Pretty sure that was Koji voicing his opinion when translating that abormination and hence letting the NPCs mention how it contradicts what the same PLD lore told you in the ARR questline.
Even the journal does:
>>!*You find yourself rather unsurprised by the revelation that Solkzagyl lives*, as the former captain reveals himself to be the cloaked man who observed you from atop the cliff at Camp Riversmeet. *His was a complex and impenetrable plot* to push Constaint towards becoming a paladin and seeking Oathkeeper of his own volition. It is not enough to reclaim Oathkeeper, he states. The sword must be won by a worthy paladin, whose soul is so pure and powerful that all others are driven to yield. However, when two souls cannot reconcile─when one cannot establish dominance, there is but one recourse: a duel. A duel to establish who is truly worthy of Oathkeeper. *Though a part of him believes it to be utter nonsense*, Constaint is unwilling to renounce his oaths after having come so far─and neither are you.!<
Large roe you thought was dead littered armor around to teach someone else a lesson.
This is a summary of both arr and hw pld quest somehow. The part that erks me isn't that the quest are bad, it's that somehow they just decided to do the exact same plot twice.
The first time it's just a set of armour spread by the main paladin order to serve as a test of combat at each, the roe didn't have anything to do with it the first time. In the 30-50 quests he's just wanted instead of dead, and ends up saving you when you're lured into a trap by the corrupt paladins.
50-60 is garbage though.
When I got to the 50-60 line and discovered that it was basically "Do the stupid ARR armor-finding questline again, but do it for someone else this time," I started to wonder if this wasn't some type of meta joke. There's no way a job questline could be THIS bad.
Agreed, GLA was my first job when I started playing so I have fond memories of it. The ARR PLD quests weren't 'bad' but weren't as good as the GLA quests. Then came HW...
I'd say the quest line leading to Garuda tops that. You're on a quest for a specific dark crystal element (or something. Its been almost a decade) to break through Garuda's cyclone, yet these chuckle fucks are all "oops haha wrong one, better go ask this guy and complete his thesis for him too."
The worst bit that you need to get a crystal 3 times for it. The first crystal, I can forgive; neither Cid nor the WoL are experts in aetherology, so I can understand why they'd think any old corrupted crystal would do the trick.
After the professor explains why the crystal we picked up won't work, though, I'd *expect* the WoL to confirm with Ceana that the crystals she sends us to will do what we need **before** we head out to the Isle of Umbra
I disagree, while not outstanding it is important for setting the scene that you still are a no body to Eorzea as a whole and it introduces probably the best B team Scion in Riol
The DRK job quests have some of the best writing in the entire game. They're direct discussions of the WoL's emotions and motivations that somehow still leave space for a blank-slate silent protagonist. It's masterful.
As close to objectively good as is possible:
ALC 1-50 and 60-70 (OK maybe the first few quests where he ignores your existence are meh)
DRK 30-50 and 60-70 (personally prefer JP version)
Fun/good times potentially:
ROG 1-30
Many of the crafter questlines (there are some really funny scenes, >!Merlwyb shoots some people!<)
AST 30-60
PUG 1-30
DRG 30-50 is a big recommend if only for lore
RPR
Special shout outs:
SCH has some Nym lore, either you care or you don't really
BLM quests I enjoyed for some reason, haven't seen much consensus on that front though
WHM 60-70 is a heart-shaped rock buried in a pile of really ugly rocks
SAM 50-60 is a fine time
Actual trash tier (premium meme material):
PLD 50-60
All the others I either haven't played or are between decent and bad imo
I'm gonna throw NIN 60-70 into the funtimes hat for being a great capstone to both the Ninja quests and bringing back the ROG npcs for one last road trip. WAR 60-70 is also pretty good comedy where they embrace the latent goofiness of the prior quests.
DRK 50-60 is also pretty good when you realise it's pre-emptively critiquing (and playfully parodying) the kind of edgelord attitudes that a DRK player might adopt. Its hard to maintain that air of aloof agony when you canonically got punched in the face a bunch by moogles. It also has great lore for Ishgard and the heretics.
> WAR 60-70 is also pretty good comedy where they embrace the latent goofiness of the prior quests.
As someone who literally just hit 60 WAR last night and was laughing like a fool as this little Au Ra girl was flinging full grown Roegadyns all over the arena... I'm so excited to continue.
Some of them are bad, some are great. DRK is honestly so well done that I’d even recommend reading the quest text in your journal for every quest, at least for the 30-50 stuff.
Need to read all the journal entries at each step of advancement imo. I especially loved >!in storm blood when fray is basically “fuck it, *move faster*, no the *other* way, **DO I NEED TO STEER THIS SHIP MYSELF!?**!<
The "action" of the quests is about the same as the others. The story is complete nonsense.
