Had a go at the DLC "Episodes" for FF15; all of them share the basic notion of focusing on a secondary character, limiting the player's level and equipment and thus not allowing them to "grind" past challenges as much as in the main game (though there are usually enough potions to chug laying around), and awarding a handful of trinkets in the base adventure once beaten. Here's my rundown:
- Tried Gladio Gaiden first; it's easily the shortest of the bunch, a single linear dungeon that took me about an hour to finish. I sometimes switch to him in the main game for certain encounters, but can't say I particularly enjoy "maining" him; his attacks are so slow and open to punishment that I feel like I have to be near-constantly on the defensive and rely on counters, which slows things down to a crawl, and is especially frustrating against speedy enemies who can even evade your counterattacks. There's absolutely nothing notable story-wise here either; the only insight into his character we get is that:
Sometimes he eats regular-sized Cup Noodles, and other times he breaks out the BIG size.
- Prompto was next; his episode is both the lengthiest and the most ambitious departure from the main game, but unfortunately in the end I also found it the most frustrating. While Prompto's third-person gunplay works well to break things up in relatively low-stakes situations, it's just not well-tuned enough to carry even a side story like this one by itself; switching to the sniper rifle will more often than not leave you zooming in on a wall and guessing which way to move to actually find a target, major battles which force you to constantly retreat to a gun rack for reloads will have you cursing the cheap hits you take as you repeatedly jump like an idiot instead of taking a fresh weapon, and the snowmobile controls are a janky bear to top it all off. Prompto as a character grew on me steadily in the main game, and I wanted to like this segment too, as it certainly shoots for the moon, but it just plain misses in too many areas.
- Came up with a NEW new recipeh after that, and while this episode plays it safest, acting as something of a microcosm of the main game by giving you the ability to run around for awhile before railroading you forward, but as such ended up being my personal favorite of the bunch; beyond that, I also prefer Ignis' combat style, which is admittedly the most QTE-ish out of everyone's but gives you much better mobility than the others and allows you to stay on the offensive much more of the time, which I find much more palatable. As it happens this one was also easily my pick story-wise; it's the only one that both revealed something I wasn't expecting and included one or two moments that I thought were well done emotions-wise, though obviously others' mileage may vary. Not that there weren't significant niggles here as with everything else in the FF15 realm, but on the whole I think this episode turned out the best.
- Had a few dormant bucks in my PSN account, so decided to have a go at Ardyn too; it would seem that at least some of the feedback the devs got was also the most positive when it came to Episode Ignis, since this one is built on the same basic framework, though this time instead of wrecking a bunch of soulless robots (and the occasional jerkface coeurl), you're teleporting behind upstanding guards and knocking them into the air for an insta-kill, breaking festival decorations for bonus points, spouting off "mwahaha" one-liners and generally being a Big Fat Meanie-Face while learning a bit about
why you're a Big Fat Meanie-Face. Combat is particularly momentum-based here, as you can rip most anything a new one if you're on a streak, but can find yourself in a rut just as fast if you mess up; story-wise some bits were a tad too melodramatic for my taste, but overall it's another pretty good time.
- Also gave the multiplayer (or, in my case, single-player with bots) "Comrades" add-on a brief try; the time I spent with it suggests that the experience mainly consists of playing the same few "select an enclosed arena, kill everything in it" missions multiple times so you can earn enough shinies to unlock a few more. Maybe there's a few tidbits therein adding some detail to its part of the storyline, which the main game leaves largely blank, but I don't think I'll be going back to it.
From here I guess it's mainly a matter of how much of the postgame I feel like doing, and then it's on to something else. As I said, though, I definitely can't say I didn't get my money's worth out of the thing.