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#shadowbringers was completionist

pangolinheart · 9 months

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FFXIVWrite 2023 DAY 7 - NOISOME (MAKE-UP)

Z'rhiki comes back from a hard day on the first, reeking, and indulges in some stream-of-consciousness musings on one of her many insecurities.

Rating: General Genre: Introspection, fluff Characters: Z'rhiki Irhi (Warrior of Light) Words: 1,287 Content Warnings: None

Z’rhiki’s pack hit the floor with a dull thump. Even without it, her shoulders felt heavy. Another long day. Well, technically the same long day, depending on where in Norvrandt you were. The sun still never set over Kholusia. She felt damp and grimy all over – her sweat had seeped into the cloth base of her armor, which now clung awkwardly to her skin.

At least the Master of Suites had been kind enough to prepare a hot bath for her.

As she reached under one arm to loosen one of her pauldrons, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her reflection’s shoulders rose as she heaved a sigh. She looked awful. Her armor was splattered with mud, blood, and the uncomfortably viscous white goo spewed by Ahm Arang’s lightwarden. It mingled with dust in her hair, leaving it matted and sticking up awkwardly in some places, while plastered to her head in others. Dirt had dulled the polished metal of her sabatons to a matte gray.

Even beyond all of the filth, she looked tired. Haggard. She’d never been strikingly beautiful, but with the tug of the dark circles under her eyes and the oily layer of dried sweat coating her skin she looked...

She rubbed furiously at her face to at least try and wipe away the freckles of dried blood.

The heavy armor she wore certainly did nothing to help matters, and she continued to fumble with her pauldron, though her mounting frustration only served to make her fingers slip. After a considerable struggle she was finally divested of it and moved to work on its counterpart. She had never liked heavy armor. Even the most flattering armor she could find was uncomfortable and unwieldy. Beyond the fact that it was heavy, hot, and trapped in body odor (which she was sure she would get a noseful of when she finally got the damned stuff off), with her short stature it made her look square, boxy and, if she was being honest, a little ridiculous. The huge decorative pauldrons that seemed to adorn every design came halfway to her cheekbones so that she looked like a child wearing an ill-fitting costume. The cuirass obscured her form and always seemed slightly too wide, and the sabatons and grieves were always crafted a bit too long.

She could almost hear the voices of countless companions chiding her - reminding her that how armor looked was of vanishing concern compared to how it functioned, and that someone whose fighting style tbrought them within the reach of the enemy could scarce afford to forgo protection.

heir echo in her ears only served to make her mood cloudier.

Maybe she needed to learn a new fighting style - something fast and light like Alisaie’s rapier, or elegant and magical like Y’shtola’s magic. At least something that didn’t involve becoming splattered with blood and viscera. She’d considered it before, even sometimes wished she’d endured the pervasive anti-miqo'te sentiments of Gridania’s Archer's Guild and taken up the bow. But these days leaving behind her greatsword made her feel... lonely, somehow.

She reached behind her to unclasp and unlace the hard leather portions of her chest piece but paused, scowling at the red brick walls. She really hoped that the Crystal Exarch wasn’t watching, as Ardbert had implied he occasionally did. At least the phantom Warrior of Light had the decency to make himself scarce while she slept or bathed. Her faith that the Exarch would show such respect for her privacy, however, was limited. She’d thought about bathing elsewhere, perhaps in a public bath, but decided that if he could spy on her in her inn room using the powers of the Occular, he could probably spy on her anywhere in the Crystarium. Oh well. It wasn’t like he actually saw her when he looked at her anyway. He probably the vision of a statuesque valkyrie, serious and dignified. The thought almost made her laugh.

She wondered if anyone would ever build a statue of her. It was probably vain to consider, but it seemed like the sort of thing people did with heroes. If they did, she thought, it probably wouldn’t look anything like her, and she couldn’t tell if that made her happy or sad. At least she would be taller. That was heartening. Hells, they would probably just carve a helmet on it so that everyone could maintain their personal imaginings of the Warrior of Light’s beatific face.

Resigning herself to the potential that she was being secretly observed, she continued undressing, dropping each piece she removed unceremoniously onto the floor. She would take care of it later, when she felt less disgusting. As she had expected, the more armor she peeled away the stronger the smell of her own sweat became, mingling with the scent of old blood and dap leather. She wrinkled her nose, glad that she had asked Feo Ul to bring her a bottle of her favorite scented soap before they had ascended to the position of Titania.

Her reflection was a little less depressing free of armor, but not much. She still looked grimy, exhausted, and haunted. To be fair, she was all of those things, she just wished she didn’t look it.

Her mind drifted back to when she was a child, listening to Rakoko’s fairy tales and imagining herself being invited to some fancy gathering, like a masquerade. She loved imagining what type of dress or fancy jacket she would wear, how she would style her hair. Looking at herself now, it was hard to imagine anyone inviting inside their house, let alone to a party.

Then the fond memories of childhood were replaced by decidedly less fond memories of Magnai Oronir.

"The woman I seek is of the dusk ─ a gentle, ethereal maiden. A dancer in the morning mist. You are a warrior of the Steppe ─ fierce and brutal, conquerors of magicked stone and steel. Ethereal you are not.”

Just thinking about it made her tail puff up with annoyance. She made a mental note to devote some time later to thinking up ways to torment Magnai the next time she saw him.

He’s right, though.

She shook her head as if to clear the thought from it.

She was invited to things – celebrations, dances, banquets with foreign dignitaries – but always in her capacity as the Warrior of Light. Most people wanted to show her off to friends and rivals, preferably in gleaming armor, standing stoically for people to admire. No one asked her there so they could dance or laugh or share a drink, and consequently such affairs ended up being unbearably dull. She often stood silently, listening to Alphinaud charm the nobles or diplomats with his eloquence and idealism while she desperately fought back the urge to cause trouble or to get drunk and embarrass herself.

Not exactly like Rakoko’s stories.

She shook her head and tore her eyes away from the mirror. She was just tired – she only ever thought like this when she was tired. What she needed was a warm bath, a hot meal, and a soft bed. Everything would look a little brighter in the morning. Now free from the confines of her armor and undergarments, she lowered herself into the wooden tub that had been brought in, making sure her back was to the mirror. Almost immediately, she felt a bit better. Her muscles began to uncoil themselves and it was easier to relax. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to feel the grime dissipating. She let the steam from the water bathe her face, breathed in the scent of her favorite soap, and slowly began to feel a bit more like herself.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #shadowbringers spoilers #rhiki tag #auggie writes #this one isn't one of my favorites but i'm a completionist so i'm putting it here anyway

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d05-72314 · 11 months

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so in ff14 i have a character on aether dc with which i lean more towards the completionist side of things. i use him a lot compared to my original character on primal, which i use for the first-time msq experience.

however, during the first-time grind to cap all crafter/gatherer in shadowbringers i lost immense patience and never picked up fisher (i am notoriously not a fan of fishing in videogames. toxic trait, i am aware.) and i have kept it that way as sort of a bit/genuine lack of enthusiasm.

i have been a consistent raider of about 5 years now, but a lot of stuff both ingame and irl has worn me down, leading me to finally give it a rest on the final endwalker tier. this predictably lead to a lot of boredom. and so:

tomorrow... the end of an era...