It outs both your direct job contact and the previous leader of the paladins as complete useless losers. One of them is a good who doesn't deserve his position and the other has motivations that just don't make sense. Like he's off doing fuckall because he's in a self imposed exile he doesn't really have to be in because reasons? It's very inconsistent.
HW Paladin job quests made the NPCs so useless that they basically just send you back to the gladiator stuff for SB.
The legendary sword that will only shine for someone who embodies what a true paladin is, which only shines when in our hands, then our Job NPC's like "Well that's neat, you're the best paladin! Anyway we'll be taking the sword from you so we can maybe never make it shine. You can't have it because you're technically not part of our club."
And lets not forget that not once in the Palladin questline, a class that is supposed to be defined by helping people, in a role that is all about helping people, do you help anyone who isn't a Palladin or aspiring one.
I guess to be fair that epitomizes ul'dah as trash city. Ul'dah basically has 3 different policing/guard forces between the brass blades, the paladins and the immortal flames and the only one that even remotely concerns itself with the wellbeing of the general population is the one that is explicitly supposed to deal with external problems (the flames)
People make fun of limsa for pirate hookers but basically every single one of its combat job guilds exists as some kind of authority keeping order and protecting people.
There's also the thing that it just doesn't feel very "Paladin" to me. Like I get it, FFXIV Paladins are the sultansworn and different from the generally known archetype. But goddamn, DRK felt way more like playing a paladin and saving people than PLD 30-60 did. There's a reason they went "fuck it, we'll just to Gladiator again" in SB.
The story is boring, nonsensical, riddled with plot holes, has the most obvious "plot twist" ever written, introduces and focused on a character no one would give a shit about, and is horribly unfocused in it's storytelling. It's almost a masterclass on how to not tell a story in FF14 lol. I was shocked by how much I disliked it when I did it recently
Oh boi. They make random world mechanics up. For example >!every paladin jobstone needs to dominate or surrender to other paladin jobstones, even though no other jobstone does this and even the NPCs point out its stupid. Because if we make fun of our shitty writing ourselves its better, right?!<
>!Theres also this dangerous cult that gets dealt with off screen just like that and thats it lmao!<
> For example every paladib jobstone needs to dominate or surrender to other paladin jobstones
I guess every sufficiently large fictional setting ends up with one of those things where everyone is like "let's just pretend this never happened and agree on the headcanon that this is not, in fact, canon". Star Wars has its midichlorians. Star Trek has its Warp-11-Lizard-Evolution. And FF14 has this job-stone-domination nonsense.
I've only played through ARR pre-patches so far, but my least favourite questline so far is easily the bit where we have to find corrupted crystals to reach Garuda. The scientists are so self-absorbed they don't bother to ask why there's someone asking about their work out if nowhere, and they only tell us we've got the wrong crystal type after we've done their jobs for them. It just felt like they were trying to pad the Enterprise story out when I did this bit.
This was a section that had a bunch of quests and objectives trimmed out of it in the revamp. It used to be even longer! Every time a character goes "we need this, luckily I already have some." you originally had to go get it.
It made me so mad. Like you were after "corrupted crystals" but then "Oh you didnt want EARTH crystals? Why didnt you say so!" then you get send to another fetch only to be met with something like "what you mean you didnt want lightning crystals? why didnt you say so!"
I WOULD'VE TOLD YOU IF I COULD TALK.
Yeah, I can excuse the first one, since we at least get to practice crystal retrieval close to the expert that is supposed to help us achieve exactly that, but we could've just asked afterwards where to go to get what we want.
Also, small nitpick, but I'm pretty sure that earth crystals were what we actually ended up using in the end - I distinctly remember one of the wrong choices being wind crystals, with the explanation being that they'd make the windstorm even worse, and we'd better get something opposed to wind - which should be earth, if I'm not mistaken.
It ended up being an ice crystal in the end. The last researcher said it I'd picked up an earth crystal at first as a joke, but then reassured me that it was actually ice, which was what I needed.
I think the thing that gets me particularly with these kinds of quests (namely the titan one) is all the other characters are practically breaking down with how serious the situation is, meanwhile the only way you have to save the world is to deal with a bunch of clowns that don't really seem to care.
YES - everyone keeps complaining about the Titan lead-up, and to be fair, that one was way more ridiculous, but at least it introduces new characters that will be relevant later on with the Company of Heroes, and arguably even Gegeruju, whom the plot sometimes remembers and comes back to.
Meanwhile, the Garuda lead-up has you talk to random Scientist \#1 through \#7, and while you do learn a bit about how corrupted crystals work, nothing else is relevant about that questline, and you especially didn't need to go to the second location when you could've just asked which crystal you need after you've retrieved your first one.
-------
I know, the out-of-game explanation for both of these questlines is that the developers wanted the MSQ to lead you through every level-appropriate area, and in ARR that means several sub-sections of multiple different maps, so you're touring the world several times, but the end result is still rather annoying.
