Hey folks, I was playing a ton of FFXIV during the pandemic. I got through ARR and Heavensward and really enjoyed it, then got a bit burnt out and fell off like 10 months ago.
Circumstances have occurred in my life such that I am now attempting to play through stormblood and shadowbringers as fast as possible, so that I can get to and understand some endwalker content, haha. After about three days of playing in the evenings I got through half of stormbood so I’m feeling good about my chances of completing this. Though I may still be a fool… I have no idea how long the content between expansions is so I don’t know if I’m overestimating my abilities, haha.
i’m thinking about moving my guy over to the new Oceania server to see what i can do with a dragoon at double-wave compatible ping speeds, and since i’m basically never online at the same time as any butts any more… but idk…
Finally compelted the post Stormblood content and got into Shadowbringers.
My experience with Stormblood was very weird, since I was mainlining the MSQ and skipping all optional content. My map is still filled with blue + sign quest markers, haha. I thought it was fun! I think I preferred the drama of Heavensward but I did think a lot of the new cast was fun and the experience of playing the MSQ was much more varied (it was great seeing a lot more NPCs in big battle moments, and playing as them was usually amusing).
I do miss the kind of intense character moments that we got so many of in Heavensward–Aymeric’s family problems, Haurchefant’s whole shit, Estinien’s deal, etc. Stormblood is a kind of weird revolution-fantasy-fulfillment thing and because of that Lyse’s arc didn’t hit me as hard. Hien is great but that’s mostly because he’s a friendly jock who wins at everything.
I posted this in the “what game are you playing” thread but the post-expansion Yotsuyu stuff was not my favorite.
I also thought it was weird that Fordola and Yotsuyu’s arcs were so unbelievably similar during the expansion, so it was weird to see the games continue to double-beat these redemption arcs for about half the post-Stormblood content before finally diverging them a bit.
I’ve really enjoyed the start to Shadowbringers (except the wild Eulmore fatphobia stuff–holy cow, what!!!) and I have found the extremely goofy parallel universe shit to be endlessly entertaining. Elves?? Humes??? They still use gil and have a whole explanation for that?? Extremely funny stuff. At first I was kind of suspicious of the idea of an alternate universe plot but it’s so fundamentally different and weird that I’m really enjoying it.
have you read the explanation for guns yet it may be the best lore in the game
yotsuyus story is frustrating for sure apparently they changed stuff around for English localization (hien and pimping is totally different in other scripts apparently)
makes me read gosetsu when he said to hien’you speak of sins my lord, but at whose feet do those sins lie’ as being said directly to hien as opposed to ALL involved in the war
I have NOT read the explanation for guns… is it related to the weird fanny pack thing I have to wear on my machinist? That sounds exciting haha
I’ve heard that a bunch of characters were localized much differently in the US version. For example I heard that Haurchefant was actually intended to be much more like, creepy? in the japanese version? Is there a good place to read about these differences or is it mostly just all over the place?
Pretty sure we had a poll like this on the old thread, but I just got my airship license and I like combining dissimilar assets in a single package, so give me your preferences.
INCREDIBLE. Love it. This game truly has the most out of control explanations for things players would normally silently accept. The silly “gil” conversation with the Crystal Exarch at the start of Shadowbringers was exactly like this
“you see… we had a currency problem after our big disaster… too many coin types… so we started testing the metal content of coins… then we found coins from your civilization in an archaeological dig unrelated to your civilization… anyway we named our coin metal unit of exchange after your coins… they are precisely equivalent and I know this because I have peered at your dimension’s economy in a scrying glass or some shit”
So wild. There’s a maximalism to this game’s writing that I find completely charming and very silly. They do shit that writers in English would never be able to get away with. I have been screenshotting a lot of the silliest sentences that I see… I should put some up in an album somewhere
and gunblades were called gunblades because they were used by the bodyguards of queen gunnhildr and the gunbreaker class developed because them getting shot at all the time by “guns” was annoying
Last night I completed a bunch more of the shadowbringers MSQ. The first thing I played last night was the sequence where you must defend the Crystarium against a sin eater attack and I was surprised at how deeply affecting I found “running around in a big battle with all your friends” to be. This game really got me!! I haven’t been doing Trusts but this makes me want to do Trusts. I understand why it took them three expansions to add these kinds of features–you need extraordinary institutional support for narrative and single player content in order to add this kind of thing to an MMO, and it probably took them three expansions to be confident it would be worth it. But it’s so good, it feels like it shoulda been there from the beginning, haha.
imo it’s worth doing story dungeons with trusts at least once, the party banter is good and each scion’s AI has cute quirks that are really in character for them (my fav is alisae always using limit break asap because she wants to impress the WoL.) doubly so for endwalker!
Got credits on Shadowbringers. Fantastic expansion. I was super impressed. Then I played through to patch 5.3 and it knocked me on my ass. There were multiple sequences in that patch that made me shed an actual tear haha
The wildest thing about it was how hard they spiked the cost and quality of the cutscenes there. Totally worth it for the conclusion to such a cool arc… I really admire how this game is willing to change the detail and expressiveness of its narrative sequences from beat to beat. It saves a lot of money for them to have a bunch of normal ass cutscenes and then go hard on the really important emotional stuff.
I can’t play this game without comparing it to TOR, which I played at launch a decade ago. They voiced everything in TOR, even the worthless conversations that just had to be there for narrative expediency, or even conversations with characters you’re not meant to have a relationship with. It’s much better to build things like FFXIV, I think, and save the extreme polish for the “reward” moments.
Also I gotta say: it’s very funny that they resurrected G’raha into like, a cool teen boy who wears cargo shorts and a bunch of weird necklaces, and I fucking bought it. On some level I was like “hmm I see… audience appeal… gotcha…” but on another level I was just thrilled to see that character return. In comic books I get frustrated when people get resurrected right and left but FFXIV makes it WORK. Incredible
yeah i was amazed at how well they stuck the landing on all of that. tbh endwalker was kind of a letdown after all that… kind of felt like they were resting on their laurels a little. we’ll see what 6.3 brings though i suppose
I got bard unlocked and got up to level 35, and I’m really torn. My plan from the beginning had been for this character to be a placeholder that I’d use to try out the options I didn’t think I’d want to stick with long-term. That worked fine for the early game—the cities may functionally be mirrors of one another in terms of leveling, but at least the characters and details are different. However, I’m now well into the Scion story which is going to be the same for everybody, and it turns out a lot of the jobs I wanted to try are locked behind levels 50 or higher. Not sure whether to stick with leveling the other low-level classes for now or if I should just resign myself to playing through ARR twice…
Do non-chocobos have dedicated mount music? I used to like Final Fantasy’s various chocobo themes; that was before February of 2022.
you can keep your character and transfer it WHEN FUCKING FAERIE IS UNCLOGGED omg please stop being a congested world half my income is from crafting sprout gear BUT THERES NO SPROUTS TO BUY MY SHIT ANYMORE
every mount has music you can turn it on or off in the options. I usually turn it off because almost all the mount music shows up in other places but the background music for zones never shows up on mounts
apparently they changed stuff around for English localization (hien and pimping is totally different in other scripts apparently)