Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn - Prologue - Reviews

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Kari5's avatar
Jan 2, 2021

A short related to FF15, this "prologue" shows bits of the origin story of the video game's antagonist, Ardyn. If you have not played the game, or do not plan on playing it, this is not worth watching. There is very view details given about the characters or setting to know whats really going on, so its more like a summary of some important scenes in Ardyn's life. It has minor spoilerse for FFXV, just because you don't know who the villain is right away, and his appearance in the game is releaved at the end.

Story

Not much of a story here.  As mentioned, this feels more like a bunch of semi-related scenes than any sort of full story. We don't know much about the setting, other than a few general statements, so it fast the feel of something only partially finished. If you've played the game (I've played a couple hours), you can fill in some holes, but it does take place a long time (generations?) before the story of FFXV.

But what they do explain, do I care? I think so. I haven't gotten far enough into FFXV to properly meet Ardyn yet (just a quick cameo scene) but background info is always good. The only thing I'm not sure about (not far enough into the game, may update this statement later) is if this is needed. If the game does a good enough job of telling the story, then it isn't, but if this provides background that the game does not, then I'm happy it exists! 

Characters

Basically same statements as above; they are not fleshed out, not even the main character, so I don't really care about any of them. I don't believe any of the characters aside from Ardyn are even in the game, so I especially don't care about them. 

Overall

I like the idea of this short. I enjoy the fact its background on the antagonist that may not be covered in the game that I'm playing right now. Do I wish it was better? Yes. I also believe the other FFXV shorts are better. Ten minutes just isn't enough to capture the amount of details a Final Fantasy game has. However, I would still recommend it to anyone who has played the game because of its length. Only ten minutes for more background story!

5/10 story
?/10 animation
?/10 sound
4/10 characters
5/10 overall
Efinate's avatar
May 26, 2022

DISCLAIMER

ONLY WATCH THIS IF U HAVE PLAYED THE GAME AND COMPLETED IT BECAUSE IF NOT THEN U AREN'T REALLY GOING TO ENJOY IT.

this episode tells us about the antagonists backstory which is pretty good but it is very short that it doesn't really make an impact. It is pretty sad but as i said it is rushed which makes it bad.the animation is pretty good but could have been better and the soundtrack is always a masterpiece with the final fantasy series.the characters are good and some are lame. Overall it is an episode for those who are going to play the dlc episode ardyn.

8/10 story
9/10 animation
10/10 sound
7/10 characters
7/10 overall
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BaraEttie's avatar
Feb 21, 2019

Disclaimer: If you have not played FFXV, this prologue will probably make little sense and would be better left skipping. I haven't seen Brotherhood since it released, but I assume there is little to no Ardyn present during it, thus watching this will spoil a lot of later game content for you. 

Game and Prologue Spoilers Below

I can't say much about story as this ties into the main game and the DLC that we will be getting at the end of March. From what I saw in this short special, there is a lot of unanswered question, and build up I can only assume will be adressed in the DLC. Thus I will hold my comments about the tie in until after that is released. (I'll come add a comment to this at that time if needed)

All the sound used was from the game, for obvious reasons so I am not going into that either, but the peices used did fit into the feel they wanted to portray.

Characters. In this short episode we get a look at 2 "new" charcters. Ardyn's brother Sonmus, who is the Mystic, and Aera, the Oracle, who is Ardyn's Fiance. Looking into the fact that Sonmus and Aera are Noctis' and Lunafreya's ancestors, Ardyn's hatred for them becomes more clear in this episode, but it also makes me feel more sadness towards him because he started off as someone who wished to only help others. We don't get a lot of into on either character but we can tell that Sonmus has quite the dislike for Ardyn, lieing to him to bring him down and ultimately get rid of him while Aera is the opposite and wants to protect and be there for Ardyn.

I can't really say more past that since we obvioulsy don't get the full story or a full look into these characters. We know more about Sonmus because of the lore from Kingsglave and the game itself, but Aera we only really get to know in this episode.

Moving onto animation. This is something that might be overlooked for some, but as someone that has studied animation, and seen probably too much anime, high and low budget, I can say this was definetly a lower budget. Simple scenes are fine but during the end sequence, the fight is very choppy along with any other scene that is faster paced. It might not have been intended but it seems like they animated the key motions and forgot to put into the filler ones. I hope this makes sense to anyone that isn't an animator.

The episode was short, and it was only meant to be an opening act for the DLC, but if a company is going to go out of their way to make such a thing, wouldn't they want to try n make it better to get us hyped up more? Yes it left me wondering about some things, especially since the last seen seemed very rushed while at the start it seemed better paced. But it didn't leave me with a feeling of excitement for the DLC and with the information given, we can pretty much guess what was going to happen in this episode based on the information given to us in the game anyway. We know he wasn't the chosen king, we know something else had to have happened but the way it got potrayed just left me with the feeling of kknowing they could have done better.

TLDR: Not bad, but not great. Most of the information given is tied into the lore of the game and can be guessed if you simply paid attention to it while playing. Exception being Aera (The Oracle) who we get little into of anyway.

?/10 story
5/10 animation
?/10 sound
?/10 characters
5/10 overall
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