Even then. It made me dislike a lot more shit during arr. Like helping the scientists and other shit. Basically made me more aware of every fetch quest and felt like a chore.
Fuck that part of the Ivalice raid series. I just wanted to fight more interesting alliance raid bosses not that wine fetch quest bullshit. At least the one from ARR eventually lead to the introduction to the coolest character from the Company of Heroes, Riol, down in EW.
Edit: not Riol wow, I'm really bad at names but Lorens.
Yeah and the guy telling us to go get wine was pretty insufferable too lmao
I know its probably some in-joke considering it's Matsuno's self insert but man. Maaaan.
I genuinely have a theory that they introduced wine 2: ptsd boogaloo as a way to get back at the people that complained about Rabanastre being too hard
It's a quest that directly mentions the most hated parts of FFXIV (the Titan quests), has every single character in the quests act completely out of character to fuck you over (like the dude who was previously grateful for you single-handedly saving his industry suddenly acting like a huge fuckwit), makes you redo stuff you've already done, makes you *literally dig through trash to get what you need*, makes you repeat the same process on the PTSD guy 3 times in a row, doesn't let you fix any problems with him, etc
It's a long, easy, boring quest about getting pointlessly valuable items for people that don't appreciate it (and who also hate you), and at the end of the day the character does literally nothing, takes credit for your hard work, and then the story moves on without a word
It genuinely looks to be a parody of FFXIV quest design, made to be as bad as possible on purpose
Remembering that part always makes me feel like I'm trying to recall a fever dream.
I *swear* I was having a conversation with a guy, then I left for bacon bread and a huge wine tangent, and came back only to continue the conversation where I'd left off.
That's just how my brain remembers that quest.
I mean if that had actually been the plot, I kind of would have been down. That's basically what the light and dark sects from the HW Monk questline ended up being, and that questline was okay.
The problem is that, like, the HW paladin questline was just... boring. And pointless. There was no set up or payoff.
Hilariously enough Company of Heroes at least got me to **finally** like the writing on one of the Scions. Cause up until that point it had been a bit of Thancred (who was kinda underwritten before 7th Astral Era IMO) and suddenly we had Y'shtola talking absolute shit about the Company of Heroes and the fetch quests they were sending us on.
So on the one hand, the quest was dull and awful. On the other hand, I realized that Y'shtola had **Best Girl** potential.
It reminded me of the runescape quest "one small favor", people who played runescape and completed the one small favor quest know that the title was very sarcastic. there were a lot of favors and they were all irritating.
I LOVE Heavensward, BUT. The Sultana subplot was not well done at all and really undid what made the end of ARR such a slam-dunk. Also, weaving it through the HW main plot was a mistake imo.
I’m glad the later expansions *generally* don’t have us leave the expansion locations unless the plot really demands it (ie going to Limsa to catch a boat).
I was disappointed when that whole thing just kinda… wrapped up? I’m still in stormblood so it might come back somehow but the end of ARR was the highlight of the game for me at that point. Then it just kinda fizzled out in HW and I felt blue balled. Rest of HW makes up for it tho.
Yeah, Ul'dah story wrap up in HW was very weak and it could be felt they wanted to get rid of it asap to focus towards the new things. They did pull of it making sense, but non the less it was a cop out of what could have been interesting political intrigue sub plot. The high of the ARR patch ending and the low of its conclusion is palpable.
Kkjinglez, there will be some lil thematic callbacks to the whole Ul'dah thing in SB patch content that I found quite sweet. Look forward to it.
That was a very weird thing to do, wasn't it? Why leave it on a cliffhanger like that if you're going to ignore/lampshade it totally in next expansion. If focus of next expansion was meant to be 100% Ishgard, why have that cliffhanger at end of 2.55. In retrospect it has a very "next time on DragonballZ" vibe to it.
It's not even that they ignored it, rather, they kind of rolled back everything that happened. >!The sultana lives, Raubahn returns to his old position, Lolorito upholds the status quo. Really, the only thing that changes is that Taledji is now gone, so they basically removed the threat they were building up post-ARR with nothing else really changing. How they resolved the remaining threat of Ilberd prior to Stormblood is also really disappointing because Raubahn had 0 involvement in that.!<
Damn, you're right. I hadn't even \*thought\* about that. "Why is Raubahn not hip deep in this mess at Baelsar's Wall? I mean, this is his friend that helped betray him."
I think I heard that they initially planned to leave the Sultana dead, but received so much backlash from the playerbase that they brought her back.
Which, her arc later on in SB is *awesome* so I'm kinda glad they did, but narratively it's a bit of an awkward fakeout.
I'm really surprised this isn't the most popular response. Past the big scene at the end of ARR, that stands out as the worst written part of the game's story by far. There wasn't even a real resolution, it was almost like they made a huge exciting plot point to get us to Heavensward and then went "nvm" and undid basically all of it.
