So I did the ch.7 dungeon and it was great.
I really enjoy the combat in this game. It's not as deep, strategic, or smart as FFVIIr's combat, but I'm finding it just as fun, if not more. FFXV's combat is more just a good action game of dodging shit and countering and using a variety of weapons, FFVIIr's more a strategic half-way between action & turn-based. Going forward I'd prefer more jrpgs with combat like FFVIIr but there's room for good action systems like FFXV too.
And because I like the combat a lot, I like the dungeons a lot too. Give me a twisting branching dungeon with character banter talking about the place and lots of moderately challenging enemy encounters that keep me on my toes and cause me to burn through my items (the daemons that attack max HP are great because the danger system is too much of a crutch) and a cool big boss and I'll have a blast. So even though a lot of the dungeons are optional I'm looking forward to going through them all.
Level capping with no food benefits at lvl.35 is definitely helping too. Levels don't really matter that much outside about a 10-20 level difference. So the lvl.28-32 enemies and boss were still wrecking me at lvl.35 and it was exciting.
One thing I still don't get is real death mechanics in this game. Like I get the reason I instant went to death on the Coeurl's is because if you hit them while they're crouched they have an instant death counter that skips the danger transition and gives you a game over unless you use a phoenix down. But on Quetzalcoatl boss of ch.7, I had like 75% HP and got hit by some major lightning shot and I went straight to death when it hit me, skipping the danger phase, and would've game over'd if I didn't use a phoenix down. But I googled that boss's movelist/stats and I don't see anything that says it has an instant death attack so idk what happened? A lot of the mechanics in this game are very underexplained and confusing.
I also started watching the Brotherhood anime and it actually helped a lot. I only watched the first 3eps so far, but 30 hours into the game I didn't know anything about any of the main four. I didn't really care and was not invested in any of them, though I didn't dislike them either. They were just action game characters on a journey and Noctis was mostly a Persona 3/4/5 style player-avatar with no personality (but I also get that his dad just died and almost everyone he knew just died and his kingdom and home were lost, so him being just a guy in depression/shock the whole time sorta makes sense).
Anyhow, actually getting backstory on each of the team members was great. Just from a 10 min anime ep, now the characters have more to them and I'm actually interested in them as characters. Will finish the last 2 eps of Brotherhood tonight.
Then going to play Episode Gladious before doing the ch.8 dungeon since it takes place while Gladious was gone in ch.7. Will be interesting to see the approach for these DLC episodes.
I found this guide for the way to get a lot of the side story stuff and when to do it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/b73rcl/final_fantasy_xv_royal_edition_a_complete_story/Only skimmed up through where I'm at but it seems like I've missed a few camp character development scenes. Which is weird because I think I've camped every camp spot. I've only seen one cutscene/tour for each party member. It seems like the camp cutscenes are chapter specific which is kinda dumb.
Anyhow still liking the game. Looking forward to the rest of the story content and all the optional dungeons and big hunts. I agree at this point that all the small hunts (of which there are too, too many) are repetitive and zzz, but the tougher bigger hunts are pretty exciting and fun to do, especially at lower levels.
yeah, like the Episodes and Comrades
Should I...try playing an hour or so of Comrades in single player when I get to the end?
