2092: I Can Have a Darkside If You Want Me To

I decided that I was going to get over my “rut” with Final Fantasy XIV today and get my mojo back, so I booted it up and decided to try something I hadn’t done before: give Dark Knight a go.

Dark Knight is the new tanking class that was added in the Heavensward expansion. So far, I’ve levelled Paladin (the main “defense tank”) to 60 as my main, and I have Warrior (the main “wallopy tank”) at 50, so I have a reasonable understanding of it. Dark Knight was a bit of a mystery, though; although I’d read a bit about it, I didn’t really have a bead on how it might actually feel to play it.

Turns out it feels like a hell of a lot of fun — far more so than the rather weedy-but-graceful-feeling Paladin, and, for my money, also more so than the cumbersome swings and heavy hits of Warrior.

I’ve only levelled fro 30-34 so far (you start Dark Knight at 30, unlike pre-expansion classes, which start at 1) so I don’t have a huge amount of experience as yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done. The class feels like a good balance between the relatively straightforward, set combos and defense of Paladin and the more intricate combos and damage-buffing of Warrior. There also seems to be a bit more in the way of “stance-dancing”, since there are a number of abilities that only work when you have a specific status effect active — or in some cases, if you don’t have it active. The skill “Blood Weapon”, for example, which increases your attack speed and allows you to drain MP from enemies, will not work if you’re in the defensive “Grit” stance, but that’s fine, since Blood Weapon is an offensive skill and Grit carries a hefty damage penalty, so the two aren’t really compatible.

I like this way of playing; rather than Paladin’s approach of sticking with Shield Oath most of the time and giving it a bit of Sword Oath only when you have a hefty aggro lead on the rest of your party, Dark Knight allows you to switch back and forth a lot more freely, giving combat a much more dynamic feel. The rhythm I was getting into by the end of tonight’s session saw me doing my basic aggro combo, weaving in the “Low Blow” stunning kick (which is off the global cooldown) and also dropping in the off-GCD “Reprisal” proc to reduce enemy damage after a successful parry. Then, when Blood Weapon was up — it actually has a pretty short cooldown — I’d drop Grit, hit Blood Weapon, unleash as many attacks as I could manage — including DRK’s DoT, which, unlike PLD’s, isn’t part of a combo, so can be applied immediately — before switching back into Grit again once Blood Weapon dropped. The timing of Blood Weapon’s cooldown usually meant that I could rotate defensive cooldowns at the same time as throwing up Blood Weapon, too, so I could mitigate at least some of the increased damage I’d be taking by dropping Grit’s considerable (20%) reduction in incoming damage.

DRK’s AoE aggro move is also a bit more intuitive than PLD’s Flash, whose radius I’m still not entirely 100% sure of. Unleash, meanwhile, displays a very clear area of effect when you use it, making it extremely apparent whether your positioning is right or not. It’s not quite as satisfying as WAR’s cone-area Overpower, being a weird-looking spell with an annoying sound effect rather than a distinctly HULK SMASH-style swing of your axe, but I’ve also found so far that DRK appears to be able to hold aggro pretty well even with only a couple of Unleashes at the start of the fight — perhaps a side-effect of its increased damage when compared to something like PLD.

I’m digging DRK so far, then, and although it’s another tank class like my main, it feels different enough from PLD already that I feel like it’s going to be enjoyable to level. And who knows? I might even end up maining it if and when I get it to 60.

2038: Vacation from Eorzea

Astute long-term readers will notice that I haven’t been talking much about Final Fantasy XIV recently. And the reason for that is simple: I just haven’t been playing it that much.

It’s not that I’ve gone off the game per se — I still see myself playing it for many years to come — it’s more that I’ve got out of it what I wanted to get out of it so far. The Heavensward storyline was exciting and dramatic — and, for my money, better than A Realm Reborn’s main quest — and the Alexander raid dungeon was an enjoyable challenge, though we’re still yet to clear its Savage incarnation.

Trouble is, outside of levelling alternate classes there’s not a huge amount to do at level cap right now.

This is the exact situation A Realm Reborn (and, I imagine, most MMOs) found itself in at launch, of course; the difference here, however, is that whereas it took me a good few weeks to make it to 50 in A Realm Reborn — I reached the level cap a while after the more dedicated players in my Free Company — I got through Heavensward pretty quickly. This was deliberate, of course; I binged on the new story content because it was enjoyable and interesting, and also because I wanted to see everything that the expansion pack had to offer. I also wanted to avoid inadvertently being spoiled on the storyline, since Final Fantasy XIV is that rare example of an MMO where the story is actually worth paying attention to and even told pretty well.

