I'm getting so close to unlocking Heavensward content, I can taste it. It is a taste that I can scarcely describe, since of course I am tasting nothing and this is a poor metaphor that I'm regretting having made in the first place. Even so, I'm really close, unless for whatever reason I'm going to hit a series of lengthy dungeons in the tail end of post-A Realm Reborn content that I'm not aware of. We've recently undertaken the Snowcloak dungeon, which I wrongly assumed would have been a climactic encounter with Shiva herself. It ended up being something similar to a snowy Sastasha, with tougher bosses. I imagine the tank chain-pulling groups throughout the entire instance contributed to that belief, though.
I'm also very close to hitting level 52 on my dragoon. I'm now realizing that my original goal of cycling over to samurai after the fact probably was never all that realistic. These quests, originally intended for capped-level characters, don't provide a lot of experience in a world where three expansions have been released. The dungeons provide a fair amount of experience, but of course these are fairly infrequent. Snowcloak is the only one that we've done in quite some time other than a run through hard mode Sastasha, but of course we did challenge Leviathan and Ramuh, stand-alone trials against classic Final Fantasy summons reimagined. I imagine I will reach 52 on dragoon, but I'll probably just power through the remaining quests after that, cycling between it and ninja as necessary.
Another really exciting thing that's happened is that I've finally acquired new gear for my dragoon! Technically, she's been rocking the same black-and-purple armor since 2014, when I originally played through the main story. Although the iconic dragoon outfit is awesome, I was never a fan of the huge abdomen cutout on the chest piece. Sure, it's a work of fantasy and armor doesn't have to make sense, but it never really worked for me. My new outfit is a lovely bronze and gray affair with wings appended to the headpiece. I took the opportunity to visit the aesthetician to grow my character's hair out again too, to complete the "holy Valkyrie" look.
It's a shame that in picking the dragoon quest rewards for those story quests, I missed out on some potential new ninja pieces. Still, my dragoon was in much direr need of an update, so it's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. The (again) black-and-purple chainmail and gnarly ninja hood/helm rewarded by the level 45 and 50 ninja job quests are really cool already, so I'm happy to keep those for awhile.
I'm realizing now that these descriptions don't do those armor designs much justice, so I'm going to take the time to take some screenshots tonight and add them into this blog post. I really miss including pictures on this blog in general, so I'm going to try to work something out to where that can be a regular thing again. I imagine I just need to get more in the habit of doing it. It'd be cool to compare some old screenshots I have with what my character looks like now, too. Since Final Fantasy XIV allows any one character to assume any job class available in the game, I see no reason to ever create new characters, so I've been playing the same one ever since the beginning!
Monday, July 22, 2019
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Good Job, Final Fantasy XIV
At this point, I feel like when I recap the games I've played at the end of the year, I'm going to reach July in the countdown and reflect on the fact that Final Fantasy XIV became the only game I played for the rest of the year. Okay, so that's probably not going to be the case and as soon as Fire Emblem comes out, FFXIV is going to go into definite backburner mode. But for now, it's a game I'm very excited about and even when I'm not playing it, I spend a lot of time thinking about it.
Part of what makes the game so fascinating for me is the variety of classes. I keep running the possibilities through my mind of what classes I'm going to take through their individual journeys. It's gotten to the point that since the post-ARR quests are taking me such a long time to complete, I'm cycling between my level 50+ classes to reach level 52. I'm doing this now just so that when I unlock Heavensward content, I'll already have a couple of classes that can undertake the level 52 job quest to get a new ability! I know for sure this will be the case with ninja and dragoon, but either red mage or samurai will be next up in the rotation assuming I reach 52 on the dragoon soon.
Other classes I'm considering putting some more time into include white mage and warrior, which also happen to be the only other two classes for which I've unlocked a job class soul. Just for some context, the base classes included in the game all start from level 1 and then have the opportunity of undertaking a special quest to obtain a job class soul at level 30 to upgrade to the advanced version of that class. Lancer becomes dragoon, conjurer becomes white mage, etc. In my case, I've gone through this process with rogue to ninja, lancer to dragoon, marauder to warrior, and conjurer to white mage, but the latter two haven't progressed much past that initial upgrade.
I think it's going to be important for me to have access to a high-level healer or tank, but ideally I'd have both. I feel like without performing these roles at least occasionally, I'm missing out on a pretty big chunk of the game. These roles can be pretty tough, though, and honestly stressful since groups depend on you much more to make sure that encounters proceed successfully. There is certainly a level of anxiety present when it becomes clear that the group's success depends so heavily upon me, even if, at the end of the day, I'm only disappointing a group of strangers if things go wrong. Additionally, my poor sense of direction does me no favors when tanking, since the tank typically leads the way through these often labyrinthine dungeons.
