zephie's game journals
i completed Eden yesterday. i was hoping for one raid series that didn't take place inside a singularity hell machine. instead it was like Omega again but instead of taking bosses from other FFs it took bosses from FFXIV. i'm actually quite a big fan of FFXIV, i have a website where all i do is write about it check it out at website dot com, so i assumed i'd have a good time with these raids. but i was pretty immediately having not that great a time
i try, i really do try to guess figure out what the hell is going on during fights. and at this point it's just stubbornness, because deep down i want to believe this game is at least smart enough to realize that boss fights, where my screwing up can mean death for other players, should be the slightest bit intuitive. there are a few fights in the game where a little message will show up to actually give a hint on what i'm supposed to do with this icon above my head that i've never seen before. the rest will just kill me instead. it actually makes me feel like i'm going crazy
years ago i would always watch a guide before i did any kind of group content for the first time. and i hated having to spoil everything for myself, especially since as the game progresses fights start having more story moments baked into them. after one particularly confounding boss experience yesterday, i looked up a guide for the fight i'd just done out of sheer curiosity, and after now knowing what to do it actually seemed like fun. made me realize that going in blind just isn't worth it if not knowing what's going on is going to make it horribly unfun anyway, so i started looking at guides beforehand again
i missed Cid, and to a lesser extent Nero, and to a much greater extent Alpha. i was looking forward to a more main-story-relevant raid series. and it was, it's just that its own story was kinda dumb. i'm usually all for Urianger's long-winded fantasytechnobabble, i like things seeming like they make sense. but here i was genuinely wondering if at any point i was supposed to be going ohhh good idea, yeah that's true woww. no i was just nodding along in agreement
the story events themselves aren't confusing, i just felt like i was being taken on a ride, where X thing would suddenly happen "because aether and/or ascians". i'm starting to see why the Encyclopedia Eorzea volume that covers Shadowbringers took years to come out, because they were probably sat with their heads in their hands trying to explain things in ways that make sense and don't sound stupid. got me making a list of wiki articles to read through before playing Endwalker, in case of any of this stuff that sounds like they're just making it up as they go along is actually super important
i always wondered who this was. i saw key art for a Shadowbringers patch on social media a few years ago that had her and Ryne holding hands, which had people (including the official account for whatever reason) acting woozy wacky over it. it turns out she's the only character in the game designed by Nomura and it extremely shows. as it went on i started wondering if he had his mitts on Eden's writing as well to some capacity, and i'm reading that he apparently had nothing to do with the story but i simply don't believe that. i'm sorry but this is kingdom hearts to me
i got distracted in the middle of writing about Eden yesterday, by Sorrow of Werlyt. sorry don't have time anymore to talk about how bad a character i thought Gaia was, instead i'm talking about how good i thought this questline was. i can't believe a storyline called 'Sorrow of Werlyt' ended up being such a bummer
i'm glad i'm now in my "looking up fights beforehand" era so they didn't drag down my enjoyment of the quests as a whole. dance routines are fun when i actually know the dance. i still die because i'm bad at this game and all others but at least now i can tell why. these went pretty heavy on the mid-fight cutscenes though and it still kinda sucks having my first experience involve someone's voice on top of everything going "ok so after this scene where this character dies you're gonna wanna stand over here and--"
it was three new duties and one solo instance where i got to pilot a big gundam, and i kinda wish it was more fun honestly. i get it when i'm suddenly playing as another character with no warning, but there was a whole tutorial section beforehand that was longer than the fight itself so i woulda been cool with having a few more things to do with it. i suppose it is more than most non-mecha games do when they introduce an is-mecha section. reminded me of the very mechanically-simple eikon fights in XVI, which apparently were what inspired this section
i love being Somewhere. Terncliff!! i'm too used to these sidequest-exclusive zones being little indoor hangars or whatever. this is a whole little place and there's a Triple Triad NPC dude. sorry Gaius i'll continue killing your kids in a bit i gotta go play cards in case this place is annoying to get back to
again i feel weird mentioning spoilers for non-MSQ content even though i don't write this with the expectation that anyone will find it let alone read it. i'll add some kinda toggle to hide certain parts. at some point. maybe. i don't know i've been real busy playing this video game
Valens might be the scariest villain in the game. usually i would think, it's not hard to make a character so hateable and comically evil, but i've come to realize real life is actually full of villains like that so it's fine. pretty much every scene with him had me desperately wishing side content could get some voice acting, which i know is a big ask for a game that's voiced in four languages. but man having total silence aside from sound effects i felt really brought a couple parts down when they could've been amazing
but let me talk about a thing i really didn't like. M'naago shows up and the name above her dialogue box is question marks
there's no way dude. this game likes to occasionally quiz me on "remember this minor character from a couple quests from 150 hours ago?" but M'naago??? was one of my favorite characters in Stormblood and i maxed out my reputation with her for deliveries, but sure give me the option to not remember who she is. i am irrationally mad about this. it's naago dude!!!!!!!!!
ending had me tearing up a lil and i'd appreciate if this game would stop doing this. this was definitely my favorite questline in the game, which i wasn't expecting out of something i was mostly doing to fill out my unlocking of duties. good thing i'm getting a much-needed tonal change with the final thing on my pre-Endwalker agenda, the funny monocle man quests. don't tell FFXIV players this but i've hardly done any of them so far
on the side i've been getting notified for big boss fates alongside hunt marks, since i found out a lot of them reward exclusive minions and mounts. they don't go down easy!!! not like hunts where we just whack the thing for a few seconds and then it's that 999 more times, they're like trials that take dozens of players 10+ minutes to complete. and thankfully i only have to do them three or four times to unlock every reward, so i don't reach a point where i get a notification for them and groan like i do for hunts