pleaseinsertdisctwo
Member
At first, I honestly loved it. The opening hours were thrilling, the combat seemed exciting, and I would get happy when I’d acquire new Eikon abilities (though they happened more sporadically than I’d hoped).
I was happily doing sidequests and hardly skipping through any dialogue.
I feel like the game falls off a small cliff after Titan, and a major one after Bahamut.
The pacing afterwards is indeed terrible. Anything that wasn’t a Stage, at this point, and it was a cutscene with skippable dialogue, I just fast-forwarded through it (aka read the line then pressed X). For sidequests, I straight up skipped every cutscene outside of the rare real cutscenes that popped up from some. I just no longer cared, and it didn’t help that the world became even more dull-looking with the ugly pink sky.
The story was very disappointing. It was thrilling at the beginning and almost exactly my cup of tea, but the more Ultima became involved, the less I cared.
It’s incredibly uninteresting to me that the answer to basically everything was “it was Ultima.”
Hooded man? Ultima.
Mothercrystal? Ultima.
Eikons? Ultima.
Olivier? Ultima.
Everything was Ultima.
Ultima basically felt like a reincarnated Bhunivelze in terms of his motives, with a less interesting design and a less difficult boss fight.
Barnabas was a terrible villain as well; I couldn’t care less about anything that came out of his uncharismatic mouth, and that goes double for Ultima.
I also didn’t like how they did Jill quite dirty. She gets the spotlight for 30 minutes at the Iron Kingdom and that’s about it. And after the initial Barnabas fight she is basically sidelined for the entire rest of the game. Shiva deserved to have more badass scenes. Such a waste of a beautiful design and such a waste of a classy lady like Jill.
I also thought the Bearer subplot was way too heavy-handed, and the 2nd time skip was straight-up clumsy.
In the end, I felt like the game really had nothing to say. It threw away a political plot for a rehashed typical JRPG plot without the charisma.
The Eikon fights were also way too long and uninteresting. The only fights I actually enjoyed were Typhon and Titan Forms 1 and 3. The rest were way too drawn out. I also didn’t enjoy any of the so-called “spectacle” and the QTE’s feel very out-of-date.
Speaking of spectacle, the game used CGI but only heavily in early scenes (Shiva Vs Titan and Odin Vs Bahamut), and minus the character models. We have some shots like when Odin splits the sea in two where the average-looking boat is surrounded by HEAVENLY-looking, obviously CGI water. Same goes for the ending scene of Clive being surrounded by super detailed sand and water. I just do not understand why they skimped out on real CGI cutscenes for this game. It made the game feel like a spin-off. Other scenes, like mothercrystals disappearing, were just showcased via some cheap disappearing effect and a fade-to-black.
I would’ve traded the mechanically boring Eikon fights for amazing CGI cutscenes any day of the week.
And while I’m on the topic of visuals: the character models were good, not great. Certainly not amazing enough to omit CGI cutscenes. I also feel like the forest from early in the game is by far and away the most impressive location in the game. Second place goes to the first Mothercrystal. Outside of Drake’s Spine and the Naldia Narrow section, I don’t recall being impressed by anything else. The world was visually very unimaginative. And the pink sky: my god. A lot of the last portion of the game was straight up ugly thanks to it.
The music was largely good, though I was quite bothered that a lot of songs honestly used a cheap-sounding synthesizer.
I also kind of wish I didn’t bother with a lot of the sidequests because, yeah, the RPG elements in this game might as well have not existed. Upgrading is quite useless, there are only a few accessories worth using, and leveling up makes almost no noticeable difference. I could see myself replaying this game but doing almost no optional content, because, what’s the point? It’s very disappointing. FFXIII was very linear, too, but at least the accessories made a difference, upgrading weapons made a difference, and Crystarium upgrades made a HUGE difference. A lot of accessories should’ve been upgrades in the skill tree.
What really saved the game for me was the combat, though I do wish we had more buttons to use, because 6 skills seemed like too few to use at a time. Despite that, I had tons of fun stringing combos, timing dodges, etc. That didn’t get old for me. I didn’t mind the linearity; I did mind the absolutely useless rewards.
I was mostly negative in this write-up, but I did think the visuals were good, the music was good, the combat was great, but the RPG elements sucked, and the story went from great to snoozefest.
Ultima(
)tely, I feel like the game played it very safe and I wish the dev team didn’t put so much apparent effort into these stupid gimmick Eikon fights that I will never look forward to on another playthrough. I vastly preferred boss fights with Clive. And in the end it felt like they didn’t know what to do with the politics and the world, slapped on Ultima, made it a typical “power of human will/my sidelined friends” plot and called it a day.
