#incomprehensible if u havent played it or a spoiler

[bearsgrove]

god i wish i had someone i could gush to about pillars of eternity

so many thoughts bouncing around my head like ping pong balls with no outlet in sight :S

[bmpmp3]

watch out it’s time for a review nobody asked for for whatever game i just beat but this time it’s the time travel edition, this post is a period piece: I beat FFXV!!! I bought a used copy with my PS4 all the way back in like 2017, the royal upgrade wouldn’t be out for a long while, the prompto dlc was out and I think the gladiolus dlc was on the horizon, thats the time in which i began playing this video game and thats the time i had been suspended in for the past three years, so i need you to understand thats the context of which I beat this game 20 minutes ago and thats why everything im about to say is probably gonna sound like rehashed criticisms from when it launched so im gonna need you to pretend its 2017 for me please dbkjasdfhbjsKDFJKDSANa ANYWAY spoilers for ffxv under the cut

it was alright lol

when i first got it i really adored it and it was so much fun and i played for Many Many Hours dsjhsfdjs I think the thing that drew me in, of all things, was the warp mechanic? I liked the combat even tho magic sucks so bad and while the summons are funny how they work (damn bro u suck so bad at this game the gods themselves needs to come help you out.....) its a shame the whole combat system feels a little shallow, like maybe if there were more skills or links or summons or hell more button combos,.... i dunno, i still adore the warp mechanic so much its so good i wish more games had things like it, it might also be one of the first modern open world games ive ever played?? wait holy shit......ffxv is the first modern open world game ive ever played................

anyway i knew going in the plot was one of the more criticized aspects and like yeah.....its borderline incomprehensible, too much important and relevant stuff happens in dlc i dont own and never played (i’ll probably check out some walkthroughs of em later tho), THE PACING oh baby the pacing

so like when i played it i played many hours and then i got to the endgame section where it gets really linear (i hear they changed stuff in the royal upgrade so its less so tho) i just stopped playing for three entire years until like a month ago hjkdsjfskfdsa its not that i dislike linearity!!! i actually love linearity, honestly i prefer it, like, the entire reason i stopped playing this game for three whole ass years was cause i burnt myself out on open world nonsense kdsjkfansjd modern open world games are mildly dangerous for me.. especially recently where the standout games ive played this year for me have been drakengard which was an evil video game yes but it was also very arcade-y and stage based design wise and genuinely i think thats underappreciated and has a lot of potential, and also flower sun and rain which is a chapter based point and click adventure game with sidequests but primarily linear, i dunno im always a slut for linearity

i dont remember what i was typing and unfortunately i dont know how to read so reading what i just wrote is out of the question but anyway i just kinda stopped at the part where shit goes down Very Suddenly and like all the plot is crammed in those last few chapters until like this month when i picked it back up again hrjfekdska and man i remember people telling me some of those later chapters suck ass and like......yeah......................OKAY IT WASNT THAT BAD.... i didnt mind most of it!!! but chapter 13 (noctis route, havent played the other one).... there was so many cool ideas being brought up and i liked the tone shift into a straight up psychological horror game BUT first of all this game needs to stop trying to get me to do stealth im not gonna do stealth if i wanted to do stealth id play a game with mechanics that lend itself well to that style of play and not ffxv

ffxv stop trying to make stealth happen its not going to happen

and SECOND of all they TOOK....AWAY....MY WARP......................MY WARP........................................................................................

some crimes can never be forgiven

jdlkfdsafs genuinely tho like it made me realize the warp is truly what makes this game fun for me, which is why im hesitant to play the dlc chapters myself and am probably gonna opt for a walkthrough instead, if i cant warp whats the point!!! let me zoom across the map bitch!!!!! what do you mean i have to run towards these enemies instead of slapping triangle at them... bicth im gonna kill you

there were lots of cool ideas and interesting story beats that maybe could have been good if they had been paced out better and not locked away behind unreleased dlc idfjkjlsjfks man and some of the late game environments are so COOL whadda hell....i do love the industrial fantasy vibe, maybe someday i should finally play ff7, yakuza like a dragon reminded me that maybe i do like turn based combat sometimes so i’ll try it out~

wait i got sidetracked anyway poor lunafreya, man...... like i love noctis and the boys so much but girl you can do better than him............girl he only has eyes for fishing trips with the boys... get u a man thats on ur level..... although i think this is a problem with a lot of stories where a love interest is absent for most of the story (and in lunafreyas case, dies two thirds of the way in jwhdksafsmnfdkms) all while the main character is hanging out with their pals, we end up spending all this time seeing the chemistry with the pals up close and personal all while noctis’s and luna’s relationship is told to us through prerendered flashbacks and also occasionally a notebook....give us a gf that can hang out with us video games....video games we need to hang out with out gfs

oh mild spoilers for a different jrpg Radiant historia, but i think the sorta romance between raynie and stock works really well just cause like shes with us!!! shes hanging out with us!!!!!!!! let us hang out with out gfs......