I don't mind taking on the challenge, though, and I did my fair share of both roles in World of Warcraft. It got to the point in that game that I was very comfortable with those roles, particularly tanking as a warrior and healing as a paladin. I'm not certain if warrior and white mage are the closest analogues in Final Fantasy XIV (white mage seems to more closely resemble WoW's Holy priest), but they're the ones I've chosen for now. Once I unlock flashy tanks like Gunbreaker or Dark Knight, or the interesting Astrologian healer, I may well try them instead, though!
Part of what makes the game so fascinating for me is the variety of classes. I keep running the possibilities through my mind of what classes I'm going to take through their individual journeys. It's gotten to the point that since the post-ARR quests are taking me such a long time to complete, I'm cycling between my level 50+ classes to reach level 52. I'm doing this now just so that when I unlock Heavensward content, I'll already have a couple of classes that can undertake the level 52 job quest to get a new ability! I know for sure this will be the case with ninja and dragoon, but either red mage or samurai will be next up in the rotation assuming I reach 52 on the dragoon soon.
Other classes I'm considering putting some more time into include white mage and warrior, which also happen to be the only other two classes for which I've unlocked a job class soul. Just for some context, the base classes included in the game all start from level 1 and then have the opportunity of undertaking a special quest to obtain a job class soul at level 30 to upgrade to the advanced version of that class. Lancer becomes dragoon, conjurer becomes white mage, etc. In my case, I've gone through this process with rogue to ninja, lancer to dragoon, marauder to warrior, and conjurer to white mage, but the latter two haven't progressed much past that initial upgrade.
I think it's going to be important for me to have access to a high-level healer or tank, but ideally I'd have both. I feel like without performing these roles at least occasionally, I'm missing out on a pretty big chunk of the game. These roles can be pretty tough, though, and honestly stressful since groups depend on you much more to make sure that encounters proceed successfully. There is certainly a level of anxiety present when it becomes clear that the group's success depends so heavily upon me, even if, at the end of the day, I'm only disappointing a group of strangers if things go wrong. Additionally, my poor sense of direction does me no favors when tanking, since the tank typically leads the way through these often labyrinthine dungeons.
I don't mind taking on the challenge, though, and I did my fair share of both roles in World of Warcraft. It got to the point in that game that I was very comfortable with those roles, particularly tanking as a warrior and healing as a paladin. I'm not certain if warrior and white mage are the closest analogues in Final Fantasy XIV (white mage seems to more closely resemble WoW's Holy priest), but they're the ones I've chosen for now. Once I unlock flashy tanks like Gunbreaker or Dark Knight, or the interesting Astrologian healer, I may well try them instead, though!
Saturday, July 20, 2019
The Richness of Final Fantasy XIV's Story
I think I've decided at this point that I'm simply going to write about Final Fantasy XIV every day. It's a big game in which there's just a whole lot to do. I'm still progressing steadily through the storyline, eager to finally get to Heavensward content. Honestly, the amount of quests ahead of me is a tad overwhelming, since I'm fully three expansions behind. But it's also really exciting, until the inevitable point that I get burned out.
I'm still in the post-A Realm Reborn part of the story. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn have migrated from the Waking Sands in Eastern Thanalan to the more remote area of Mor Dhona. New primals have been uncovered in the form of Leviathan and Ramuh, and rumblings of an Ultima Weapon successor, Omega, have begun. Yugiri, a representative of a group of refugees from the country of Doma, has come seeking help from the leaders of the various cities, particularly Ul'dah in Thanalan. Meanwhile, a nefarious merchant by the name of Teledji is fomenting rebellion by playing the oppressed lower class against the wealthy elite of the city, all in the effort of turning a profit.
The story is complex, and if I'm being honest, it all starts to become pretty difficult to keep track of. It is interesting, though, and definitely the MMO story to which I've paid the most attention. Unlike World of Warcraft or other MMOs of that nature, I don't skip any quest dialogue at all, and I never skip cutscenes in dungeons or raids the first time through, potentially much to fellow group members' dismay. The developers clearly spent a lot of time crafting this story, and although there's a ridiculous amount of content to sit through, I feel like I'd be doing the game a disservice by disregarding it.
Beyond the quality of the story itself, it's a lot of fun to see all of the references to previous games in the series that the game includes. The country of Doma is of course a direct reference to the Doma of Final Fantasy VI, from which samurai Cyan Garamonde hails. Appropriately, it is the country from which the ninja and samurai classes in Final Fantasy XIV originate, even if it is possible to acquire these classes from within areas included in the base game. Another good example of a callback to Final Fantasy VI is in the magitek armor that plays a big part in the final encounter of the base game, where players are afforded the opportunity to pilot these mechs in combat. The magitek armor was famously piloted by protagonist Terra Branford while being controlled by the Empire.
