Its only a couple of hours long, but is a pretty packed couple of hours. Adds some good lore on the Fallen civilization and what they were up to before their fall, especially considering this game's equivalent of Summoners (which unfortunately are not called Summoners in the English version of the game, although they attempt to keep the connection between the terminology by using Eikonoklaste and Eikons). FFXVI is at its strongest, imo, when it remembers that its not just a dark fantasy game, its a dark FINAL fantasy game, so reusing elements from previous games, in their own way, is always welcome and I appreciate it.

Outside of the story though, this dlc is essentially all combat. There's no side content at all, just story, and once you enter the Sagespire, this dlc's dungeon, be prepared for a ride. The dlc is more difficult than the base game on the same difficulty, and even against regular enemies they decided to spice it up a bit by giving enemy mages a new buff spell to cast, that not only acts as a barrier for the enemy, but also will inflict damage to clive if he uses a melee attack, making you need to rely on magic attacks and abilities on any enemy with this buff. Basically, enemies now get your Will o' the Wykes ability to cast on themselves. fun times.
We get some new bosses in here as well, and all of them are a genuine struggle to fight against. They hit hard, move quickly and one of them is just straight up an FFXIV raid boss the way he's putting lines on the floor. You also need to pass a dps check for the final boss, as not defeating him in time will kill you instantly, although luckily the DPS check isn't too difficult.

Overall, really solid, if short, dlc that fulfills the role of "extra/postgame dungeon" really well.

Es básicamente una mazmorra grande y poco más. Al más puro estilo FFXVI, o sea: estrictamente pasillera, donde solo hay que derrotar enemigos, recoger objetos y tirar palante.

¡Pero al menos es una mazmorra! El juego base difícilmente tiene algo que se pueda considerar una mazmorra de verdad.

La mayoría de enemigos son reciclados, pero los jefes nuevos están bien. Omega es una pelea complicadilla y bastante intensa, cosa que también eché de menos en el juego base. ¡Y resulta que los nuevos accesorios tienen efectos palpables en el combate y no son solo sucedáneos de "+5% de daño"!

La verdad, no creo que decir "todo lo que está bien aquí debería haber estado en el juego base" sea precisamente un cumplido a la hora de valorar un DLC, pero en fin, ahí queda eso.

Ah y la pobre Jill sigue teniendo 0 protagonismo a pesar de acompañarnos todo el rato lol

Forgettable and worthless. Every unit of intrigue present in such an effervescently cool title is disregarded the second the characters begin talking. Any hope of an interesting narrative is eschewed and replaced with even more jargon centred around crystals. Not ten minutes since I rolled credits had I already forgotten every event of this "story".

In the stead of a story stands a drawn out, exasperated cacophony of homogeneous fights.
Coming from FFXIII to this was not the refresher I wanted in terms of linearity. These combat encounters are served to you along one exhaustingly long hallway. There are a lot of hallways in this. If you put bends and stairways in your hallway but don’t actually make it non-linear, it is still a hallway. The combat in these fights is, admittedly, still incredible. However, not one ounce of the credit for that falls to this DLC, as it is entirely unchanged from the base game.

This is not worth your time. Perhaps its greatest merit may end up being that it serves as a ticket of admission for the second part of the expansion pass, which looks much more not terrible. I am at least confident in the fact that they would struggle to make another DLC any more drab than this instalment.

Final Fantasy XVI was a good game. Very flawed in a lot of ways and pretty unremarkable on the whole, but good. I wasn't realy desperate to play the DLC, was pretty content with what I got from the base game, but I guess I needed a bit more Final Fantasy in my life after Rebirth, so here I am, having played both of these small expansions.

The first DLC, Echoes of the Fallen, doesn't have that much going on. I guess if you really, really love the combat in XVI then it's a great time since it's just going up a large tower with barely any story (though what's there is actually surprisingly funny, which was a surprise after the very serious base game), fighting a whole lot of battles and a few pretty interesting mini-bosses before a final fight against Omega, who was a pleasant surprise since it was actually fairly challenging (by which I mean I died once) in contrast to the very low difficulty of the base game. I sort of like the combat in moderation (I still wish it required a bit more from the player) so I had a pretty good time and the DLC is only around 2 hours so it doesn't at all overstay its welcome, though I did make the mistake of playing on Final Fantasy Mode since it doesn't really make things more difficult as much as it just gives enemies and bosses way too much health. The new music is also very good, as expected, and I had sort of forgotten how good FFXVI looks graphically, even if it is a bit disappointing that this is mainly just a reskin of other tower-like areas in the base game.

It's also very strange how the reward for beating it is a sword with exactly the same stats as the base game's ultimate weapon, which I already had. It looks pretty cool, at least. The weapons of XVI in general look really good actually, and I feel like that's sort of an underappreciated thing about it, even if it's a very small thing.