While I continue to work on my SWTOR class reviews proper, the summaries for all of the various class stories are pretty much done. I decided to tackle yet another project. With the launch of Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, I realized how many people were probably coming back to the game and that with as much space as there is between patches, some folks may not recall exactly what happened in the story leading up the expansion. Especially since Final Fantasy XIV significantly expanded the main scenario storyline with each patch. So I thought, how about a summary for that too?
Unlike the SWTOR story summaries, this one is chock full of SPOILERS, so be warned before reading down the page. After all, the SWTOR page was mostly designed as a spoiler free way of seeing if the storyline would interest you before sinking 50 levels into the narrative but Final Fantasy it’s more of a catch up/reminder tool. It’s heavily summarized so don’t expect too much in the way of a point-by-point quest-by-quest breakdown. It also assumes you have some familiarity with names and places in the world of Final Fantasy XIV. Though some reoccuring elements such as Hydaelyn and the Primals are explained somewhat.
Anyway, I hope you Final Fantasy XIV fans get a kick out of it. It’s broken down by patch, so you can go and read just the parts you want. I plan to expand it into including stuff like the story for the raid content that is now kind of outdated with the expansion, so I don’t know if as many people will get a chance to see the AWESOME tribute raid to Final Fantasy III: The Crystal Tower or the lore filled bits of the Coils content.
Oof. If you ever needed a reason to feel burnt out on a game, it’s trying to burn through all the class stories during a small window of 12x experience. Holy cow. I just finished up the bounty hunter storyline again, and don’t worry faithful readers the reviews are currently in the draft pile on that one. But between just playing the game, and then trying to write some NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAND words or so trying to summarize each class story, I suppose burn out was inevitable. Just like… /whew am I right? So where does that leave us?
Well, it means I clearly need to clear my head for a bit. Cleanse the pallet of TOR a bit before the new expansion drops and I dive head long back in. Oh trust me, true readers. I am far from The Old Republic. The reviews will be done in good time. But the Class Story Summaries ARE done, and I always considered that the more important of the two projects since they offer people an idea of what the class will be like chapter by chapter without spoiling it. I am proud of that and it is pretty much the most visited thing on the website right now, trailed only by the occasional visit from the once HUGELY popular couple of World of Warcraft Achievement guides I did way back in another life as a blood elf. /awkwardcough.
So what is there to look forward to? Well, I have finally gotten set up to start delivering semi-regular Let’s Play videos. The BioShock ones have proven to be quite popular so far. I mean I’m not Markiplier or Pewdie Pie or anything. But I’m not trying to be. I’m trying to be me and my usual silly self while playing games I love. I’ve got a massive steam library of stuff to play and a bunch of console games as well. So I plan to keep those up as long as they’re fun. I’ve taken feed back from quite a few people and made them much shorter, usually 10-15 minutes in length. So folks put off by my original 45 minute video of Shadowrun Returns back in the day need not worry. You can always check out my videos by using the YouTube link at the top of the page and hey feel free to show your support and subscribe!
In the online front, I’ve hopped over to my favorite palette cleanser of choice: Final Fantasy XIV. If you also dabble in there you might bump into me on either the Gilgamesh or Jenova worlds under the trademark name of “Vrykerion” (Shocker) or the lesser known “Puff Tanix” (My default gnome name and also the name of my chinchilla.) There is just something wholly appealing and being at the opposite end of the spectrum of The Old Republic as a game where you can level every single class with a single character and never need to switch alts for crafting or other play experiences. So you can probably expect some rambling from that end soon.
Also there’s one other thing in the works, but it is a sloooow burn on that one so I don’t want to say too much about it. But the design work on it has been going on for nearly a year and it’s finally getting to a workable point, so there may some news on Vry’s Super Secret Project as well.
So worry not faithful readers and viewers, between all that and my usual yakking about offline games and movies (Speaking of which, Book of Life. Go see it. The Hat demands it.) There will be more then enough content to sink your teeth into during this minor vacation from the galaxy far far away.
So since my girlfriend and I spent this last weekend holed up in the house sick as can be, we decided to explore a new game. The game in question as I’m sure you already figured out from the title was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the newish MMO addition to the Final Fantasy series. It was on sale for $15 on Amazon, I was curious, and it came with a free month. So we bought it to give it a try. Before you even ask: No, I am still playing SWTOR and I am still working on the class reviews. And yes, I am still playing Final Fantasy 13-2 and actually enjoying quite a bit, and I’ll be writing about some of that soon as well.
So 12 painful hours of downloading later, we finally got to play. She made an Arcanist and I made a Marauder. Kind of a tanking/healing duo. Which works out nice as we can tackle a lot of content like the random world events ala Guild Wars 2 called FATEs (Which is an acronym for something I couldn’t be bothered to remember) that it would frustrating or painful to do solo. I smack the thing, she keeps me alive, I keep the thing from killing her. It’s the circle of MMO roles, Simba. Don’t be a n00b. Lionesses don’t dig n00bz. Sorry! Tangent. Sick. As I said before.
