Endwalker is truly something special. It is the grand finale to a saga told over 8 years, and not only does it live up to the lofty expectations of concluding it in a satisfying way, I would even say that it is the best FFXIV writing to date.

The plot moves at a breakneck pace as it covers a large swathe of climactic plot points that continuously left me wondering what could possibly be coming next. It is quite tonally varied too, from having some of the funniest moments, to leaving me in tears numerous times, to unquestionably some of the darkest writing I have ever seen in Final Fantasy.

Each of the zones in the expansion are also quite stunning in their own ways (including the major city and town), and I still feel it cannot be overstated enough how phenomenal of a composer Soken is, along with the talented performers you hear throughout.

Each of the dungeons is a treat as it continues to make use of the trust system introduced in Shadowbringers to allow you to do the main story dungeons with NPC party members, and the trials are as memorable as ever.

Not only is this easily my favourite Final Fantasy story, but it ranks among my favourites in gaming overall. I really hope more and more people continue to give FFXIV a shot, because they will not be disappointed. I can only imagine where the story will take us next.

"Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?"

This is just outright the most emotionally resonant, full experience I've had with this hobby in my life to date and it's sort of not even close.

Shadowbringers was already the pinnacle of the genre and they clearly weren't content with only one masterpiece because they went and pulled it off again. It's surreal seeing a finale of this magnitude realized as effectively as what we got here. The writing is phenomenal throughout, especially so in zone 5, and the entire expansion is packed with some of the best video game music...ever? Soken and Ishikawa are very much in a league of their own at this point.

Footfalls, Flow, both Sharlayan themes, and Dynamis are stunning just to name a few standout tracks. Not only are the individual Endwalker songs themselves great musically, the placement of each and every piece is executed perfectly to reinforce the story. The way Close in the Distance progressively unfolds over the course of the final area until you get the full vocal version was genius.

Every moment of this finale is deftly pulling together over a decade of meticulously structured narrative threads while simultaneously laying the foundation to do it all over again and it is immensely fulfilling if you've played the game for any length of time. The entire expansion is undeniably built on plenty of familiar JRPG trappings, but the way core themes are explored and the actual specifics of the plot make it one of the best versions of a story in this vein imo.

Everything surrounding the MSQ is great as well. Some of the best, most powerful voice acting in the game so far is found throughout Endwalker, All the trials were top tier design wise as were plenty of the dungeons, and given the wealth of great content in 6.1 there's a ton of other great encounters and new story on the horizon.

14 is one of the most impressive, accomplished not only MMOs but video games period at this point and this masterful conclusion to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story only reinforces that.

Down the sinews of memory lane again.
You have this spirit caught in a tree in the Whispering Hillock that utters : "A mare, wild and free...In meadow's pasture caught...Dark as a bottomless well...Black as the depths of night...Such a beast, no other." It's one of the best moments of the game. The whole quest smells like putrid devotion, with a love for language old and profane. Instances like these are when you truly understand how enamoured Wild Hunt is with speech and its intricacies, the way it can flood back and forth between rustic tongue twisters and theatricalities. This, to me, is the draw, at all times, in a game such as Wild Hunt.
But words are precious things and a story like this one always has too many of 'em. In the process of playing a videogame, of sitting at the desk for hours on end - consuming swathes of informations even in the most restrained of environments - we tend to fuse with it. A mouse movement becomes a handy one / You learn how to instinctively use the array of systems at your disposal. Ease of play ; you ride through the mechanics, swinging your sword aimlessly before picking up a thousand little materials that you can never grasp anyway. Then you press A to have your horse get you to the next dialogue. Imagine bearings of all places in a fantasy setting - but let's say for a second that it's the point, because it is effectively the point. Speeches of all shapes and sizes are Wild Hunt's way of framing the moments, big and small, that tend to make or break our experience. You don't necessarily remember the time you looted a Witcher's grave but you do remember setting up a stage play with your best friends at the end of the world. Speeches, short and long, are Wild Hunt's way of conveying theme. Of manifesting (and maybe even warping to the extent of our choices) the text. Wild Hunt, as it happens, has a lot of thoughts on human nature. On society. On being a father - every ten hours of gameplay or so.

