i did the level 50-70 questlines for Summoner and Scholar. Heavensward Summoner was pretty uninteresting, which is saying something for how much i get to talk to Y'shtola's sister. Stormblood quests had some cool Allagan summoner lore, brought down by this talking book, hopping up and down endlessly, making constant thumping sounds in every cutscene. my god did no one playtest these quests and go hey wait this is kind of annoying as hell

i remembered why i didn't enjoy Scholar. the quests are fine, there's tonberries so generally it's a good time. tonberries in this world are just regular people who got cursed, and the storyline involves trying to find a cure, so hopefully that doesn't go anywhere and they get to stay as lil stabby fish. but gameplay-wise, i don't see myself getting a handle on all these different types of heals man. i complained about Sage starting at level 70 and dropping 15 healing spells on me all at once, but i basically did the same thing with Scholar by leveling it to 70 entirely as a Summoner first

i was hoping since they share the same base class there'd hopefully be some similarities. not at all, in fact there's one skill they share that on Scholar has the exact opposite effect it does on Summoner. eventually whenever there was a solo instance during this questline, i would die on purpose first thing so i could unlock easy mode. but that was mostly because the NPCs just would. not. move out the way of attacks, and they'd build up half a dozen vulnerability stacks. i don't wanna deal with that dude

is that a good idea

the Dawntrail benchmark came out, and originally i wasn't going to bother with it because i assumed it'd be a hassle to get it working on Linux, but i wanted to see how my boy looks with the shiny new graphical update. looks kinda weird! luckily they're giving everyone a free fantasia when the expansion comes out so i can give him some real eyebrows. my computer got a 'very high' rating at 1080p max graphics yeah cool whatever my preferred way of playing is still on medium at 1024x768 with no anti-aliasing. video games should stay in their lane and leave the looking-like-real-life to real life

i'm 25 pages into this thing so i get kinda lazy sometimes. big big game like this, these journal entries are more like the occasional checking-in on what i've been up to, instead of the day-by-day accounts i try (and fail) to do for most other games. i had a reason for bringing this up, i forget what it is but anyway i did Four Lords over the past couple days

i woulda done this questline earlier if i knew it had two new dungeons, and if i knew the questline existed in the first place. was expecting a series of boss fights called Four Lords to be more serious than something where a lot of the screentime is taken up by funny talking animal hijinx. it also provided the very surprising truth behind the big spinning rocket tortoise mount i see every now and then. it was him all this time

this game just can't help itself at every corner can it

fyi when your epic pop culture reference amounts to simply quoting jokes verbatim it actually just becomes plagiarism

the fights themselves were rad. one had a straight-up DDR section. i always wished boss arenas had a little more variety instead of almost always just being a flat circle, and one of these had a part where we were all launched into the air, falling while dodging attacks from below like a Sonic game. it was clear that functionally it was the same flat circle deal as always and it was just a visual trick, but i still thought it was neat

the big bad was just the ARR extreme trial mount scaled up in size, and we ended up defeating him in a cutscene instead of an actual boss fight, which was slightly disappointing. but overall it was a cute story, and now i just have Shadowbringers side content to do before moving on with the MSQ. but first i get Summoner to 80 while trying not to fall asleep from how simple it is. yes that's mainly why i chose it over RDM/BLM. but i'm snoozy snorin over here

i still don't know

wish there were more viable ways to level than running the same dungeons over and over. something about the fact dungeons aren't totally mindless, and that they're the exact same thing each time makes them so much worse to grind than say fates. excited to see what "variant dungeons" are all about and be disappointed by them probably. but anyway i got Summoner and hence Scholar to 80 and could finally do the Shadowbringers role questlines

there's a lotta freakin jobs now. i haven't played many job stories past ARR so i can't speak to whether there was a notable decline in quality as a result, but i would more than understand if that were the case. so just having a questline for each role instead of job is a good idea imo, plus it opens up the possibility of a final "allied" story since it's only a handful of questlines to do, whereas before it'd be way too many jobs to have to level in order to unlock it, and so there wasn't much incentive to play multiple roles

least favorite was probably the ranged story because the guy i gotta tag along with is obnoxious. favorite was healer because of a funny dwarf. i don't know if this was ever established before but apparently dwarves are just lalafells, which makes it very funny that they're a beast tribe in 5.0. and i don't know what the deal is with their beards, why they all have them and brag about them but when a female dwarf takes off their helmet off comes the beard as well. are they all lying or is Square just too cowardly to give a girl a big big beard

thankful that these role quests are not intended to judge my ability at playing said roles, because whenever i have to play Scholar i'm spending half my time hovering over each healing ability to make sure of what it does because they all look the same. also thankful that the big fight of each questline involves playing as one of the Dead Guys of Light and only being given five very simple abilities. i use the attack button to attack and the heal button to heal

so then i unlocked the final story. i didn't know what to make of it at first -- barkeep approaches me, gives me a smug look and goes so you have completed every questline huh... well now i will tell you The Truth. i went into all these thinking they'd just amount to some backstory to make me retroactive-sad about these dead characters. and this finale would be a neat little bow to tie it all up, and maybe give me a new title. oh my god

this is where i feel slightly weird about spoilers. i don't usually shy away from them here because i write this journal for me and myself alone. but this is technically side content that most people probably won't see, and i say "technically" because like the Coils i do not know why it's relegated to side content. The Truth is so intertwined with the old warriors and the flood of light, i'da been a little mad if i finished the rest of the MSQ and found out about this stuff later on. especially because of what happens after this questline....

another questline! and i gotta do the Heavensward extreme trials to unlock it!! ! ?? so THIS is where the Warring Triad and Unukalhai become important. the trials were a lot easier to solo at 90 than i was expecting but i wasn't entirely sure why i had to do them in the end. again some pretty big lore implications here. feeling more and more justified in this pre-Endwalker detour of mine

finished off the Summoner and Scholar stories after that. Summoner followed up on some stuff from the Stormblood MSQ i was left wondering about it, and it kinda made me realize how much i was missing the more grounded stories. Scholar ending was nice and sweet but i'm sad i might not be seeing tonberries anymore

now omw to eden.....