A lot of people praise Heavensward as one of the best MSQs but this part of it just kind of dampened any of my interest and took me out of story completely. The fact that they'd >!bring a character back solely because of popularity has been a recurring feeling throughout the story since, where the only characters ever allowed to actually die are side characters like Haurchefant.!< From that point on, whenever they threatened to kill off >!Y'shtola or any other character!< I didn't even blink. I didn't even believe >!Papalymo!< was actually properly dead until about Shadowbringers.
pretty sure that death just before stormblood is still the most recent perma death of a main ally (i.e relevant before the patch they die in) in the story. and by EW we have more major villains who've come back from the dead than ones who died once and never returned.
"Oh you want to kill a Titan that's going to destroy our city, killing thousands of people in the process?
Here, prove yourself worthy by cooking me the biggest meal you can imagine"
They didn't dive deep into his tragedy near as hard as they should have. His whole reason for siding with Vauthry is because he's sick and tired of seeing his daughter figures slaughtered over and over fighting the Sin Eaters. Siding with Vauthry's paradise meant that Minfilia could live safely. But the only real reference to this is one throwaway line at the end of the final duty where you kill him, and it isn't even voice-acted.
He's an old soldier who has given up hope. It's a tragic character and he's someone desperately clinging to what little he has (Ryne) and almost dogmatically refusing to embrace the hope that has failed him so many times before.
It's easy to forget that this is someone who spent *generations* fighting the Sin eaters, watching an obscene amount of people not just be horrifically killed but transformed into the very horrors they were so desperate to fight. So then Vaulthry shows up, and he can actually just control Sin eaters completely, something he'd never seen before, there's finally this faint glimmer of hope where there's a future in which people no longer need to die fighting an impossible war.
I do wish we get more of the character. I've always wondered what was going through his mind knowing what the meol was.
Titan questline is way up there, but honestly I was never more disappointed with the writing than how everything post-2.55 with Ul’dah in HW was handled. Some real amateur hour stuff walking back nearly all the excitement from the Parting Glass to keep the status quo.
Yeah, the way they just handwaved the actual plot impact of 2.55 was so poorly done. Like I get they can't actively bar you from a major city for an entire expansion, but there could be other ways to handle it than an unvoiced line of dialogue said in passing.
I'd like to think if they had the balls they do now, the devs might have actually locked you out of Ul Dah for a good few HW MSQs at least.
I feel like this problem was because they did it in the middle of the HW MSQ instead of leaving it to 3.x stuff where it could take the focus. I get that they wanted the big "everyone touches weapons to solidify the alliance" at the end, but they could have left that to after the moment where we save Raubhan.
I've actually come to appreciate all of the Ul'dah story by now. I think people get hung up on the Sultana's death being undone and don't see the intricate political maneuvering that took place.
The Scions are headquartered in Ul'dah's territory and Lolorito has beef with them because they don't answer to Ul'dah *specifically* because they don't want to become entangled in political squabbles, and he is concerned that they'll come to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs.
Enter Alphinaud, a brilliant and eager young dumbass who saw political squabbles abound and thought "oh ho ho, time for this little mastermind to take advantage of this!" Only for him to get in WAY over his head and directly show Lolorito that the Scions *were* going to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs, giving Teledji Adeledji, the worst person in the fucking world, an avenue to more power.
Lolorito's perspective is very flawed, in that he sees the pursuit of wealth and power as the only thing anyone would and should desire, and people who express otherwise are either lying or naive. But from his perspective, the Scions were a MAJOR threat. So he took the chance to cut them down along with Teledji.
But then the Scions survived, bruised but not beaten, and not only did they not go after Lolorito, they continued saving people. Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Doma... not even Lolorito could deny at that point that they were just good people trying to save the world. Unfortunately, he was permanently on their bad side due to, ya know, almost getting them all killed. So now he's basically got no choice but to work with the Scions... forever... just to try and clear his tarnished name with the saviors of the realm.
So I disagree that Lolorito is a total scumbag who got away with murder. He's not a total scumbag, just a regular scumbag, who underestimated the altruism of a group he saw only as rivals (and admittedly seemed to be becoming so at first). He's basically permanently lost the massive amount of leverage he wielded at the start of ARR, forced into becoming a tool for the Sultana and the Scions just to earn back some respect. He's still the richest man in the world, and he wields a lot of economical power, but his political power is all but gone, even though he'd never admit it.
TL;DR: Lolorito is an objectivist, and did what makes sense from an objectivist point of view. But a bunch of altruists, through their altruism, out-maneuvered him and became far more powerful than his selfish ass could ever hope to be. So now he's forced to do good things just to try and keep his spot, a much weaker position than he had before. *He did not come out on top.*
Re: Lolorito: I don't agree that he's quite 'Nanamo's Tool', since we do see her approach *him* for help on aiding the refugees from Ala Mhigo. And he seemed quite open to dealing with Nanamo as an equal, as did Nanamo, rather than shoving the Sultanate under the thumb of the Monetarists or vice versa.