But in these moments all I really care about is Johnny the Whiterun guard that told me about the arrow once lodged in his knee. What gets me thinking - what got all of us thinking in truth - is just how common of a name Johnny was in Northern Tamriel and how many arrows seemed to be flying, daddyless and unsupervised, around Skyrim's terrain.
This interaction is revelatory to me.

Because the more you play Wild Hunt and the more you realise that its open-world is full of Johnnys. Because what I need to know about Phillipe Strenger is not a façade reproduction of abuse or some kind of temporal puzzle that would allow me to solve the riddle of his humanity.
I don't care about the how, only the why. Why did you take up arms in war ? Why did you choose that woman ? Why did you no longer choose her ? Why why why. And in the absence of answers to this question, a movement then, something to bend me towards the videogame.
It's like, I could never trust someone whose favourite game is The Stanley Parable. It's not about whether The Stanley Parable is good or bad. It's about It being a game of hows and ways. Of metatext for the sake of the metatext - so just a text, then.
Wild Hunt is a game that asks the Skyrim soldier the circumstances of his crippled knee, but rarely why he wanted to venture the wildernesses in the first place. And I think that's preposterous.

One of my favorite lines in the Whispering Hillock goes as follows :

"It is done already...
It cannot be undone.
There are no roads...
To Aard Cerbin."

This is the pIace. Somewhere beneath the veneer. I wish we could go there. Leave the boring social apparatus to the kings and the elves and instead chase a wilder one. Be explorers, adventurers of strange forces beyond Geralt's comprehension. Actually, I'd just wish I could feel his body, his thoughts sometimes incorporated in play or dialogue variances. But I'm always away - away from men, from him - and decidedly following foot-tracks to learn the name of a killer when all I really needed to know was the shape and colour of their favourite dagger.

contrary to the way Matsuno games are often framed by their fans, my love for Final Fantasy XII is easy to explain and pretty surface level: it's one of the prettiest, best sounding, smoothest, most compellingly playable RPGs ever made. the world of Ivalice as presented in this game is one of the most plainly compelling in all of video games, with art design that is frequently breathtakingly beautiful explored through a gameplay loop as frictionless as balthier's crocs be stylin'. in many ways, it is the platonic ideal of an RPG experience, especially with sakimoto's score, which leans into traditional fantasy bombast in a way that Uematsu rarely did, and works incredibly well. this is what adventure sounds like. even to this day, i struggle to think of games that are better presented than this. looks and feels and sounds for all the world like the most expensive game of all time, which it basically was, and there's honestly a lot to enjoy just from the sheer brilliance of the production alone.

the gambit system is a stroke of genius, one of my favourite RPG battle systems, unfairly maligned at launch for "playing itself" by the kind of people who probably think time spent menuing in an RPG is not actually playing it. the various Zodiac revisions have made it a bit of a faceroll but constructing a new deck to face one of the more challenging optional hunts remains one of gaming's real sidequesting delights.

the elephant in the room is that the story just isn't great, though sometimes I think it gets a bit of an unfair rap from people who just wanted it to have the exact same ending as FFX. for what it's worth, I do quite enjoy the themes this game explores and the nethicite as a metaphor for state violence is effective and thought-provoking, and I enjoy Ashe's struggle to comprehend that one cannot use the tools of empire without becoming empire, and I think her solution at the end is powerful (and, frankly, frequently willfully misinterpreted as just accepting the status quo). yes it would be sick if Ashe just blew up the imperial fleet but at that point I'm just wanting the game to be about a different thing than what it actually is about. i'm willing to meet it halfway on this one. however, there's no denying that in terms of pacing and structure the game is a disaster, especially in the second half, what with it devolving into multi-hour hikes between cutscenes that do little to develop a fairly simple plot. even as the presentation of the story remains world-class, the nightmare development of this game bleeds through constantly, and it ends just when it feels like it's really kicking off. it feels like Square had an ambition to develop this setting and cast with more spinoffs and sequels a la VII and X but aside from that weird DS RTS nothing really came of it. a real shame.

