Dawntrail came out yesterday. i could hardly sleep the night before. i was refreshing my launcher constantly. finally it's open. Endwalker title screen. uh oh. maybe it's nothing

it's something. i didn't want to relogin to see if that would fix it because i didn't want an hour-long queue, but eventually my hand was forced. turned out there was something with the custom launcher i use (because i couldn't get the official one working) not being able to accept some new EULA and so it specifically didn't install Dawntrail alongside the new update. everyone's currently praising the unusually smooth launch but what about my experience specifically

so i spent six hours dealing with technical issues culminating with having to redownload the entire game, before i could actually play play it. by the end of that, along with some personal issues i was having i just wasn't feeling like playing it or doing anything at all really. sucks since i basically didn't do anything the day before because i was so excited. all i did yesterday was reconfigure my hud and hotbars, walk around and look at some shiny new graphics. i did check out the Estinien workout scene again like i said

my excitement leveled out over the weekend, now i be taking my time with my cool new game to play. it went back up yesterday for other reasons though -- i ordered a new* CRT monitor that's right baby 4:3 screenshots are coming back don't like them make your own website!!! nice big new graphics update square would be a shame if someone were to intentionally make it look worse

i audibly sighed after the first line with the realization it was going to be a whole expansion of people talking like this, so when he said "just kiddin" it was a massive relief

Tuliyollal is very big and pretty but the music sure was a choice that they made regarding music. upon arriving it's totally frontloaded with exposition, which i'm all for since it's nice to have a kind of "lore reset" and also it's just neat and i'll listen to anything Wuk Lamat tells me. she's essentially Lyse but good (big and fuzzy)

judging purely by level i got about maybe a fifth of the way through the story over the weekend. i won't lie it's been making the post-Endwalker quests a lot more exciting by comparison. we've essentially been going around collecting gym badges (which when Beastmaster gets added will solidify this as The Pokémon Expansion) and usually i'm all for contest arcs but, the trials have been so mundane. i know it's the beginning of a new story arc but does it have to be A Realm Reborn 2 in the fetch quest department as well

saddest "festival" i've ever seen bro. gathering materials to repair this float was the first trial, because it turned out to be a Magic Float that brings a bountiful harvest. like immediately. it starts glowing and all the dying crops transform into big bushy not dying crops, but somehow hardly anyone in the village knew this was its purpose. they're all funny colorful birds though so i'll forgive them for being stupid, plus they didn't even make me fly across a large tedious sea of clouds to dance at someone

if you showed me this screenshot of the next trial i'd think oh cool they kinda made a game out of it that maybe i'll have some agency over. no i'm still only along for the ride while Wuk Lamat makes every decision with no deviation. don't get me wrong i like not being the main character for once but having to accompany someone while they walk around attempting to trade an axe for some herbs has me itching to go kill a god or something

it's all a vessel for developing Wuk Lamat's character which i get. after all the characters she's up against who as of now seem like the villains, are just a couple of dudes my guy could easily squish like bugs. and of course the endgame hub is a crazyfuture sci-fi city so clearly i have no idea about anything that happens. we are also competing against Thancred and Urianger one of if not both of whom i assume will be the final boss

i've been mainly playing Gunbreaker still, because they added two new DPS jobs that everyone is playing so queues have been one thousand hours unless i'm a tank or healer. i thought the fact that all these duties are new and no one knows what the hell is going on would be a good reason for me to tank them with other players instead of NPCs but it turns out i underestimate my own anxiety Enjoy the company of these characters too much

but now i've been able to get my epic birdbow and i am sufficiently birded up with seven (7) birds on and around me at all times -- my owl, chocobo, one on the pants and four on the bow. they fit four birds onto a single bow can you believe this. so obviously i'm now leveling Bard alongside Gunbreaker, it all goes back to the harp baby

the main scenario has started to pick up for me, specifically when Wuk Lamat asked me to hold her hand. i'm at level 94 and G'raha has yet to show up a single time so tell me what choice do i have, i have to cope somehow and she's here for me. being told outright that as it stands she is not fit for the throne, and that what were originally presented as the only stakes for this story are not even really stakes they were fakestakes, was heartening weirdly enough. like oh this story has been real boring so far but at least now i know it's not going the boring place i thought it was going

took a small break to play PSO2 New Genesis and i found out where he went

today i used a Fantasia since i'm now equipped with two free ones, and i made the much-needed change of poofing up my tail. everytime i saw it it just looked pathetic, like a sad rope drooping from my rear end. no more. i also softened up my face somewhat. this game's graphical update is now complete

currently about halfway through Dawntrail and we've already made my catwife queen so i was wondering where exactly we had to go from here. playing an RPG that historically has had the custom-made player as the focus, then suddenly not being it anymore is such an interesting idea in theory. i'd almost call it avant-garde if the rest of the story up to this point lived up to it. i'm starting to wish the game did a better job of interweaving gameplay with story so it'd have the chance to emphasize it, instead of it being the same-old save for a single segment where i got to play as Wuk Lamat

everyone's being mean to my new dawnwife online but imo the hate should be directed towards this guy. every cutscene he's in has the exact same bit where he freaks out then he's told to not freak out and then he's normal. they're putting Hildibrand-level attempts at humor into my main scenario and i'm not down with it no sir

so we arrived in Catboy Texas with its location names that i will never be able to discern when selecting from my teleports list, and after some developments i think, this is getting suspiciously Amh Araeng Trolley Problem-esque. then we meet with these guys and i couldn't believe it. my character has a flashback to the First's equivalent of this very group, confirming that we are in fact, doing the most boring part of Shadowbringers again but with a train instead. i was starting to get a little drunk by this point because honestly i wanted to inflate my interest in the game to get through it faster, and nothing that was happening seemed important to remember anyway

then suddenly it was. i swear it's like they knew people would be complaining about how low-stakes the story is at this point and decided, surprise! now there's all the stakes. one half of me is very excited and the other half worried, because what in the hells is going on. i feel that a boring story is still better than a dumb one, and i can't help but think that when a giant fleet of sci-fi alien robot dudes appears out of literally nowhere and starts gunning down everyone in the streets, it might be leaning more towards that dumb side