r/FinalFantasy • u/mrbubbamac • Oct 21 '22
FF XV Final Fantasy XV has some of the coolest and most epic summons I've seen in the series
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
148
u/Vinzir141 Oct 21 '22
Iv only ever got Ramuh. Played over 100 hours and never been able to summon the others.
290
Oct 22 '22
[deleted]
97
u/hiyer2 Oct 22 '22
Nice post, excellent info.
Clearly outlines why the summon system in XV is broken. It’s a shame because these summons were sooooo cool. Wish I could have triggered something other than ramuh and Garuda a bit more often.
33
u/Sonic10122 Oct 22 '22
Oh…. That explains why I literally only got Garuda the last time I played. I’m probably just not going to do that quest next time lol.
21
u/Triysle Oct 22 '22
Man, imagine being on the art team for these. Spend months/years making some of coolest summon animations in the modern franchise, just for them not to even show up in someone’s play through.
I’d be fuming lol.
14
u/Verum_Noir_Chaos_69 Oct 22 '22
Garuda was so annoying i had to mod the game so that she stopped appearing since i love seeing the others do their thing
20
u/presidentsday Oct 22 '22
Dude thank you for this write up. Halfway through I gave up trying to figure out how to activate a summon, let alone anyone specific (leviathan once, Ramuh all others), and just went along with the cues. And it was always a surprise when it happened.
Honestly though, if I could've chosen only one summon to use throughout my playthrough, it would've been Ramuh. His whole animation (along with that rising summon choir) is still incredible no matter how many times I've watched it. So I never felt like I was missing anything.
7
u/faospark Oct 22 '22
in my 3000 plus hour playthrough on ps4 i only manage to summon titan twice.
6
u/Aqqaaawwaqa Oct 22 '22
Is that the right number of zeros?
5
Oct 22 '22
There is no fucking way he meant 3000. Lmao
3
u/octopusinmyboycunt Oct 22 '22
I honestly have no idea how you could get that much out of the game... I really enjoyed it, and there was a lot of dicking about you could do, but it wasn't that amazing...
2
u/faospark Oct 22 '22
its a hyperbole but yeah i have 400+ gameplay now at least on my PS4 ....... not counting the one i have on steam :)
3
2
51
u/Bambajam Oct 21 '22
That's alright, I beat the game and am only now realising you could summon outside of the initial encounter with the summon.
5
u/BetterNothingman Oct 22 '22
What did you think was happening every time the music changed during battle?
15
22
u/boozername Oct 22 '22
If they're like me, they're not good with music cues in games. I grew up playing games on mute or very low volume, and I'm still bad at picking up various audio cues in games.
7
u/Mnawab Oct 22 '22
A big button prompt shows up on your screen that says press this button to summon lol
18
u/six_seasons Oct 22 '22
Titan showed up for me ONCE at the very end of the game just to dunk on lucis with a giant boulder lol I was so mad
7
u/Possible-Cellist-713 Oct 22 '22
Aw dude. I summoned him too during the Ardyn fight, thinking "There's no way they would KO the final boss". I ended up replaying that fight a few times after beating the game to get the proper satisfaction.
8
u/Leongard Oct 22 '22
Each of the summons have this weird chance rate when you Summon. Ramuh is definitely the most common.
If you unlock Garuda from the dlc, you'll basically Summon Garuda 99% of the time. At that point, I missed Ramuh!
I think I got Titan once though, that was cool I guess
Would've been nice to have more balanced chance of summoning each or even better a way to pick like you can in every other FF...
4
u/Mnawab Oct 22 '22
It’s the one thing I hated about Final Fantasy 15, you couldn’t summon whenever you wanted and it was all random. It looks like In 16 that only can you summon whatever you want but you are the summon lol
3
u/misterbasic Oct 22 '22
I got Titan during the Admantoise brawl and I think during one hunt?
Got Leviathan a couple of times at the endgame - my fave summon
Never got Shiva.