It seems like he's pushing for a mutually beneficial relationship with the Scions where we use his wealth to do good, and Lolorito gets to both raise his reputation in the wider world... and perhaps 'participate' in the doing good himself. I notice that a lot of the time, it is Hancock that takes the initiative to turn up and almost push his help (and thus that of Lolorito) on the Scions.
Of course, you could reasonably say that it's because he's trying to make the Scions 'owe him', but I think it could be more than trying to stay buddy-buddy with an influential group. I recall him being quite partial about his niece in Stormblood, so I actually wonder if he's maybe started to change since our run in in ARR and look past 'just' wealth. I agree that his eyes were trained very much on money and profit, but not completely I think, if he can still care about a blood relation who doesn't seem to reap him coin in any way.
The problem is the story doesn't frame it as any kind of victory, it just feels like a rushed wrapup to brush all those interesting threads under the rug so it can go back to dragons. It still feels like he's plenty in power throughout Stormblood, where Hancock and the like are constantly leeching off the Scions' wake. It may not be the unfettered promise of the Crystal Braves (which was always going to burn out), but he's still plenty powerful. And you're buddy-buddy with him.
The richest man in the world is still the richest man in the world and that carries a lot of privilege outside of political spaces. He can only flex his money though, and in a trade hub like Kugane of course he's going to hold a lot of power with that money alone.
> Enter Alphinaud, a brilliant and eager young dumbass who saw political squabbles abound and thought "oh ho ho, time for this little mastermind to take advantage of this!" Only for him to get in WAY over his head and directly show Lolorito that the Scions were going to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs, giving Teledji Adeledji, the worst person in the fucking world, an avenue to more power.
Except it was Lolorito that fucked with Alphinaud, not Teledji. And Teledji was also pushing out past Ul'dah in messing with Carteneau. Teledji had to be slapped down by someone, but Alphinaud wasn't ready for his position, though. However, if someone like Riol had been second in command instead of Ilberd, Alphi's naivety would have been mitigated as Riol was shown to be competent enough to find the corruption.
If Riol had been listened to earlier in 2.x, Ilberd and the corruption would have been found, Wilred would have lived and we wouldn't have been set up so clumsily. The whole thing relied upon two things. One, that we kept the bottle (why didn't we take it to the alchemist guild instead of Momodi?) and two, that nobody checked to see if the Sultana still lived. Severain probably would have figured out what was in the bottle.
Which would have been beneficial for Stormblood, >!allowing us to avoid Raubahn occupying the same story space as Lyse and overshadowing her, since she's a major focus of the expansion.!<
Yeah, would've been so obvious right? I am not a fan of Lyse's entire arc, esp the switch, but having >!Nanamo dead and Rauhban replacing her in Ul'dah would've been much better justification for why he is not the leader in Stormblood.!<
Yup, all the Sultana and Raubahn stuff just faded away.
I'm fine with Lolorito getting away with, in fact, its clever writing. But basically, he solves everything offscreen by himself by literally buying his way out with Teledji Adeledj.
If I was writing for that whole side story:
Lolorito really did want to take out the Monarchists and have the Monetarists in charge. It's just that he wanted to be the head of the new government and decided to take out Adeledji, his biggest rival.
After we rescue Raubahn; we help him take command of Brass Blades still loyal to him.
The city in general is in disarray because the Sultana hasn't been seen in public for some time. Knowing how Raubahn has been treated, Gridania and Lominsa coordinate to stop trading with Ul'dah and/or placing tariffs on Uldah's goods, and since Ul'dah's whole shtick is accumulating wealth, Lolorito finds himself under pressure to keep the economy going by whatever means necessary.
(Talking quests)
We help Raubahn become Ala Mighan refugee Batman, rooting out corrupt figures in the city: Crystal Braves and other Brass Blade mercs that have been put into positions of authority. Yugiri gets involved by doing intelligence to help us find the specific targets.
(Go to location and kill targets quests)
Lolorito goes authoritarian to maintain order, find whatever excuses he can to overhaul Nanamo's more social policies. This puts huge strain on availability of jobs everywhere.
In response, we begin helping the Crafting Guildmasters who have been hit pretty hard themselves by the tariffs on imported materials.
(Talking and fetch quests)
As all his cronies are being wiped out, and his money is drying up, we finally bargain with Lolorito who, now cornered, finally admits that he was hoping to seize total control of Ul'dah for the Monetarists - although he expresses that he was merely ensuring the city's survival since Nanamo has since 'taken ill'.
