A Crystalline Prophecy Review from 1up...

[Corrderio]

Spoiler: show

At the least they could have implied through text that Aldo would seek out his sister in Selbina. This way they could have her there and the scenario-completer could at least feel that they finally closed the book on this story. Instead we get an epic cop-out that invalidated doing the entire scenario. You'd think SE would at least understand that people wanted to unite the two characters in the end....

Oh well... only solidifies that the scenario was just for gear.

Spoiler: show

I need to agree, it makes sense in a way we don't tell Aldo since we lost our memory of the events to.

It would have been nice if they gave each other something to remember each other by so they could seek each other out at least.

[Maxxthepenguin]

SE is supposed to be the master of storytelling

oh jesus rofl

[Corrderio]

oh jesus rofl

Agreed, everything past FF6's storyline just seemed to be pretty bad to me.

[Max™]

Free Triumph, Hades +1.5, Hollow, Communion +1.5 earrings. Free randomly kickass lvl 72 rings (waiting for the first Str 4 Aug: +5 Str ring), easy to get people in for help. Fun last couple of fights... and my $10 Valor body replacement.

Would have been the best update ever if it was free, but I'm pleased.

[Arthars]

for christ sake

no one review a addon or expansion due to its mission.

People will still complain about the difficulty of COP mission etc etc etc and mention how easy rotz is etc but is that the main concern?

98% of us enjoy what is instore for us AFTER the mission, sky limbus salvage etc etc

and yes it seem ACP's after mission's stuffs is the red coffer in tenshodo, dissapointing a little but i still thinking bashing an expansion or add-on because of their mission is bullshit

[Maxxthepenguin]

I'm confused about how you think something you spend 5ish hours on doesn't deserve to be critically thought of.

[BRP]

My or any other person's opinion of Milkman aside, this is still a public review of the expansion saying exactly what me and alot of other people stated (and aparently pissed off alot of people).

Calling shit for what it is and having a bandwagon league of alarmist freak out because you insulted their game is always lolable.

And I dont think this will be the last article labeling this expansion scenario as a failure, if any more are done at all.

If these future articles are as poorly written as Milk's then they will just as worthless. Since milky won't be answering my questions any time soon maybe you should try if you feel the exact same way.

Also I have to wonder who else gives a fuck enough to review a tiny piece of DLC content. I don't know actually. Does 1up give letter grades to things like MMO updates or even something a little smaller and more the size of what we got like Halo map packs? How about horse-armor?! A+!!

EDIT: Also you have to consider how much time one has to spend to experience this DLC in the first place. They can only really give a truly brutal review if they hate FFXI. How could they last that long?

Agreed, everything past FF6's storyline just seemed to be pretty bad to me.

That's just because you were a kid before and during FF6. Go look now.

[Corrderio]

That's just because you were a kid before and during FF6. Go look now.

I've replayed through most FFs recently and stil think the storylines have declined since 6. Although I think 6 had the best storyline. Only FF that I thought lacked story was 5, I'm kinda going easy on 1-3 though I'll admit but they were the start of the series so yeah...

[Kaylia]

Pretty accurate review. If anything, he was generous in not mentioning that the cutscene animations are basically zilart-quality, with npcs doing little more than running and moving their arms clumsily. Serpent Generals quests had infinitely better cutscenes for free.

If serpent General quest were infinitely better, how awesome was Lilisette batle against the orc?

[rezn0r]

ff8 had the best plot, everyone start arguing
(this is really my opinion too)

(to half-echo what's been posted: the expansion sucks, the reward is worth $10, it could've been in the update, they want our money)

[Colenzo]

i want some fuckin STR rings with accuracy on them plz

[vivix]

ff8 had the best plot, everyone start arguing
(this is really my opinion too)

If you're talking about the first two disks, you are correct.

[arus2001]

So far, I paid $10 for a bunch of meds from a box. Screw you guys' luck with augmented equipment, let alone good ones.

[Xno Kappa]

ACP was fun, but could have easily been part of an update for free. We got bamboozled out of $10 for a stale and empty story-line, which by the way was the main marketing point of these add-on scenario's. Body pieces didn't really do me much good either, temporary piece for BLU. Not going to baw/qq whatever the new word is for someone disagreeing with SE, but I'll just read the transcript for the next add-on's rather then dropping more cash.

[Tomino]

Free Triumph, Hades +1.5, Hollow, Communion +1.5 earrings. Free randomly kickass lvl 72 rings (waiting for the first Str 4 Aug: +5 Str ring), easy to get people in for help. Fun last couple of fights... and my $10 Valor body replacement.

that's not exact.
you forgot to mention the weeks of timesink re-collecting the keyitems and wishing for those items, getting trash in the meanwhile.

