zephie's game journals
been doing a lot of MSQ lately because i've once again come down with a sickness. it's called gaming disease and symptoms include wanting to play a lot of final fantasy on my computer. i finished replaying the main Stormblood story the other day and man it's been a lot of game, but i absolutely needed the refresher because unless a character died or fakedied i did not remember a thing from my first time playing
i bought Stormblood back in 2017 but didn't play through it until after Shadowbringers had come out, which i'd heard was way better, so i may have wanted to speed through things a lil bit so i could get to it faster. so i thought my opinion that Stormblood is sorta boring could've been a result of that, but after replaying it, taking it at a slightly more leisurely pace and talking to everyone i can along the way, i'm now of the very different opinion that Stormblood is kinda boring as opposed to sorta
there's the same problem ARR had where there's a ton of exposition and not enough things happening. Heavensward was heavy on exposition too but it was mostly the revelations that the story focused around. Stormblood is a lot of visiting new places and listening to people talk about their history with the Empire, and also about their weird religions. by the very nature of the premise it's a slow burn as we convince all these different peoples to take up arms
the reason FFXIV's story feels so disjointed at parts is because i have to be involved in it all. there's no B-plot when the main character has to be present for everything that happens. Stormblood is really the two stories of Ala Mhigo and Doma, and Ala Mhigo gets put entirely on the backburner for a large chunk of it, immediately after an imperial raid on their resistance base. then the Doma part ends, and we go back without saying anything, and actually without saying anything because Hien catches up with us in another city after we liberate his kingdom and is like uhhh? you just left out of nowhere??
ovoo.. the Au Ra Naadam Bigfight sequence was cool, though mainly because it was a relief to win so easily after always losing at it in PvP. really think there should be a way to replay these story instances in isolation, because the way New Game+ works is it's split into like, 15+ hour chapters that you gotta do all in sequence. so if a fight like this is towards the end of one chapter then there's no way to replay it easily without entering the slog realm
very funny lead-up to the final quest where it starts playing War Sounds across the map that come from nowhere
i cannot tell you how disappointed i was the first time i saw this. after years of buildup, finally reaching the end of Stormblood, ready to finally take back and explore Ala Mhigo and.....it's a dungeon.. i know there's Explorer Mode now that lets me hang around at my leisure but it's not the same. though maybe it's for the best it's not an actual zone, or else it would just end up being really small and honestly not super worth liberating
even kept the typo. risky joke to make
"Active Time Maneuvers" are this game's version of QTEs that act like they're anything more than QTEs. they make a big fuss about it when it happens like whoa here it comes ok get ready..! then it's just clicking a single button on the screen a few times, or the UI would have you think but i'm actually able to just slam the keyboard because any input counts
it also hides the chat window when it does this
i forgot how ridiculous the final boss is. Zenos, who has beaten me twice already, combined with Shinryu, who Papalymo sacrificed himself just to conceal and we had to awaken an ancient megarobot to subdue. but against all odds i continue to be the main character so sucks to be them in the end. choosing to believe that regular dude people are terrible at figuring out how to use their Primal Powers which is how i'm always able to beat them. but it's still canon that i beat him alongside "seven of my fellow adventurers". who were those adventurers? don't know, who cares also
the fact that you are the main character is what a lot of people say they like about FFXIV's story over other MMOs rather than just being a nameless adventurer but iunno i'm not huge on it. there were multiple self-referential jokes made this expansion about how i just happened to know several other equally-powerful Not Warriors of Light who also had the Echo to help me out in battle. video game logic sure but it's a toss-up whether the game acknowledges that i fought a boss with others or if canonically i was alone
Stormblood was good. its biggest issue is that it comes between Heavensward and Shadowbringers. i've almost exclusively criticized it on here but that's only because i'm too online-poisoned to know how to focus on the positives when it comes to anything. rest assured i do enjoy this story i'm putting 200+ hours into replaying for no rewards
one last complaint though: Lyse didn't deserve top billing. she goes from being the dumb comic relief character Yda to, surprise! actually not the "Yda" you didn't even know in the first place because you didn't play 1.0. most people's reponse to her reveal was probably just "oh so her name is Lyse and not Yda ok". then suddenly she's a central figure for the liberation of her people she's had little connection to the past twenty years. and all she really does is go to different villages and complain about how no one wants to get themselves killed. it shoulda been M'naago where is she on my title screen
we were Ascian-free for an entire expansion, and it was nice. but i need to get to Shadowbringers quickly so i can start to care about these guys again because the second he appeared after the credits i let out a sigh
i really need to get to Shadowbringers quickly. Fordola is a way more interesting villain than Zenos in my opinion but a lot of the dialogue surrounding her in the patch quests (mostly from Lyse) makes me want to tear my eyes out. we've murdered hundreds of random imperials during quests by this point i would like to mention
and once again it should've been M'naago on my title screen
as i get closer to catching back up to where i was before i'll likely be focusing more on specific story moments on here. said it before but it's probably safe to assume that if anyone did happen to stumble upon my website and chose to read up to this point, they would likely also be FFXIV players so i don't have to be like "ok so this guy's backstory is that--[half a page later] and that's why it's messed up that he said this one line". and if you don't play FFXIV did you know there's a free trial that goes up to level 70 with no restrictions on playtime and includes the critically-acclaimed first expansion Heavensward and also Stormblood. also join my FC i wanna buy a house
aside from that i'm still making progress on tribe reputations every day (went back to delete the word 'beast' there, still getting used to being not racist). the Heavensward ones continue to be a major slog but apparently they get better in Stormblood. all i can say for sure is they've made me like the Namazu after them being exclusively kickable so far so that's a good sign