Consequently, I got to the “end” a lot more quickly than I did with A Realm Reborn, and consequently I’ve found myself with a lot more “dead time” with stagnant content. Sure, I could run Alexander over and over again to try and get some more gear sets. Sure, I could level other classes — I probably will do this at some point. Sure, I could run the current two level 60 dungeons over and over to get as many Tomestones of Esoterics as possible to gear up one or more classes.

Trouble is, I simply don’t have a lot of motivation to do so right now. And that’s sort of fine by me, really; whenever I play an MMO I always find myself in a weird place where I’m really enjoying the experience of playing the game and getting good at it — I maintain that Final Fantasy XIV is one of the few games I genuinely consider myself to actually be pretty good at — but also feeling a strange sense of “guilt” that I’m not playing any of the other million and one games that have been staring at me from my shelves for the last few years. Conversely, I play a game that isn’t Final Fantasy XIV and I feel a similar sense of “guilt” that I’m not playing Final Fantasy XIV more. I can’t win. Stupid brain.

On balance, though, this “dead time” is actually proving to be rather welcome, as since I have little inclination to log in right now for anything other than my weekly raiding commitments — and the group as a whole is pretty half-hearted about the whole thing at the moment, to be honest — I am having plenty of time to delve into other experiences. I managed to get the Platinum trophy on Omega Quintet. I’m working on the Platinum trophy for Hyperdevotion Noire. I am loving the shit out of Sword Art Online on PS4. And I’m also really enjoying Splatoon, Heroes of the Storm and any number of other games right now.

The trouble with any hobby that has a lot of different elements to it — be it gaming, music, reading, movies or whatever — is finding that perfect balance where you can enjoy all those different elements at different times and not feel like you’re neglecting any of them. Right now, even though I know that I don’t have much motivation to play Final Fantasy XIV, I still feel like I’m neglecting it because I’m not logging in to talk to my friends. So perhaps I still haven’t quite found the right balance there. But eh. I’m not going to worry about it for the moment — a new content patch for the game might rekindle my interest for a while, but in the meantime I’m going to cut right back and enjoy the other experiences I have on the go right now.

1988: The End of Ascalon

Finished the Heavensward main story quest today. WOW.

Spoilers ahead!

I was pleased that the team went all-out and gave us a full-on Final Fantasy finale. The final dungeon, the Aetherochemical Research Facility, gradually gets weirder and weirder as you progress through it, until you eventually reach what is clearly The Final Boss Room, in which you’re set upon by not one but two Ascians, the dark-robed ne’er-do-wells whose evil machinations have been behind most of the Bad Things happening in Eorzea throughout the Final Fantasy XIV narrative.

Delightfully, this battle against the Ascians even does the typical Final Fantasy thing of unfolding across multiple forms, with the “merged” form of the two Ascians creating “Ascian Prime” and battering you with some of the most spectacular attacks in the entire game. Lest you thought that Final Fantasy XIV would lose some of the series’ trademark spectacle owing to the fact that its multiplayer nature makes cinematic camera angles and lengthy spell sequences impractical, this confrontation very much dispels that notion.

That’s not the end, though. The battle against Ascian Prime — the conclusion of which finally sees recurring villain Lahabrea apparently dealt with once and for all — is followed up by an eight-player Trial in the research facility’s Singularity Reactor, in which you face off against Ishgard’s Archibishop, Heavensward’s main villain.

This being Final Fantasy, however, you don’t just fight a doddering old man with an obscene amount of hit points. No; shortly before your battle with him, he draws upon the power of the Eyes of Nidhogg to channel the spirit of Ishgard’s legendary king Thorden — he who, with his knights twelve, originally laid Nidhogg low and took the great wyrm’s eyes — and become a Primal incarnation of the ancient king. Naturally, this involves him growing to approximately ten storeys in height in the process, and his bodyguards, the twelve knights of the Heaven’s Ward (do you see what they did there) undergo similar transformations prior to your final battle against the whole sorry lot of them.

The actual battle against Thorden and the knights is amazing. Final Fantasy veterans will doubtless recognise this setup as an excuse to bring in the notorious summon “Knights of the Round”, and indeed the final boss battle is effectively you fighting Knights of the Round, complete with ridiculously overblown attack animations — including, at one point, the reactor in which you’re fighting seemingly floating up into space, then your entire screen shattering to bring you back to reality. (This animation is pretty much a direct reference to Knights of the Round’s appearance in Final Fantasy VII, whose attack animation “Ultimate End” was the most powerful ability you could equip your characters with in the whole game.)