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sparklecryptid · 2 years

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ffxiv: also i am 2/5 on maxing the arr beast tribes! I was honestly just trying to get it to the materia reward levels so I didn't have to get all of my materia through spiritbond. and then my completionist obsession hit...oops.

Congrats!!! I…. *checks* allegedly have some beast tribes maxed? I do not know which ones. I think it’s the (spoiler) from shadowbringers. I think.

My brain is zero percent completionist. I am simply vibing my way through the game

#ffxiv anon

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redwhitebreeze · 3 years

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I mean i get it because I also get sentimental but I find a bit dumb people going "This is my big goodbye to Shadowbringers" when none of the content it brings is gonna go anywhere, eventually Endwalker hype is gonna die out a bit and people will find their way back to the Crystarium and to John Fantasy. I know for a fact that I'm gonna go back to it when I finish the EW msq. There's so much in Shadowbringers and unless you're one of those crazy completionists you still have stuff to do there.

#A bit of a dumb rant I know but needed to get it out

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schalaasha · 4 years

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Favourite Games of 2019

I don’t like making ranked lists anymore. So here’s a bunch of games old and new I played in 2019 because I was busy catching up due to not playing FFXIV as much as in previous years.

Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1: For You, The Replaceable Ones

I think going in, and even starting to play it, I felt like maybe the game would abandon the WTC mystery game conventions. It ended up not doing that, because the game leaves you with far more questions than answers at the end. The A3W World (“after World War III”) is still trying to deal with political issues and social issues that existed prior to World War III. A global stalemate exists due to the military implementation of the Gauntlet weapon. Eventually things happen where different countries need to deal with a shortage of resources, territorial conflicts, etc which sets off a chain reaction to World War IV. However, the children who grew up in the A3W era, settled into new ideologies and views of how society currently works are at odds with what the older generation wants and requires of them. Along the way, they need to deal with other groups and conspiracies in order to maintain the Walls of Peace.

So in essence, R07 still crafts a mystery for readers to figure out, but it isn’t a murder mystery. It’s an international conspiracy mystery and I am more than okay with that. I think this chapter required a lot of worldbuilding to set that kind of story up and coming out of Phase 1, I understood why the first chapter wasn’t exactly like Umineko’s. I thought that it was handled well, despite some of the purple prose (but if you’ve played a R07 game before, you’re likely used to it). I also thought he really tried to introduce and incorporate themes including gender, generational differences, societal tiers, geopolitics disguised as sports events (possibly mirroring the 2020 Olympics in Japan), etc. as well as he could throughout the story through the game’s cast. Even if the game meanders a bit (and it definitely feels that way towards the start), when it actually starts to roll, I felt compelled to keep reading.

And truly, the game has an incredibly large cast of characters. The TIPS section handles introductions well, and while some cast members don’t have as much time in the spotlight as others, I can see them getting their time eventually in subsequent chapters. Clearly Phase 1 exists to focus more on the children from the Arctic Ocean Union (the “AOU”) as evidenced by the additional stories unlocked at the end of the game so hopefully other chapters have the same amount of character backstory for the other factions. I also genuinely enjoyed that the big international cast of characters allowed for many different types of designs with characters with different types of hairstyles and hair texture or characters wearing hijabs and still managed to make them retain adorableness or a sense of style. I do not recall seeing it as often in Japanese media and I’m very happy to see it here.

I think Ciconia Phase 1 is a very good start to this subseries’ planned four episodes and I hope to see more sociopolitical commentary. It feels as though R07 looked at everything happening in Japan and social media/how news is consumed and decided to write a four-part SFF series about it. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I backed Bloodstained when it got put on Kickstarter a few years ago. It was shipped to me at… possibly the worst time since Shadowbringers was coming out very shortly after. My fiancé and I played ours for a short bit, felt very positive about the game, then dropped it to play Shadowbringers. We didn’t return to it until maybe September/October? Both of us ended up getting our Platinum Trophies for it so we both played through everything the game had to offer.

Bloodstained is a good experience, but not without its issues. I played on PS4 and I’ve had a few outright crashes or some glitching into walls early enough that I couldn’t come out of them again due to not having the required skill to try to get out of it. I also felt like the game meandered or had a bit of padding in its earlier stages). Later on, you realise you have to put in the farming work to have a better and faster time not unlike its Igavania counterparts, but I did feel like the drop rates prior to actually working towards higher luck stats/drop shards were low enough almost to the point of unfair or deliberately wasting my time. I also felt as though there were too many weapon types; with adequate shard use and shard grinding eventually you can settle into one weapon type that suits your playstyle or eventually use the gun for everything when you get the special hat quest reward).

However, I’m speaking about this game as someone who platinumed it which requires a lot of farming and synthesis. As a player going through the main campaign, I think the maps are adequate. The backgrounds are very lovingly crafted, and the music is absolutely one of the best of the year. Boss design is also fun and rewarding, requiring the player to learn how all the different weapon types work, adequate backstepping and closing in, and boss patterns. If you suck, the game will show you that you suck very quickly and deliberately. Essentially towards the end, I felt as though Bloodstained tried very hard to cater to fans of the metroidvania style of game, and the classicvania style of game. I personally don’t think it completely succeeded but for a first time experience of trying to combine the two into one, it did its job with preparation for another game.

I also feel like some criticism was lobbed towards the game’s narrative for being told in library/book entries, and while I understand that (I actually couldn’t open all of the books for fear of my game crashing), I don’t think elaborate cutscenes and continuous dialogue would work well with this game’s flow. Bloodstained prioritizes gameplay elements and player exploration over anything else, and to be honest, I’d rather it happen that way than with long elaborate cutscenes. I also felt as though I got more out of the game because I’d played the 8-bit prequel as well.

Overall, Bloodstained is a passable experience. I’m glad I played it, and I’m glad I put the work in to try to make the game a better experience. I got what I wanted out of the game for as much as I backed it and I hope they try again with a similar formula because this is a very good first step.

The Touryst

Sometimes when I see a game with voxel graphics, I feel pretty compelled to pick it up because it looks so darn lovingly rendered and it usually ends up being fun. The Touryst does a good job with its graphical style and visiting new islands is a complete delight because of it. It looks like a game with style, and performs super-well on the Switch. It’s also one of the freshest games I’ve played in a while.

Basically you’re playing a blocky dude with a moustache who just wants to have a good time but when he gets to TOWA Monument, he’s told he has to find monument cores to unlock the world’s secrets. And then you can do whatever you want. The different islands have their own little personalities: there’s an island called Fijy which is volcanic, there’s Ybiza with a bunch of dudes chilling on the beach and passed out on their chairs, there’s Santoryn which is just Greece, and a few other places that are essentially recreations of real-world places.

As you explore, there’s a lot of stuff to do. A variety of things to do. There are puzzles and mechanics that don’t necessarily overstay their welcome, you can play footy, you can play spelunker, you can take helicopter rides, you can take pictures, get stuff for a museum, surf, play rhythm games…. It’s your vacation, do what you want. It’s a little like Vegas. Unlike Vegas, you can use your ever-increasing money and diamonds to get new moves for your moustached character to reach new objects.

