Think I forgot one of these yesterday, apologies. The reason is Final Fantasy XI. It is not an excuse, it is a simple explanation!
I'm glad I chose to delay my coverage of Final Fantasy XI until I'd made further progress through it, because I'm having an absolute blast working through the story and levelling content so far. From around level 30 or so, things really start to accelerate — you start gaining access to a variety of new areas and some of the expansion stories kick off, so there's a very strong feeling of the world really opening up and providing you the opportunity to go in lots of different directions.
It's addictive. But what I'm finding is not that it's addictive in the same sense as other MMOs, whose addictive nature is often at least partially tied to their social nature. No, in FFXI, because I'm soloing everything, the addictive quality is the same as that I get from… a regular old RPG. It's really quite wonderful.
People often claim FFXI is "outdated" in many ways, citing the fact that its original incarnation very much followed the Everquest mould as evidence that it is borderline obsolete at this point. But having now spent a good quantity of hours on it, I can emphatically disagree with that; Final Fantasy XI in 2019 is simply a great Final Fantasy game that can be enjoyed yourself. It just so happens that you have to play it online, and that there are other people around.
I'll talk more about this when we do the full Cover Game feature, but the fact that the game was specifically designed as a spiritual successor to the NES/Famicom-era Final Fantasy games — particularly III — becomes more and more evident as you progress. We have the relatively vague "figure out exactly what is expected of you" instructions and dialogue of those games. We have non-linear dungeons in which navigating your way through is as much a challenge as fighting off their fearsome denizens. And we have all manner of delightful and charming sidequests that can reward you with access to significant new game features, content and all manner of other goodies.
I've reached a significant moment in my own playthrough now: the city of Jeuno, which is the "neutral" city outside of the main "three nations" that provide the initial setup for the game. From here, the Chains of Promathia storyline kicks off, which is supposedly one of the best in the game, and we start getting more and more significant challenges for our missions. There's also a number of the advanced jobs that can be unlocked once you get to Jeuno, too; I currently have my eye on Dancer, but it seems that achieving that might involve an itsy-witsy bit of time travel. Because Final Fantasy.
Anyway, I'm still having a great time, and don't forget that as Patrons, you can exclusively enjoy my playthrough so far with this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmqFDuRsOsfx1Hov1I6YS50_3WgFtLKQ — a reminder, please don't share this link with anyone!
I'll release this to the public "in context" as part of the Final Fantasy Marathon video playthrough project I'm intending to kick off after Atelier Rorona is done, but for now, you can feel free to enjoy what I've been getting up to in semi real-time! 🙂
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