It’s a fitting end for Heavensward’s story, which has overall been a great addition to the ranks of Final Fantasy narratives throughout history. And it leaves some nice open teaser threads at the end ready for future content patches and the continuation of the story — most notably the character Estinien’s possession by the spirit of Nidhogg, the latter of whom is understandably pissed off at the world for numerous reasons, not least of which being the fact that he had his eyes scooped out, and some thousand years later, was killed by some young upstart claiming to represent the spirit of the planet itself.

Anyway. It was good stuff, and sets the scene nicely for the launch of the new raid dungeon Alexander, which must be due pretty soon now. (Indeed, the ending cutscene shows Alexander rising out of the water in the Dravanian Hinterlands, though it is as yet impossible to enter the great iron giant.)

I’m glad I beat the story (and the two “post-ending” dungeons Neverreap and The Fractal Continuum, both of which are a lot of fun — and pleasingly challenging) and am looking forward to seeing what’s next. In the meantime, I have an official full-on review of the expansion to write for Gamespot, so watch out for that soon.

1979: One More Post Where I Gush About Heavensward, Then I’ll Find Something Different To Talk About Tomorrow (Probably)

Level 56 now, and I’m starting to really get a feel for the new skills that have been added to Paladin.

Paladin often drew some criticism — or, rather, accusations of being “boring” — for the fact that it was a relatively straightforward class to play, with only two real combos of abilities to use in different circumstances compared to a much wider array of things to do if you’re playing a Warrior. Its main perk over its raging counterpart, however, was its survivability; Warriors have a ton more HP than Paladins, but they also take more damage, while Paladins have fewer HP but a lot more in the way of defensive abilities to mitigate or even nullify damage.

Still, though, I understand the criticisms; once you unlocked all the abilities to form your basic combos, it very much became a case of pressing ability 1, 2, 3 and occasionally stepping out of enemy ability telegraphs. Post-50, though, things get a lot more interesting.

The oddly-named Sheltron, for example, is an ability whose usefulness doesn’t become immediately apparent. What it does is guarantee that you will block the next physical attack you take. Blocking an attack is usually determined by random chance, influenced by the stats on the shield you’re wielding alongside your sword. Sheltron guarantees a block, and while blocking doesn’t nullify damage altogether, it does reduce the damage by a significant amount. It also has the handy side-effect of restoring some of your magic points when the block goes off, meaning that the Riot Blade combo is no longer the only way to regenerate MP.

Blocking also allows you to counterattack with a move called Shield Swipe, which is actually one of the Paladin’s more potent offensive moves, and also inflicts a status that prevents the enemy from using abilities of the “weaponskill” type. It’s not quite as good as a Stun or Silence, but it can be helpful and give a moment’s grace. The damage is very nice, though — particularly as it’s been buffed since its original incarnation — and it also now generates aggro, meaning you’re not losing out by weaving in a Shield Swipe when it’s up.

The other ability I’ve had the opportunity to play with now is Goring Blade, which follows on from the Riot Blade combo, previously used just for regenerating magic points to allow you to keep casting Flash, your main means of controlling larger groups of enemies at once. Goring Blade, meanwhile, has a solid initial hit followed by a damage-over-time effect. Paladins don’t do a lot of damage generally — it’s not their role, after all — but adding the ticks of damage to what you’re doing anyway — particularly if combined with other DoT effects like Circle of Scorn and Fracture — you can actually put out some fairly respectable numbers. Plus Goring Blade has like the coolest visual effect of all Paladin’s moves that I’ve unlocked so far.

I just reached level 56 this evening, which is a level at which I unlock another new ability. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’m very much looking forward to finding out and experimenting with it — one of the most exciting things about the new expansion is the fact that everyone is getting these new abilities at the same time, so there isn’t yet an established “right way” to do things. As such, experimentation is key, and it’s really rewarding to work out an efficient use of abilities for yourself.

But anyway. That’s three days in a row I’ve talked about Heavensward. (It’s really, really, really good.) I promise I will attempt to talk about something else tomorrow. Probably. Maybe.

1978: Some More Heavensward Thoughts

Spent some more time playing Heavensward today and am having an absolute blast with it.

It’s been an odd adjustment to move from the rather freeform, “pursue your own goals” gameplay of a level cap character back into the routine of doing quests, exploring and all manner of other things. But I’m enjoying it a lot, particularly as so far Heavensward is proving itself to have a wide variety of things to do and ways to earn those all-important experience points.

The main story quests have been very good so far. They always were mostly quite interesting (though in the post-50 ones there was quite a lot of lugging boxes around and other menial tasks in between the more dramatic moments — not exactly the Warrior of Light’s finest hour) but Heavensward has raised the bar somewhat.