when i was younger and i first started playing it i was hoping the story would focus more on how fucked up it is that like gladiolus and ignis were like raised to be retainers............like imagine ur 2 and theyre like yo this baby? ur gonna advise him.....imagine ur like 3 and theyre like you gotta protect this baby with ur life..........................i dunno i think there coulda been some interesting interpersonal conflict over how theyre all still friends who love eachother but like the situation theyve all been raised in is NUTS.... i dunno they probably explained it away in the game lore somewhere i dunno i cant read fdssdfssfadsdsafsd i guess one of the biggest problems with the writing is honestly how messy all the themes get, like the game ur playing at the beginning is low key an entirely different story and it shows qwq i could not tell you what the thematic takeaway was by the end gomenasai

it does suck how fragmented and convoluted getting the story of this video game is, and this is coming from a fan of kingdom hearts.... like theres the game and the movie and also one chapter of the game with two routes and also all these dlc episodes and theres like that pixel game about nocts dad and there was the story in the demo and theres probably more i dont know about and like its one thing to have a multimedia project with lots of supplemental material but each thing needs to be fairly standalone yknow? like love live doesnt make you play the mobile game to understand the mangas jkfdsjdsfdasdf i dunno it was just too much and too fragmented in far too complex of a way for me (again, a kingdom hearts fan) to follow qwq

oh heres another compliment for the game tho, the photo mechanic? fantastic like more games should have auto photos that you get to look through, its so cute and fun, plus even tho the plot and pacing was a bit of a mess and some of the character development was incomprehensible i still cried at the end when noctis picks one of promptos photos to keep with him, and then in the credits when it shows you a bunch of photos you saved in order....i knew it was coming but it was so cute and good.....

oh also like.....two credits....two after credits scenes.......maybe more....imagine

oh man also it was getting a little rough after prompto disappeared so to kinda keep my spirits up and continue through the game without getting bored i played the rest of the game in the dorky chocobo festival outfit and lemme tell ya.....it adds a lot, 10/10, would recommend wearing it to the endgame, since the costumes show up in the cutscenes after the timeskip i was still wearing it and the shot of seeing grizzly 30 year old noctis with that stupid little hat.......i laughed so hard my dad came to check on me sfhkjdajfsldvfds i wasnt ready for it.....................

all in all ffxv as it stands without the royal upgrade or any dlcs is a decent, good but not fantastic game with some writing problems and some hit or miss gameplay mechanics but is still very fun (until they take your warp ability away) and has a lot of cool ideas and i liked it~

oh shit i just remembered a friend told me back in highschool (when i started the game) that the car gets flying abilities at one point......i never saw it fly.....ive been CONNED...IVE BEEN SWINDLEDwait i just googled it it was a side thing i never did lol i was hoping it would just randomly happen and i could fly my car to go kill ardyn tho........

edit: WAIT sorry i just remembered i had more things to say but also i need to sleep so they might be incomprehensible

- the fishing minigame slapped but only if you had the dlc that makes you never lose your tackle

- i know promptos like a clone or something but because of one of the early dungeons, the icy one, where that creature keeps stealing prompto cause she thinks hes her baby i thought it was leading up to a reveal that prompto was literally the kidnapped child of the boss of this dungeon hfskjdlfddsfdds

-i love most of the timeskip designs but prompto needs to shave that little beard off right this moment

- the timeskip was so fucked up imagine ur 20 and u wake up and ur 30 and then you die.......

-oddly enough i was weirdly fine with the fantasy audi and the fantasy vivian westwood and the fantasy cup noodles but the thing that did kinda throw me for a loop was at one point when i think ignis references the shining like all work and no play makes me a dull boy...... i cant stop thinking about fantasy steven king and fantasy kubrick

- playing as 30 year old noct tho, it did remind me of how nice yakuza 7 was with playing as 40 year olds....more jrpgs should let me be a grown man i like being a grown man it just feels nice

edit again: just woke up here’s some more things i wanna say

- i think another reason the last section of the game is a little meh is cause its all set at night or in dark areas and man.,....this game is Bad with dark areas lkfdsjds like i put the brightness as high as i can put it, i even adjust my tvs brightness and i STILL cant see SHIT!!!! bro turn the lights on.... basically never played at night unless the game made me cause it was so bad jfjskds plus there were so many cool environments like i mentioned before, but i cant see them qAq

- are rewrites a thing outside of warrior cats? like yknow when people write fanfic that are just like rewrites of the original property but like fixed lol i havent read one since i was like 10 and reading drawn to life rewrites (im sorry but the plot twist is bad) but i also havent really looked, i think ffxv could do well with some fan rewrites