I'm also really excited to try out The Crystal Tower raid dungeon, even if I'm apprehensive about the difficulty of getting a huge group together for what is very old content by now. It's evidently a reimagining of the entirety of Final Fantasy III's final dungeon, which really does sound incredible. I've heard bits and pieces about other content included in the game, too, such as a section devoted to Ivalice and Final Fantasy XII in general, which sounds fantastic, but at this point I'm not doing much more research. There's a lot of stuff out there and I'd be happy to be surprised by it.
I'm still in the post-A Realm Reborn part of the story. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn have migrated from the Waking Sands in Eastern Thanalan to the more remote area of Mor Dhona. New primals have been uncovered in the form of Leviathan and Ramuh, and rumblings of an Ultima Weapon successor, Omega, have begun. Yugiri, a representative of a group of refugees from the country of Doma, has come seeking help from the leaders of the various cities, particularly Ul'dah in Thanalan. Meanwhile, a nefarious merchant by the name of Teledji is fomenting rebellion by playing the oppressed lower class against the wealthy elite of the city, all in the effort of turning a profit.
The story is complex, and if I'm being honest, it all starts to become pretty difficult to keep track of. It is interesting, though, and definitely the MMO story to which I've paid the most attention. Unlike World of Warcraft or other MMOs of that nature, I don't skip any quest dialogue at all, and I never skip cutscenes in dungeons or raids the first time through, potentially much to fellow group members' dismay. The developers clearly spent a lot of time crafting this story, and although there's a ridiculous amount of content to sit through, I feel like I'd be doing the game a disservice by disregarding it.
Beyond the quality of the story itself, it's a lot of fun to see all of the references to previous games in the series that the game includes. The country of Doma is of course a direct reference to the Doma of Final Fantasy VI, from which samurai Cyan Garamonde hails. Appropriately, it is the country from which the ninja and samurai classes in Final Fantasy XIV originate, even if it is possible to acquire these classes from within areas included in the base game. Another good example of a callback to Final Fantasy VI is in the magitek armor that plays a big part in the final encounter of the base game, where players are afforded the opportunity to pilot these mechs in combat. The magitek armor was famously piloted by protagonist Terra Branford while being controlled by the Empire.
I'm also really excited to try out The Crystal Tower raid dungeon, even if I'm apprehensive about the difficulty of getting a huge group together for what is very old content by now. It's evidently a reimagining of the entirety of Final Fantasy III's final dungeon, which really does sound incredible. I've heard bits and pieces about other content included in the game, too, such as a section devoted to Ivalice and Final Fantasy XII in general, which sounds fantastic, but at this point I'm not doing much more research. There's a lot of stuff out there and I'd be happy to be surprised by it.
Friday, July 19, 2019
Delving into FFXIV Mechanics
I've always been fascinated by mechanics in RPGs. While world-building, characterization, and plot are all really important components of what I like about the genre, what tends to keep me engaged is some degree of mechanical complexity. It's why some games that might have weaknesses in terms of story otherwise maintain my interest. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, the story and characters are great! Sure, the pacing could use some work, but you have to keep in mind that the quests were distributed to be completed in chunks during regularly scheduled updates. When done consecutively as I'm doing now, it does start to feel like a bit of a slog at times. Still, even though I really enjoy a lot about FFXIV's story and its characters, what I really love about it and can't stop thinking about are the mechanics.
I've experimented with several of the massive roster of classes available in the game and each one has a variety of interesting gimmicks. None are so straightforward that I feel like I'd be able to jump into playing it right off the bat were I to be given a fresh level 80 with no prior context. In fact, when acquiring the Samurai and Red Mage jobs, I felt positively overwhelmed with just the skills and abilities available at level 50. But this is honestly a good thing, because part of what I enjoy about this game is that effectively playing a class involves quite a bit of finesse.
At first glance, many classes seem to be built around simple 1-2-3 combos, but as you acquire more levels, it becomes clear the classes are much more varied and interesting than that. The spear-wielding Dragoon was the first class I got to level 50 originally and serves as a good example of what I'm referring to. Its base skills are True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, and Full Thrust, abilities that deal the most damage when performed in succession. This is the most basic of combos for the class and for standard encounters is what you'll be performing most frequently. However, against tougher opponents with more health, you'll be starting with a different set of skills. Although you'll still begin your rotation with True Thrust, you'll instead move on to Disembowel, another melee attack skill that increases the damage the Dragoon deals by 10% for a certain period of time. This only occurs if Disembowel is performed after True Thrust, keep in mind. The third attack in this sequence is Chaos Thrust, which, again, is only effective if performed specifically after Disembowel. This skill deals damage up front, but when performed in a combo, also deals a significant amount of damage over time.