One way in which it’s done this is through the use of instanced quest battles — scripted encounters that take you out of the main multiplayer world and put you in your own private little area to complete objectives. In A Realm Reborn, these were usually fairly small scale but fun; in Heavensward they’re much more ambitious affairs with their own unique mechanics. One particular highlight relatively early on sees you running through one of the earlier dungeons by yourself in the attempt to rescue a prisoner — while you do so, their captors start filling the place with poison gas, so you have to deal with that as well as finding a way to release them.

The main story itself is interesting and feels more focused than A Realm Reborn, too. Taking a somewhat darker overall tone, the plot thus far has seen the Warrior of Light (you!), one of your erstwhile companions and two other characters who each played roles in A Realm Reborn exploring the lands beyond Ishgard in an attempt to stop a war between the Dravanian dragons and Ishgard that will doubtless end with much death and destruction on both sides.

A Realm Reborn set up dragons mostly as fearsome, dehumanised foes to be treated with respect but defeated nonetheless. They played a relatively minor role in the overarching storyline until the latter hours and the Binding Coil of Bahamut storyline, but they were there nonetheless — and as you progressed, particularly through the Bahamut narrative, it became very apparent that they weren’t quite the simple foes you might have expected them to be based on their appearances in other fantasy media.

Heavensward runs with this theme, with both the main story and sidequests going some distance to help us understand the dragons a little better. One questline in particular sees you helping out an Ishgardian who is essentially a “racist” of sorts against dragons — he refuses to believe they are anything more than monsters, but as you complete his quests, both you and he come to see that the dragons apparently have feelings and society just like the humanoids of the world.

The sidequests are kind of interesting in that they further your understanding of the game world much like in A Realm Reborn, but unlike the base game, the darker tone seeps in quite often, with many quests ending in less than perfect circumstances. In some regards it feels like some cues have been taken from Nier — also published by Square Enix — by demonstrating that sometimes, even with your best intentions and god-felling skills and abilities, you simply can’t bring about a happy ending for everyone. It’s sobering, but very much in keeping with the overall tone.

Then you have boss fights in which you and seven friends take on a giant insect god with a penchant for swinging four gigantic swords around at once, and you remember that this is still very much a Final Fantasy game at heart — and oh, do I love it for it.

1977: To The Heavens

Well, it’s finally here: Final Fantasy XIV opened the doors to its first full expansion Heavensward today — for those who preordered it, anyway — and I’ve spent literally all day playing it.

It’s good.

The story follows on directly from the end of the 2.55 story arc, which I won’t spoil here for those who haven’t seen it in all its ridiculous and tragic glory. Suffice to say, however, that it provides good reason for the Warrior of Light (that’s you!) and occasional companion Alphinaud to head in the direction of Ishgard, a region which had previously been closed off to outsiders, but which became a little more open-minded after seeing how you (and seven friends) fended off an absolutely massive dragon towards the end of A Realm Reborn.

The city of Ishgard itself is beautifully rendered, being somewhat similar in design to a cross between Final Fantasy XI’s cities of San d’Oria and Jeuno. It has its own very distinctive character that is separate to the three previous city-states we had the opportunity to visit in A Realm Reborn — the verdant, nature-filled environs of Gridania; the tall towers and tall ships of Limsa Lominsa; and the juxtaposition between extreme affluence and extreme poverty of Ul’Dah — with an austere, almost unwelcoming facade and some beautiful architecture. The kind of place where you’d be slightly afraid to touch anything, lest you befouled or defaced it in some way or another.

Outside the city, things get interesting. Early on, the main scenario quest sends you off in two separate directions: in one direction lies the Coerthas Western Highlands — a snowy, mountainous region similar to the existing Central Highlands region, but with more in the way of sheer cliff faces and inconvenient but impressive-looking lumps of rock all over the place — while in the other lies the Sea of Clouds, a floating archipelago of islands in the sky where skies are often clear and blue by simple virtue of the fact that the islands are above the clouds, but whose altitude drops the temperature to less-than-inviting levels. There’s a huge contrast between these initial two areas; Coerthas is drab, monochromatic and somewhat grounded in reality for the most part (huge dead dragon corpse aside), while the Sea of Clouds is dramatically colourful, the stuff of pure fantasy. I haven’t proceeded further afield just yet, but the main story is shortly to have me heading for Dravania, home of the dragons, so I’m interested to see how that compares.

One really striking thing about Heavensward is its sense of scale. A Realm Reborn was no stranger to sprawling environments that were impressive to behold, but Heavensward takes it to a new level. Ishgard is gigantic and imposing in the same way an old cathedral is; meanwhile, the field maps are huge in terms of both surface area and variation in altitude — the latter aspect of which is, in part, designed to accommodate the new flying mounts you can ride around after completing the surprisingly enjoyable task of hunting down a number of hidden “aether currents” scattered around the region.

