on a journey to find some magic stone that does something probably i don't know it feels like there've been seven different Stones already. we reached this big demon wall boss which slowly pushes us across a narrow path so we have limited time to take it down before we get squishened. before the battle Vaan says we should decide whether to fight or run away, so of course i'm over here thinking yeah i can barely get it down to a third of its health before going splat but i'm gonna keep at it. what if i get something good from it and i can't fight it again later

had me experimenting with gambits finally, but eventually i resorted to a fat grinding sesh. also did a few hunts, none of which were worth the time. it still wasn't enough, but then i found out about "quickenings" which are like limit breaks? i don't know i unlocked some and tried them out and i didn't understand how they worked, then i read a wiki article on them and i still didn't understand how they worked. and it still wasn't nearly close to almost enough to knock in this wall, so i said whatever i'll just bail. hope it's not as difficult

oh. we were getting squished against this door we could easily go through. then in the next room i'm fighting the same wall again but it's way easier now, and turns out neither version drops anything. well at least my guys' numbers are all bigger now

so Vossler was in my party as a guest all this time, and i thought he would end up being the final party member proper since he took up the last icon slot. but then he turns around and en gardes at us!! and after i got him all those levels man. well he had to die since he made us lose our big stone that was important probably. do you know how much time we spent doing things we didn't need to do to get that dude. it's fine though because in the next cutscene everything explodes and the stone magically floats back to us

currently at Jahara, Vosslerless party check-in. 15 hours might be a lot for where i'm at but blame it on my insistence on knowing every NPC's life story and Pointless Grindquest 2025. also for a while i felt a little weird about using the speedup function, to the point where i actually disabled the L1 binding in my emulator (resulting in a few menu annoyances) and just turned up battle speed instead. i remembered the reason i don't like using fast forward in emulators is i worry it'll make me impatient. plus i was like i sacrificed DPS for those unique Balthier/Fran animations so i am going to look at them

got over that though. sure it being "in the game" doesn't mean much when newer FF ports have megacheats mapped to buttons that are super easy to press by accident, but it's not like it matters when 95% of battles in this game are essentially on auto mode anyway because of gambits. plus at least the music doesn't speed up as well god. i did a chain of sidequests that involved running back and forth long distances between two towns so i'm definitely team speedup now. i hit L1 zoom towards a group of red dots on my minimap and watch my guys mow down everything in three seconds, and this can be gaming if we so choose. if we will it in our hearts

a long time ago i had a desire to play every Final Fantasy strictly in order so i would have a better idea of the evolution of the series and its recurring elements. but playing this one, specifically when i reached the viera village which, among many other things from this game also straight up exists in XIV, i realized the other way round works just fine. i can point at something and say oh this is what that was from. in fact it's probably better this way because then i'm not just a small child flipping out over fanservice

i watched a video recapping the plot up to where i'm at because i'm stupid as hell and keep losing track of characters (deciding to blame this on my habit of drinking while i play), and am i way further into this game than i thought. it amounted to like two thirds of the video. i'm hoping whoever made it just ends up saying things like "and then after a bunch of things happened," or else i fear a large portion of this game's playtime will be grindtime

i have reached a point where i can afford to ride a large bird whenever i so please, though at first it seemed like it was mostly made redundant by the speedup button. they can also bypass enemy encounters but again those are over within seconds thanks to the other party members i left behind as i dashed on ahead at 100mph. not that i really need a reason to want to hang around a big bird but i'm only given a limited amount of time with them, and now they are simply a means to access hidden paths

i've been sticking with a party of Vaan, Basch and Ashe and leaving the others by the wayside, until i reached a zone with a lot of flying enemies, the air around whom they can't do much but whack fruitlessly with their shortbaby weapons. so i had to bring out the ranged gang for a while and get them up to speed. going on another grindfest i've come to wonder how down with the gambit system i really am. like it's cool that i can customize it (even if i never have to) but did i get owned into thinking it was good here just because they called it "gambit" instead of "auto-battle"

sure the alternative is manually selecting "attack" against trash mobs 80% of the time but i still think that might be better than running around playing Extra Steps Vampire Survivors. i have read a few times that all the combat that requires brain function is relegated to endgame hunts so i guess i'll just bear with it for now. a lot of other parts of the game are very cool and i like them a lot and i hope i come to re-like this part too

another part i like: my little pixelguy achievement room. you're telling me we, as a society, transitioned to boring standardized "points" when we could have had this the whole time. livid to learn that upon release of the remaster they removed this in favor of the playstation trophy system. no one knows anything about how to make video games

there's a lot of directions to go out in the world and i often wonder if i'm going the right one, then a cutscene triggers and i sigh in relief a little. it's sometimes nice when after a long loredump the story then becomes "spend the next few hours traversing the plains to obtain the thing". it's an RPG gotta have reasons to go places and kill things, and i do be killing things. those hours spent traversing plains would ordinarily be minutes if every red dot on my minimap was not like a magnet for me. sic em boys

on our way to Archades after killing a guy who killed a guy we didn't want killed. Ashe must wield the Sword of Kings, and with it bring an end to the Dusk Shard (that was dialogue from a cutscene yeah baby it's final fantasy). i am often running into things i can't tell whether are mandatory, and after looking it up there is not as much missable stuff as i thought. some, and enough to bother me regardless, but less than i thought and of which i was planning to live in blissful ignorance for the rest of my days

oh uhhh

talking to every NPC has finally owned me. after speaking with everyone i came across in Archades i was then told i need to speak with everyone in Archades. i have to collect these "chops" by gathering, information? good boy points? a lot of poor people down in the slums before were grumbling about "gah.. if only i had the right Information.." and i can't quite grasp what planet i'm on. i gotta hear about one topic from one person then talk about it with another specific person who talks about something vaguely related. and i can only remember one topic at a time due to me being a weird alien from the short-term memory planet