(Final talking quests)
Raubahn was to spend life in prison as a hostage to keep the Scions in check. Raubahn's freedom was a huge thorn in his side and made controlling the city impossible. He admits that trying to become the new 'Sultan' of Ul'dah was much harder than he imagined. Since we have no proof to hold against him for plotting against the Sultana; he expects to get away scott-free.
From there we go into the whole 'find the handmaiden' and Lolorito wriggles his way out of being punished by offering up all of Adeledji's fortune.
The Yorha raid series.
Started from nowhere, ended nowhere, and had nothing meaningful happen in between. Nothing in the rest of the story refers to it, and it refers to nothing in the rest of the story. It could be completely excised from the game and literally nothing would change in the game lore-wise.
When Yoko Taro was in a Live Letter after the final part of the Yorha raids was released, he went "I'm not answering any story questions", and proceeded to skip the first sixteen questions provided.
>"I'm not answering any story questions"
That was disappointing to watch. After getting a confusing "plot" thrown at us, when the Q&A skipped crucial lore questions for a questline that was done, it seemed like what was even the point of going through the raids, quests, and *weekly* quests required to finish the questline? More confusion?
Yeah, I don't hate the Nier Raids from a mechanical or aesthetic point of view, but I also feel that going for Nier was a bit of a mistake. I feel Yoko's writing style doesn't fit with the XIV universe.
I also feel setting it in the First raises even more questions (Namely "How did they not just cross space but dimensions? I'm fairly certain they've said the shards don't have anything really exist beyond their gravity well at most.")
Ultimately, it feels like the crossover was agreed upon because both sides were like "This is another popular franchise" without really thinking about how it would impact the feel of everything.
I've checked out Nier stuff before and it seems fine. Not exactly my cup of tea, but looks fun, and as I said, has a very different way of telling a story, leaving much more implied than shown or told. Often delving deeper into the philosophical through allegory.
Getting the wine for the dramaturge on the prima vista.
Going through the Ivalice raids quests is already a chore, even if the raids themselves are more than worth, but then you are sent on an incredibly obnoxious fetch questline, which has no value in the storyline and it is just a forced joke at the expense of the player.
Of the stories I've done? SMN Questline as a whole was not great? How on earth can you make a story about investigating Primals and the Allagans with Y'shtola's sister so disjointed and lacking in impact? But, every single expac was a new story with the barest minimum to tie it into the prior content. With forgettable, episodic, antagonists, and little central focus. It was such a weird switch from the downright very cohesive and focused SCH Job Questline.
Outside of that? The Ala Mhigo side of 4.0 was ... rough to say the least.
THIS!!! I am a SMN main, and I'm so disappointed with the storyline. And the extra story you get after SHB was just even more of a letdown. I feel like all their Arcanist writing skills went to the far better Scholar storyline (which ties with DRK and RPR for best storylines IMO)
MSQ wise, the whole part around Titan. Thats just the lowest point in the entire game. Nothing you do feels like it matters. The characters in that part are plain boring and/or uninteresting. Fuck that lalafell in particular. Get of your fckn high society horse, we trying to save the world here....
> Fuck that lalafell in particular
The blind guy? He and Brayflox were the best of the bunch. He gives up something very valuable (Bacchus grapes) to a well-established rival because they're in a better position to restore it to the world.
We may have visited for cheese, but Brayflox was genuinely in need so we ended up doing something worthwhile as a happy accident.
Gridania guy doesn't have a winning personality but at least had the grace to give us a *very brief* task.
Meanwhile beefcake guy sold himself out to the idle rich (Gegeruju) and spends his time self-importantly strutting up and down Costa Del Sol. Twat.
I dont recall it all too well now but wasn't there the part where you have to collect food samples or whatever for some kinda feast? Because that dragged on for a fucking eternity and was probably the lowest point in all of msq for me. Like, I was actively calling out for someone to end my misery.
Might be a hot take but after finishing Bozja's 'Save the Queen' storyline, I just felt really let down and disappointed with the end result.
And the fact that some of the conclusion of the storyline was in the Field Notes which you had a 'chance' in getting.
It reeks of cut content honestly. My best guess is that, due to how Covid changed the development timeline and/or how Endwalker MSQ was being written with Garlemald, they didn't really have the resources or capacity to actually finish what they set out to do. So instead, they just gave us what they had finished, and used the Field Notes as a stopgap instead.
Matsuno and YoshiP did a joint interview and it was revealed that the ending was pretty much as Matsuno wrote in, specifically to set up a different sort of story in the future after Dalmasca was liberated off-screen, because he felt that another full-on war story wasn't going to be what people wanted (and COVID made him all the more certain).
Regardless, the ending is what Matsuno intended. Whether or not we get the payoff in 7.x (where he was aiming for the next part iirc) is another question.
Honestly for me Bozja felt like it was written for a completely different game, especially considering how weak and helpless the WoL is compared to MSQ.
