Alright I'mma start off with Bozja.
First some pre-Bozja good vibes, buncha TLS people just chillin' on the beach
(^The Lala on the very right is actually just a rando that saw us sitting there and decided to join lol)
So for a while we were just killing shit in Bozja as you do. At some point I was ranked up enough to go into Castrum Lacus Litore. Except it works like a special critical engagement of sorts where it's on a timer (apparently one hour from beginning of the instance or from the last time a group finished it. Or something)
At some point way past midnight and after a couple of hours of playing it finally appeared.
So here I kinda thought it was just gonna be like an extra boss battle type of thing like most of the critical engagements. Have fun wrecking a cool boss, get some story afterwards easy peasy
OH BOY I was not prepared. It's like a full fuckin double alliance raid with extra cheese. Full on 48 people dungeon with multiple bosses requiring coordination between groups and it's somewhat on the long side or at least it felt like it.
Our party consisted of myself, Lex and uh, no idea who Eric Ghastlyarse is but they're also in the TLS FC
The rest were randos that we picked up, as one is wont to do in Bozja
Straight from the beginning people who were evidently more familiar with how stuff works already were asking whether we're gonna do "top or bot". I briefly pondered whether I just walked into a mass erotic RP session but nay, 'tis boss mechanics.
So during that part shit was still fine. One half killed shit at the bottom, our half took on the top.
The rest of the raid I was just confused and the second boss (was it Adrammelech?) was a giant pain in the arse. Couldn't get a read on the mechanics in real-time whatsoever and just kept dying. Like, a lot. Which is super annoying because in Bozja you lose mettle and it was like, 500+ per death. I literally lost thousands and was afraid I was gonna come out of this with a net negative. Don't know how much mettle you get for a clear but it wasn't a loss at least lol
Most of the others weren't fairing better either as the entire alliance wiped a few times on this if I recall correctly.
To further annoy the piss out of me, apparently one of our team mates decided to mark me with a "target to ignore" marker, the ones that look like this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...tionSign2.svg/1200px-ProhibitionSign2.svg.png
I assume as a way of saying "fuck this guy, don't raise him, he sucks"
Now I never used markers before so I had no idea how to get rid of it either at that point so to add further humiliation I spent the entire duration of Castrum with this sign on my head like a giant, glowing dunce cap.
Very cool, thanks
So dude complained "can we at least try to do mechanics?" and shit and I'm fairly certain I had mentioned earlier I was new to this and I mention it again. Brief explanation from their side, move when x don't move when y and I thought "ok cool got it" except shit still caught me off guard and I realized I still didn't know how to anticipate the attack because by the time you see it it's already too late to do the thing you need to do.
So guy accuses me of not listening to them blahblah at which point the severe tiredness (past 3am at that point), annoyingness of the fight and constantly dying and dudeface in chat just made me snap and I just yell at them in angry German
Somehow we get through this fight but there is another one after and things don't go well here either. I think the entire alliance wiped a few times here as well.
At this point the entire experience was just fucking miserable and I'm more busy huffing and puffing in front of my tv instead playing the damn game
Basically me:
Like I was actually close to throwing my controller lol
I spent the remainder of the fight dead. I didn't even bother accepting raises at that point. Which I guess technically isn't cool to just sit it out but I was in total "fuck everything" mode at this point and just wanted to go to bed and not constantly lose a shitton of mettle and thought I was more useful to everybody dead than alive (which mirrors my occasional mood in real life so my generally shitty mental health comes into play here now as well, unfotunately shit makes me very thin-skinned)
Oh yeah, communication between people at this point also read closer to a fucking twitch chat as well which is decidedly the least thing I want from my immersive Final Fantasy experience
Eventually the fight is won and I just skip all the stupid cutscenes and log out and go to bed
Absolutely garbage experience, whew
I guess one shitty experience after over 500 hours of playing isn't too bad, to try and look at it from the bright side
Moving on to different stuff now.
In jollier news, I chanced upon Alpha again while grinding FATEs for my relic weapon!
This is from the lvl 80 ninja job quest. I'll just leave this without further context
And one from when I was testing explorer mode and its feature to activate limit breaks at will:
Now one thing I'd love to see that is probably too much to ask for is being able to place mobs and/or boss enemies in those dungeons as props for screenshots. Would be a cool update but I doubt that's ever gonna be a thing.
And from the end of patch 5.3:
Warrior of Light is a big boy lol
I mean I get it's mostly for visibility in group content but still.
I'm slightly peeved I had known I'd be fighting the OG WoL for a while now. Got spoiled for me by Youtube thumbnails. >.>
Was a very cool fight though. Been listening to the theme a bunch the past couple of days and the cinematic in the middle of the fight was epic stuff although...can you believe I did not realize the Ascian showing up helping us out was Emet-Selch, despite the super obvious trademark Emet gestures he used? I thought maybe it's Hythlodaeus for whatever reason. Idk I'm stupid maybe?