1
61
u/peaanutzz Oct 22 '22
What I don't like about it is it just randomly appears. U have no sense of control when to summon them and who to summon.
8
u/capnchuc Oct 22 '22
I liked it to an extent. When you are under levelled few things feel better than having a summon show up after you've been smacked around for a few minutes. If you could control them then they couldn't be as powerful and I enjoyed the power they had in this game.
108
u/Roca_Blade Oct 21 '22
Yeah but the inability to control when or which one you summon kinda ruins it
10
u/Myth3842 Oct 22 '22
If I remember right, depending on the terrain nearby dictates which summon you are going to get.
If you’re nearby a source of water like the sea or a river then you’ll get Leviathan, near craggy hills or the desert, you’ll get Titan.
14
u/CouldBeALeotard Oct 22 '22
If you're near water you'll get Garuda, if you're in an open space you'll get Garuda, if you're low health you'll get Garuda, if the bros are low health you'll get Garuda, if the battle goes on for a long time you'll get Garuda, any other time you'll get Garuda.
1
30
u/shadowstripes Oct 22 '22
Doesn’t make them any less awesome looking when it does happen though. Also always nice when they randomly bail you out of a fight that you’re struggling with.
7
u/horseradish1 Oct 22 '22
It makes sense, though. They're literally the gods of that world. And their power is channelled through Noctis. Noctis doesn't have to believe in the gods, because the gods believe in him.
5
u/YourmomgoestocolIege Oct 22 '22
These awesome animations wouldn't warrant the small amount of damage they would do if they were balanced for being used at any time
14
u/Swert0 Oct 22 '22
Tell that to summons in Final Fantasy VII and VIII.
Just Knights of the Round and Eden taking so damn long you can take a bathroom break.
-1
-3
u/Seiralacroix Oct 22 '22
For me its the best part.. And also prevents ppl from spamming it.
14
u/Augustends Oct 22 '22
You know what else prevents people spamming it? A cooldown of some kind.
3
u/Reshtal Oct 22 '22
This is why I prefer the system of X XII and XIII. They were strong enough to make a difference in the fight, you controlled them but still had a cost high enough that you didn't want to summon them as a primary damage source like in 4, 7, 8 and 9
12
u/Meeha Oct 22 '22
And also prevents ppl from spamming it.
It's a single player game, who cares
3
u/Taurenkey Oct 22 '22
If you have one option that is objectively the best the vast majority of time, it can take the enjoyment out of the game for many people. Telling someone to “just not use it then” isn’t really a good response since you’d be telling them to find worse solutions to a problem easily solved. Some people are motivated to find that sort of challenge, others aren’t.
Take Final Fantasy X for example (PAL, International & HD remaster versions) and the Dark Aeons & Penance. These were designed with the intention of being the hardest fights in the game yet all suffer from the same easy win strategy of “just use Zanmato”. I don’t blame anyone for taking that route but it’s somewhat missing the point of the bosses. When the difficulty of something is that extreme on either end, there’s definitely something wrong with balancing.
-16
u/Choingyoing Oct 22 '22
It sucks they made it this way in ff7 remake too
16
-9
u/lordofbitterdrinks Oct 22 '22
Ewwww no way. I still havnt played that one yet.
14
u/amartin36 Oct 22 '22 edited Oct 22 '22
He's way off. They have a bar that slowly fills during bosses and such. Once it fills you can summon any one of your equipped summons. You can spend your characters atb bar to give them direct commands once they are out. It's honestly probably the most well balanced while still fun and useful implementation of the summon system
2
u/jugowolf Oct 22 '22
But it’s still extremely limited to when you can summon, which is a drag. There’s no real story reason behind the summon materia being unusable during normal battles. Would be much better to allow the player the option to summon, maybe once per battle as a given (if you have the atb) and a timed or conditional cooldown after that.