Once the Disembowel buff and Chaos Thrust damage-over-time effect have been applied, you can then move on to the standard 1-2-3 combo again. Even at this point, the rotation is fairly simple and only involves five skills. However, we still have to consider other abilities that are more conditional. For instance, Lance Charge is a buff that simply increases the Dragoon's damage for a period of time and stacks with the Disembowel buff. Ideally, it should be cast when facing tough opponents and then whenever it is available. Additionally, Life Surge is another cooldown ability that ensures your next attack is a critical hit, which in my mind is best used just before Full Thrust since it's the most damaging ability in the Dragoon's basic rotation.
On top of these abilities that factor into the Dragoon's standard rotation, you have access to abilities like Spineshatter Dive and Dragonfire Dive to close the distance on faraway enemies, whereas Jump and Piercing Talon allow you to simply attack from afar. Dragonfire Dive also doubles as a way to deal with large groups of enemies, paired with Doom Spike, an attack that targets a cone in front of you. Combining all of these abilities and applying them in the correct order and in the right situations is intensely satisfying--and this is before even learning abilities I never got to use from the expansions. Every class I've played is just as inventive and I honestly cannot wait to try them all out.
I've experimented with several of the massive roster of classes available in the game and each one has a variety of interesting gimmicks. None are so straightforward that I feel like I'd be able to jump into playing it right off the bat were I to be given a fresh level 80 with no prior context. In fact, when acquiring the Samurai and Red Mage jobs, I felt positively overwhelmed with just the skills and abilities available at level 50. But this is honestly a good thing, because part of what I enjoy about this game is that effectively playing a class involves quite a bit of finesse.
At first glance, many classes seem to be built around simple 1-2-3 combos, but as you acquire more levels, it becomes clear the classes are much more varied and interesting than that. The spear-wielding Dragoon was the first class I got to level 50 originally and serves as a good example of what I'm referring to. Its base skills are True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, and Full Thrust, abilities that deal the most damage when performed in succession. This is the most basic of combos for the class and for standard encounters is what you'll be performing most frequently. However, against tougher opponents with more health, you'll be starting with a different set of skills. Although you'll still begin your rotation with True Thrust, you'll instead move on to Disembowel, another melee attack skill that increases the damage the Dragoon deals by 10% for a certain period of time. This only occurs if Disembowel is performed after True Thrust, keep in mind. The third attack in this sequence is Chaos Thrust, which, again, is only effective if performed specifically after Disembowel. This skill deals damage up front, but when performed in a combo, also deals a significant amount of damage over time.
Once the Disembowel buff and Chaos Thrust damage-over-time effect have been applied, you can then move on to the standard 1-2-3 combo again. Even at this point, the rotation is fairly simple and only involves five skills. However, we still have to consider other abilities that are more conditional. For instance, Lance Charge is a buff that simply increases the Dragoon's damage for a period of time and stacks with the Disembowel buff. Ideally, it should be cast when facing tough opponents and then whenever it is available. Additionally, Life Surge is another cooldown ability that ensures your next attack is a critical hit, which in my mind is best used just before Full Thrust since it's the most damaging ability in the Dragoon's basic rotation.
On top of these abilities that factor into the Dragoon's standard rotation, you have access to abilities like Spineshatter Dive and Dragonfire Dive to close the distance on faraway enemies, whereas Jump and Piercing Talon allow you to simply attack from afar. Dragonfire Dive also doubles as a way to deal with large groups of enemies, paired with Doom Spike, an attack that targets a cone in front of you. Combining all of these abilities and applying them in the correct order and in the right situations is intensely satisfying--and this is before even learning abilities I never got to use from the expansions. Every class I've played is just as inventive and I honestly cannot wait to try them all out.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
The Engrossing World of Eorzea
Square-Enix's marketing is certainly effective, as it turns out. I hadn't seriously played Final Fantasy XIV since 2014 when the game was first rebooted. I reached level 50 on my dragoon and promptly stopped. Although I really enjoyed my time with the game, I didn't feel compelled to continue playing or even level up other classes. In retrospect, I'm not totally sure why that was. It might have had something to do with a WoW expansion coming out at the same time and then getting burned out on MMOs in general. After all, there are a lot of other less time-consuming games out there to play.
The recent promotional videos for Shadowbringers, the game's brand new expansion went a long way toward winning me over. The game features such a wide variety of classes now that I felt like I was really missing out on something great. I really liked the game even when I first played it, but I've always wanted to jump back in and try some of the classes I missed like red mage, samurai, and ninja. The new gunbreaker and dancer classes are just icing on the cake at this point.
