Final Fantasy XV DLC that single-handedly made me reevaluate my rating for everything else FFXV-related because I cannot in good faith rate it anything below a 3 and cannot in good conscious rate it anything above or on par to the rest. Episode Ardyn is messy and edgy and I had a great time with it, honestly. To give it some actual credit, it had some interesting concepts and imagery in there that kept me genuinely hooked. I think that the ending was a pleasant if not strange surprise that addressed FFXV's themes in a way that I had wanted from FFXV for a long, long time. Ardyn himself is fun to play as and fun to follow once the third chapter kicks in, and that third chapter is hilariously ridiculous, so much so that I was without a doubt having a great time all throughout. Lotus Juice is there! You can blow up cars and jumbotrons for shits and giggles! You can buy Ardyn different hats! Raw as hell. I would recommend Episode Ardyn on this basis alone, but fortunately for me I can say that it personally scratched an itch that may or may not appeal to you as well, if you're anything like me.

Unfortunately, beginning to Episode Ardyn is deceptively boring. The best part for me was a familiar face, you could say, and that realization eclipsed pretty much everything else going on at the time, which is dire. Its dramatic moments are laughably predictable and uninspired, but I suppose that there's SOME things you could thematically extrapolate from the fridging of a female character introduced specifically to make Ardyn sad. As for later on, I consider the sheer edge of it all to be delightfully silly, but I suppose it could be what others might call grating. Even I think that the gameplay is repetitive, for as long as I spent running around Insomnia making sure I fought and broke anything and everything that I could. That final boss has the same problem that all of the other giant-sized bosses in FFXV have, which is to say that they're janky as hell. All in all, I'm not sure if I would call Episode Ardyn good. However, I would say that it's worth it, even if for all of the wrong reasons and maybe one or two of the right ones.

Oh, and my final note is that the optional boss is fun as hell. It's goofy. Highly recommended, but I'm a guy who genuinely enjoyed Episode Ardyn, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Final Fantasy XV DLC that single-handedly made me reevaluate my rating for everything else FFXV-related because I cannot in good faith rate it anything below a 3 and cannot in good conscious rate it anything above or on par to the rest. Episode Ardyn is messy and edgy and I had a great time with it, honestly. To give it some actual credit, it had some interesting concepts and imagery in there that kept me genuinely hooked. I think that the ending was a pleasant if not strange surprise that addressed FFXV's themes in a way that I had wanted from FFXV for a long, long time. Ardyn himself is fun to play as and fun to follow once the third chapter kicks in, and that third chapter is hilariously ridiculous, so much so that I was without a doubt having a great time all throughout. Lotus Juice is there! You can blow up cars and jumbotrons for shits and giggles! You can buy Ardyn different hats! Raw as hell. I would recommend Episode Ardyn on this basis alone, but fortunately for me I can say that it personally scratched an itch that may or may not appeal to you as well, if you're anything like me.

Unfortunately, beginning to Episode Ardyn is deceptively boring. The best part for me was a familiar face, you could say, and that realization eclipsed pretty much everything else going on at the time, which is dire. Its dramatic moments are laughably predictable and uninspired, but I suppose that there's SOME things you could thematically extrapolate from the fridging of a female character introduced specifically to make Ardyn sad. As for later on, I consider the sheer edge of it all to be delightfully silly, but I suppose it could be what others might call grating. Even I think that the gameplay is repetitive, for as long as I spent running around Insomnia making sure I fought and broke anything and everything that I could. That final boss has the same problem that all of the other giant-sized bosses in FFXV have, which is to say that they're janky as hell. All in all, I'm not sure if I would call Episode Ardyn good. However, I would say that it's worth it, even if for all of the wrong reasons and maybe one or two of the right ones.

Oh, and my final note is that the optional boss is fun as hell. It's goofy. Highly recommended, but I'm a guy who genuinely enjoyed Episode Ardyn, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Final Fantasy XV is an extremely fun romp in the first half and an extremely non-committal tragedy in the second. The plot is okay, but paced very strangely with all of the emphasis put on all of the wrong things. It simultaneously draws attention to the problems of its world and says nothing about them in favor of portraying itself as a typical fantasy epic. The characters have zero agency, as it feels as though they simply go wherever the plot takes them, which I can see resulting in many feeling frustrated and which I personally believe results in Noctis's so-called development feeling unearned.

That all said, GOD, that first half of the game has a feel to it unlike anything else I've played. The open world is expansive and empty, yes, but against all odds I believe this to work in the early game's favor. Bluntly speaking, the main cast is the reason to play FFXV. They're all engaging and lovable characters and their chemistry and banter with one another is off the charts; after playing so many games where you're told the characters are friends and have nothing to prove of it, the palpable sense of love between the boys is like a breath of much needed fresh air. Thus does traversing the world- as long and admittedly tedious as this may be- truly does succeed in feeling like a road trip with your loved ones. There's a reason why I believe the interpersonal drama to be better than that of the main plot. On the topic of agency from earlier, I do feel as though the lack thereof amongst the cast is crucial to the narrative, for as much as FFXV fails to fully capitalize on its own themes. All of the characters are pawns in the cruel and unusual scheme of callous beings far beyond their comprehension from long before their time. They're often given no choice but to follow the path laid out before them like lambs to the slaughter. But check out how cool the Six are! Isn't Noctis so cool? At least Ardyn's a good antagonist and a pretty great parallel to Noctis, in concept.