So one of the things I thought would turn me off the story of XIV in general is the silent player-insert character because it never quite works for me and I just prefer actual characters which obviously doesn't quite work in a game like this.
As mentioned earlier I appreciate the fact they seem to make the player character more expressive and small dialogue choices now pop up almost constantly so at least you character actually speaks with others and you have at least a minor choice in what you're going to say and though it might not have an effect on the story it at least gives you some minor wiggle room for roleplaying your character.
The biggest surprise though was that we're essentially getting a backstory of sorts? With the WoL having the soul of Azem and Azem and Emet-Selch having been friends and all that. Like whoa, that's cool. We are somebody beyond just headcanons! And the canon was in a former life so it doesn't ruin your headcanon either!
Also, that Azem crystal is essentially an in-universe duty finder lol
Elidibus was also constantly talking about duty I'm sensing a pattern here.
Elidibus's end was pretty sad too. Man, I'm getting misty-eyed for Ascians. To think they started out as just generic scheming evil Organization XIII. We have come a long way.
As for G'raha Tia, dude was just very likeable. He almost seemed too good and nice and you'd think it means he a) turns out evil after all or b) they'll kill him off to make you cry
And they definitely played with that. There was that brief moment after Vauthry where he pretends he just used you for reasons I assume because he didn't wanna admit he's really gonna sacrifice himself but funnily enough even the other characters didn't buy it for a second lol
And then in 5.3 it seems like they raise a bunch of death flags with all the emotional speeches that seem like a farewell and all. Didn't really doubt that transfering his soul and putting him back into his young body in the Source would work though. And speaking of farewells I was pretty misty-eyed during the part where you visit all the Scions saying goodbye to the people of the First. It's just that mixture of sadness but also wholesomeness. Runar giving Y'Shtola the flower and asking her not to leave was honestly kind of adorable.
And then everybody finally returning to the Source and G'raha joining the Scions was good vibes, and good and wholesome vibes definitely have a higher chance of making me tear up than sad stuff so teary-eyed I was. And G'raha is such a swell character I'm genuinely glad to have him along for the ride as proper part of the team. And I don't say this often about guys but he's...kind of cute???
It's been a very long time since an FF game made me emotional (I don't count VII Remake because a: unfair advantage due to nostalgia and b: the emotion during the ending was irritated and confused
) and I certainly didn't expect a freakin MMO to be the one to do it.
Like. Everyone kept going on about ShB being so good and blahblah it was honestly almost annoying. With how everyone was raising my expectations surely it would not be possible to meet them, like when Heavensward slightly underwhelmed when it was "just" a 4/5 instead of the 12/5 I had expected from all the praise I read
Probably my own fault for letting my expectations run so high.
But for Shadowbringers?
Between this and how much I had enjoyed FFVII Remake (misgivings about the ending notwithstanding) I feel like I can say this:
but unironically.
And man, what a journey it was getting here. I started playing FFXIV almost exactly 10 months ago. Feels weird to be caught up now. I really enjoyed having a crapload of story content to play through and binge on for literally months. Felt like a neverending video game. Now I have to wait for the next scrap of story bits like everybody else! Now that is just painful. At least 5.5 is less than a month away and I'm pretty excited for the PS5 beta as well.
Actually I'm also looking forward to doing trials and raids when they are a brand-new. I really wanna see what these are like when literally no one knows how the fights work yet and everyone has to figure shit out. Hoping to have some of you TLSers alongside me with everyone being newbies but I don't know how realistic that is gonna be when everyone probably plays through content at a different pace and at different times
So 5.4 is setting stuff up for Endwalker. First of all. Matoya's Relict dungeon. Mahusive porxie boss. CUTE.
Poor thing
Thank god we just tamed it instead of murdering it.
...although...
come to think of it, I bet it would taste really good...
I see people are concerned about the villains because Zenos is back and he has been fairly one-note and the new Ascian seems like, to quote Zepla a "murder hobo" lol
I have faith in the writers though. I'd say give Natsuko Ishikawa a standing ovation but people already have, so.
All these weird towers that popped up throughout the world too! One character mentioned they look Garlean which I find odd because...they totally don't? They look weirdly alien or like something from the void or Mhach or whatever.
I have now finally watched the Endwalker trailer as well and there's more H.R. Giger-esque architecture too. Garlean my ass.
God it's liberating to no longer have to fear spoilers.
I'm finally free and can get excited for new content alongside everybody else
I guess this also means that at long last this thread is finally coming to an end. Thanks to everyone who was interested or cared enough to read my thoughts and impressions for this game~
I'm gonna shut up now.
