Fairly recently (a week and a half ago, as of this going up, since I apparently finish major story segments of the game on Monday or Tuesday), I finally finished the Main Scenario Quests for the central chunk of the first major expansion of Final Fantasy XIV. This one, called “Heavensward” or 3.0, depending on if you’re into titles or major version numbers, features a section of the world that went largely ignored in the original part of the game (A Realm Reborn) because of its policies of isolation. This place, Ishgard, is a society located within a cold and dreary chunk of the world that withdrew into its major city (and surrounding defenses) as the thousand-year-long dragon war began to escalate around the same time the invasion of the surrounding area started ramping up. Following the end of the “patch content” between the end of A Realm Reborn and the start of Heavensward, you’re granted entry into this isolated city, adopted by one of the major houses (metaphorically, I mean, not legally), and then thrown into the societal problems facing this country like a Holy Hand Grenade from the Worms games. As is right and proper for the protagonist of a video game, you crash into a thousand years of lies, an ancient betrayal, and shine the light of true on the world shebang like you’re a nightlight in a dark hallway. And, you know, meet some memorable characters along the way.
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Final Fantasy XIV: One Week After Buying The Full Game
Last time, I wrote about my impressions of the general plot of the first major chunk of Final Fantasy XIV and my thoughts about buying the game. Now that I’ve own the game for a full week, gotten in a solid weekend of play, and had a few more days besides, I’ve gotten a much better impression of the gameplay loop that I’ll be experiencing for a significant portion of the future. At this point, now that I’ve joined up with the Free Company my friends are in, gotten a few more jobs up to the post-level-50 zone, and started to dig into the more modern day-to-day stuff, I feel like I’m on firm enough ground to say that I’ll probably be playing this game for years to come. I’m sure I’ll take months off, cancel my subscription from time to time, and eventually play other stuff when I get tired of FFXIV or run out of interesting things to do (or just get tired of sitting in my office all the time), but I can see myself playing this game for quite a while yet. The whole “daily events, do some gathering, meet up with friends, and idly pursue quests or rare drops” loop is really working for me here, likely because so much of it is social or something I can (and probably should!) be doing with other players. I’m still new to the FC, but everyone has been so warm and welcoming that I’m sure I’ll get over my initial shyness really soon and start reaching out to them for help or to do some of my daily/weekly events. I’m just really feeling new right now and that’s a difficult place for me to ask for help from, especially when I know I could probably figure it out by myself.
Continue readingWrapping Up Part 1 of Final Fantasy XIV
There won’t be any direct spoilers for the final plot points of Final Fantasy XIV’s A Realm Reborn in here, but I’ll be gesturing at it broadly. It’s not a surprising twist or anything, but I felt I should at least disclaim that, even if I’m writing about stuff nearly a decade old at this point. After all, I just started playing the game and would have wanted to avoid spoilers, so maybe you would too. Anyway, skip paragraph three if you want to avoid spoilers (this is paragraph 1).
Continue readingGrinding Through The Content Mines Of Final Fantasy XIV For Every Scrap Of Joy I Can Fid
In the last month (as of you reading this, anyway), I have played some 120 hours of Final Fantasy XIV. I started playing it around the start of the year by mixing it into my regular game rotation and it has slowly taken over all of my gaming time. Aside from days when I’ve gotten home from work too late to start playing a game or days when I’ve had other stuff to do (like watching episodes of TV shows in preparation for listening to my favorite media analysis podcasts, Media Club Plus and A More Civilized Age, or doing chores), I’ve spent most of my free time playing FFXIV with my friends who got into it a few months before I did or desperately trying to grind through stuff so I can at least sort of catch up to them. Or, in a few cases, grinding through the Main Scenario Quests so I can have the next group activity ready for when my friends are online. I’ve had very little time for puttering around, which is unfortunate since that is part of what I enjoyed about the game the most in the early days, but there is much to dig through in the content mines and most of the puttering activities I want to do are difficult to do when your inventory is almost always constantly full of junk that you’re holding onto because you will one day want to have it for other crafting you’re probably going to do. It’s all interconnected after all. The crafting systems, I mean. Unless you’ve got a paid account and can buy stuff on the market from other players, you need to go make all your own stuff. Which is a lot! There’s so many things you need.
Continue readingSurprisingly Relevant Politics In Final Fantasy XIV
I’ve written before about games that are so big that you can find almost anything you want to look for in them. In games like Dragon Age: Origins, it leaves you with a game that isn’t really saying anything or that buries the things it would like to say in smaller chunks of storytelling so that you, the all-important player, can make whatever choices you’d like and still wind up doing some form of the “heroic” thing in the end. In games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it never says anything but presents you with enough opportunities for you to say something about what you’re seeing that you will find a story emerging from your experience with the game. I’ve always preferred the latter, where the game relies on setting things up for you to discover or lend your voice to, because all of my experiences with things like the former have left me feeling satisfied with my video game time but unfulfilled. I’ve never really blamed games like that because how the hell are you supposed to write a story that can account for that much player choice without sacrificing a lot of the direction you’d like or rendering most player choice meaningless? How could you craft a story meant to have wide appeal that still makes a stand about what is good and what is bad in a way that will surely be alienating to some people? Well, Final Fantasy XIV does it mostly by (so far) taking a few weak but potentially alientating stands on some issues and letting everyone you skip all the cutscenes you’d like (with a few exceptions, but none of those ever seem to overlap with a story that has something to say beyond “hero good, villain bad”). Which I find incredibly surprising now that I’m digging into more and more of the story following the story that plays out over the first fifty levels of your character in the game given how it abjectly refused to do anything of the sort early on.
Continue readingTurns Out I Really Enjoy Healing In Final Fantasy XIV
As I’m writing this post a week ago (compared to when it gets posted, anyway. Who knows when you’re actually reading this), I’m officially two weeks into my time with Final Fantasy XIV and everything I suspected would be true in my last post about it (almost two weeks ago) has stayed true. I’ve continued to enjoy my time with the game, even if I have spent my time pushing myself through the Main Scenario Quests rather than via my preferred “slow puttering” method, but I was eager to unlock more parts of the game and my friends were often making time for me, so I didn’t want to waste the time they could have spent on other things by being lackadaisical about the meat of the game. Now that I’ve finished the first portion of the game, everything up through level fifty (as far as the MSQ and my chosen Job, White Mage, are concerned, anyway), I’m ready to get back to a little bit of puttering, trying out some other classes, and starting to spread myself out a bit more widely as I get deeper into things. I’m still on the free trial, since I’m none too keen to start paying subscription fees for the game, so there’s still a bunch of stuff I can’t access or can only access via a series of convoluted events (like taking my friends on dungeon delves requires a friend to invite me to a group and then promote me to the group’s leader since I can’t make groups with a free account). I’m already looking forward to when I’ve played enough of the game to justify spending money on it so I can join up with the free company my friends are a part of and maybe even start making friends with some of them. There’s still so much of the game out there for me to find and play!
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