I was happily doing sidequests and hardly skipping through any dialogue.
I feel like the game falls off a small cliff after Titan, and a major one after Bahamut.
The pacing afterwards is indeed terrible. Anything that wasn’t a Stage, at this point, and it was a cutscene with skippable dialogue, I just fast-forwarded through it (aka read the line then pressed X). For sidequests, I straight up skipped every cutscene outside of the rare real cutscenes that popped up from some. I just no longer cared, and it didn’t help that the world became even more dull-looking with the ugly pink sky.
The story was very disappointing. It was thrilling at the beginning and almost exactly my cup of tea, but the more Ultima became involved, the less I cared.
It’s incredibly uninteresting to me that the answer to basically everything was “it was Ultima.”
Hooded man? Ultima.
Mothercrystal? Ultima.
Eikons? Ultima.
Olivier? Ultima.
Everything was Ultima.
Ultima basically felt like a reincarnated Bhunivelze in terms of his motives, with a less interesting design and a less difficult boss fight.
Barnabas was a terrible villain as well; I couldn’t care less about anything that came out of his uncharismatic mouth, and that goes double for Ultima.
I also didn’t like how they did Jill quite dirty. She gets the spotlight for 30 minutes at the Iron Kingdom and that’s about it. And after the initial Barnabas fight she is basically sidelined for the entire rest of the game. Shiva deserved to have more badass scenes. Such a waste of a beautiful design and such a waste of a classy lady like Jill.
I also thought the Bearer subplot was way too heavy-handed, and the 2nd time skip was straight-up clumsy.
In the end, I felt like the game really had nothing to say. It threw away a political plot for a rehashed typical JRPG plot without the charisma.
The Eikon fights were also way too long and uninteresting. The only fights I actually enjoyed were Typhon and Titan Forms 1 and 3. The rest were way too drawn out. I also didn’t enjoy any of the so-called “spectacle” and the QTE’s feel very out-of-date.
Speaking of spectacle, the game used CGI but only heavily in early scenes (Shiva Vs Titan and Odin Vs Bahamut), and minus the character models. We have some shots like when Odin splits the sea in two where the average-looking boat is surrounded by HEAVENLY-looking, obviously CGI water. Same goes for the ending scene of Clive being surrounded by super detailed sand and water. I just do not understand why they skimped out on real CGI cutscenes for this game. It made the game feel like a spin-off. Other scenes, like mothercrystals disappearing, were just showcased via some cheap disappearing effect and a fade-to-black.
I would’ve traded the mechanically boring Eikon fights for amazing CGI cutscenes any day of the week.
And while I’m on the topic of visuals: the character models were good, not great. Certainly not amazing enough to omit CGI cutscenes. I also feel like the forest from early in the game is by far and away the most impressive location in the game. Second place goes to the first Mothercrystal. Outside of Drake’s Spine and the Naldia Narrow section, I don’t recall being impressed by anything else. The world was visually very unimaginative. And the pink sky: my god. A lot of the last portion of the game was straight up ugly thanks to it.
The music was largely good, though I was quite bothered that a lot of songs honestly used a cheap-sounding synthesizer.
I also kind of wish I didn’t bother with a lot of the sidequests because, yeah, the RPG elements in this game might as well have not existed. Upgrading is quite useless, there are only a few accessories worth using, and leveling up makes almost no noticeable difference. I could see myself replaying this game but doing almost no optional content, because, what’s the point? It’s very disappointing. FFXIII was very linear, too, but at least the accessories made a difference, upgrading weapons made a difference, and Crystarium upgrades made a HUGE difference. A lot of accessories should’ve been upgrades in the skill tree.
What really saved the game for me was the combat, though I do wish we had more buttons to use, because 6 skills seemed like too few to use at a time. Despite that, I had tons of fun stringing combos, timing dodges, etc. That didn’t get old for me. I didn’t mind the linearity; I did mind the absolutely useless rewards.
I was mostly negative in this write-up, but I did think the visuals were good, the music was good, the combat was great, but the RPG elements sucked, and the story went from great to snoozefest.
Ultima(
)tely, I feel like the game played it very safe and I wish the dev team didn’t put so much apparent effort into these stupid gimmick Eikon fights that I will never look forward to on another playthrough. I vastly preferred boss fights with Clive. And in the end it felt like they didn’t know what to do with the politics and the world, slapped on Ultima, made it a typical “power of human will/my sidelined friends” plot and called it a day.
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