Every step we take
Echoes in our wake
Winding round our fate
To forge ahead
The thing about picking up FF14 this year is that after 600 hours I've just now hit something that could be called the endgame. I haven't lived it. I haven't grown with it over the last decade. I've just got a vertical slice of the thing that I fast-forwarded through. I've been playing long enough to have seen, say, Toto-Rak be reworked to be significantly better, and I have to imagine that things like that have been happening to the game periodically all this time. What the hell is TP? When did it go away? I only know it from old youtube videos of fights, like graffiti on the walls of Pompei or something. This manifests in many ways. For example, I play Gunbreaker and Dancer pretty extensively. Those are specifically Shadowbringers content, but don't have any particular association with Shadowbringers for me because I picked them both up long before I reached that content.
All this is to say, Endwalker is the best expansion.
Dys an sohm in
Rohs an kyn ala na
Mah morn
Dys an sohm in
Sahl djahs afah an
Heavensward. The biggest jump in quality. The focus on a smaller number of main characters that you actually get to hang out with was such a boon to the story. It still isn't until patch 6.1 that I think all the scions have something resembling a personality or something to do, with Y'shtola being the last holdout. Her fans should have rioted years ago.
Having people follow you around for some quests is the tiniest concept with the biggest dividends. It makes the spaces and the characters feel so much better. It's taken so long to escape from the big pit of everyone just spouting exposition and sucking my catboy dick but it's been so worth it to finally grow some affection for these characters I've spent like a trillion years with. The scions share a meal together! G'raha eats a big burger! Dude the burger is gigantic have you seen it? Massive burger. They made me like Hydaelyn, something science thought impossible.
Storm of blood, born from blood, of our fallen brothers
Thunder stilled, oaths fulfilled, now we yearn for freedom
Stormblood was the most ambitious. It often flirted with legitimately great and resonant themes. It succeeded with literally zero of them, partly because the game has really dumb politics (there is an entire storyline that's just lecturing a character on why neoliberalism is good) but more because the expansion is packed too full to give everything the time it needed. The game is better for having made the attempt.
Endwalker is about fighting being sad. That could be said of all fiction, but in this case it's a real Final Fantasy giant bird monster that's made of being sad. This is a cornball concept but if Final Fantasy can't be about fighting being sad, what can? Nobody actually needs to be told that being sad sucks, but there's something to be said for simple acknowledgement. The big, sweeping ideas aren't handled particularly interestingly, but the little stories are. There's a girl who feels boundless empathy, but never recieves much in return. There's a man who feels alone in a society that only views life through the lens of utility. There's the Warrior of Light and Zenos beating the shit out of each other at the end of the world because that's the only way they know how to relate to anything and this is the only other person who really gets it. It's all soap opera, but these are the things that just work on me every time.
One brings shadow, one brings light
Two-toned echoes tumbling through time
Tumbling down to the never
I can't say I'm an overall big fan of Shadowbringers. I think it really blew it's setting and most of its story concepts and most of it is pretty dull fetch quests. The rest of it kicked ass, though. After a decade, the art of dungeon design has been well refined, and every one of them is a delight. You might think there are only so many ways to stand inside or outside of a circle but you would be wrong bud.
The average level of quality in the stuff you actually spend your time DOING in the game keeps climbing, and I imagine will continue to do so. The 6.1 dungeon boss is one of the most fun bosses they've put into a normal dungeon so far! This is really the most essential element of the whole game, being fun to engage with, and for as much as I don't feel like talking much about it, it's the main reason the game is so good.
When the world comes crumbling down
Know I'll be there
Though our fleeting moment has gone
You're not--you're not alone
So everything got better by degrees. This is a big part of why Endwalker is my favorite for sure: they just did everything that much better. But I can't overlook the fact that this was an absolutely bonkers plane they were trying to land. Like one of those old timey ones before they figured it out and they tried to have like a bunch of wings and it didn't work. I felt satisfied. I felt like there was more out there-- knew the game was continuing-- but thought that the story they were telling had somehow come together into something. Not a perfect thing, but a thing.
There might be a little bit of Endwalker's philosophy baked into the game reaching further back than you can even imagine. FF14 was a game that launched so bad they unreleased it, but they didn't forget the original version. ARR was a sort of sequel rather than a reboot. Every previous misstep can never be undone, but it can be lived with, and some other cool thing can make it feel worthwhile.
For everything I enjoyed about my time, past present and future, with Final Fantasy 14, it's a massively multiplayer entry in a series that's mostly single-player, and it works as well as it does because there are so many others in it with me. It's the friends I chat and joke with as I play. It's the other players who are patient when I die repeatedly on a new trial. It's everyone who sees my sweet glam. It's the half-naked catboys dancing in Limsa day-in and day-out. Endwalker is the newest content, and I got to experience it with more new people than any of the other expansions. When someone pops in to help you with a FATE that was a bit too much for you. When you do the final trial with a bunch of other first-timers and everyone has a great time. When you know that they, somewhere, are fighting the climactic battle against Zenos right alongside you, that moment where all the stakes are gone and all that's left is the thrill of it. That's fun! That's the essence of what makes the experience special.
Is this not so... Adventurer?