Another striking thing about Heavensward is nothing to do with its architecture, however: a good 80-90% of the original voice cast appears to have been replaced, meaning some characters sound quite different to how they sounded in A Realm Reborn, with several even having picked up regional accents (primarily Yorkshire so far) in the intervening period. It’s initially somewhat jarring, but overall the quality of the voice acting is much better than A Realm Reborn. This isn’t particularly difficult, however, because although A Realm Reborn had an excellent localisation (albeit one that diverged quite a bit from the original Japanese script and took on something of a life of its own) its voice acting was passable at best and woefully awful at worst. At least in English it was, anyway; the Japanese voice acting makes use of well-known voice talent like Rie Tanaka (Hyperdimension Neptunia) and Eri Kitamura (Senran Kagura) and as such has always been pretty good, but it’s clear that the English dub was perhaps, to put it politely, done a little bit on the cheap side.

It’s not entirely surprising, mind you; A Realm Reborn was a huge risk for Square Enix given Final Fantasy XIV version 1.0’s critical and commercial failure. As such, the decision to perhaps skimp a bit on the voice acting budget — many scenes in A Realm Reborn and indeed Heavensward also are unvoiced — was understandable. However, since A Realm Reborn achieved the seemingly impossible and rescued an all-but-dead MMO from oblivion, turning it into one of the company’s greatest success stories in the process, it’s gratifying to see that a bit more effort has been put into aspects of the presentation such as voice acting — even if the change in some characters’ voices is a little surprising the first time you hear it.

I’m yet to try out a huge amount of the new gameplay features — I’m concentrating on levelling my main class Paladin to 60 before levelling anything further — but the new skills for existing classes look interesting, and the altogether new classes seem to be really cool, though it looks as if “lolDRK” is going to become the new “lolDRG”. (Context for those unfamiliar: for the longest time, Dragoons (DRG) were notorious for dying a lot, due in part to their low magic resistance but also due to awkward animation locks on certain skills making it difficult to move out of the way of attacks; hence, “lolDRG” as the response to a Dragoon’s inevitable death; Dark Knights (DRK), however, appear to be ready to take up the mantle for themselves, from what I’ve heard so far.)

Oh, and the music is amazing. And the story is interesting. And I’ve fallen in love with this stupid game all over again. There goes the next few years of my life…

1975: Bahamut Down

In the early hours of this morning, Wuckle and I achieved something I hoped we’d achieve before Friday: we defeated Bahamut Prime in The Burning Heart, bringing our expeditions into the Final Coil of Bahamut to a close — for now, at least; we have some members of our static raid group who are still yet to clear these fights, so we’ll be helping them through at some point soon.

As the “true final boss” of the game, I was hoping that the Bahamut Prime fight would be pretty spectacular, and sure enough I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s a video (from my character’s perspective as a Black Mage) of our clear:

The fight is not only a suitably challenging battle to bring the main endgame raid of “vanilla” Final Fantasy XIV to a close, it’s also a fitting conclusion for a Final Fantasy game. Japanese role-playing games are often known for getting a little… peculiar in their final confrontations, with final bosses often being fought in space, in clouds of darkness, in strange swirling miasmas or inside the cores of planets. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, your battle against Bahamut Prime takes place within Bahamut’s own heart — Bahamut Prime, it seems, is not literally Bahamut himself (since he is both absolutely massive and in the process of being regenerated by the various Coils) but rather a manifestation of his will and rage.

This doesn’t stop him being a formidable opponent, mind you. The fight combines mechanics from a number of earlier battles to create a confrontation where you have to use everything you’ve learned about handling mechanics to be successful. There’s heavy amounts of damage. There’s people taking responsibility for ensuring the group isn’t wiped out by carelessness or inattention. There’s puddles of nasty shit on the floor that you have to drop carefully. And, of course, there are Divebombs, Final Fantasy XIV’s most notorious enemy ability, first introduced in the Turn 5 fight against Twintania, later seen in a somewhat different format in the Turn 9 fight against Nael deus Darnus and finally seen from not one but two independent sources in the Bahamut Prime battle.

Divebombs are notorious because in the case of Turn 5 in particular, they were the “roadblock” that stopped a lot of groups from progressing further, simply because they’re tricky to handle properly and can have devastating consequences for the whole group if handled incorrectly. Their inclusion in each of the three “final” battles in the three separate parts of Coil shows the battle designers’ awareness that they are a challenge — albeit a surmountable one — and a desire to test players’ abilities to the maximum, often without the helpful visual telegraphs that many of the other enemy attacks in the game have.