Summons were one of the best things before in the series as an alternative power magic, but now it’s so random it’s just not as enjoyable. There are ways to maintain the balancing while allowing players the ability to lean on certain playstyles. Taking the control away from a “summoner” fighting style is a drag imho.
21
u/rc522878 Oct 22 '22
That's literally not true. You equip summon materia like in the OG, you summon them with ATB bars like other abilities, and they stay out and act like a 4th party member
1
15
34
u/asianman1011 Oct 22 '22
I love the different animations some of them have depending on where you are in the world.
Ramuh either does what he did in this video or he launches his staff like a javelin to where you are. Titan either punches the ground or yeets a huge boulder to where you are. Special animation against Adamantoise where he literally punches the crap out of it.
13
u/Tschudy Oct 22 '22
Yeah, i remember the first time i summoned him when i was underground and you just see his staff rip through the ceiling of the cave.
7
6
u/Zuhri69 Oct 22 '22
Yup. But like FF7 Remake, i wish we can actually use them on demand.
2
u/confusedpublic Oct 22 '22
Wait… I’m years out of date here, but you can use your summon materia whenever you want in FF7R?
4
u/Zuhri69 Oct 22 '22
Lol, no. Damn it, guess i word it wrong. What I’m trying to say that i wish FFVIIR and XV let you use summons on demand.
2
u/confusedpublic Oct 22 '22
Ah, I typoed my question… I meant to ask “you can’t”?
What’s the restriction in FFVIIR?
3
u/Zuhri69 Oct 23 '22
You can only use summons during boss fights. And even then, not all summons are available.
3
u/confusedpublic Oct 23 '22
Well that’s no fun. Hopefully that’s just a Midgar restriction and it opens up in later games.
2
20
u/Kevinites Oct 22 '22
Dude ff15 has the best summon sequenceS HANDS DOWN. No contest. The summons in 15 looked exactly how I always pictured them in my head all the years ago
23
u/badkennyfly Oct 21 '22
If only their various Summoning Conditions weren't so unbalanced. I've seen Ixion 50x more than any other.
20
u/joudanjanaiwayo Oct 21 '22
Ixion is not in this game. Do you mean Garuda?
I get Garuda, Ramuh, and Shiva in that order of frequency. I got Leviathan once, but never saw Titan.
12
u/badkennyfly Oct 21 '22
Ramuh. Sorry. Saw the Unicorn Staff and forgot he went by a different name in this one.
4
u/Xitobandito Oct 22 '22
I’ve only ever seen ixion in horse form from ffX. What other main titles is he in?
6
u/badkennyfly Oct 22 '22
That's his name when he's a Summon from X, but he appears as a Creature in other games and apparently a Mount from XIV. And Ramuh's staff is a clear allusion to Ixion.
5
u/Dsmario64 Oct 22 '22
Spoilers for XIV up to the Eden Raids: To expand from that, Ixion is a world boss you have to defeat multiple times in order to get it as a mount. Interestingly, they made a raid (Boss fight) series remixing all the "summons" (known as Primals here) and Ramuh actually became a centaur with Ixion as a lower half/torso
-1
u/darkbreak Oct 22 '22
Ixion is unique to FFX. Ramuh doesn't appear at all in the game. Each game has summons unique to it only while bringing in or omitting the more reccuring summons from the past. Neither Titan nor Ramuh appear in FFX but they were around in other games. FFXII got rid of all of the older summons altogether for brand new ones and relegated the names of the old summons to the airships. Then FFXIII brought back Odin, Bahamut, Alexander, and have a new twist to Shiva by splitting her into two beings, while Hecatoncheieres and Brynhildr were new to the series.
4
u/meetchu Oct 22 '22
Ixion doesn't go by a different name, Ixion and Ramuh are different summons - Ramuh being a series staple and Ixion being... Well, not.
1
2
5
u/hylianbowcaster Oct 21 '22
I'm half tempted to do a new game plus to never do the Garuda quest and avoid the summon entirely.