[Septimus]

The content was definitely mediocre but the end reward was actually very useful for a number of jobs. The ACP body is irreplaceable for a number of a jobs.

But the ACP bodies are also nigh on useless for several jobs. All of my jobs (RDM, WAR, WHM, BRD, BLU, DRK) have better gear for their bodies already.

I think I would've enjoyed the story much more if the Serpent Generals quests didn't exist. As I was doing the missions I kept comparing the CS to those in the SG quests and the ones I paid for kept felling short of the ones I got for free.

The Serpent General quests, the WotG nation quests, the Adventuring Fellow quests, or random quests since ToAU was released like Led Astray or Three Men and a Closet. They have put in a lot of quests with great stories and characters that you can really care about. Sadly they didn't do it for ACP.

Aldo is such a boring and bland character.... its beyond me why SE even designed a tack-on story involving him. Fuck, Zeid is infinitely more interesting than Aldo if we want to talk about characters who starred in Zilart.

Honestly the review was pretty accurate though id personally give this scenario a D. The "reward" for completing the expansion was great however at the end of the day the lorebuffs get nothing and people who just mash through cutscenes get a reward within 6hours.

SE is supposed to be the master of storytelling but too much of the expansion decended into "get this and go here" with no reasons or logical explanations. Anyone even know why your sent to the Hall of the Gods after the Fei'yin incident? The plot-twist was also pretty lame and the ending changed nothing.

Yay? Really... i hope Shantottos story is funny or at least mocks itself for our amusement.

A story about how a young Also made his way from the ruins of Tavnazia, the various people who helped him along the way, and how that made him the man that he is today would have been very fascinating. Then contrast that with his search to find his sister and end it with a tear-filled reunion in Selbina and you would have one of the desired stories in this game. It would have been the closure that we as players have all wanted since we watched the opening movie. This is what I wanted when they announced this expansion- sadly what I got was not that. (Once more, my own fault for expecting competency.)

Free Triumph, Hades +1.5, Hollow, Communion +1.5 earrings. Free randomly kickass lvl 72 rings (waiting for the first Str 4 Aug: +5 Str ring), easy to get people in for help. Fun last couple of fights... and my $10 Valor body replacement.

Would have been the best update ever if it was free, but I'm pleased.

And instead a lot of people got Potions +2, Black Beetle Blood, Vile Elixirs, and Death Rings with AGI+1 Light Resist -30. Some people got some nice augments, other people got totally hosed.You can do these quests over ad infinitum, but the point stands that this was supposedly a story-driven set of missions. Gear is great and lovely and all, but anyone who says that this story was even partially satisfying is a terrible liar

I think this is the main reason as to why people are upset, the story was short and awful. It just feels like a flimsy excuse to have people spend $10 on augmentable bodies- the people who only care about gear they have the added bonus of maybe possibly getting good augmented earrings and rings. However, the people who care about the storyline have a lot about which to be displeased.

[Kerberoz]

Fun last couple of fights? There are only 2 fights against anything above level 40.

[Hyan]

But the ACP bodies are also nigh on useless for several jobs. All of my jobs (RDM, WAR, WHM, BRD, BLU, DRK) have better gear for their bodies already.

This is just my assumption, but I think that you don't have the "normal" stuff RDMs, WAR's, WHM's, BRD's, BLU's, DRK's usually have but better gear in general.. In that case the bodies don't really have a good use for you, but those without any decent bodies might find them to be a good alternative, at least until they get something better. I think there are a lot of those players still.

[Silenka]

They dropped the ball on this expansion. I think they were hurrying to release it along with this version update and just totally wrecked it by not taking more time to flesh it out and make it something worth 10 bucks.
I could name a great number of 'free with update' quests that were TONS better in quality and emotional value than all the missions combined in ACP.

I have somewhat higher hopes for Shantotto/Kupo, it's gotta be almost impossible to fuck up a story dealing with our favorite insane tarutaru BLM, and moogles are just so darn cute it will be hard to screw up that one too. They're cute like this hamster

Just as long as we don't have to spend hours farming TW mobs again.

[Carraway]

With a new character still trying to hit 75 WAR, I'm looking forward to the body piece as a way to free up ~200k gil by selling Haubergeon. The repeatable rewards are nice, largely due to their potential. However, the story is pedestrian and the quest design is about as close to prehistoric as it gets in the MMORPG genre.