But anyway. You didn’t come for a deconstruction of the mechanics of Final Fantasy XIV’s raids. (Probably.) You came to hear me enthuse about beating a spectacular final boss fight — and, if you’ve watched the video, you’ll see that it most certainly is.

As I’ve written about a few times previously on these pages, I’m a big fan of well-done final confrontations, and a big part of an effective one in my book is good use of music. Turn 5 and Turn 9 (the previous “final bosses” of the game prior to the introduction of Final Coil) both had great music that was unique to the fight (or “almost unique” in the case of Turn 5 — it’s also used for the final boss of the main 2.0 storyline as well as a later confrontation); Turn 13, meanwhile, makes stunningly effective use of the game’s main theme song “Answers”.

“Answers” is one of the first things you hear in A Realm Reborn, since it accompanies the dramatic introduction sequence that depicts the end of the 1.0 world through the Calamity — an event that those who played the original incarnation of Final Fantasy XIV actually lived through.

The Calamity saw the descent of the artificial moon Dalamud as a result of the machinations of Nael van Darnus, an overly ambitious Imperial legatus and the main antagonist of the 1.0 storyline. As the moon approached Eorzea, however, an unexpected thing happened: it burst open to reveal a very angry Bahamut, who proceeded to lay waste to the realm in his somewhat understandable rage — after all, you’d be pissed off if you’d been locked inside a moon since ancient times, wouldn’t you?

All looks lost for Eorzea, but the intervention of Archon Louisoix, a major character in the 1.0 storyline and quests, sees something mysterious happen that no-one quite understands or remembers. Everyone wakes up five years later in a realm that is somewhat different to what it once was, but still very much intact. This is how A Realm Reborn kicks off, but the main storyline then goes off in its own direction and the truth of what really happened in the Calamity doesn’t start to be revealed when (if) you venture into the Binding Coil of Bahamut.

Through your explorations of the three Coils, you discover not only the truth behind the Calamity, but also what happened to a number of important characters who had apparently disappeared or died — most notably, Louisoix himself and Nael. Needless to say, everything comes back to Bahamut in the end — but during your investigations you also discover exactly what it was that led to Bahamut’s imprisonment inside the artificial moon, and why he’s so full of rage and resentment towards humanity.

Since “Answers” is a song so closely tied to this storyline, it’s fitting that it should be the accompaniment for its final conclusion. And it’s used beautifully throughout the fight, too, beginning with the mournful baritone lyrics speaking of suffering and pain, moving through the gentler, sweeter female lyrics that speak of “the land’s light of justice” and walking free before eventually culminating in the gloriously thick-sounding choral finale. The music isn’t just played straight through, though; the simple, sparse baritone singing is used in the fight’s first phase, the female lyrics come in in the second phase as you start having to deal with Bahamut’s minions as well as the dragon god himself, and the explosion of passion that is the finale comes as Bahamut Prime begins casting his ultimate attack Teraflare: a devastating blast of flaming energy that, assuming you survive, signals the beginning of the end.

Final Fantasy XIV uses music spectacularly well throughout to help with its storytelling. Each of the story’s main confrontations are accompanied by their own unique theme tunes, many of which have relevant lyrics. The presentation of the game’s absolutely, positively, definitely final battle (until Heavensward, obviously) is no exception to this, and I’m very excited to hear what Soken and his team come up with to accompany our new adventures.

It’s now 1am, though, and since I’ve had like three hours sleep, I think it’s probably time I caught up a bit.

1952: Orderly Play

With Final Fantasy XIV’s first expansion Heavensward coming in about a month’s time, I’ve been doing some thinking, particularly as I’ve dialled back the amount I’ve been playing vanilla Final Fantasy XIV during this “lull” between the story finale a while back and the launch of Heavensward next month.

You see, this “lull” period has allowed me the opportunity to get caught up on some other games — or, well, if we’re honest, to dive head-first into the rather wonderful Omega Quintet, which I adore — and I’ve been enjoying that a great deal. This may sound like a “first world problem” of the highest magnitude, but anyone who has ever indulged in an MMO will likely be familiar with how easy it is for such games to “take over” to the exclusion of anything else. It’s not necessarily a problem when it happens, but when you have lots of other games that you really want to play, and never really seem to have any time to play them, that’s when it needs to be addressed — or you need to make some tough decisions as to what you might “sacrifice”.