As a little game where you can do whatever you want little by little, and makes for a smooth experience, I’m glad I picked up the Touryst after asking another person what they thought of it. It has great puzzles, lots of stuff to do and explore and see, and ton of minigames for whatever mood you feel like you’re in. The game is fairly short, but I’m very glad the holiday doesn’t overstay its welcome.

A Short Hike

A Short Hike places you in the shoes of a bird who is utterly determined to walk to the top of Hawk Peak to get signal for her phone. I totally understand; sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.

But the game allows you to undertake that journey however you want to. You can go right away and finish up and get that darn signal. Or you can take your time and we’ll build that bridge when we get there. There are different types of terrains to explore if you opt to take the scenic route… and it’s rewarding to do so. You can find treasure, you can water a flower, you can talk to the Animal Crossing-esque characters to do some sidequests, you can do whatever you want.

I’m sorry to say that when the game introduced fishing, I spent a lot of my time doing that. Fishing ruins me. The completionist in me wanted to fish. But the whole thing is that you don’t have to do any of this. If you want to finish the game, you can absolutely positively focus on that and the game doesn’t pressure you for it.

And that’s one of the things I like about it. It’s just whatever about the whole ordeal. I don’t feel like I’m completely and utterly missing out if I don’t decide to do something. Even the task of getting Golden Feathers to progress is fine since you only need eight for it, and the game easily gives you enough rewards to get four or five before sidequests or exploration is factored in.

Sometimes you just need to take a walk and kind of think of nothing just to clear your head. And A Short Hike accomplishes that very well.

Worldend Syndrome

In my effort to try to find other games to play in 2019 because I’d fallen a little out of love with FFXIV, I realised that taking baby steps with visual novels and bite-sized games would be the best idea to try to get back into traditional games (particularly since I was, and am, still questioning whether I like games as a hobby or not). On a whim, I decided to download a boatload of visual novel demos one night and tried a bunch of them out. Worldend Syndrome’s demo didn’t exactly grab me until perhaps halfway through the demo when I a) realised that this demo was long af, and b) nothing appeared what it had seemed as I kept going through it and the characters were enjoyable.

So I decided to get the game and dragged my fiancé along for the ride. It’s one of those standard decision-making/pick which girl you want and go down her route VNs but it didn’t really feel skeezy or ecchi other than one particular point in each girl’s story where you get confessed to. You go through the VN as an unnamed protagonist who is visiting his cousin over the summer, and you and your friends get dragged into a school club whose focus revolves around folklore. The town the protagonist finds himself in is haunted by the Yomibito, spirits of the undead who look exactly like regular people but are eventually driven mad enough to kill.

One of the things that drew me to this visual novel was its assortment of animated backgrounds. They colourful and gorgeous. Every CG looks nice and coloured well, and the backgrounds for each area you visit are so beautiful and makes every single location easy to settle into. The cast is also surprisingly decent, where I expected to hate a few people but I ended up being okay with them because they were written well and weren’t as tropey as I had expected. I was also very pleased that the character that you were roleplaying as wasn’t skeezy when put into situations where he could have been, and that he treated the girls very well (though I won’t deny that there are some spots where behaviour was questionable but it doesn’t happen as often). Because the characters were written adequately enough, the game’s true ending route comes together very well and very naturally to a point where I could seriously believe that every character got along with one another to make sure the emotional impact of the mystery was satisfying.

In order to finish Worldend Syndrome, you have to do each route. A few characters’ routes don’t get unlocked until halfway through the game or even until the very end. The game also remembers everything you’ve done when it autosaves the system data on the world map, so if you need to reload a save to figure out someone’s schedule or if you mess up, it’s relatively easy to come back to something you’ve missed. I’ve played a lot of multiple route VNs before and Worldend Syndrome is easily one of the better VNs that allows the player to skip through to something they’ve missed or skip through previously-viewed text for another route.

As it is, Worldend Syndrome doesn’t really try to do anything spectacular, nor does it try to stand out like other visual novels of 2019 have (ie: Ciconia, presumably AI but I only tried the demo and I hated parts of the script, sorry). It does its job and tells its story which has a very good payoff in the end.

Judgement

I bought my fiancé Judgement earlier this year, as I had retired from playing Ryu ga Gotoku after Dead Souls/Ishin, and he was still playing the series religiously. I watched him play through part of it and I felt compelled to get my own copy because the combat looked nice, and the characters were compelling enough that I felt comfortable picking it up.

Judgement follows former lawyer Takayuki Yagami who is now a detective. His tale is one of redemption and conspiracies, reminiscent of some Phoenix Wright games (which this game gives clever nods to when the protagonist is in the courtroom). Yagami is more serious and down-to-earth than Kiryu is so the tone of the game feels quite different than other RGG games (or at least the ones I’ve played).

It still feels like a regular RGG game where you’re still wandering through Kamurocho, you’re still getting into fights with randos and Yakuza dudes, you date girls, you go to buy food, you play minigames, etc. But it isn’t as big as a standard RGG game; because you stay only in the one area, the cast is smaller, you get a job board to get your sidequests from, and the story itself is fairly short and sweet. I actually prefer that as a lapsed RGG player since it’s easier to get back into the games this way.

Judgement, however, disappointed me just a little in how little you spend in the courtroom. You’re given opportunities to present evidence, do some suspect tailing, use your smartphone to catch a cheating husband, or use a drone to search for evidence. I felt like when you had to use the drone to search for evidence, it ruined the pacing a little. The tailing missions are also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, and no that isn’t a good thing! Due to this, I felt like Judgement was not necessarily a great detective game but it did a decent job of trying to mold the RGG experience to a different main character.

Yagami can… fight… for some reason so he can beat up whatever randos come up to him on the streets. He’s actually more acrobatic than I remember Kiryu being in previous RGG games. He can kick off objects, he’s hard to back into a corner, he can do wall-flips, etc. It’s also much easier to earn XP where it’s all in one bar so you can do whatever you want to fill it up like play darts and just put stuff into his lockpicking. As a lapsed fan, the streamlining feels okay. The streamlining for combat also feels good because if you fights go on too long, the popo can come for you and you’d get fined, so emphasis is on finishing fights cleanly and quickly.

Overall, as a lapsed RGG fan, the way Judgement looks and feels and wraps up its twists and turns was really exciting for me. It may not have as many things to do as other RGG games, but honestly I think being a leaner experience was better and thus didn’t make the game overstay its welcome. I also am eagerly awaiting RGG7 since I enjoyed the demo a lot and I think the new protagonist can carry the series the way Yagami carried Judgement.

Cadence of Hyrule

Sometimes, after my fiancé and I bought our Switch, I’d wake up, go brush my teeth, and return to bed just to see my fiancé awake and playing Cadence of Hyrule. I was perplexed as it’s been ages since he’d willingly played a Zelda game, and his hands are super-huge for the joycons so he doesn’t like using them much.

