I think anyone stumbling across this blog by chance might have a good idea of exactly what happened to it. Suddenly, every entry is about Final Fantasy XIV and then bam, no updates for a month. Yes, it's true. I've been drawn, inextricably, to the powerful magnetic pull of this MMO. I've been playing it regularly since before I started writing about it. I haven't really taken any breaks since, despite having an earnest desire to get back to games like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain, or even Grandia HD or the Ace Attorney Trilogy. Those games will be played at some point, but I would have expected I'd be finished with at least a couple of those by now. No such luck.
Unfortunately, I need to send off my Switch for repair since the sound has stopped working in handheld mode, seemingly at random. There's no damage whatsoever. It's very frustrating. I've never had any issues like this with any other console I've had in the past. I'm also experiencing the "joycon drift" issue, in which the left joycon analog stick repeatedly registers phantom inputs. My initial knee-jerk reaction was to simply buy a brand new Switch, but calmer heads prevailed. The repair will cost me about $110, so it makes a lot more sense simply to take that route. It just means I'll be without my Switch for a couple of weeks. Which means I have little to distract me from Final Fantasy XIV.
The last time I updated this blog, I'd reached level 60 and had started hitting the tail end of Heavensward content. Since then, I've played through the entirety of Stormblood and Shadowbringers and now have a level 80 ninja. On top of that, I've maxed out several beast tribes. For some context, beast tribes in Final Fantasy XIV are groups that offer a series of quests that can be completed daily. Completing them regularly will award you reputation with that tribe and allow you to ascend to higher and higher ranks of recognition and unlock unique rewards at their various vendors. Maxing them out takes quite a few consecutive days of questing. Since you have the ability to do 12 of these quests a day, it's not something that can be done in just a few minutes. On average, I'd say it took anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete them on a daily basis. I've done that, consistently, for the past...two months?
Over the course of that last paragraph, almost unconsciously, I started drifting into the weeds. It's difficult to discuss Final Fantasy XIV without meditating on the minutiae. It is a massive game made up of many interconnected systems and parts, parts which I've had plenty of time to dissect and analyze over the hundreds upon hundreds of hours I've spent playing it over the past few months. It's a fantastic game that I can't say enough good about, but I think it's time to move on, at least for now. There's so much game there to play that I could easily spend hundreds more hours on it, but, even without a working Switch, I have a sizable backlog of games to tackle and they are deserving of my attention. After all, it might encourage me to write more, since I'm conscious of bombarding my blog and Twitter feed with nothing but Final Fantasy XIV content.
This will be a good opportunity to revisit some games that I've abandoned along the way. Persona Q2 is a good example. It's the last gasp of a handheld on which I've played dozens and dozens of games, and I enjoy the game! There's no reason not to go the distance and actually finish it, even if it feels strange at this point to hold it in my hands after becoming so accustomed to the Switch. Then there's Divinity: Original Sin, which I'm stubbornly replaying on PS4 before playing its sequel, for reasons that are as unclear to me as I'm sure they are to you. Final Fantasy XIV won't exit my life entirely, because I'll still want to check in on it as updates drop, but I no longer want it to be the game that I sink all of my time into, every day.