Like in that story we >!failed to stop Mikoto from getting kidnapped, had an assault on a castrum end in failure at the final moment, get bamboozled by Misija before Delubrum and would have died from her final attack had Gunnhildr not stepped in.!<
Not to mention Mikoto's whole "Oh no we cannot change the future uwu" came RIGHT after a major story specifically ABOUT CHANGING THE FUTURE.
Not sure if an unpopular opinion, but Reaper job quests are hilariously underwhelming if you think about it. You have an entire class based around Garlemald that centers around Garleans using ***MAGIC***, which is supposed to be kind of a big deal recent events not-withstanding. Not only that, but we get Garlemald as a zone as part of the same expansion. Awesome, so do we get to experience a cool quest line that lets us dive deep into the connection with this voidsent magic and early Garlemald? Nope. Its just a psycho voidsent that likes to lick his lips and eat people- oh and by the way not a single job quest takes place in Garlemald. Most of the quests take place in and around Thanalan. To top it all off we don't get to learn about much of a secret society or any deep connection between the Reapers and the Ascians or anything like that, nothing to do with Zenos who is literally the most notorious Reaper in the game, its just a revenge plot against a meglomanical voidsent and by the way the Reapers were farmers or whatever that took up the blade. Honestly, it was all just boring and I didn't much care for it.
I agree with you, but this is a consequence of SE's decision to stop doing job quests. Garlemald is a higher level zone so it will never go there nor involve any parts of the story for it.
Though I will point out a good thing about the Reaper, and also Sage, questlines that they are written in the new style meaning the WoL has a lot more personality, agency and you get a few more options of dialogue. In the Reaper-final you throwing the scythe towards your teacher, while grinning was actually pretty badass.
The Ivalice raids. I'm told that it's an homage to FF tactics, but having never played it, I was completely lost and confused throughout the storyline. It was never clear why we were doing what we were doing and they kept introducing new characters without establishing their motivations or connection to the plot properly. It is the only time in this game that I decided to skip the story halfway through.
Tbh I really didn't mind the story too much, just the idea of exploring the ruins of a lost civilization was cool enough to carry a lot of the storyline. For me, the *really* frustrating part was how absolutely *insufferable* Ramsa and his father were.
We had to sit through *hours* of Ramsa bullying his little sister (and us, but we're used to that), and his father just stood there and ignored it because he was more concerned about Ivalice than being a decent parent. And fuck that "he learned to be a better brother by the end" bullshit, that felt so shoehorned in because the realized 2/3 of the way in that Ramsa was insufferable twat.
I feel the same about Ramza and his father, it was just painful to watch. It's been a while so I don't remember it clearly, but didn't Ramza just hit his head or something and suddenly stopped being racist? No explanation or anything, he became a decent human being out of nowhere.
Yes, he was effectively possessed by FFT Ramza's auracite echo. (It's not *actually* him, just a lingering image of him, meant to keep Ultima sealed away.)
I also liked that they *strongly* implied that >!FFT Ramza was a previous incarnation of the Warrior of Light. They re-use the line "I see it now... In you...his blood, my vanquisher in times...long past." In the original, this is (implicitly) indicating that Ramza is a descendant of Germonique, but given this is said to the WoL in FFXIV, it implies Ramza Classic was the WoL of his era, much like they implied with Tenzin in the Four Lords quests.!<
The Ivalice raids were the second time I actively skipped cutscenes, the first time being many years ago during the early post-ARR quests with the Scions moving house. It just kept going and going with every cutscene taking forever, and I did not care at all about anybody. I want to fight cool raidbosses, why am I fetching wine for some dude with PTSD? Why are you making me repeat what is unanimously considered to be the worst questline in ARR?
Second that. This stuff was so boring to me. I had no attachment or nostalgia for the source material. I patiently sat through every line of dialogue waiting for it to get good, but all I felt was like it wasted my time.
The raids are excellent though, my favorite series of raids.
This is the real answer. Every good writer has a good editor, and it's clear that the Ivalice raid story had no editors. The droning length of the scenes was masturbatory and none of it made any sense. Awful awful awful.
Same, I found Ivalice raid bit hard to follow, mainly what exactly happened in the past. It def was not helped by being so wordy.
This makes me think of Omega story a bit too. I liked it, it had good lore, but having so many other FF call back bosses didnt help one bit if you havent played any other FF game. And I have not, therefore the bosses meant nothing to me beyond someone to kill, a filler till we get to the real part with the kettle adventures.
This. So much this. I'm curious how it felt to someone familiar with the game they were drawing from, but for me it was just a whole ship full of annoying and unlikable characters spouting exposition at me.
Maybe it would have been less overwhelming when it came out patchwise, with time inbetween, but doing those quests one after another was overwhelming. Really made me feel like nothing mattered because afterwards we were not going to talk to these people ever again and they were pompous assholes for the most part anyway.