You can easily say that Cadence of Hyrule is just a Crypt of the Necrodancer reskin with Zelda stuff all over it, but feels pretty clever in that it uses stuff from roguelikes and a rhythm game and makes the A Link to the Past world feel incredibly fresh. Bosses, especially, feel very fresh. Enemies move according to the rhythm and have a unique pattern that’s easily memorized so you can fall into the rhythm and take advantage of. If you’ve played Necrodancer, you’ll probably feel at home in this aspect, especially since the maps are also randomised (which leads different playthroughs feeling fresh).

The Zelda feels comes from recreating tunes from older Zelda games in puzzles, the magnificent sprite art, the great Zelda remixes, a simple-enough story, and a standard set of things to find in each procedurally generated dungeon. You also find a variety of traditional items like the bow, the bombs, boomerang… and a spear? It’s a nice blend of Zelda and Necrodancer.

The caveat is that it takes a little getting used to, since you’re not exactly used to not being able to freely move in a Zelda game. But when you do get used to it, it feels good. Everything is pretty expendable and if you die, you don’t feel like you necessarily lose a lot since you can accrue it all easily enough again. It’s unpredictable and that random roguelike nature is something that makes the Zelda experience feel fresh.

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark

My fiancé and I were trying to find spooky games to play for Halloween that wouldn’t make me squeamish because despite my profession dealing with analysis of body parts and human body fluids, I can’t see that kind of stuff on TV or in games in a realistic sense. It grosses me out. At least when it’s in front of me, it’s already out and off someone’s body and in a fume hood/biosafety cabinet and I didn’t have to see how it happened. My fiancé picked up Spirit Hunter: Death Mark on a sale we went through it together.

Death Mark is a tale about horror-themed urban legends and a curse that needs to be broken. People get marked with a crimson bite mark in the game’s H City and they eventually develop amnesia and die. A group of people live and gather at a spirit medium’s mansion (who is dead upon arrival). The only hint to break the curse in this mansion is a little talking doll named Mary. The protagonist eventually goes through several mysteries in an effort to break his curse and stop others from dying.

Death Mark does some surprisingly well-crafted worldbuilding. Each spirit you deal with has a well-told backstory, sometimes especially ghoulish (particularly the bonus post-game episode, the first episode, and the one episode with the telephone booth). The game excels with psychological horror and the enemies involved in each boss battle assist in making the player feel that way as well. The backgrounds also lend well to this as while they are simplistic, the shading and colours used help to execute a sense of dread. One particular chapter harkens back to Japan’s Aokigahara, and the backgrounds used connect very well to that particular location so that it feels super-eerie.

Regardless, Death Mark relies a lot on its text to establish its atmosphere and as someone who reads stuff like R07 VNs and other regular VNs with a lot of text, I was okay with that. The localization was well-done, albeit with some issues that would have been caught in editing but overall it carried the story very well.

There are boss battles prior to the end of each chapter, where you must use each item you find in your exploration segments. You need to use specific items in a specific order (even with the correct party setup) in order to achieve a good ending for that particular chapter (and thus eventually the game). I thought this was an interesting mechanic and while it got a little tired depending on the spirit, it showcased how creepy some of them can be on your screen.

Unfortunately, Death Mark does not have a variety for its soundtrack and it’s almost disappointing that the same piano tunes and boss themes played repeatedly as I felt it detracted from the experience.

Otherwise, I felt like Death Mark was a short and sweet horror experience that played into urban legends and folklore experiences. I loved the little vignettes that eventually ramped up to a central story point. I hope the sequel is good when we get around to it.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

So my fiancé and I are doing this thing where we’ve started buying one copy of a game so we’d both own it together and go through it together. Sekiro and Man of Medan were two of those games this year.

Sekiro isn’t really like Souls. Eventually you’ll come to learn that very quickly when the game throws a boss at you and if you try to play like Souls, you’re not going to get the job done. It will show you that you never learned how to parry properly and you’re going to have to go back and learn it. Or if you didn’t grab a prosthetic that will make the job easier, you’re gonna have to do that too.

The game is interesting in that you aren’t exactly whittling down health bars all the time; you’re striking properly so you can overwhelm their posture bars, find an opening, and go in for the kill. Enemy health bars are essentially secondary to that posture bar. You have your own posture bar so you’ve got to learn how to parry properly. Sometimes you need to parry complete combos in order to deliver posture damage back to an enemy. It’s all about getting into the flow and rhythm of combat. And you must beat bosses in order for you to get a stat boost, so being able to beat a boss lies in your skill, and not necessarily your level/equipment.

Sekiro is Souls-like in its storytelling and worldbuilding. You can run around rooftops and areas to find secrets off the beaten path. You go back and forth between areas and speak to different NPCs to find out their backstories. The plot is also told via NPC conversations with the main characters. At first it’s a little dry but the story opens up eventually. It also has some great voiced NPCs for quests (one quest in particular had voicework that made me feel so sorry for the character that I was like “we need to get the proper item for this guy please don’t make him suffer”).

It feels rewarding to put in the work in order to beat the bosses, make it so you don’t resurrect as often to make people sick, and meet whatever standard Sekiro is throwing at you. It lets the player know that they’ve met that standard, and then throws another boss phase at them so you have to get even better.

Owl I’m looking at you.

Super Kirby Clash

My fiancé and I bought a Switch together this year (which, outside of dinner and movies and clothes, etc. was one of our major purchases together). We downloaded a few demos to try the control scheme out, including Super Kirby Clash. I am aware that this game is probably old, but hey it’s still going and it’s still being supported and I’m catching up.

I’m probably putting it here due to bias, but I think It’s really cute and the hats are super-adorable. I love getting new hats and new weapons for my little Kirby. It’s fairly standard as far as a “mobile experience” is concerned and playing it a little when I have the time to and hacking away at it little by little is rewarding when I get a new hat or new gear. My fiancé and I played it in multiplayer as well, which felt a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

It’s pretty inoffensive and I haven’t paid real-life money for anything in it, and I still feel like I’m progressing. So as a Kirby game with light RPG elements (ie: something I’ve wanted for years and years), it’s nice to finally see realised.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

An artist I commission very often from convinced me to move this game further up in queue than I originally had it when we were talking about games we were playing after finishing Shadowbringers’ main campaign.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the spiritual successor inspired by Wonder Boy III, with the formula being modernized for a new era. It feels fast, and it looks soooooooo pretty. The tracks are bumpin’ too. It’s also a little tough but with every difficult section successfully platformed through, you feel really good about it.

You play as a plucky boy named Jin whose uncle is an insano who turns everyone in the kingdom into animals. After you experience sweet freedom as a human boy platforming across things easily for like 15 minutes, Jin’s uncle turns him into a pig. Whoops. From there the platforming gets a little harder and you need to learn how to manipulate different forms and different spells in order to get across various sections.

