Final Fantasy XV: Cup Noodle XV Special Edition

[Silenka]

Slowly pushing to the finish line of the single player here, since apparently Comrades is based on the world at the state it is in chapter 13, which I'm nearing, and I want to finish this 'story' before diving into the multiplayer.

Am I still supposed to not be knowing wtf is going on at chapter 12?

It's partly because you've been dragging out the gameplay. The stuff is in there but it can get lost if you're not paying attention/don't read all the lore junk they left lying around.

Spoiler: show

Although yeah Lunafreya gets pretty shafted as far as direction the story goes, they underused her quite badly after spending so much time building her up in Kingsglaive and the early storyline. Cor is basically just an agent of the Crown who helps Noct now and then (and you get more into him if you play Gladio's Episode). Ardyn's motives and movements make complete sense as long as you play all the way through, he's definitely the best part of the otherwise underdeveloped storyline - but it doesn't start unveiling until past ch12. I can't say I was ever lost while playing through this game though so I don't understand the confusion so many people have, but I did like the game more than most people so all my extra research probably contributed somewhat to my understanding of it.

[solracht]

The weapon/leveling system in Comrades is really abusable in a fun way.

So far I enjoy all of the new systems (char creator, char unlocks, town unlocks, weapon system, etc.) but the actual "game" is not really that fun since it's just instanced Hunts in really small areas while sitting through far too many loading screens. The loading screens in particular really kill the experience for me.

Would be nice if they added one or two explorable areas to the DLC later down the road but I'm not really holding my breath. Hopefully they at least remove some of the loading screens between Hunts, the campfire/cooking sections feel very unnecessary.

Ultimately I think it might've been better if the DLC was an extension of the actual game instead of a standalone game, like having an option to do a single-player XV playthrough with all the Comrades systems (with instanced multiplayer Hunts on the side).

[Vaspinne]

It's partly because you've been dragging out the gameplay. The stuff is in there but it can get lost if you're not paying attention/don't read all the lore junk they left lying around.

Spoiler: show

Although yeah Lunafreya gets pretty shafted as far as direction the story goes, they underused her quite badly after spending so much time building her up in Kingsglaive and the early storyline. Cor is basically just an agent of the Crown who helps Noct now and then (and you get more into him if you play Gladio's Episode). Ardyn's motives and movements make complete sense as long as you play all the way through, he's definitely the best part of the otherwise underdeveloped storyline - but it doesn't start unveiling until past ch12. I can't say I was ever lost while playing through this game though so I don't understand the confusion so many people have, but I did like the game more than most people so all my extra research probably contributed somewhat to my understanding of it.

About Lunafreya:

Spoiler: show

Apparently they had a ton of story about her for the game ready but it involved her getting abused a lot, so they cut a lot of it out because they thought it wouldn’t be received well by the public

[Elcura]

About Lunafreya:

Spoiler: show

Apparently they had a ton of story about her for the game ready but it involved her getting abused a lot, so they cut a lot of it out because they thought it wouldn’t be received well by the public

Tis a bitch move but if they thought what we got was enough to convey a decent character let alone someone who we care about they fucked up.

I mean it's easy to assume but gd did that bitch need more face time.

[Kirin]

I mean it's easy to assume but gd did that bitch need more face time.

Multiple entendres!

[solracht]

People are going OOB and it seems like most of the world map is in Comrades, which would explain the retarded load times... but it also makes me hopeful they'll eventually let us go through some of the areas:

[Kaisha]

I mean it's easy to assume but gd did that bitch need more face time.

Apparently the change to Ch12 they did was adding optional speech options about 'lore' cutscenes about a war that happened, and a scene with Lunafreya, and all it did was bring up more questions than answers, while also being rather out of context in the current situation of the game.

They couldn't have chosen a worse spot to inject those scenes into.

People are going OOB and it seems like most of the world map is in Comrades, which would explain the retarded load times... but it also makes me hopeful they'll eventually let us go through some of the areas:

Stuff like this is why I'm semi-excited for the PC release, assuming the devs did zero clean-up from console launch version (and just tucked it aside). I would love for someone to mine the files just to see how many unused assets/scripts/etc are just sitting there dormant. It's like FFXIV 1.0 in such a way, albeit XV is....actually playable start to finish. And yeah, I'm not surprised Comrades is just the open world but walled in. It saves time and effort on their part having to break locations down into small chunks when they already have a location to work with.

[Anoat]

Any opinions on if this is better on PS4 or XB1? Digital Deluxe Edition for XB1 is on sale for $30 and it's hard to turn that down, I just prefer playing Final Fantasy on PlayStation though.

[Tyrath]

it looks slightly better on PS4.

[Anoat]

Welp PSN matched the price so I went with PS4 version, hooray.

[Kaisha]

Pay attention to weapons that have an additional bar under the stats when upgrading them, like Onikiri.

Should be stressed that said bars are about one pixel tall for some god damn reason. Didn't realize my current weapon even two stats that could be capped for an upgrade and missed out with this weapon. Will need to buy another. Is no biggie though, doesn't take long to level a weapon up to 40.

So for the weapons themselves, is it the left-side buff that's inherited from the items used to level it up, and the right-side is just part of the weapon?

That aside, with the dumb enemy AI and terrible animation telegraphs, this would feel a little more playable if it just borrowed ARR's AOE indicators to better let you deal with enemies, instead of a generic PRESS SQUARE TO BLOCK which doesn't always work, nor give much context.

[Vaspinne]

Is Comrades any fun? I have the season pass and was considering giving it a try

[IceSylph]

Is Comrades any fun? I have the season pass and was considering giving it a try

If you can get past the horrid loading times, it's decent. It also has some story that ties into the main game.

[Shenrien]

I'm not really seeing these horrible load times that are being mentioned.. 15s I feel is the longest I got held up

[IceSylph]

I'm not really seeing these horrible load times that are being mentioned.. 15s I feel is the longest I got held up

Going from Town to Camp takes forever, and from mission end back to town. Definitely more than 15 seconds of loading time. It's the same amount of time it takes to load when you quick travel during the main game. Same with all the screens that aren't needed or could be shortened (food screen). Going from camp to the battle is quick, though.

[Kaisha]

Comrades is pretty great podcasting material I've noticed. Put six hours into it yesterday, quite liking it, albeit I recognize how shallow it is in terms of the combat.

Also had an amazing mission the other day where we were escorting a truck, and then on one turn it decided to stop and keep honking its horn. Five minutes of us four running about trying to unstuck it, and the truck would randomly strafe/back-up on the spot, honk some more, and jiggle in place. Wasn't until much later it just 'fixed' itself without moving an a trove of enemies spawn which let the mission script continue. I just wish there was a faster way to farm electricity for the plant since I'm now just grinding hunts I need specific materials from to upgrade weapons with due to the little difference in electricity you get back for missions in my level range.

[Laugana]

I have a PS4 pro and the loading times are horrendous, plus I've had the added pleasure of the game freezing on 2 separate occasions on the loading screen, the one that takes you to the hunt area that lists the team roster. I've given up playing it at the moment in the hopes that it'll be fixed at some point.

I'll be back for Episode Ignis though.

[Vaspinne]

I have a pro as well and I gave this a shot last night. Didn’t really have any loading issues myself /shrug

[Silenka]

Is it the difference between having put in a SSD or not...?

[Vaspinne]

For the record, no SSD for me