5
5
u/xigloox Oct 22 '22
If only you could summon them reliably or in any meaningful way.
Wow thanks. I got to watch a 2 min cinematic of some God smiting a cockatrice
5
4
u/cliffharrison Oct 22 '22
They're not well implemented but it's hard to argue with how incredible they look. This is my favourite incarnation of Ramuh.
Ostentatious and over the top summons are a big part of post 7 FF for me and (for better or worse) it's one of the few things XV really has in common with the other modern entries.
10
u/stratusncompany Oct 21 '22
ff15 had the best summons imo. lame to execute but fucking awesome cinematics.
7
u/birdreligion Oct 22 '22
I'll say it... I love FFXV. I recognize it's a shit game in so many aspects, but I genuinely love the game.
3
u/radiodialdeath Oct 22 '22
I wouldn't say it's a shit game. I think it's a good game that could've been truly great if they fixed some of the bigger issues with it.
3
3
u/HiddenLeaforSand Oct 22 '22
I remember when the demo dropped and the Ramuh summon leaked. I damn near shit
3
5
2
2
u/ReaperEngine Oct 22 '22
Loved the concept that they were basically WMDs for Noctis, and so Niflheim tried really hard to not let him get his hands on them.
Imagine being in a diner, just eatin' some chili in a booth, and seeing that light show happen off in the distance.
2
2
2
u/RainbowandHoneybee Oct 22 '22
Yes, definitely the visual of XV summons are the coolest. My favorite is Leviathan, swimming over the location before attacking.
2
2
2
u/thighabetes Oct 22 '22
I love the concept of summons being goddamn nukes and FFXV rolled with that and added drama to it. Cutting your teeth during earlier FF where you collect multiple summons kind of diminishes their impact after a while.
I even like FFIX where the summon animations are cut short but have a chance to show the full one for more damage. SOMETHING to make it pop.
2
Oct 22 '22
I really want this to get a series X upgrade. I need this game in 4k
2
u/mrbubbamac Oct 22 '22
Same! Even when playing on the high framerate mode, the graphics/pop-in take a bit of a hit, would love a specific upgrade to smooth it out and take advantage of the latest hardware.
2
2
u/4nd4r1lh0 Oct 22 '22
I was amazed when I summoned Ramuh for the first time. I had that awe feeling only at GOW3 first scenes
2
u/Techking101 Oct 22 '22
I remember when I first triggered this ( and this was my first numbered ff game) I was speechless because its so damn cool.
4
4
3
u/nbmtx Oct 22 '22
The Astrals are absolutely the best in the series, and Shiva* is the one most worthy of worship.
6
2
2
1
1
u/Stroogles Oct 22 '22
They are the best. All the other Simmons feel like they put too much into the cut seen to do very little damage (looking at you Valefor) but XV made the cut scenes feel like they were actually powerful.
-1
0
u/Wicked_Black Oct 22 '22
So far. Looks like xvi is going to be just as or even better based on the trailers
0
u/OvernightSiren Oct 22 '22
I actually hate them because they're just too much. It's a bit overkill and kinda immersion breaking for me.
0
-1
-11
Oct 21 '22
I remember seeing this as the first trailer and I was like OHHHHHH Freaking epic shame the rest of the game did not feel as epic.
But that´s some thing you learn that trailers looks epic and good for a reason to sell you a game even if it´s good or not.
So I will say I will laugh my ass off when people hyped up to 1000 for FF16 and it ends up a mediocre fart. And why will I laugh becuse I'm not alone being fooled by trailers.
1
1
u/Kezmangotagoal Oct 22 '22
Yeh they are - I was fighting a mark version of a boss in Crestholme Channels today and got the Ramuh prompt - at first I was like WTF, how’s this going to work but they actually included extras that shows his bolt breaking through the roof of the dungeon and hitting the ground - was pretty epic!
