PixlBit

As always, thank you for the incredibly kind words, Michael. You've been with us since the beginning, and I always appreciate your feedback. We're on an extended holiday break to play some more of the 2016 releases, but I have big things planned for this year.

I'm going to be getting a new laptop to handle audio and video editing, which means it should be able to tackle some more recent games. I might mess around with my Steam account a little more when that happens, but I love me my Xbox One S.

Yeah, I got too confident. I blew through the game on my champion without breaking a sweat, bumped it to hard to do some bounties in adventure mode, and got killed by Malthiel when he was almost dead. Going to try again, but currently leveling barbarian to 70.

Nice job! I just beat the game on hardcore mode on the XB One version, and will beat Act V tonight. Then I want to get that character to 70, but I'm afraid to increase the difficulty. I did that on the PS4 version and got slaughtered in a random dungeon at level 66.

I appreciate you taking the time to comment on this episode. After being there for the conversation and sitting through it again during editing, I think Patrick was trying to troll me to argue his point, which he enjoys doing sometimes. I don't think he could truly be serious about that argument, because by that logic Mario Kart is just like Gran Turismo because you accelerate and brake, and Call of Duty is just like Overwatch because they are both first person and you shoot things.

Patrick gets the most love in our comments, and when it's just Angelo and I there is decidedly less feedback on the show, which is where my comment on that came from. People certainly aren't listening to the show for my boring ass! Thank you for listening! It's easy for me to assume that the only people listening are the ones that comment regularly, but I know that's not the case, and it's nice to have a reminder from time to time.

I don't know what it would take to impress you graphically. I can't comment on the Xbox One version, but I know the 360 version of XIII was inferior to the PS3 version, so that might be the case here. The lighting, environments, and sheer amount of detail in everything is mesmerizing, especially when you get into the bigger fights. I did have one graphical glitch where the texture on the water vanished and it looked like one flat surface, but when I came back to the area later it looked like it should.

I think your comment on open world design is different than my complaint. You're talking about fetch quest design, which I agree is a problem that carries over into almost everything these days, and I blame MMORPGs for that. But I'm talking about actually traversing the world and finding it empty, with sporadic combat and a lot of the more interesting landmarks far removed from the road, so to find them you have to slog through a lot of boring, open areas with not a lot to see or do. I think Kingdoms of Amalur did a great job having secrets to find and plenty of enemies to fight, so even if the quests were in that MMO style at least getting from point A to B is more fun. Saints Row IV has repetitive tasks, but I loved the way you could easily move from combat to hacking to racing as you wandered around, and of course traversal is super fun in that game.

I don't think I represent the common sentiment about this game at all, and I really don't understand how people are so over the moon for the combat and open world design, not to mention the dreadfully slow walking and driving speeds. The only common complaint I see deals with the camera. I also hate the way the story is told, but there wasn't room in the review for that. You're probably right about it being reviewed harsher if it didn't have the Final Fantasy name, because the only way people would give that combat a pass is if they were expecting a turn-based battle system and they prefer this flashy, shallow system.

It's a fully acredited school, funded by Shinra.

Yeah, throughout my play through I kept thinking that A Realm Reborn (and even FF XII) did most of this stuff better, especially when it came to the area designs and populating them with enemies.

Oh man, I'm right there with you when it comes to interacting with things. Besides jumping around like an idiot over and over, I also think the window for the button prompt is really small, and it's easy to pass something. Have you noticed that the game is slow to tell you what you're picking up, too? Been a small source of annoyance for me.

I also got sidetracked with the side quests and hunts, and probably was around that amount of time logged at chapter 7. The game really churns through chapters 9-12 really quickly. I wish the side quests felt more organic, instead of having a handfull of people just doling out quest after quest, and I wish you could accept multiple hunts at a time. I think FF XII also did this, but the hunts were at least more interesting.

I played the entire game in Wait Mode, and still had the experience I wrote about. It's an improvement, but I still hated the combat.

It's about time! Now we just have to get you commenting before we record!