Different animal forms give you different skills. Pig form allows you to sniff out secrets literally, snake form lets you cling to walls and go through tiny passages, frog has a sticky tongue for swinging, and lion form lets you go through obstacles. You need to use these forms well to platform well enough to get through each area and finish the game. Being successful at platforming in this game feels good and fulfilling and satisfying. As you unlock more, platforming experiences get more and more complex with more obstacles put in your way, so in essence it feels like the opposite of a standard metroidvania. Playing both Bloodstained and this in one year felt like playing polar opposites. That said, the checkpointing in Monster Boy is really good. Game Atelier knew what they were doing.

The bosses by contrast were really easy and it’s nice to take the time to look at the art for each boss. All of the effects are also super-nice. Playing Monster Boy on a 4K TV is quite a visual treat for its boss sections, its town section, and its platforming sections. The colours are off-the-charts. Each animal sprite has its own set of unique animations: the piggy farts and looks like >_>, froggy looking at flies, etc. And the music is so good. If this game were a 2019 game I’d definitely put its soundtrack on my list, but it isn’t. It’s a nice blend of new and old stuff and it’s a delight to hear in-context as encouragement to keep going when you fail a platforming section.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a faithful representation and homage of the old Wonder Boy games. It’s filled with references and secrets and awesome art, and I’m glad to have been convinced to move it up my queue for this year.

Most Disappointing Game: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s brought me closer to so many people in recent years and I’ve met so many more through it. Playing this game means so much to me and I want the best for it for years to come. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical about it. If I hated this game, I would stop playing and honestly, I wouldn’t care about its future. I will say this before getting started: I like Shadowbringers’ story so far (we aren’t going to be finished with its story until 5.3). I don’t think It’s necessarily as consistent as Heavensward, but I think Shadowbringers’ story is the most Final Fantasy story we’ve gotten since perhaps FF10. Truly, it’s the best we’ve seen for the series this decade.

I had a lot of hopes and hype for Shadowbringers. I hated Stormblood, for a myriad of reasons: social reasons, gameplay reasons, and narrative reasons. The direction Shadowbringers was going and all the trailers made it seem like it was going to be fresh and exciting and new. My fiancé and I (and a few others) swapped servers+data centers in advance of the expansion for a fresh start, to boot. I watched the Job Actions trailer over and over and tried to decide what I was going to eventually main and gear up because I didn’t really have a main in Stormblood due to the combat changes and how easy things became for certain things.

During a live letter, they mentioned that they’re changing how things work in battle, and that’s when I became a little cautious. I was hoping for the best leading up to release and then I saw the scholar/healer changes and got very worried. I changed mains in Stormblood because playing Scholar was freaking horrible at the start of Stormblood.

I eventually had to change mains at the start of Shadowbringers because I was not having fun playing Scholar. For people who didn’t bother to level a healer at all, the writing was on the wall for healers during Stormblood. Essentially, it introduced an age of healing where you barely ever used your GCDs to heal. You mostly used OGCDs and preplanned shields. 90% of the time if you wanted to be a good healer, you’d mostly DPS. I don’t think I’ve cast a GCD heal at all in SB and ShB content unless things were going super-wrong.

The healing changes introduced in Shadowbringers made us think that things were going to change, that things were going to be harder to heal. I had my doubts, however, because all fights are scripted and if they were to introduce a substantial change to incoming damage, they would have to make it so most people (casual, midcore, hardcore, less experienced newbies, experienced folks) would be used to It and could handle it. There was no way they were going to introduce more difficulty given that subscription numbers were increasing.

And so, healers during Shadowbringers got some damage skills taken away, but in their place, they were given more tools to heal with:

- White Mage came away from this as a very well-rounded healer at launch. It had its damage spells, it had a damage spell with a stun, it finally had long-standing and easily useable mitigation, it has substantial MP recovery, and it has a damage spell that rewards you for using three GCD heals to make up for damage lost. White Mage still making out like a bandit in 5.1.

- Scholar felt dramatically different and didn’t feel as solid as it used to be. It had most of its damage tools taken away, the usefulness of its fairy was decreased because let’s be honest it was super-overpowered, it got one of its fairies and its AoE esuna taken away, and it was given its PvP move to act as an AoE that doesn’t have another effect. I had to completely unlearn everything I did as scholar in the last 5-6 years in order to play current scholar. Current 5.1 scholar is overpowered as heck and I don’t feel as satisfied to play it in SB/ShB content.

- AST LOL. All the cards are balance. MP regen is what. Heals are what. Everything is just what. Other fun skills were removed. That said, I really like AST just because it feels like I have to work twice as hard to achieve the same effect the other healers bring to the table.

So eventually with all of these changes, we had assumed that healing was going to be harder. It wasn’t. It’s the same experience and all we’re doing is pressing one single button all the time. I barely have to heal in dungeons. I barely have to heal in raid unless my party members step in stupid. I just can’t bring myself to play healer every single day anymore, and I love healing in this game. Or I loved it back when it was more dynamic. I just press one button over and over and over and over and over and maybe sometimes another but I just press one button a lot. It’s really sad and it makes me miss old Cleric Stance of all things.

I like Shadowbringers’ story. I felt rewarded playing through it as someone who’s played the game for years and did everything when it was in-content. So for me, it was like a good reunion. There were a lot of points where the story dragged or felt rocky. I felt like the start of the 5.0 campaign was utterly boring and poorly paced. It picked up again, then slowed down again, then picked up again, then got REALLY BAD, then picked up again for a good finish. I don’t think it’s as consistent as Heavensward’s 3.0 campaign, but it was very solid and made up for the 4.0 campaign.

However, story is only 20% of the experience for me. The rest of the time, I need to actually play the game. I actually liked the levelling and crafting changes and new skills they brought in during 5.0 because leveling a crafter never felt easier. I felt like I still had to work hard but the payoff came quickly and my macros still worked as well as they did from during Stormblood. I also used my Stormblood melds and Stormblood equipment for the entire levelling experience and had to make concessions for some of my macros as time went on. I still had to know what my skills did, basically. The 5.1 crafting/gathering changes kind of make me want to craft less since I don’t feel like I have to solve a puzzle anymore and to be honest, everyone crafts now so you make far less money than you previously did. The desynth changes also made it so that most of my markets tanked since what’s the point of gathering half the materials when desynth makes those materials easily accessible. I’m not saying to gatekeep at all, but I feel like the experience should have been a little harder (ie: like the Ixali experience where you had to learn what your skills did or desynth shouldn’t be this easy to keep the market fairly balanced). My server is a crafting server so I am more impacted in general from this. That said, I don’t have anything to spend gil on so it doesn’t matter, I guess. I just feel far less inclined to participate in what was one of my favourite pastimes in XIV.

I mained Ninja which got killed in 5.0. I was already dealing with the servers moving from East Coast to West Coast, so adding a bunch of stuff to squeeze into your TA window in 10 seconds in Shadowbringers utterly killed the job for me. 5.1 Ninja throws me off as someone who played this game since the time Ninja was introduced, and I can’t make myself play it. The current opener is the Doton opener (which is something I didn’t like in SB at all) and I can’t always rely on my tank to bring the thing to my Doton. That, and making it so you do different things per every other or every third TA just makes the job a little unpalatable for me at 80. I’m one of those people who wants TA to go. I don’t like that Ninja’s become the TA bot in recent years. I can still do well with it. People still throw buffs at me, but I don’t find enjoyment in the job anymore and I hope we get a proper retool in 6.0.