Anyway. The short version is that I have no intention of stopping playing Final Fantasy XIV completely as I’m too invested in the game experience as a whole, including the friendships I’ve developed as a result of playing it. But I also have no intention of sacrificing the (probably literally) hundreds of other games I have on my shelves and haven’t played yet. As such, then, some sort of compromise would appear to be in order.

Then it struck me — actually not for the first time, since I’ve had these thoughts before. A relatively straightforward solution to the issue — and one that I’m aware won’t be ideal for everyone, but which I think I might be able to stick to — is to treat gaming like any other hobby that requires a significant time investment: schedule and organise it.

This may sound like a bit much for something that many people regard as lightweight, somewhat “disposable” entertainment (though, I hasten to add, I’ve never been one of those people) — but think about it. Someone who’s really into tennis probably doesn’t play tennis every time they have some free time. Someone who’s a member of a book club isn’t constantly attending meetings. Someone who likes live music isn’t constantly at concerts. There’s balance; you do different things at different times, particularly when there’s a social element.

As such, I feel that going into Heavensward, it would probably be a good idea for the sake of my own sanity and satisfaction to specifically set aside times for playing Final Fantasy XIV — as a sort of “weekly event” or meeting — and times for playing other things. And then stick to them. That way, I won’t feel the strange “guilt” I feel about not playing Final Fantasy XIV when I’m playing something else, or the corresponding and equally strange “guilt” I feel about playing Final Fantasy XIV as my backlog of PS2, PS3, Vita, 3DS and PC games continually grows faster than I can complete them. The inherent benefit of something like this, too, is that it allows me to set some sort of schedule for experimenting with things that I’d like to explore more, like streaming and recording gameplay videos.

I’m not entirely sure what the right “balance” is as yet, but that’s something I can probably work out over the course of the next few weeks as we count down towards Heavensward’s launch. It’s something I’m keen to get right, though, because as I’ve already said, I have no intention of giving up Final Fantasy XIV, but I also really don’t want to feel like it’s eating into opportunities to play other things, too.

So I’m thinking I might experiment a bit starting this week. I’m going to try having maybe two Final Fantasy XIV evenings that are reserved exclusively for FFXIV purposes; one of them will probably be Monday, as that is one of the two nights we customarily raid, and I’m thinking that the other will probably be Friday, since that’s the end of the week and consequently a good opportunity to stay up and socialise with others. Weekends I’ll take as they come; I’ll play FFXIV if I feel like it — and we raid on Sunday nights anyway, even if I don’t play any more than that — and I’ll play other stuff without “guilt” if not.

If two days midweek doesn’t feel like enough time to Get Things Done in the game, I’ll consider it again. But we’ll see.

This has probably not been a terribly interesting post for you to read, dear reader, and for that I apologise. However, it has been helpful for me to “think out loud” in this way and come to some sort of conclusion. So if you stuck around and watched me do that, uh, thanks for your commitment and understanding, I guess? And perhaps I’ll see you in Eorzea on Friday!

1923: Target: Bahamut

After successfully clearing The Second Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV a while back, our raid group is now on to the Final Coil of Bahamut — the last four encounters in this particular part of the story, and, like its predecessors, some of the toughest fights in the game.

Since we’re approaching the release of expansion pack Heavensward, which will feature an all-new raid set inside giant fortress/robot thing Alexander, The Final Coil of Bahamut has been “nerfed” slightly in order to allow a few more people to make it through. Specifically, the “Echo” bonus that was gradually introduced in previous Turns has been brought in, giving anyone who enters an immediate 10% boost to their maximum HP, damage dealt and healing.

This doesn’t make the encounters easy, by any means — although we’ve all cleared Turn 10 (aka The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1) several times, today we had real difficulty with it for some reason. So after a while we gave up and took a look at Turn 11, which none of us had seen at all before.

For the unfamiliar, the Binding Coil of Bahamut storyline in Final Fantasy XIV is effectively a direct follow-up to how version 1.0 of the game ended — with “The Calamity”, which saw artificial moon Dalamud called down from the sky, only to burst open and reveal a very angry dragon god called Bahamut, who promptly proceeded to blow seven shades of shit out of Eorzea. Archon Louisoix — grandfather of Alphinaud and Alisae, the former of whom is a main character in A Realm Reborn’s main storyline and the latter of whom serves as the “protagonist” of sorts for the Binding Coil of Bahamut narrative — did something appropriately spectacular when all hope looked lost, leaving a number of adventurers temporarily trapped in limbo until they woke up five years later in an Eorzea that was in the process of being rebuilt. What happened to Bahamut? That’s the question that the Binding Coil of Bahamut sets out to answer, and you gradually discover bits and pieces about what really happened as you progress through it.

