Gaming

Full spoilers for the entirety of the game follows.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, I beat the game and couldn't find any recent discussions about it here, so thought I'd make one. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the game (or on my thoughts). In no particular order:

1. The combat system was very cool! I wasn't sure about it at first and I still admittedly miss controlling a party rather than an individual, but it sure is a fast paced and varied system. I switched my eikons up a few times, with the final set I found most useful being phoenix (ignition / flames of rebirth), bahamut (wicked wheel, gigaflare), and shiva (windup, diamond dust).

   • I found that phoenix's "o" ability was the most useful most of the time but mostly used it for reaching flyers. I usually didn't otherwise find I had time for o abilities.
   • I found that most normal enemies were extremely easy, so it was best to build largely around staggering + heavy hitting the toughest enemies.

2. The ending was really sad. Though also a little confusing. It seems like Clive tried to heal Joshua, couldn't, and sacrificed himself to... I think completely destroy magic for good? Sounds like the blight would still be there, though presumably wouldn't progress anymore?

   • I like that the game used the red star again. I felt so bad when Jill realized Clive was gone.
   • TBH, "confusing" was kinda a recurring theme in the game for me. But at least some of that was surely intentional (Ultima's monologues).

3. The game sure had a lot of really badass, dramatic fights! Ifrit really helped to make some fights feel massive in scope without having much "ludonarrative dissonance" (since early game, you couldn't control Ifrit and it was supposed to be extremely taxing to fully prime). The Titan and Bahamut fights are perhaps some of the most epic Final Fantasy battles I've ever done (and I've played almost all of them)!

4. I thought it was a bit weird that the bulk of the game is based in a Fallen airship, yet you never actually restore the airship, even when you need to fly! When Origin rose, I was like "aha, time to finally restore the airship!", but nope. Felt like a tease.

   • I also really wish the game had more lore on the Fallen. They're such a prominent centerpiece of many maps, and yet the game barely delves into them at all. I kept expecting they were saving it for some big bombshell later, but nope, nothing.

5. One thing that confused me is that Ultima talked a lot about Clive needing to absorb the other Eikons, yet no Leviathan? I noticed early on that the game said there is one Eikon for each element and listed 8 elements, yet only 7 Eikons (plus Ifrit) were ever mentioned. "Leviathan the lost" even gets named dropped by Joshua and yet Ultima doesn't even seem to notice the missing Eikon. Wonder if they're saving this for DLC? Either way, it feels poorly executed considering how central Clive absorbing Eikons is to the plot.

6. Oof, Waloed was depressing. I was so hyped to see Ash, after going so long without ever even seeing this whole 'nother continent. Only for it to be a graveyard of dead and Akashic.

7. Fuck Annabella (Clive's mom). She was such a piece of shit. I kinda wonder if Ultima was influencing her from the start, or if it was only later? I suspect she betrayed Rosaria out of her own free will, considering how terribly she treats Clive from the start.

8. The treatment of Bearers was sickening. At first I was noticing parallels to American chattel slavery, but it quickly became more of a Nazi Germany kinda thing. It was a great design choice to make Clive a "bearer" so that you'd experience the bigotry firsthand. I wanted to outright murder most NPCs I met because they were so horrible.

   • It's especially sad when you later find out why Bearers are treated bad. They were originally freaking blessed and people in power were just jealous/afraid, so had to scapegoat Bearers.
   • I also felt so bad for L'ubor. He was the centerpiece of his village and yet the people who loved him turned on him so fast the instant they learned he was a Bearer. And they acted like it was some big betrayal, as if they couldn't understand why a Bearer would want to not be a Bearer.

9. The map design is very meh. The game is pretty, but aside from the mothercrystals and Fallen ruins, everything feels so grounded that it may as well be our world during medieval ages. I want a fantasy world that feels fantastic! And aesthetics aside, most maps are fairly linear. They often have some branches (many used only for specific side quests), but felt like they didn't give enough reasons to explore. The movable parts of the map feel narrow and restrictive.

   • For whatever bizarre reason, you can often find larger enemies off the beaten path, but they're rarely worth the time. The XP/AP/gil they give is hilariously bad compared to just a pack of normal enemies that you might be able to beat in a single AoE spell.

10. Early game side quests are terrible, but they get great later in the game. It's really weird. IDK why they made the early game quests so bad. It set me up to expect side quests to suck. And the game has a lot of side quests, so they probably could have trimmed a few to make the early game side quests suck less. In particular, the early game quests within the hideaway feel very forced and awkward.

11. Ultima was a decent villain. Very creepy (those eyes!). I'm not entirely sure I understand where he and his "collective" came from, but am thinking from another planet, since his final form fights in a cosmic setting and Origin is described as a ship, but looks far more like a spaceship than anything else.

    • Barnabas was also great. Super intimidating in ever scene. The battle you're supposed to lose was well executed, as you've seen a few of those "press the attack" moments by then, but it's the first one that can't be finished fast enough (I kinda wonder what happens if you cheated?).

12. I liked the twist that the crystals and magic were bad for the environment. Kinda wonder why no academics or something at least noticed that before, though. Isn't the pattern of the blight's movement kinda obvious to its cause? Kinda feels like they missed an opportunity to draw analogies to climate change, where we know what's causing it and simply refuse to do anything about it.

13. The contextual codex was a neat idea, but the execution felt lacking. It only seems to work for the main quest, despite the fact that side quests populate a huge number of codex entries. I also found that despite regularly checking it, I often would not see the new codex entries I expected to see (until I went to visit Harpocrates). New pages of existing entries were also written as if you'd only read the newest page, with lots of repetition for minimal (if any) new information. I love lore, so codexes are super appealing to me. It was sometimes disappointing for new entries to not actually say anything new.

    • It generally didn't do a good enough job at explaining new things (e.g., at the very beginning of the game, characters are talking about how they're on a mission to kill a dominant and for so long I'm like "WTF is a dominant"). And it took a little while to understand the high level global politics because the game is slow to explain them.

14. Damn, the game is long. Took me about 60 hours, doing basically everything except the cronoliths (I tried those a couple of times and gave up -- too hard and not fun to me).

15. The game does fantastic at updating NPC dialogue. I noticed so many changes to dialogue throughout the events of the game, including side quests. Lots of games barely update dialogue and it's sad cause I want to know how characters are reacting to some big event.

    • The hideaway really needed to be more compact. You spend soooo much time walking around to visit quest givers and hear updated dialogue.
    • For whatever weird reason, some major NPC dialogue (shop keepers and such) isn't fully voiced. I don't get why. It felt incomplete. I mean, I'm glad that dialogue didn't get outright cut, but would have preferred it being fully voiced.

Overall, it was a very fulfilling and fun story driven game with action packed combat. I'd give it a 9/10 (though I am a Final Fantasy fangirl, so am biased).