Overall, the game seems fun. We’re fairly early on it only getting to level 10 so we could unlock all the other classes. See, in FF14, you don’t just play one class like you do in WoW or SWTOR. Okay you do. But only for the first 10 levels. Then you can unlock the other classes by visiting their trainers/guildmasters and taking a short quest. Once you do, you can switch between the classes by switching to a different weapon (more Guild Wars 2 flashbacks with the whole ability sets being tied into weapon choice) and each class keeps its own level. So I may be a Level 10 marauder, but only a level 1 Arcanist, and a level 5 cook! Because yes, even your professions are baked into the class system. On one hand, this is pretty cool. You can pretty much experience EVERYTHING you want with a single character. Play any class you feel like. Level all the professions! On the other hand, it seems like doing that will be insanely grindy. See your base class levels pretty quick at first because you are doing a lot of unique low level quests. But those quests are gone once you do them. That means you’ll eventually have classes to level and have nothing to do it with except for FATEs and grinding mobs. But hey, you don’t have to level the other classes right? Well, sort of. See on top of the classes, there are Jobs. Jobs are kind of like Advanced Classes, or even more accurate a LOT like Prestige Classes in the sense that they have a requirement tied to them. Like the Warrior job requires having Marauder leveled to 30, and the Gladiator class leveled to 15. And jobs are like where it’s at. You want the job. The job is cool. For uh… reasons. I guess? I assume the usual MMO rigamarole of more abilities, more power, more etc. And you can unlock all of those too but that pretty much will mean you need to get every class to at least level 30 (out of 50). Be prepared to kill a whole lot of lady bugs and rabbits.
However, the game is still fresh and fun and the grind has yet to set in, so I plan to fiddle around with it for this first month and see how it goes. Maybe it will be added to Vry’s Regular MMO Arsenal of Killing Time. There is one thing I am dreading but haven’t quite reached yet, which is apparently around level 15 in the main storyline (the main storyline being the thing that sets when certain in game capabilities like being able to make guilds, use airships, get mounts, etc are unlocked with) you have to do a series of dungeons to progress. Oh. Oh boy. Um yea. Forced grouping to advance. Lovely. I’m sure someone is rolling their eyes at that and saying “Oh forbid you interact with people in a MULTIPLAYER game” or some such. But yea, I’m all cool with interacting with people. When it’s my choice to do so. It was bad enough in school whenever we had a group assignment and had to find a group of students to work with and no, doing the project by yourself is NOT an option, Lil’ Vry. I’m not good in those situations. Never have been. So why play an MMO? Because I like the idea of a living world that updates and changes as time goes on where as single player games remain static and unchanged year round unless you have massive modding support (I ❤ you, Bethesda) or are something like Animal Crossing but even that just repeats every year with nothing new being added (Oh, imagine Animal Crossing meets Skyrim. Real time calender and time events in the game? How cool!) Anyway, back on topic. Yea. Forced groups. Not looking forward to it. Especially since you need to do them to do things like… use a mount. And I know there’s a dungeon finder tool but the horror stories of 4-5 hour waits for each of these three consecutive forced dungeons does not exactly leave me hopeful. Oh well. We’ll see I guess.
Finally, I suppose the Final Fantasy series has a uh… reputation for more… er… “Feminine” male figures than most game series out there. I mean, you could play a game of what sex is this character with a great number of both main characters and random NPCs throughout the series since it went to CD format (And the earlier concept art for the NES/SNES games by Amano was the same way, don’t get me wrong. But that seldom got translated into the game sprites. If you even could.) But can we please discuss the early armor quest reward I got for my Marauder?
That is not a tabard, chest piece or tunic. That is a dress. A pink dress, with pink gloves, and pink sneakers. On my MARAUDER. Normally I’d compliment the game on trying to buck gender stereotypes here, but honestly I can’t think of a situation where any gender would find this acceptable clothing for an axe wielding barbarian. But I won’t deny that jokes of Pretty Pretty Barbarian Princess were uttered all night long at this ridiculous outfit I found myself wearing. Oh, and those little pantaloons sticking out from beneath the “tabard”? Those are his pants. They are described as such in game.
Behold! The rare and exotic male upskirt shot!
On your first guess, would you say those were pants? Or even shorts?! I know that was the first thing that came to our mind. Oh no. And what about that poor kid I’m saving from the vicious giant crabs of doom? Kid is scarred for ****ing LIFE. Look at his face:
To be fair, if you just got saved from giant evil crabs of death-like doom or doom-like death (GECDLD for short) by someone wielding a giant axe and dressed like that of any gender or sexual orientation, wouldn’t you have that look on your face too? Seriously, Square Enix. WTF?
Vrykerion 