That’s not all, though. Although Final Fantasy XIV’s setting of Eorzea is very much “swords and magic” fantasy, with a hint of magical technology lifted pretty much directly from Final Fantasy VI, there’s also a hint of sci-fi in there. Like any good sprawling role-playing game worth its salt, Final Fantasy XIV has an ancient race of long-dead weirdos who left mysterious, technologically advanced relics all over the world. The background of said weirdos — known as the Allagans — runs as an interesting undercurrent to everything else that is going on, and is specifically explored through both the Crystal Tower and Binding Coil of Bahamut story arcs, with it being necessary to complete both to get the full picture — or at least, everything that has been revealed about them so far.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is where some of the most interesting, exciting and surprising developments in this aspect of the game’s overall lore come, and it’s also home to some of the most spectacular visual settings in the whole game. By jumping head-first into the sci-fi angle, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is free to let loose with some enormously creative, absolutely massive environments that are quite unlike anything seen anywhere else in the game. Turn 11 in particular, which we saw for the first time tonight, is quite astonishing to behold, unfolding in and around an enormous scale model of the artificial moon Dalamud, and I understand that 12 and 13 are even more spectacular. I’m looking forward to it.

The thing I’m looking forward to most about this, though, is the fact that it represents the “true final boss” of the game as a whole as it exists today. And, while I haven’t spoiled myself on the encounters in Turn 12 and 13 as yet — though I can pretty much figure out who/what you’ll be fighting there — I have had a listen to the music. And it’s going to be quite the experience battling with this — the music from Turn 12 — in the background, I feel.

We have a big hydra… thing to flatten first, though, and we’re taking another pop at it tomorrow. Wish us luck!

1870: Cards, Cards, Cards

Spent a bit of time playing Triple Triad in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, and had a lot of fun.

Triple Triad, for the uninitiated, was a card game introduced in Final Fantasy VIII. It’s a very simple game, although optional advanced rules can make it surprisingly brain-melting, particularly when they’re used in combination. And it’s a flexible enough game that, by playing around with these rules, a player with a “better” deck of cards isn’t necessarily always going to beat someone with “bad” cards.

For those who have never encountered the game, here’s how it works: There’s a 3×3 grid onto which you and your opponent take it in turns playing cards from a hand of five. (This means there will be one card left over at the end.) Cards have four numbers on them, corresponding to the four edges of the card. When you lay a card down and it “touches” the edge of another card (for example, you played a card in the middle-left space while there was already a card in the central space, meaning the right side of your card is touching the left side of the card already there) you compare the numbers. Under the normal rules, if the number you laid down is bigger than the number that was already there, you flip the card and claim it as your own. (For example, using the situation above, if the card in the middle had a “4” on its left edge, and the card you laid had a “5” or higher on its right edge, you’d claim the middle card.) Whoever has the most cards under their control when the board is filled wins. Simple.

The advanced rules fall into several different categories. Variations on “Open” mean that you and your opponent reveal either three or all of your cards from the outset, allowing for a degree of forward planning. “Random” disallows you from using the five-card decks you’ve built yourself, instead pulling five random cards from your complete collection. “Order” forces you to play the cards from your deck in the order you put them in there. “Chaos” forces you to play the cards from your deck in a random order. “Reverse” flips the normal rules on their head, meaning smaller numbers now beat larger numbers — this rule makes a “bad” deck suddenly very good. “Ascension” causes cards of the same type to inflate in value the more of them that are placed on the board. “Same” allows you to claim cards if you put down a card and the numbers on two of its sides match two cards already on the table. “Plus” is a similar rule, only instead of matching numbers, the two sides must add up to the same value. Both “Same” and “Plus” can set off combos, too, allowing you to potentially take the whole board in one go with a lucky or well-planned move.

As you can imagine, combining these rules can make for a game with a surprising amount of flexibility, and change the feel of it altogether. But even in its basic form, Triple Triad is a surprisingly compelling little diversion, and the more you play it, the more cunning little strategies you’ll spot and be able to adopt. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to challenge various non-player characters around the game world to a game — who may potentially give up some rare cards if you beat them — and also to play other players. In the latter case, you have the option of customising the rules to your liking, or throwing caution to the wind and having a “Roulette” match in which the rules are determined randomly. There are also regular tournaments — the first one started today — in which you have a set period of time in which to complete (and hopefully win!) as many games as you possibly can in order to score points and get yourself on the leaderboard.

It’s an extremely well fleshed-out version of a game that was a lot of fun to play against the computer in Final Fantasy VIII; it’s even more fun to be able to challenge friends to a game thanks to Final Fantasy XIV’s massively multiplayer nature.

And if nothing else, it’s something to do while waiting in a queue for a dungeon…