everyone always calls him G'raha Tia in full, but no one calls me J'khet Tia. some do call me Master Tia, i.e. Lord Doesn't-Get-Any. i called him just "G'raha" in a cutscene and his ears perked up all bouncy like, so i'd much prefer it if people started omitting the Tia so that this might happen more often

there's a whole heap of fantasy-sciencebabble (which i do like) in the process of finding a cure for primal tempering, and it all culminates in creating some goofy flying medicinal pigs (which i don't). we managed to figure things out pretty quickly for something that has plagued the world for thousands of years. i won't complain because we got yet another crazy-big Matoya-adjacent dungeon out of it, and a lot of G'raha fawning over getting to go on adventures with his hero/boyfriend

i know i keep going back on forth on this. but i've decided, i put off playing Endwalker until i finished replaying the entire freackening game, i can wait a bit longer -- while i re/play all the major questlines first for total story comprehension. on the agenda are Alexander, Warring Triad, Shadow of Mhach, Four Lords, ShB role quests, Eden, Sorrow of Werlyt, and Hildibrand. can't imagine FF Tactics and Nier raids being too important. Eureka and Bozja apparently are but they would delay things an extra couple weeks

in the MSQ after Shadowbringers Gaius comes out and mentions there's a hot new Ultima Weapon in the works, which i assumed would form part of the basis for Endwalker, but that's apparently Sorrow of Werlyt? i didn't even know it was a thing!! didn't know about Four Lords either. why is there so much of game i don't understand it. also i started leveling Summoner instead of Red Mage because i forgot that by getting it to 80 i would by extension have a healer leveled in Scholar, and i wouldn't have to learn greek for Sage

very almost got 3 lines in Wondrous Tails..... i don't think i've ever even gotten 2 lines before. traded it in for a minion worth 400k to sell because i still be thinking about that dream house.. haven't been focusing on it but i've been making money steadily lately. doing hunts has made me rarely have to pay for teleports which makes a huge difference. anyway i had a 1 in 8 chance of making 15m+ here but this tiny catgirl decided i should be homeless instead

finished replaying Alexander and it was stupid. thankfully i was able to solo it all this time around and bypass mechanics which cut down on a lot of the gameplay stupid, but the story stupid remained. i was worried i'd finish it, remember how confused it made me the first time and think i must have been the stupid one. no i just rightfully knew to shut my brain off as soon as i identified time travel nonsense not worth following

i did try to follow it, for a time, and in doing so i was able to confirm it was in fact all nonsense. you know a time travel story is good when even its characters remark on the fact it doesn't make sense. the dumbest part was how often we were face-to-face with the bad guy (a small goblin) and didn't kill him. then at one point we do just shoot him in the head, showing how easy it would've been and how many headaches could've been avoided. well onto the Big Triad

these fights were cool, if i'm to believe video footage of them i saw after the fact. i solo'd them all and apparently skipped big sections because i'm so good and strong with my big bow. Sephirot theme goes crazy dude i'm saying his name. don't know who power guy 9000 is

hate Cait Sith bro he looks so bad in this. i finished the Mhach raids, and i thought i got a lot further in with the questline before than i was, and that i'd have to spend a lotta time watching videos of it. apparently i only ever did the first one! always thought the whole series took place on the Void Ark, despite the first raid being called The Void Ark. but we went to Mhach and it was cool, i was like yooo i read about that place in my big book of fantasy

i probably sound like i'm setting myself up for disappointment by using lore prep as a pretense for playing all this content, but that's only part of it. plus after this questline, everything else on my to-do list will be new to me. i'll read about how there's "a surprise for those who have done X questline and Y raid" and i know it'll end up being two lines of dialogue ok i know. i saw that Warring Triad was particularly relevant, but after playing it through and realizing i already knew most of this background lore, Unukalhai seemed like the only real connecting thread. then i checked his wiki article while squinting, and saw the Endwalker section was three lines long

i'd expect 24-player raids to be more forgiving but i guess not, for some reason they dial up the seemingly-random instadeath mechanics big time. look i know i complain a lot. i would go into it but i have little memory of exactly what and how much i've said already across the one thousand million words i've written about this game, so i don't want to risk sounding like i'm harping on every page. developers have explicitly said the cryptic trial-and-error fights are by-design, so we will just have to agree to disagree on what makes a good video game

anxiety is probably a big part of it. if it were a singleplayer game it wouldn't be a big deal (except in Palace of the Dead where not looking up mechanics beforehand will cause me to lose up to an hour of progress). i realized this, when after a cutscene in one of these raids, i saw that i was the only new player watching it, and the entire alliance was standing there waiting for me. they didn't have to! i'm one little baby DPS, who cares if i get locked out of a boss fight because i wanted to watch a cutscene

it's weird that despite all this, i have an intense desire to learn everything in this game inside and out. maybe it's that on some level i think being good at the fights will make my criticisms seem more valid. moreso it's that my issues boil down to "i don't know it yet"; once i learn how a fight works it's all good. doesn't change those fundamental problems obviously but at least i'll no longer become exasperated and confounded over why i'm suddenly dead on the floor

also i learned that the Mentor Roulette is essentially an everything roulette, and that sounds super appealing to me. i wanna be able to queue for gods-know-what and know what i'm getting into, no matter what it is. this is the only reason i want to become a mentor, which honestly there are too many incentives to becoming a mentor that don't involve actually making an effort to help people. there's apparently a big problem with mentors quitting out when they get an extreme trial in their roulette. but progging those with random sprouts sounds like so much fun? cowards, i'm thinking

Urianger hath exited mine possession at last....i had a dream someone bought this from me then refunded it, and i had to contact Square to get things sorted out. and i think that somehow ended up with me having to fight Sakaguchi

in other news, i got it. a 4 million MGP mount i didn't really want but it was the most expensive one so obviously i had to buy it. i started playing Lord of Verminion every week for this, and i understand why nobody plays Lord of Verminion. yet to dive into mahjong. i learned how to play it so i could 100% a Yakuza game then immediately forgot everything