When I returned to the game, I discovered that I technically hadn't even beaten the game's original main storyline. It makes sense. I tend to have a habit of reaching the level cap in MMOs and getting out, citing the genre's tendency of never ending as my reasoning. Still, FFXIV is an MMO that has a very clear delineation of where the story of a particular outing ends. When A Realm Reborn ends, it does so in dramatic fashion. Just this weekend, my girlfriend and I played through the climactic final battle of the base game. It was actually very thrilling, even though we were a bit frustrated at the dizzying pace our group maintained throughout the final dungeon runs.
I played a bit more of Final Fantasy XIV around the time Heavensward came out, but even then I never managed to get into any of the actual expansion content. Even now, we're slowly making our way through the Seventh Astral Era quests that serve as the A Realm Reborn postgame. It's slow-going, because there sure is a lot to do. We've embarked on a series of quests to unlock The Crystal Tower raid, hard modes for a slew of different dungeons and trials, as well as migrated the Scions of the Seventh Dawn away from The Waking Sands to Mor Dhona. Although the amount of content we've unlocked is overwhelming, I'm actually really looking forward to doing as much of it as I can. I'm blown away at the general quality of a lot of this content.
Because Final Fantasy XIV syncs your party to a level appropriate for the content you're tackling, it always seems possible to experience these challenges in the way the developers intended. I can't help but make the comparison to WoW, where power creep and the advance of time rendered early group content entirely impotent. The last time I played, everything up to maybe level 80 was absurdly simplistic and boring, which just wasn't the case when a lot of that content originally debuted. FFXIV expertly sidesteps this issue. Although early dungeons are certainly more simple than later content, they do an admirable job of onboarding you with the class and role that you've chosen, instead of serving as a mindless button-mash serving only the purpose of accruing as much experience as possible.
My main concern at this point is that because there's so much content in the game, I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to make it up to expansion content before I'm buried in other new releases. Fire Emblem: Three Houses comes out in about a week, for instance, and I'm definitely going to devoting a significant amount of time to it when it does. I guess it's not a big problem to have at the end of the day. If Final Fantasy XIV needs to get sidelined, it will. I know it'll always be there waiting for me.
The recent promotional videos for Shadowbringers, the game's brand new expansion went a long way toward winning me over. The game features such a wide variety of classes now that I felt like I was really missing out on something great. I really liked the game even when I first played it, but I've always wanted to jump back in and try some of the classes I missed like red mage, samurai, and ninja. The new gunbreaker and dancer classes are just icing on the cake at this point.
When I returned to the game, I discovered that I technically hadn't even beaten the game's original main storyline. It makes sense. I tend to have a habit of reaching the level cap in MMOs and getting out, citing the genre's tendency of never ending as my reasoning. Still, FFXIV is an MMO that has a very clear delineation of where the story of a particular outing ends. When A Realm Reborn ends, it does so in dramatic fashion. Just this weekend, my girlfriend and I played through the climactic final battle of the base game. It was actually very thrilling, even though we were a bit frustrated at the dizzying pace our group maintained throughout the final dungeon runs.
I played a bit more of Final Fantasy XIV around the time Heavensward came out, but even then I never managed to get into any of the actual expansion content. Even now, we're slowly making our way through the Seventh Astral Era quests that serve as the A Realm Reborn postgame. It's slow-going, because there sure is a lot to do. We've embarked on a series of quests to unlock The Crystal Tower raid, hard modes for a slew of different dungeons and trials, as well as migrated the Scions of the Seventh Dawn away from The Waking Sands to Mor Dhona. Although the amount of content we've unlocked is overwhelming, I'm actually really looking forward to doing as much of it as I can. I'm blown away at the general quality of a lot of this content.
Because Final Fantasy XIV syncs your party to a level appropriate for the content you're tackling, it always seems possible to experience these challenges in the way the developers intended. I can't help but make the comparison to WoW, where power creep and the advance of time rendered early group content entirely impotent. The last time I played, everything up to maybe level 80 was absurdly simplistic and boring, which just wasn't the case when a lot of that content originally debuted. FFXIV expertly sidesteps this issue. Although early dungeons are certainly more simple than later content, they do an admirable job of onboarding you with the class and role that you've chosen, instead of serving as a mindless button-mash serving only the purpose of accruing as much experience as possible.