I switched back to ranged. Thankfully Bard hasn’t changed as much since SB (though I still prefer HW Bard like a weirdo), and Dancer is one of those “I worked too damn long today and I just wanna do the mindless brainless rotation” jobs. I miss old Machinist oddly enough. It felt really good when you played it well and pulled off a decent wildfire. Now it’s a little easier and I don’t feel as fulfilled playing it. That said, it’s probably the best incarnation of the job since it’s sad little introduction in 3.0.

Even tanking is substantially easier and that’s a mostly good thing. It sucked going into a low level dungeon and having trouble keeping aggro due to the level syncing and your DPS’ stats. Now you can just turn your stance on and go to town without losing any damage potency like you used to. I kind of miss swapping stances after I’ve established aggro though, because you could tell the difference between a good tank and a bad/less practiced tank if they didn’t bother to swap stances in a fight. Tanks came out of this expansion very balanced, though. They might need some work here and there (warrior I’m looking at you), but overall, they came out the best out of the three roles.

Other than that, you have monks not knowing what they should be, samurai continuously getting buffed and nerfed, black mage staying consistent, red mage being lol, summoner getting changed to the point where now it’s overpowered, among other DPS changes. DPS overall don’t have as much synergy so you can take any job you want to into raid and it’ll get the job done. That said if you want to do as much damage as possible, you’re generally going to take the same few classes into the raid if you’re less educated about them. And I feel like the lack of synergy or utility between classes or even the loss of something like mana shift makes the whole experience a little boring. It’s very “f you, I got mine” or the onus is on the player for their own personal burdens and no one’s really helping each other unless you’re a dancer, trick attack bot, dragoon or bard.

I really hope the other pieces of content are substantial but what I’ve seen aren’t exactly what I had in mind. Boss refights with an alternate version is really neat but I didn’t really want that for this raid tier. I wanted something more original given what we had to deal with in Omega. I don’t really care for the Nier Automata crossover because, again, I wanted something original to the XIV lore and the First. I think doubling down on Blue Mage is a bad idea and while some folks like its party-based content now, I can’t bring myself to keep doing the content given that it’s clear they don’t know what to do with it (or didn’t know what to do with it). With one dungeon coming per patch I have to question what’s happening internally or what they’re working on. I know SE is weird internally and I really hope that the kind of stuff I’ve read in previous postmortem articles isn’t happening.

Either way, I’m really disappointed that I want to stop playing XIV so much when it’s the most popular among my friends and followers because it’s so dissatisfying to me and it’s the most accessible that it’s ever been. I hope things get better eventually but going by what I think they have in store and their old reliable formula, I don’t have hope. I’m tired of the formula and I feel like it needs a shakeup. Overall, I’ve been less happy playing FFXIV than I’ve ever been and it makes me feel really sad.

#goty 2019 #ciconia when they cry #bloodstained #the touryst #a short hike #worldend syndrome #judgment #cadence of hyrule #spirit hunter death mark #sekiro #super kirby clash #shadowbringers

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louderthanthedj · 5 years

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Long Character Survey - Hope Gallant

Get ready for a whole post about my god damn fuckin seLF

Below the cut

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Hope Gallant

NICKNAME: None

AGE: 22

BIRTHDAY: 20th Sun of the 6th Astral Moon (November 19th)

ETHNIC GROUP: White

NATIONALITY: I would say Gridanian because current affiliations but she wasn’t born there

LANGUAGE(S): English, with my own accent despite the European accents FFXIV defaults to

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Asexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Demi-romantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Taken

CLASS: Economic? Middle. FFXIV battle class? White Mage

HOMETOWN / AREA: Mor Dhona

CURRENT HOME: Technically Mor Dhona, but has spent the last four months on Norvrandt. Obviously

PROFESSION: White Mage, Scion

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: White/Purple (Still not sure if it’s naturally white or glamoured)

EYES: Violet

NOSE: Small, straight

FACE: Round, chubby

LIPS: Full, terribly chapped/scarred

COMPLEXION: Pale

BLEMISHES: N/A

SCARS: Chewed up/Picked apart lips

TATTOOS: None

HEIGHT: 5′1″

WEIGHT: 200 lbs

BUILD: Short, stocky, chubby

FEATURES: Beauty mark under lips

ALLERGIES: None

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Short with long bangs, artificially straightened. Bangs always cover right eye, generally also cover the left

USUAL FACE LOOK: Never wears makeup. Sometimes wears dark lipstick

USUAL CLOTHING: Hoods, soft jackets/sweatshirts, leather jackets/boots, tight pants

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR(S): Bug monsters. Fucking hates fighting wamouracampas

ASPIRATION(S): uh

POSITIVE TRAITS: Excitable, friendly, empathetic, funny (?), determined

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reclusive, possessive, impulsive, moody, lazy/unfit

ZODIAC: Scorpio

TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic

SOUL TYPE(S): Performer, Spiritualist

ANIMALS: Chinchillas, cats

VICE HABIT(S): Sweet-tooth, glutton, constantly sleepy

FAITH: The Twelve

GHOSTS?: Yes

AFTERLIFE?: Fuckin better be

REINCARNATION?: Hopefully not

ALIENS?: Yes

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: WOULD SURE AS HELL BE LEFTIST

ECONOMIC PREFERENCE: Eat the rich

SOCIO POLITICAL POSITION: Take a guess

EDUCATION LEVEL: FFXIV equivalent of finished college

FAMILY.

FATHER: N/A

MOTHER: N/A

SIBLINGS: N/A

EXTENDED FAMILY: N/A

NAME MEANING(S): N/A

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: N/A

((Hi, I have NONE of this as a concrete as she is a self insert and the name is an homage to a past Final Fantasy character and a bassist respectively))

FAVORITES.

BOOK: Not creative enough to think of a lore-friendly answer, but doesn’t read for fun

MOVIE PLAY: See above, but LOVES theater

5 SONGS: ((I’ll link my class playlist when I make that post))

DEITY: Rhalgr, Nophica

HOLIDAY: All Saint’s Wake

MONTH: November/6th Astral Moon

SEASON: Autumn

PLACE: Lakeland

WEATHER: Sunny and brisk

SOUND: Heavy music, gentle breezes

SCENT(S): Lavender and Tea

TASTE(S): Chocolate and savory spice

FEEL(S): Leather jackets, warm blankets

ANIMAL(S): Chinchillas, cats

NUMBER: 6

COLORS: Purple, Black, White

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Singing. Singing singing singing okay this is my one fucking thing

BAD AT: Physical exertion

TURN ONS: Kindness, empathy, communication (the explicit turn on y’all literally all already know)

TURN OFFS: Right-wing, untempered haughtiness

HOBBIES: Singing, going for walks, napping, sketching, ???

TROPES: Don’t know the specific name but that one punk/goth girl in a media friend group, usually paired with the weak/warmhearted nerd or comic relief

AESTHETIC TAGS: Gothic, witchy, punk, autumn, hooded figures, scythes, leather boots

FC INFO.

