I know I said I was taking a break from the blog, but then Episode Prompto came out for Final Fantasy XV and I realized I needed to do at least one more post. This downloadable content finally answers the question what happened to Prompto between when he fell off the train and when Noctis and the others found him again. Story wise, this was much more relevant than Episode Gladiolus, and there was more variety to make it more interesting, but at the same time, the gameplay is awkward and probably needed more time to work out the kinks.
The story is Prompto got knocked off the train by Noctis when Ardyn used his powers of illusion to make it appear that Ardyn was going to shoot Prompto but it was the other way around. Prompto then wanders the arctic tundra of Niflheim(inexplicably wearing weather appropriate attire, where did he get the hat and coat, really?) and passes out in a blizzard waking up in a lab where he has to fight magitek soldiers and face down their maker(and his) Verstael Besithia. Through documents and voice recordings, we find out that Verstael cloned himself to make the Magitek troops and Prompto was one of them, but Prompto alone was somehow liberated by Lucians and grew up free. In denial, he shoots Verstael thinking he has ended this ordeal, but it seems this was part of the plan, Verstael has transmigrated his soul to the "Immortalis" which sounds pretty bad, and it is. Aranea shows up and helps Prompto escape and he rides a snowmobile around the open world of Niflheim's tundra, which is potentially fun if you get the hang of it, but the real point is to just go to another facility where Prompto fights more magitek troops and the penultimate boss Barbarus who buys enough time for Verstael to resurrect himself as the Immortalis, a giant mechanical worm that basically plays out as a movie and you have to shoot it with a machine gun and get so many hits before the movie ends or it kills you. After that, Prompto goes off to find the crystal and the credits dovetail back into the main story.
The story itself is cool and the options of sidequests is an improvement over Episode Gladiolus, and also Prompto's equipment held promise with a melee weapon, flares/grenades, and three different guns in addition to his handgun(a machine gun, a sniper rifle, and a bazooka), but ultimately the execution falls flat. For one thing, Prompto takes damage too easily, and unlike Gladiolus, this DC uses the main game's damage system which means Prompto runs out of HP and stumbles before he's KO'd and can use a phoenix down, which sucks because this means you can get stuck unable to fight and when you try to restore HP you don't have enough to keep form getting in the danger zone again in a few seconds. It also gets hard to aim, which makes the sniper rifle worthless if you don't have the element of surprise and the bazooka isn't much better. Ultimately, unless you are already proficient in FPS mechanics, you are better off spamming the machine gun until you run out of bullets and then find a refill and use your handgun or melee weapon until you get the refill. Magitek troops are a pain because there is a mechanic where they get stunned and you can finish them off to steal their weapon, but it also makes them somewhat invulnerable to anythin other than the finishing move and gives them a chance to recover, so until you get used this mechanic, it actually slows you down. Ultimately the system makes Prompto so weak, the sidequests are more touble than they are worth, just wasting restoratives and ammo.
If you have the patience to to handle the main quest, it fills in some gaps for the completion of the story, but don't play this for the gameplay experience unless you want to relive the disappointment of Dirge of Cerebrus. Actually, Dirge of Cerebrus was better.