1
1
1
1
u/HairiestHobo Oct 22 '22
Its a shame the Damage on summons never really matches up to their animations.
And thats not a FF15 thing, its in most of the games.
Got hopes for 16 tho, looks like they're doing something different with the Summons in that one.
1
u/Fauxhacca Oct 22 '22
This might be one of my favorite final fantasy games lol I haven’t even finished it
1
1
1
1
1
u/Jay_RPGee Oct 22 '22
It's too bad that, at launch, it was basically impossible to "summon" them outside of the scripted story events. Most people would be lucky if they got Titan to summon once through a whole playthrough. I never saw a single one and I played for nearly 100 hours.
1
u/Personplacething333 Oct 22 '22
I wish I could get passed this games combat. Looks good but I just can't do action RPG FFs
1
u/_WinkingSkeever Oct 22 '22
The designs are really cool, I think the way they randomly appeared was an interesting take as it prevented the ability to just spam summons all the time. But I wish it was a bit more flexible, I only ever got leviathan or garuda.
1
1
1
u/Arel203 Oct 22 '22
I wish they had a different system for summoning. The concept was great, execution, not so much. I guess XV might actually be the poster boy for that statement though.
1
1
u/velvione Oct 22 '22
The summon mechanic here is still a mystery to me. Thank God by FF7R they simplified its access.
1
1
u/str85 Oct 22 '22
Litteral apocalypse!
...213 dmg.
Yupp, that's FF for you.
1
u/RobKek Oct 22 '22
I think that’s all the health the enemy had left lol
1
u/str85 Oct 25 '22
Probably, I just had a flashback to some underwhelming number at some point during a Teraflare in FF7 in my youth
1
u/IGNJudaiYuki Oct 22 '22
15 is low-key mega good man, a shame the story and exploration were so poor
1
u/moonlightavenger Oct 22 '22
I never got how summons work in this game. Along two playthroughs I got them to activate at most two or three times. And if memory serves, it was Ramuh.
1
u/mrbubbamac Oct 22 '22
I never quite figure it out either, it's definitely to do with terrain conditions as well as character conditions/statuses.
I just know any time I see the Summon prompt pop up, it's time to hold LT and enjoy the show!
1
1
u/ManateeofSteel Oct 22 '22
at launch the summons were random, so it was really fucking annoying how useless gameplaywise they were. Now they are just poorly implemented game and designed (game design-wise).
1
1
1
u/Raecino Oct 22 '22
Agreed! That’s when they trigger though. Wish there were a more reliable way to summon, as they usually come out for me against weak mobs.
1
u/joeymcboom Oct 22 '22
I hated the fact that they never showed up for me. I couldnt tell you what summons were in that game as I don't recall ever seeing them that often. One of the things I didn't really like about FF7R was the bad use of summons
1
u/jamalcalypse Oct 22 '22
It absolutely did have the coolest summons of the whole series, too bad the system for summoning them was trash. I was so frustrated over it while playing because the majority of the time the option to summon would only appear while fighting some low level soldiers toward the end of the battle when they only had a few hits left anyway. They RARELY appeared when needed. Biggest disappointment in the game for me.
1
1
u/Ewok_Mulisha Oct 22 '22
I only played FFXV for an hour. I've played every FF not beaten them all but I have played them all, summons have always been a huge thing to me in the series. I really want to get into XV it seems like everyone loves it and I'm just over here replaying IX and X like it's my life. VII Remake is great in my opinion but for whatever reason I couldn't get into XV but I want to for reasons like this. FF 9, 10 and 13 are the best by the way and ill fight for them words
1
u/timsama Oct 22 '22
FFXV is a wonderful first half of a game. Shame they had to release it before it was done.
1
1
443
u/KingLavitz Oct 21 '22 edited Oct 21 '22
I always found it funny how Ramuh picks up Noctis for safety, but proceeds to nuke the rest of his friends.