MAIN FC(S): Myself

ALT FC(S): Myself

OLDER FC(S): Myself

YOUNGER FC(S): Myself

VOICE CLAIM(S): My dAMN FUCkin self

GENDERBENT FC(S): eh

MUN QUESTIONS.

((Where my answers get short))

Q1: IF YOU COULD WRITE YOUR CHARACTER YOUR WAY IN THEIR OWN MOVIE, WHAT WOULD IT BE CALLED, WHAT STYLE WOULD IT BE FILMED IN, AND WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?:

God listen FFXIV is already perfect, add in me fucking up shit with purple magic and my scythe, and romantic/comfortable couple content constantly with Alphinaud and I’m made

Q2: WHAT WOULD THEIR SOUNDTRACK / SCORE SOUND LIKE?:

Non-lore friendly: Punk music. I post a lot of theme song bullshit and I have a whole playlist of songs that correspond to each battle class

Lore friendly: Think Skyrim and Vindsvept on Youtube, very VERY different from punk music but like. Help me find lore friendly punk music?

Q3: WHY DID YOU START WRITING THIS CHARACTER?:

I don’t write her

Q4: WHAT FIRST ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?:

She’s me

Q5: DESCRIBE THE BIGGEST THING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR MUSE:

Uhhhh I mean lore wise she’s really incapable as an all rounder due to her physical lacking despite being a completionist. She’s also explosive and tries to learn from her mistakes but doesn’t and absolutely doesn’t deserve the friendship she has

At least I don’t think I do. I don’t know why all of you take such an interest in me and support my ship with Alphinaud or why he’d even like me in the first place so I guess despite all of my self growth over the past three years I’ve still got an inferiority complex. She’s very grateful though.

Q6: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON WITH YOUR MUSE?:

She’s me

Q7: HOW DOES YOUR MUSE FEEL ABOUT YOU?:

She’s me

Q8: WHAT CHARACTERS DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE INTERESTING INTERACTIONS WITH?

Aside from the obvious, I like to imagine Hope’s at least a bit more sociable than me, or able to actually get herself out as the story would kinda be a bit impossible if she wasn’t active. With that, she spends an interesting amount of time with class quest characters, especially antics with Sanson and Guydelot, and visits with Alka Zolka

Despite how pissed I am with him over shadowbringers I would really like to think her and Thancred spend a lot of time together just for company’s sake. Same with Arenvald but maybe a bit more close considering their much more similar ages.

She got very attached to Ardbert during their shadowbringers interactions. That was definitely something she had to mourn, and still does, despite absolutely knowing his ending was entirely fitting

Q9: WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION TO WRITE YOUR MUSE?:

I don’t write her

Q10: HOW LONG DID THIS TAKE YOU TO COMPLETE?:

An hour, maybe. These are fast for me cause my answers aren’t in depth, I’m just reminding ya’ll all about myself. Except for the temperament stuff. Those I had to go retake or re look up cause I forgot

I got tagged by noone but @pugsleybro showed me @spotofmummery‘s post and encouraged me to do it so he’d have to and I want to see his

So I tag @pugsleybro, @rhymingteelookatme, and @amandafullmetal

#my wol #ffxiv

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zaggitz · 4 years

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My Games of the Year 2019

2019! Pretty dang good year personally, pretty dang garbage globally. Semi decent in terms of games? I feel like there were some hot bangers but they were all pretty spread out and far between. It probably doesn’t help that I worked a LOT this year, which means I ended up playing I think the least amount of new games in this year since I started making these lists. 2020 looks to have an even slower start but I know there’s new consoles on the way, E3 is gonna be a wild ride y’all.

As previously stated, I did not play a lot of games this year, but the ones I did I think were pretty good.

First off, I figured I’d list my games of the year for the past decade(links to the respective lists provided onnce I started doing them.): 2010: Super Mario Galaxy 2 2011: Dark Souls 2012: La-Mulana 2013: Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2014: Bayonetta 2 2015: Trails in the Sky SC 2016: Trails of Cold Steel 2 2017: Trails in the Sky The 3rd 2018: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age And now 2019:

10. Pokemon Sword It's that classic Pokemon formula only streamlined to take merely half the time(and half the Pokemon oops!!) In all honesty I really enjoyed my time with this game and the fact that it tried to be as tight as possible and didn’t waste your time felt really refreshing. I just wish it had a meatier postgame. I don’t mind the reduced dex but the lack of legendaries to hunt really sucked any wanting to play more out of me after seeing the credits.

9. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening It's that classic weird Zelda game, only prettier and with even better music. The touched and fixes to the gameplay alongside the amazing atmosphere provided by the new graphics and revamped sound track make this the definitive version of a true classic.

8. Resident Evil 2

Mr X is literally the scariest thing I've had to deal with in a game in years and I twitch uncontrollably whenever i hear loud footsteps heading my way in real life now. I still need to sneak back in and do a second playthrough before RE3make hits next year(????fuck yes????)

7. Devil May Cry 5

It only took like 15 years but we finally got a new genuine Devil May Cry game and its the best one yet??? It capped off a lot of the plot threads from 4 and felt like a complete game with tons of love put into it and I'm so glad Capcom is having this renaissance the past couple of years if this kind of stuff is what we have to look forward to.

6. Judgement Fantastic spinoff to the Yakuza games, same great setting, amazing new cast of characters. Probably would have been higher on the list if it didn't give me cat noise ptsd from having to find all the hidden cats during investigations.

5. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Score another win for people getting to revive genres/series they used to be huge players in. Playing this game feels like being pulled right back into the mid 00s and I mean that in the best way possible.

It oozes so much mechanical personality out of every poor, the soundtrack rules and it scratches that 100% completionist itch the way only a true IGAvania can.

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses I only played Blue Lions but this is already my favorite fire emblem I've ever played. There's basically not a single character I didn't like and I found the Blue Lions plot to be extremely emotionally gripping and satisfying overall.

The exploration of its themes of ptsd, growing up in war times, racism, classism and all the social struggles that come with these things is second to none when it comes to this series, and I can’t wait to dive back in for another playthrough soon.

3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice This game fucking rules as hard as it is hard. I love From Soft's version of feudal Japan and I really hope they get some dlc or a sequel to flesh some of their ideas out because they are super fascinating.

I try to be very thoughtful about why I like the games I like but man this game is just plain old rad and fun and hard and some guy cuts a portal to hell out of his neck and you fight his super powered grandpa after he climbs out of the portal. It’s a good video game.

2. Trails of Cold Steel 3 Basically any other year this would have been my go to number one contender. I love this game and this series to bits but i think it spends a little too much time backpedaling on its payoffs in order to keep all the reveals for the final act which, while incredible, is pretty exhausting by the time you get there.

New Class VII are some of my fave characters in the series, Ash and Altina especially. I really loved them pulling back plot threads like Hamel that have been simmering in the background for almost two decades now. The music as always is fucking incredible. By the end of the game it truly feels like the beginning of a culmination for so many years of built up plotlines and then oops it cuts to black.