My main concern at this point is that because there's so much content in the game, I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to make it up to expansion content before I'm buried in other new releases. Fire Emblem: Three Houses comes out in about a week, for instance, and I'm definitely going to devoting a significant amount of time to it when it does. I guess it's not a big problem to have at the end of the day. If Final Fantasy XIV needs to get sidelined, it will. I know it'll always be there waiting for me.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Revisiting Pillars of Eternity
It feels like I've been chipping away at Pillars of Eternity for the better part of five years. I purchased it for full price originally around its release and despite my computer's protests, I made it through a pretty significant chunk of the game and the expansion content as well. One way or another, I lost track of the game and eventually stopped touching my PC altogether in favor of console gaming. I always wanted to return to it, but because my PC is not exactly in good shape right now, I never had the opportunity. I decided that it was finally time to return to the game, but since it had been so long since I played it, I knew I wanted a fresh start--and it's not like I had any other option anyway, since this time I've opted to play the PS4 version.
It's immediately apparent that the PS4 version of the game has some performance issues. The frame rate, particularly in populated towns, has some very noticeable hitching. Because my PC never ran that game that well in the first place, it's nothing I'm not familiar with already, though, and in all honesty, it appears it runs better than it did on my PC in particular. Still, it would have been nice if the console version was optimized a bit better, since these issues don't really exist in the console version of Divinity: Original Sin, a game that has a similar level of graphical fidelity.
Playing through the game again has made me realize just how much of the game I played the first time. Many things were familiar, but a lot of the game's content held up really well to a second play-through, including the complex (and polarizing) "real time with pausing" combat system. I had forgotten why I decided to stop right near the end of the game the first time, but now that I'm wrapping up content from The White March, it's starting to become a little clearer. The expansion ruins the pacing of the game.
Pillars of Eternity is a game that's already loaded with content. There are quests and stories to find on every corner of the map. Each of the game's playable characters feature their own side-quests that flesh out their individual stories. There's a deep dungeon below the keep you maintain that can be explored as you progress. Even sticking primarily to the main story can be time consuming, but if you look for it, there really is a lot to do. I tend to play these kinds of games pretty exhaustively, so if there's a quest in my log, I'm going to do it, regardless of how relevant it is to the plot at large. As a result, it's not difficult to get burned out.
Still, the pacing of the main game seemed completely fine to me for the most part, until I took a detour from the main story and started exploring the frozen north of The White March and plumbing the depths of Durgan's Battery. Because the expansion content is concurrent with the story of the base game, it's not something that I felt comfortable waiting to do until after the game was done. It's even positioned in such a way that the suggested party levels are within the range you'd be well before you reached the endgame, at least for Part 1 of the expansion.
The expansion is also very combat-heavy, which means you'll be spending a lot of time in protracted fights, and in delving through trap-laden dungeons to collect treasures. Although there's plenty of story there, it's much barer than the base game, which is packed to the brim with dialogue and characterization at every turn. Many quests in Pillars of Eternity can be completed without combat of any kind, but these types of quests are much rarer in The White March.
All of these factors make it clearer why I fell off the game initially, especially since I had cranked up the difficulty to compensate for how much extra experience I was getting from all of the additional combat and quests. I didn't make that same mistake this time. Although fights were less challenging overall, it meant I finished Part 1 of the expansion much faster. I'm fine with that, because it means I'm even more likely to finish Part 2 and subsequently the main game, all these years later. Maybe I'll finally play Pillars of Eternity 2 as well, provided it does release on consoles later this year.
It's immediately apparent that the PS4 version of the game has some performance issues. The frame rate, particularly in populated towns, has some very noticeable hitching. Because my PC never ran that game that well in the first place, it's nothing I'm not familiar with already, though, and in all honesty, it appears it runs better than it did on my PC in particular. Still, it would have been nice if the console version was optimized a bit better, since these issues don't really exist in the console version of Divinity: Original Sin, a game that has a similar level of graphical fidelity.
Playing through the game again has made me realize just how much of the game I played the first time. Many things were familiar, but a lot of the game's content held up really well to a second play-through, including the complex (and polarizing) "real time with pausing" combat system. I had forgotten why I decided to stop right near the end of the game the first time, but now that I'm wrapping up content from The White March, it's starting to become a little clearer. The expansion ruins the pacing of the game.
Pillars of Eternity is a game that's already loaded with content. There are quests and stories to find on every corner of the map. Each of the game's playable characters feature their own side-quests that flesh out their individual stories. There's a deep dungeon below the keep you maintain that can be explored as you progress. Even sticking primarily to the main story can be time consuming, but if you look for it, there really is a lot to do. I tend to play these kinds of games pretty exhaustively, so if there's a quest in my log, I'm going to do it, regardless of how relevant it is to the plot at large. As a result, it's not difficult to get burned out.