however, having said all that, there's never a moment when I'm not enjoying FF12. the squad here is good as hell and I just really like the vibe and tone of all these ivalice games. the fandom's claim that this is "the political one" are laughable on multiple levels, but I do see how it gained that reputation. when you're someone who sees "political media" as a certain type of thing rather than something inherent to art, then of course you'll see a game visibly and outwardly concerned with nation-states and political fantasy as an aesthetic as "the political one", even over the far more politically radical FFX. the other side of this coin is that enjoying this kind of aesthetic is extremely valid. i simply love to see a historian write in his memoirs of the grave fate that has befallen the kingdoms now that the treaty has been broken. y'all love this in heavensward and Tactics (a game with far more regressive politics imo), so why turn your nose up at it here?

it is a true and fair criticism of Final Fantasy XII that its themes are undeveloped, but when you're experiencing it through some of the best dialogue and voice acting in possibly any JRPG ever (i think about Judge Bergan almost every day) it's hard to complain. it's like Lord of the Rings: I do not get anything particularly remarkable out of that trilogy in a thematic sense, and at worst find it's "return to nature" conservativism deeply irritating. but I still love it because it is just, from top to bottom, a hugely competent, deeply accomplished work that is never not a great time. and that's Final Fantasy XII: maybe lacking in the things that I find most remarkable about the series, but effortlessly able to sink me into a contented state of relaxed bliss.

ok so imagine capcom as a mother & all the franchises/IP's they own as her offspring's

they're all at a nice family reunion

resident evil is there
devil may cry is there
street fighter is there

and so on...games that made momma capcom proud just sitting at the dinner table

...and then there's god hand who instead of being at the table is simultaneously smoking crack & having a loud ass threesome with trigun & fist of the north star in the capcom home bathroom for the rest of the family to hear while they try to eat dinner & the threesome is so rough that one of them just fucking dies

thats god hand, im not elaborating any further

minor spoilers ahead

i've always despised the reputation of this game, many people call it a 'predictive masterpiece" and similar other things when it's quite far from the truth, everything related to MEMES in this game is stuff that was already familiar to many people by the time this game released, and many other games came out before it and tackled similar postmodernism themes (The Silver Case, Deus Ex, etc).

what IS impressive however is HOW this game executes its themes, and i think it's one of the most fascinating things ever. it fully takes advantage of its medium and its role as a sequel and delivers powerful scenes and plotpoints that would never really work in any other game.

with that being said, these aren't really my reasons for loving this game as much as i do. it's fascinating stuff for sure but what made me really adore this game so much is the identity aspect of the game.

games about identity are always fascinating to me and appeal to my brain as a trans person, they can be healing and validating, and it's done so brilliantly here with Raiden, the ending was probably the hardest i ever sobbed at anything ever and Raiden getting such a happy ending after EVERYTHING that happened in his life and during the game is beautiful as fuck and makes for one of the most powerful stories i've ever seen.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game about many things, a lot of people to this day keep misinterpreting it by calling the patriots right, and it also hurts that that's all what people talk about whenever someone mentions the game and never mention the identity stuff ever. but it's also understandable that not that many people would care about it so it's whatever.

so what am i trying to say from all of this? well mainly i just hope people would stop saying "oh my god this game predicted social media" whenever it comes up for discussion and appreciate what it's actually trying to say, because it's really not that at all.

Coming into your own and saying goodbye

If you want the short, simple and clean version of how I feel about Kingdom Hearts II then here: My short, simple and clean thoughts on Kingdom Hearts II.