Well, I guess I’m really looking forward to CS4 then!!

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers I always enjoyed this game in the past mostly as a side game to kill time but the beauty of having a game run this long means that it has just as much time to get you invested in its world and its characters. The fact that this expansion starts by taking all of that away and throwing you and your band of misfit allies into completely uncharted territory, devoid of all resources and external allies, is just the faintest tease at how spectacularly bold this expansion is.

Despite the fact that this game takes place in a whole new world mostly divorced from the main political arcs established so far, it goes maybe the furthest in terms of huge metaplot shattering and affecting reveals. By the end of this game I sympathized and understood the villains of this game in a way I never imagine I would be able to.

The character writing is superb, the menagerie of side characters you’ve come to know over the past three games finally get a chance to shine as they are stranded in the strange alternate universe mirror of the main game. Before this game I liked one or two of the Scions quite a bit but found the rest of the team to be pretty forgettable. By the end of Shadowbringers each and everyone one of them stand as some of my favorites in any jrpg I’ve ever played.

The villain of this expansion is just straight up the best most well written, sympathetic and relate-able foe from any FF game so far. Hell, even outside of Final Fantasy I have trouble thinking of another villain who I shed legit tears for when they finally passed on.

The game’s music is incredible and otherwordly, the changes they made to the classes (that I play) were all rad and Ardbert is my Husband of the Year all Years.

I’ve always played this game pretty casually without massive investment but I'm here for the long haul after this expansion.

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ramajmedia · 5 years

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Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Announced for Switch

Xenoblade Chronicles is coming to Nintendo Switch as a Definitive Edition release, with a launch date targeting sometime in 2020. Xenoblade Chronicles follows the adventures of Shulk and Fiora as they explore a massive JRPG open world, unraveling a mystery that blends questions about nature, technology, and the human spirit together to arrive at some truly interesting conclusions.

Xenoblade Chronicles originally released in 2010 on the Wii, but was notoriously difficult to get a hold of for anyone in North America, as the game released in Europe a year after its Japanese release but took even longer to arrive on North American shores. This was especially surprising because of the game's critical reception - Xenoblade Chronicles was one of the most widely-praised releases on the Wii, garnering several perfect scores from outlets while providing a brand new platform for the Xeno games to reach new audiences. The game was such a success that it would eventually spawn a sequel in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which released for the Switch to the same kind of critical acclaim while avoiding the location launch troubles that plagued its predecessor.

Related: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Review - Perfect Dark(ness)

Now, fans will get another chance to experience one of the most underplayed great JRPGs of its generation when Xenoblade Chronicles arrives on Switch in 2020. The game will be released as Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, but there is nothing else known about it currently apart from glimpses at what it will look like from its reveal trailer courtesy of Nintendo. It's unclear what improvements, if any, will be made to the game, which will be a decade old by the time it releases on Switch. Shulk, perhaps better known to many Switch owners as one of the many characters in the Super Smash Bros. series, will reprise his role as protagonist alongside Fiora.

youtube

Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition for the Switch is a smart way to keep fans interested in the Xenoblade series while developer MONOLITHSOFT hasn't announced a new instalment yet. The game is legendary for being one of the best games barely anyone in the West played, and the 3DS port in 2014 did little to fix that. With so many people fond of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and eager for more content, it will almost be like MONOLITHSOFT released a brand-new prequel.

Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition won't have to do much to garner interest from fans of the JRPG genre, but new gameplay modes, features, or content will go a long way in luring back people who have already completed the game. That will be especially important because the other quality Xenoblade Chronicles is known for apart from its near-perfect gameplay is its hefty length, with a 70 hour average playthrough and a completionist time of over double that. Anything to make the second experience different will be appreciated by fans, and could set up Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition as a sleeper hit for 2020 despite being an older game.

Next: Overwatch is Officially (And Finally) Coming to Nintendo Switch

Source: Nintendo/YouTube

source https://screenrant.com/xenoblade-chronicles-definitive-edition-switch-2020-release-date/

#screenrant

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blustersquall · 5 years

Note

For the FF14 ask questions 1 through to 9.

Thanks Nonny~

1. Favorite race? Au Ra. When I first started playing I was a hyur, because none of the other races appealed to me. Then when Au Ra was announced I Fantasia’d because I wanted to see what it looked like. Since then, Au Ra is all I’ve been. I like the way they look, something about the scales on the body gives them a more “other-worldly” appearance to say Lalas, or miquotes.

Also, tail.

2. Favorite class/job? Well, i main monk, so… Monk. I’ve always liked classes where I can hit shit with my fists. I’m also quite partial to Machinist, Dancer, and Paladin. I am a nervous tank, but Paladin makes it feel easier. Machinist is just fun especially with the upgrades since Shadowbringers. And Dancer is cute. I enjoy that it’s both damage and utility.

3. Least favorite class/job? Disciple of the Land/Disciple of the Hand. I level them only because I’m something of a completionist, and so my retainers level. But I find leveling them so mind numbingly boring. If we’re talking Disciple of War/Disciple of Magic, then ninja. I just don’t get on with it. Again, it’s a class I’ll level for completion purposes, but it’ll be the last one I level and I’ll rush it.

4. What’s your server? (only share if you’re comfortable with doing so of course)Midgardsormr

5. Favorite character(s)?From not within the Scions, then I would have to say… Lord Hien. Possibly one of the best things to come out of the snooze-fest that was Stormblood, Hien is a lot of a fun. His nobility is admirable, and his desire to want to do the best for his people. His hope, too, is infectious, and his willingness to run headfirst into battle, not watch from the sidelines.

Aymeric, Saddu, Magnai, and Raubahn all run a pretty close second.

6. Favorite Scion out of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn?If you’d asked me before Shadowbringers, I’d have said Thancred all the way. But, since Shadowbringers, all the Scions have risen in my esteem. Shadowbringers really allowed each one of them to shine. It allowed us as players to see the bond and banter between them, and to experience it for ourselves as the WoL/WoD. In the past, the Scions have always kept something of a backseat and the WoL has been the one to be at the forefront of everything. In Shadowbringers, it was amazing to see what each one of them brings to the table. To see them all working together and how well the blend.

Thancred is still kinda my favorite, but that’s more down to because I ship he and Phaedra together. Honestly, how much I enjoyed Urianger came as a shock to me.

7. Least favorite character(s)?Lyse.Sorry, not sorry. She’s got no qualifications to be leader of the Resistance, and she’s dull as stale bread.Also, Zenos. As a villain, he’s just boring. And... ugh, i just hate him. He’s not much of a villain.

8. Favorite BGM/vocal track? I love the music from the Alexander raids. And the addition of music from FFIX and FFVIII in Shadowbringers made me so freaking happy. I lost it when I heard Vamo Alla Flamenco fro FFIX strike up during the Dancers quest line.

Vocal theme, it’s hard to choose. The vocal themes are all really gorgeous, and they fit the expansions really well. I always look forward to them.

9. Favorite trial?Oof, this is hard. Hm… Sophia maybe, or Lakshmi; mostly because of the music. ^^

#ff 14 #ask meme #final fantasy 14 #Anonymous

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