Still, the pacing of the main game seemed completely fine to me for the most part, until I took a detour from the main story and started exploring the frozen north of The White March and plumbing the depths of Durgan's Battery. Because the expansion content is concurrent with the story of the base game, it's not something that I felt comfortable waiting to do until after the game was done. It's even positioned in such a way that the suggested party levels are within the range you'd be well before you reached the endgame, at least for Part 1 of the expansion.
The expansion is also very combat-heavy, which means you'll be spending a lot of time in protracted fights, and in delving through trap-laden dungeons to collect treasures. Although there's plenty of story there, it's much barer than the base game, which is packed to the brim with dialogue and characterization at every turn. Many quests in Pillars of Eternity can be completed without combat of any kind, but these types of quests are much rarer in The White March.
All of these factors make it clearer why I fell off the game initially, especially since I had cranked up the difficulty to compensate for how much extra experience I was getting from all of the additional combat and quests. I didn't make that same mistake this time. Although fights were less challenging overall, it meant I finished Part 1 of the expansion much faster. I'm fine with that, because it means I'm even more likely to finish Part 2 and subsequently the main game, all these years later. Maybe I'll finally play Pillars of Eternity 2 as well, provided it does release on consoles later this year.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Fell Seal's Lofty Goal to Live Up to Final Fantasy Tactics
The first PlayStation I ever owned was a PSOne--that is to say, the small, miniaturized version of the console released well after the initial launch of the platform. As a result, there was already a pretty significant catalog of games to try by that time. In those early days, it served as essentially a Final Fantasy machine. I played Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy IX simultaneously, because at that point I hadn’t yet become compulsive about playing through games from start to finish. The game that really got its hooks in me and on which I spent countless hours, however, was Final Fantasy Tactics, a game that I consider, to this day, to be among my favorite games of all time.
Although I acknowledge now that Final Fantasy Tactics certainly wasn’t the first game of its type and in fact owed a considerable amount of its DNA to its predecessor, Tactics Ogre, the game was like nothing else I had played at the time. It had deep customization and systems paired with an excellent story. The strategy of the combat and the investment I had in the progression of my characters was fiendishly addictive and led to numerous playthroughs in which I created new challenges for myself. A frequent rule of mine was to avoid using the infamous Cidolfas Orlandeau, otherwise known as Thunder God Cid, whose extreme power level essentially breaks the game.
But when it comes down to it, Final Fantasy Tactics was a game that could be broken in any number of ways, and that’s a part of what I liked about it. There were so many things built into the game on which one could experiment and feel clever for having exploited. These exploits and workarounds became well-enough known in the community that a series of challenges were created to make the game more difficult to complete. A common challenge was the Straight Character Class run in which all party members were required to use the same playable job and no abilities from other job classes could be used. In many cases, this wasn’t challenging at all, depending on the power of the class in question. A run with only bards, on the other hand, was quite challenging.
Another common challenge was the Solo Ramza Run, which is pretty self-explanatory. Even these runs could be fairly easily conquered with a little strategy--which led to yet another challenge, which required not only completing the game as a solo character, but in a single class, as well. These were quite a bit more difficult, but all doable, even within strict level ranges. All of these challenges might seem dumbfounding to a casual observer because even without restrictions, the game is difficult on the first run through. I have many memories of Golgorand Execution Site (Golgollada Gallows in more recent translations) and the infamous Wiegraf battle that ended numerous early playthroughs.
The level of investment and engagement in Final Fantasy Tactics was tremendous. In the years that followed, fans eagerly awaited a follow-up that would honor this game’s legacy. Subsequent games in the series were met with a luekwarm reception, at least for the game’s most hardcore fans. I actually really enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its DS sequel, A2: Grimoire of the Rift, but their cutesier style and nerfed difficulty certainly made them feel like games of a different style entirely. Year after year, fans predicted (or perhaps engaged in wishful thinking) that a true successor to Final Fantasy Tactics would arrive. So far, this hasn’t happened, but that hasn’t stopped independent studios from making games that aspire to the heights FFT reached.
It’s almost become a running joke at this point, of course, to imply that your game is inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics. The infamous failed Kickstarter Unsung Story did this. Children of Zodiarcs did this and was arguably misleading in doing so, even if the game itself was quite good. And of course, Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark did this. In its case, the comparison is very apt.
Fell Seal is a turn-based tactical RPG in which you assume control of Kyrie, a member of a group called the Arbiters, who enforce the law and mete out justice to those that would disrupt it. Inevitably, as so often happens in video games, she must embark on a pilgrimage to obtain a power for which she is destined. She is accompanied along the way by a motley assortment of allies, including the rookie knight Anadine, the trickster Reiner, and even a shapeshifting monster by the name of Bzaro. The interactions of these characters is reasonably charming and inoffensive, but the characterization isn't something that ever stood out for me.
