plains and buildings,it wouldn't be too hard to think that this place can be naturally found in our own world, but then you see a giant ass Loch Ness monster in the lake and see chocobos running around, and all of a sudden there's a huge clash of fantasy and reality, this is the first area truly presented to us, so hopefully there will be more fantasy inspired locations, but they are hitting the direction that they wanted to go on the head

 

As for quest location, it's interesting finding road signs with details on quest in the area, would have prefered NPCs giving out quest, but I'll bite. Overall, the quest themselves are pretty straightforward, find this kill that, nothing much to say on it.

 

Negatives

Honestly, it feels like I'm playing Dragon age inqusition again, a lot of land to explore with nothing in it other than generic side quest, it's all pretty to look at, but it has nothing to do.

As for the actual traveling part, this game commited a great sin for me when it comes to traveling, it gave you a sprint in order to give you the illusion that you can go faster when ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS MAKE THE SPRINT THE NORMAL PACE. God, that just grind my gears, and not only do they add a sprint mechanic, but a seemingly arbitrary tired from running mechanic as well, i get that's its a fantasy based on reality, but can the heroes atleast have sonic lungs please? Granted, this game will most likely rely on transportation such as the car or chocobo, but that still doesn't excuse such a crappy mechanic.

Also, night time is the worse, the part about the overwhelming amount of smokes I pointed out in the negatives on combat are exemplified here as the mech warriors seemingly increase activity during the night, and goblins only appear in dark areas giving you three types of Enemies to fight all at once. So yeah, go to bed as soon as you see dusk.

 

Overall, they need to add more things to do, that's a pretty arbitrary statement I know, but when it comes to open world dynamics, no game can hold a candle to elder scrolls games, if you're going to do open world, follow their lead, even though there will be a lot of ground to cover. Make traveling less of a tedious task, where not only i get tired of running around, but also my character. And I thought I was playing FFXV, not dying light, nerf the night time segments on the amount of enemies please, also, throw in some incentive for me to play during nighttime to begin with.

 

Since those were the main two aspects of the game that were shown I think I'll leave it at that, but one more thing...sindy, what the hell, this is why feminist are attacking the gaming community because of crap like this, that outfit is soooo impractical while working on a car.

And I may have piled on a huge chunk of stuff into the negatives, but don't get me wrong, the game is fun, but it can stand to make changes that would allow it to flow better and overall be a better experience which, for the most part, is the reason I hope SE released this demo in the first play, to gauge people's reaction and make appropriate changes.

Edited March 18, 2015 by outbackjim21

[Elijah Gravenhorst 480]

Dude, you're a really low leveled Noctis... chill out 

[outbackjim21 83]

Dude, you're a really low leveled Noctis... chill out

My critique had much more to do with the game than simply the 5/6 useless skills in the game. Most of what makes this game would have been uniquely awesome...10 years ago, but now we see what happens when a game has been in development hell for too long. Essentially this game is the oculus rift, it was so awesome to hear about, it talked about features that have never even been conceptualized before, but then other companies, Microsoft, Sony got in on the uptrend and not only took the basic principles of the rift, but enhanced them, all because the rift took to long to come to market, now it has to share revenue with other companies who copied their basic principle. In short, other games have done these mechanics before, and have done them in half the development time.

[Elijah Gravenhorst 480]

My critique had much more to do with the game than simply the 5/6 useless skills in the game. Most of what makes this game would have been uniquely awesome...10 years ago, but now we see what happens when a game has been in development hell for too long. Essentially this game is the oculus rift, it was so awesome to hear about, it talked about features that have never even been conceptualized before, but then other companies, Microsoft, Sony got in on the uptrend and not only took the basic principles of the rift, but enhanced them, all because the rift took to long to come to market, now it has to share revenue with other companies who copied their basic principle. In short, other games have done these mechanics before, and have done them in half the development time.

Neither the oculus nor FFXV have been released yet so I think it would be wise to withhold total judgement of the product. The oculus could outsell everything else and end up the only vr headset on the market. You have no idea.

[outbackjim21 83]

Neither the oculus nor FFXV have been released yet so I think it would be wise to withhold total judgement of the product. The oculus could outsell everything else and end up the only vr headset on the market. You have no idea.

you completely missed the point of the analogy. The oculus was a unique device until Sony and Microsoft announced and started developing their individual AR/VR headsets. Now oculus has to share revenue with both of those devices where as if it would have released much earlier instead of taking 5+ years to be developed after being announced it would have had a market all to itself. Same goes for 15, if this game didn't take the 10+ years that it took to develop after intially announcement, then the mechanics introduced would have been impeccable at the time, but it's all been done now. And have you seen the Hololens from Microsoft, rofl makes the oculus look like a joke, if microsoft can incorporate that into the Xbox one, game over.

[Elijah Gravenhorst 480]

you completely missed the point of the analogy. The oculus was a unique device until Sony and Microsoft announced and started developing their individual AR/VR headsets. Now oculus has to share revenue with both of those devices where as if it would have released much earlier instead of taking 5+ years to be developed after being announced it would have had a market all to itself. Same goes for 15, if this game didn't take the 10+ years that it took to develop after intially announcement, then the mechanics introduced would have been impeccable at the time, but it's all been done now. And have you seen the Hololens from Microsoft, rofl makes the oculus look like a joke, if microsoft can incorporate that into the Xbox one, game over.

I don't have the energy to address all the flaws in your reasoning. We can just agree to have different opinions. I am looking forward to FFXV. Have a good day, sir.