Finally finished the original A Realm Reborn storyline on my Final Fantasy XIV New Game+ run. Will likely write about it over on Rice Digital for the columns this week — but suffice to say for now that I enjoyed the experience, and Castrum/Praetorium were good fun solo. Not especially challenging — though I did actually take a bit of damage in some of the last fights — but enjoyable to battle through by oneself.
Final Fantasy XIV remains such an interesting game to me for a variety of reasons. I've just had a completely narrative-centric experience with it off and on for the last few weeks, and that's the complete opposite of what I was doing towards the end of my time with it first time around; the endgame grind was real back then, and while the social aspect of things helped keep you sane while it was going on, there was no getting away from the fact it was still a case of doing the same things over and over again.
I mean, that's still true to a certain extent, but there's also a lot more game to get through before you get to that point — and even then, the nice thing about Final Fantasy XIV is you can quite reasonably stop at any of the main narrative milestones — the end of a X.0 release and the end of an X.5 patch cycle, usually, though the latter tends to have a cliffhanger leading into the next expansion — and feel like you've had a "complete" experience.
But then there's the mixed blessing of the fact that everything in Final Fantasy XIV has some sort of narrative context, so you'll probably find yourself wanting to do more challenging things just so you can resolve some story threads. This was a particular issue back in the days of the original Binding Coil of Bahamut raid cycle, which features some of the best narrative in the 2.X cycle of Final Fantasy XIV, but also some of the most monstrously difficult fights imaginable, even with the gradual nerfing of them over time. I got largely carried through the grand finale of it shortly before Heavensward released, and it was still surprisingly challenging.
Of course, with the "undersized party" option, you can now run stuff at a much higher level than it would normally restrict you to, opening up the possibility of, say, soloing Coil as a level 80 character with top-notch gear. (I don't know if it's possible in my current level 70 state, but I might give it a go before I move on to Heavensward's main scenario in my New Game+ run.)
Anyway. This is all stuff to ponder in future installments of The Returner over on Rice Digital, so I'll refrain from saying too much more. Suffice to say I'm having a good time for the moment, though — and even doing the unsynced stuff I'm starting to get a decent feel for how Samurai plays properly once again. It's a very active DPS class that puts out lots of damage, so I'm looking forward to developing a bit more mastery over it now I'm through the relative cakewalks that was A Realm Reborn in New Game+!
Off to bed for me now, though; Castrum and Prae both took me nearly an hour each to solo, and I don't regret a thing — but I am, however, tired! So sleep claims me. Have a pleasant evening!
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