Like Final Fantasy Tactics, many of these story characters come with a unique class of their own, whether that be protagonist Kyrie’s Marked class with its dark magic or Yates’ Anatomist, with its focus on healing allies and summoning the undead. The abilities of these classes, after acquired, can be mixed and matched. It is possible to have two sets of primary commands, two passive abilities both from the primary class and two of any available that you’ve previously learned. Finally, you may equip an ability that activates only reactively. As a result, there is a high level of customization available for just about any character in the game.
It is definitely a game that more closely adheres to the Final Fantasy Tactics formula than other strategy RPGs I’ve played. Most of them incorporate a lot of the strategy elements but shy away from the customization and character-building. Games like Etrian Odyssey or even Bravely Default satisfy my party-building desires but don’t have the crunchy grid-based gameplay that I’m looking for. This is the only title I’ve played in awhile that achieves that same lovely combination.
On top of that, the art style definitely works for me. The backgrounds are very colorful, the sprites are detailed and nice to look at, and the character artwork is, in general, very well done, even if the detail in the portraits clashes with the more simplistic in-battle graphics. The animations, however, are unexciting and frequently wooden in a way that many games developed in Unity seem to fall prey to. Although the graphics of Final Fantasy Tactics are certainly dated by today’s standards, there is a fluidity in the animations in that game that I”ve always found satisfying, and that’s just not something Fell Seal pulls off.
What’s most important in any strategy RPG, though, are the mechanics. In this way, Fell Seal mostly delivers. The gameplay loop of progressing through a series of classes and unlocking more and more powerful classes continues to be satisfying throughout the entire game, especially as you unlock special classes that can only be assigned via the usage of hidden items. This particular touch reminded me more of Tactics Ogre than anything else, especially when you consider the inclusion of classes like Vampire or Werewolf, classes that also existed in some form in those games and again required special steps to unlock.
Although the on-the-sleeve influence of Final Fantasy Tactics is lovely, I did find myself wishing that the game would take more steps to differentiate itself from that title. Sure, it has classes that have no real analog in that game, but when you consider the classes that are included, it’s almost like developer “6 eyes studios” was going down a checklist to make sure they’d included their homage to each individual class. Squire becomes Mercenary, Knight becomes Knight again, Black Mage becomes Wizard, White Mage becomes Mender. There was room for more differentiation and creativity than what was displayed. Even the most interesting of classes didn’t strike me as incredibly engaging, partially because most of their effects just don’t lead to compelling builds.
Another issue I had was that some classes had repeat abilities, especially when you consider story classes and special unlockables. Some classes simply serve as an amalgam of abilities that other classes have, with maybe only one or two new ones. In a game with this many classes, it makes sense that there would be some repeats, but when you look back at Final Fantasy Tactics, where each class has something like 20 abilities, it’s easy to feel like each new class you unlock isn’t that exciting. It’s great when you end up unlocking splashy abilities like Double Cast II or Blood Magic, but the journey to get there is long, and you’ll find yourself moving from unexciting class to unexciting class on your way. Fell Seal mitigates this somewhat by offering you a stat bonus for mastering a class--a task that’s much easier to do than in FFT, since you’ll only generally have to learn about 10 abilities.
I also found that many encounters were tedious, not just because of the general pace of the game (which I turned up significantly in the settings), but because enemies rely heavily on status effects. I was so frequently silenced and put to sleep that it felt like I never got to have any agency in combat. Compounding this issue is that enemies are frequently in classes that have naturally high speed, which means you never get the chance to take preventative actions. What use is a spell like Barrier in preventing status effects if you’re not fast enough to cast it before being attacked?
Because my weaker characters were so frequently killed before they could do anything, I found myself relying on protagonist Kyrie to clean everyone else up, which resulted in a huge level imbalance. Because of the way the game scales enemy levels, this puts everyone else in your party even further behind, since the enemies increase in power based on the average level of your strongest characters. The stronger Kyrie got, the stronger my enemies did. Even worse is the fact that when weaker allies get killed in combat, they end up with injuries that discourage them from participating in your next battle due to stat penalties.
Fell Seal does have some great ideas, but most of them are cobbled together from other titles. It's not difficult to go down a checklist and identify where each individual mechanic came from. It's a game that owes a great debt to Final Fantasy Tactics, of course, but there's a little Tactics Ogre here, a little Final Fantasy Tactics Advance here, and a little XCOM there. It doesn't have much of an identity of its own at the end of the day, and because it doesn't apply these ideas with as much polish as many of its influences, the game suffers for it. Like Children of Zodiarcs before it, Fell Seal is damaged by inviting a comparison to an incredible game. I enjoyed my time with Fell Seal despite its frustrations, but I can't see myself ever replaying it.
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