Kingdom Hearts II is a special video game for me and it'll take a bit out of me to explain why. Around May 2006, I was eleven years old and the only thing I wanted was Kingdom Hearts II after playing Kingdom Hearts to death as a child and forever being allured by the advertisements playing on television and video game stores. I remember having barely enough money to cover the game itself and went everywhere trying to find a copy of the game until I found a copy new but it wasn't sealed, my young impatience really wanted to buy that version then and there but my parents wanted me to get a sealed copy so we went looking for a different store and despite my temporary frustration, we eventually did find one sealed not long after. The car ride and reading the back and the manuals are almost a lost tradition these days with the modern world but I do remember them fondly still. It felt like I was holding onto something that was a long time coming personally back then and sure enough that it was. Kingdom Hearts II was the first video game I ever truly bought with my own money, made from doing grueling labor at my aunt's house for only ten dollars at a time but my family wasn't doing that well growing up at all if ever. I remember playing it during a time where I found out I was gonna move soon and well the sad thing was that I finally actually made some friends back at elementary school. I was always the weird kid growing up but then I finally met some kids that were really nice to me and we would actually hang out and play Pokemon FireRed with the wireless adapters. I remember the feeling of seeing them for the last time ever and then beating the introductory segment to Kingdom Hearts II in which I admit I also just wanted to play as Sora at the time since I was also pretty young back then and didn't play Chain of Memories before. I just remember playing and missing those said friends the whole time especially since I was mostly alone for a long time after moving. Despite that, Kingdom Hearts II itself is what I feel personally the ideal Square Enix and Disney crossover game that they could've made for me.

I always felt like this journey has had the most emotional impact on Sora as a character. The disney characters you meet are always glad to see you and always reassure him that he will find his loved ones at the end of this journey. The way he also sees certain interactions with the characters just always make him feel just as emotional as the player can be during these scenes. It's the game where I truly feel like Sora cares about Riku and Kairi and vice versa with the game managing to show this perfectly. The introduction segment of Kingdom Hearts II is something I feel like we can almost all relate to. The childlike wander of hanging out with your friends and doing shenanigans while realizing you only have so much time until the real world comes for you like it does for all of us. I only hope we can treasure that time together when things were so much simpler. Not to mention the finale segment goes off the wall in how bizarre it can truly get and feels like such a spectacle that it's hard to keep your eyes off while still having that emotional core that Kingdom Hearts II holds firmly throughout the whole experience.

Kingdom Hearts II might the best that can manage the art of "pressing X or A continuously" and yet resulting in a fun and dynamic combat experience. I've always played on Proud for the several playthroughs I have of this game due to the PlayStation 2 version we got here didn't have Critical until in more modern times where we have ports of the Final Mix version now so there was no more excuses. I did my first playthrough on Critical and it feels even more tight than I remember. Sora being able to do flashy moves, the techniques of movement, magic feels more fluid to use and more streamlined so every spell is important is just the icing of this large cake of a never ending struggle. If Kingdom Hearts II on Proud and lower, makes you spam the X or A button then Critical will actually make you think about it in a sense while giving you more fun tools to play around with. This also includes the huge variety of boss fights with different mechanics too which really make each encounter truly unique. Perfect play is rewarded and being reckless will kill you but it lets the combat fully utilize what it can provide for you and what it can provide for your enemies. Drive forms turn Sora into a specialized monster with each form giving you specific abilities including abilities that help Sora's maneuverability in general.

The very first track you hear when you boot up Kingdom Hearts II sets up the tone in a very somber way accompanying the art of two young men sharing ice cream together. Essentially when you hear that piano, you know you're in for a very important moment. It's very hard not to sing the praises of the soundtrack considering how important the music is to me that I remember each of the song's melodies by heart now. If I had to share one song that encapsulates Kingdom Hearts II for me it would be the friends in my heart.

I spent a lot of time playing this game during the past several days that it didn't even dawn on me that I started playing this only three days ago and now here I am writing my thoughts after having beaten it for the fifth time now. I honestly don't think those friends in elementary school even remember me at this point or remember I even exist but I hope they're doing alright. For one of the few times in my childhood, you guys didn't make me feel like something was wrong with me and I thank you for that. I never like to get too personal with my thoughts on video games but Kingdom Hearts II deserves that and so much more and I hope it has done for you what it did for me. I will be lost to time but I hope this game never will be. A coming of age journey across a galaxy just to find the ones you care about the most.

Thank you for reading.