oh man. okay so i did the tank questline and decided i probably didn't need to do the others just yet, so i could carry on with the main story for now. thankfully i found a page online that showed each quest in as much detail as i was looking for, so i could get past this awkward no man's land of not having New Game+ unlocked. not too keen on watching G'raha showering some other random person with the praise he'd been reserving exclusively for me thus far but no matter

reeeally wishing there was a way to replay story fights now, because there was one where i played as Estinien that i didn't get to do!!! i mean i did get to do it four years ago but i didn't remember doing it. i didn't remember a single thing past the main Shadowbringers story, so after 5.0 i was effectively in charted-but-i'd-forgotten-all-the-charts territory

it made sense that things seemed so unfamiliar when 5.1 went into a kinda nothing arc regarding the Chais and Eulmore. though there was also an entire dungeon called the Grand Cosmos, which when i looked ahead and saw the name of i thought, did we go into freaking space again and i forgot all about it. but it was actually just a big mansion. it was nice to be able to simply skim through a video of it, because running story dungeons with NPCs was starting to take 30+ minutes each. they don't use they damn AoEs

5.2 and i was caught back up. oh my god i caught back up to where i was before. for the first time in years i did a main story quest and was rewarded for it, a cool 1/300th of a level of exp. 5.3 was the newest patch back then, so i coulda just trucked along for a few more hours and been caught up with the story. but no i left it on 5.2 and now after 8+ years i've still never been caught up

kinda couldn't believe it. playing the game through to this point was already a gargantuan undertaking, and i did it twice (albeit this time at a higher level and with faster transportation). i think at some point in the past i tried continuing with the story here, not really knowing where i was, hoping it would start coming back to me in time. if so i probably immediately realized just how lost i was, and knew i'd likely have to re-experience the entire story again in some capacity before continuing. it's been fun. this game is really cool i like it

for the first quest of my post-new-game-plus life: scraping off barnacles

and then a dungeon!! and some very large plot revelations!!! everything is so delightfully new. things are getting into some real "recontextualizing the entire game" territory and i'm thinking, damn i really should've trucked along for a few more hours back then. Elidibus going crazy turning everybody into main characters and whatnot

i get a visitor to my room at some ungodly hour and i get to choose who it is from whosever role questlines i've completed, which was surprising. but i'm now learning there's an extra choice if all questlines have been completed, and it's supposedly the super-canon choice involving a supposedly important character. reminded of how both Alisaie and G'raha were relegated to side content in ARR, and now i'm back to wanting to do everything before moving on. Thancred and Ryne are off doing raids and i should probably join them

give a cat a bread

for what i hear is the big big story patch, 5.3 started off pretty light. everyone's a Warrior of Light now (haha starts off pretty light i just got that) and for some reason delivering loaves of bread and helping a little girl pick grapes so she can learn to be an Apothecary of Light doesn't seem like much of the due response to what's just happened. but it's an MMO so i suppose if everyone's a main character now this kind of stuff will be pretty par for the course. Elidibus casts an illusion over the world that instills in everyone the desire to slay three boars

oh i woulda just carried on with the story and not bothered with New Game+ if i knew Elidibus was gonna treat me to a nice lil recap quest :) this and the Heroes' Gauntlet dungeon encompassing different locales and characters of Norvrandt probably hit harder because i spent so long here. four years and i'm finally getting around to leaving this place. i only slacked off for roleplaying purposes i swear, because of how time moves faster here or whatever

don't know why they made G'raha's encrystralling so pixely but i like it, dude out here embodying the DS version of FF3. sorry that i said "i like it" when he's in intense pain for most of this patch because of it

i waited over half an hour for a party to fight Elidibus last night before collapsing on my bed. in this game's efforts to be more solo-friendly it has only made me more impatient when running into things like this. this is the final final boss of Shadowbringers, and we've been fighting random other heroes summoned from other worlds in the same manner we were from the Source, which is also the explanation for the people i fight alongside for this fight so could we not just get some NPC randos

it's like first fantasy!!!!!! what an amazing fight, and i say that despite dying three times to cryptic icons appearing around me. also caused a wipe during a "press a lot of buttons" QTE, once again due to the chat window being active but not visible and all my inputs going in there instead. his final prank

couldn't much handle the Goodbye Quests. again possibly in part due to how long i stalled on this part of the game and remained somewhat familiar with its characters, but i had myself a nice long cry over it. each scene had me dreading the next and they just kept coming. tearing up again as i sift through screenshots while writing this so i need to move on Now

alright i'm dry and i'm normal. i foolishly thought i might reach Endwalker today but i failed to take into account the necessary emotional recovery period. and also the fact i've doomed myself to write at length about everything i play until the end of time (just kidding i enjoy it) (it's a fun doom) (like the video game Doom)

it's probably safe to call this my favorite game. calling something my favorite anything always seemed like more of a deliberate label rather than something indicative of how i actually feel about it, and doubly so for a forevergame like this. i put three times as much time into RuneScape and at no point in my life would i have called it my favorite game. for most of my life the label went to Sonic Adventure 2, then eventually to Yakuza 0 after it also had me bawling like a baby so it could very well just be a kneejerk reaction to that. i don't know i'll give it another 2,000 hours just to be sure

i have no idea what to expect now, which surprises me. i assumed Endwalker would mainly be about Elidibus but i guess not? i know almost nothing aside from zone names and moon. i have remained wholly unspoiled despite frequent lore-related web searches. i've gotten pretty good at squinting the second i see a reddit post in the results with '6.x' in the title. Zenos is still here for whatever reason, but now G'raha is perma-here so that balances it out. man i'm excited!!!