Echoes in our wake
Winding round our fate
To forge ahead
The thing about picking up FF14 this year is that after 600 hours I've just now hit something that could be called the endgame. I haven't lived it. I haven't grown with it over the last decade. I've just got a vertical slice of the thing that I fast-forwarded through. I've been playing long enough to have seen, say, Toto-Rak be reworked to be significantly better, and I have to imagine that things like that have been happening to the game periodically all this time. What the hell is TP? When did it go away? I only know it from old youtube videos of fights, like graffiti on the walls of Pompei or something. This manifests in many ways. For example, I play Gunbreaker and Dancer pretty extensively. Those are specifically Shadowbringers content, but don't have any particular association with Shadowbringers for me because I picked them both up long before I reached that content.
All this is to say, Endwalker is the best expansion.
Dys an sohm in
Rohs an kyn ala na
Mah morn
Dys an sohm in
Sahl djahs afah an
Heavensward. The biggest jump in quality. The focus on a smaller number of main characters that you actually get to hang out with was such a boon to the story. It still isn't until patch 6.1 that I think all the scions have something resembling a personality or something to do, with Y'shtola being the last holdout. Her fans should have rioted years ago.
Having people follow you around for some quests is the tiniest concept with the biggest dividends. It makes the spaces and the characters feel so much better. It's taken so long to escape from the big pit of everyone just spouting exposition and sucking my catboy dick but it's been so worth it to finally grow some affection for these characters I've spent like a trillion years with. The scions share a meal together! G'raha eats a big burger! Dude the burger is gigantic have you seen it? Massive burger. They made me like Hydaelyn, something science thought impossible.
Storm of blood, born from blood, of our fallen brothers
Thunder stilled, oaths fulfilled, now we yearn for freedom
Stormblood was the most ambitious. It often flirted with legitimately great and resonant themes. It succeeded with literally zero of them, partly because the game has really dumb politics (there is an entire storyline that's just lecturing a character on why neoliberalism is good) but more because the expansion is packed too full to give everything the time it needed. The game is better for having made the attempt.
Endwalker is about fighting being sad. That could be said of all fiction, but in this case it's a real Final Fantasy giant bird monster that's made of being sad. This is a cornball concept but if Final Fantasy can't be about fighting being sad, what can? Nobody actually needs to be told that being sad sucks, but there's something to be said for simple acknowledgement. The big, sweeping ideas aren't handled particularly interestingly, but the little stories are. There's a girl who feels boundless empathy, but never recieves much in return. There's a man who feels alone in a society that only views life through the lens of utility. There's the Warrior of Light and Zenos beating the shit out of each other at the end of the world because that's the only way they know how to relate to anything and this is the only other person who really gets it. It's all soap opera, but these are the things that just work on me every time.
One brings shadow, one brings light
Two-toned echoes tumbling through time
Tumbling down to the never
I can't say I'm an overall big fan of Shadowbringers. I think it really blew it's setting and most of its story concepts and most of it is pretty dull fetch quests. The rest of it kicked ass, though. After a decade, the art of dungeon design has been well refined, and every one of them is a delight. You might think there are only so many ways to stand inside or outside of a circle but you would be wrong bud.
The average level of quality in the stuff you actually spend your time DOING in the game keeps climbing, and I imagine will continue to do so. The 6.1 dungeon boss is one of the most fun bosses they've put into a normal dungeon so far! This is really the most essential element of the whole game, being fun to engage with, and for as much as I don't feel like talking much about it, it's the main reason the game is so good.
When the world comes crumbling down
Know I'll be there
Though our fleeting moment has gone
You're not--you're not alone
So everything got better by degrees. This is a big part of why Endwalker is my favorite for sure: they just did everything that much better. But I can't overlook the fact that this was an absolutely bonkers plane they were trying to land. Like one of those old timey ones before they figured it out and they tried to have like a bunch of wings and it didn't work. I felt satisfied. I felt like there was more out there-- knew the game was continuing-- but thought that the story they were telling had somehow come together into something. Not a perfect thing, but a thing.
There might be a little bit of Endwalker's philosophy baked into the game reaching further back than you can even imagine. FF14 was a game that launched so bad they unreleased it, but they didn't forget the original version. ARR was a sort of sequel rather than a reboot. Every previous misstep can never be undone, but it can be lived with, and some other cool thing can make it feel worthwhile.
For everything I enjoyed about my time, past present and future, with Final Fantasy 14, it's a massively multiplayer entry in a series that's mostly single-player, and it works as well as it does because there are so many others in it with me. It's the friends I chat and joke with as I play. It's the other players who are patient when I die repeatedly on a new trial. It's everyone who sees my sweet glam. It's the half-naked catboys dancing in Limsa day-in and day-out. Endwalker is the newest content, and I got to experience it with more new people than any of the other expansions. When someone pops in to help you with a FATE that was a bit too much for you. When you do the final trial with a bunch of other first-timers and everyone has a great time. When you know that they, somewhere, are fighting the climactic battle against Zenos right alongside you, that moment where all the stakes are gone and all that's left is the thrill of it. That's fun! That's the essence of what makes the experience special.
Is this not so... Adventurer?