The presentation of the game is great. It looks good and sounds even better. The gameplay of FFXV ranges from fun to frustrating entirely depending on how ambitious it's feeling at any given point in time, but when it's fun it feels pretty fucking great. Its semi-modernized world never bothered me; in fact, I think that contrast to be found in the combination of aesthetics was one of the cooler aspects of the game. I liked fishing, I liked Prompto's photography, I liked camping... Despite everything, I cannot understate how much I liked Final Fantasy XV. Is the game good? I don't know! Did I, even in all of my critiquing, enjoy my time with it immensely? Very much so. If you happen to spot it on sale, then I would suggest giving it a shot, at the very least.

(Last thing I'll mention is how ridiculous it is how much you have to turn to external material in order to see all that FFXV's world has to offer. Locking some of its best/most important stuff behind DLC and a fucking movie of all things is bokers.)

Final Fantasy XV is an extremely fun romp in the first half and an extremely non-committal tragedy in the second. The plot is okay, but paced very strangely with all of the emphasis put on all of the wrong things. It simultaneously draws attention to the problems of its world and says nothing about them in favor of portraying itself as a typical fantasy epic. The characters have zero agency, as it feels as though they simply go wherever the plot takes them, which I can see resulting in many feeling frustrated and which I personally believe results in Noctis's so-called development feeling unearned.

That all said, GOD, that first half of the game has a feel to it unlike anything else I've played. The open world is expansive and empty, yes, but against all odds I believe this to work in the early game's favor. Bluntly speaking, the main cast is the reason to play FFXV. They're all engaging and lovable characters and their chemistry and banter with one another is off the charts; after playing so many games where you're told the characters are friends and have nothing to prove of it, the palpable sense of love between the boys is like a breath of much needed fresh air. Thus does traversing the world- as long and admittedly tedious as this may be- truly does succeed in feeling like a road trip with your loved ones. There's a reason why I believe the interpersonal drama to be better than that of the main plot. On the topic of agency from earlier, I do feel as though the lack thereof amongst the cast is crucial to the narrative, for as much as FFXV fails to fully capitalize on its own themes. All of the characters are pawns in the cruel and unusual scheme of callous beings far beyond their comprehension from long before their time. They're often given no choice but to follow the path laid out before them like lambs to the slaughter. But check out how cool the Six are! Isn't Noctis so cool? At least Ardyn's a good antagonist and a pretty great parallel to Noctis, in concept.

The presentation of the game is great. It looks good and sounds even better. The gameplay of FFXV ranges from fun to frustrating entirely depending on how ambitious it's feeling at any given point in time, but when it's fun it feels pretty fucking great. Its semi-modernized world never bothered me; in fact, I think that contrast to be found in the combination of aesthetics was one of the cooler aspects of the game. I liked fishing, I liked Prompto's photography, I liked camping... Despite everything, I cannot understate how much I liked Final Fantasy XV. Is the game good? I don't know! Did I, even in all of my critiquing, enjoy my time with it immensely? Very much so. If you happen to spot it on sale, then I would suggest giving it a shot, at the very least.

(Last thing I'll mention is how ridiculous it is how much you have to turn to external material in order to see all that FFXV's world has to offer. Locking some of its best/most important stuff behind DLC and a fucking movie of all things is bokers.)

Monster Hunter Rise is a strange game to talk about, because it's simultaneously insanely fun and bizarrely disappointing. The movement in this game feels good, the QoL changes carried over from World go a long way, it feels GREAT cutting through monsters like butter- I suppose that would have to be it, right? I recently cleared G-Rank in MHGU. It's slow, and it's a bit of a slog, and it's great. The feeling of spending 30-40 minutes methodically wearing a monster down compounded the sheer amount of rewards for your effort is unmatched, and I most certainly did not get any of that while playing Rise. I am well aware that this isn't an unpopular opinion, but I do want to reiterate that for as weak of a Monster Hunter as this game may be, it still rocks. I really, REALLY enjoyed Rise. But a lot of the supposed harder fights of Rise left me saying "that's it?" while the triumphant music played and the game tried for the millionth time to get me to care about Kamura Village.

Gameplay aside, the monsters themselves are really good. I don't think that there was a single monster in the game that I wasn't, on some level, looking forward to fighting. The game looks good and this extends to their models. Most important to me, I greatly enjoyed some of Rise's originals. Rakna-Kadaki is the highlight but Somnacanth and the serpents were also standouts. The intro poems weren't... bad, but they were more corny than I would've liked. Oh well.

Uh. The character customization was good. The music was good. The story was not good but I don't really care about that anyway; I only wish that there hadn't been so much emphasis on it. New mechanics like Wyvern Riding and Wirebugs were cool for as easy as they make the game but I've been over that part already. I don't know what else to say! I like Rise. I really, really did like Rise. Still, it wasn't quite what I was expecting coming off of the heels of the past Monster Hunter games I had played, and didn't quite live up to the standard set by what I liked so much of those games. Oh, and FUCK the endgame.