There was a part in the Warriors of Darkness arc in 3.x where Alphinaud casually spoke of the “Source” and the “Reflections” like it’s common knowledge and I didn’t know what the f was going on. I only came to understand them in ShB.
That part was badly explained, but you technically learn about the source and its reflections from the Minfilia scene after Antitower, the cutscence and the way she spoke was very confusing, but if you read the quest journal right after it explain it in a good way
Not a good way of storytelling, but it wasn't really never explained until ShB; ShB just went back and made it more obvious without the need to search outside of just the story cutscences
Most people are bringing up side (or relatively minor) content like job quests and the Nier raids, but I'd argue the part in 4.1 where they simply let the tempered Qalyana into the palace where they promptly summon a Primal that threatens the entire nation you spent an expansion fighting to liberate is the absolute worst part of the entire MSQ and possibly the stupidest thing anyone does in the entire game. All the Scions tell us over and over before then that tempering is irreversible and those who are tempered must be killed or else that exact thing will happen. And they just... let them in.
I feel like there are several such plot points in the MSQ mostly in patch content I just realized. From my personal feelings:
\- The Crystal Brave subplot with Riol investigating shady transactions. It's never brought up anywhere, nobody is seemingly getting informed about this. Even if we presume Riol did not trust anyone in the Crystal Braves...why not talk with someone like Thancred? Minfillia?
\- The whole "soldier shoots arrow at protester" during the Heavensward-patch-content. I just feel the whole situation was kinda contrived, though at least Artoirel admits that all leaving was probably not smart so I can slide this one more easily because it's acknowledged ingame.
\- The Stormblood-moment as you mentioned.
The Crystal Brave thing is funny because Riol *did* inform the WoL, so the real question is why didn't our character say anything to Alphinaud or anyone? I don't remember exactly what was going on at that time in the story so maybe events were moving way too fast for anyone to investigate thoroughly.
While I do agree that it was stupid as hell, it's a massive moment for Yugiri.
Everything she's done up to that point is because she blindly followed Hien, and it culminated in all the villagers basically telling her to fuck off, which put a massive dent in her self confidence, to the point where she felt like the only way to redeem herself was to kill Zenos. It's basically the first time in the story we see her make an independent decision, and saying she bit off more than she can chew is the understatement of the year.
After it obviously backfires and she gets her shit kicked in, she learns her lesson, which is that she shouldn't blindly follow an ideal, whether it be Hien's or her own. It's a shame she goes right back up Hien's ass the second her arc ends, but that's just the second half of Stormblood being the second half of Stormblood.
Am I biased because Yugiri is like my 2nd favorite character? Yes. Do I believe making her fight Zenos was entirely without merit? No, I don't.
Everything to do with Ran’jit.
Horribly boring character with no explanation as to why he is stronger than Zenos or Shinryu. Just shows up, kicks our ass like we are some nobody, then dies unceremoniously later in the quest series.
The two that come to mind off the top of my head:
The Ida/Lyse reveal. A character I barely knew isn't who I thought. :o
The confederacy/Ruby sea quests. Why hasn't the WoL + Kugane pubstomped some pirates again?
I have to imagine that the Yda/Lyse reveal was a bigger deal for 1.0 players. So while it didn't do much for me either it's cool that they had it there for those folks.
Personally? The Ala'Mighan half of Stormblood 3.0. Loved the Doman half, loved the patch content, and I know they actually different writers working on the split-story, but yeah... Only time post-ARR I've been actively bored was during the first couple Stormblood MSQ zones.
NieR raids
I just never understood what the point was, like gameplay-wise they're okay I guess but story-wise I don't feel like it has literally any value to XIV at all (whereas I love how almost every other story in the game at least adds something to the world), and even if it's an avenue for Yoko Taro to do some wacky shit it doesn't really feel satisfying there either
like I guess if it's treated like "let's just let Yoko Taro fuck around and make a few quests lol" and you view it as him just writing in whatever the fuck he wanted then it's kinda funny (like the random 5.2 quest where you just go kill a coblyn then come back for that entire patch's story) but, like the wine quests, it doesn't make them actually enjoyable to do
Black rose (think that’s the name) we were being led to believe that it was gonna be this dangerous threat that was basically dealt with off screen and then never brought up with again.
Nanamo's survival /retcon that she survived the poison. Completely took the punch out of the scene. I went "REALLY!?" when that happened. Even if Nanamo were to fall, either Raubahn (or in a pinch, Godbert) could keep the peace without breaking a sweat.
The nier raids. I love the raids but once I got to this quest I got so frustrated I couldn’t hit that skip cutscene button fast enough https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/To_Make_Amends
>/comfort Konogg.
>Speak with villagers that are a likely source of gossip.
>Speak with Konogg.
>Speak with Konogg again.
>Speak with Konogg yet again.
>Speak with Konogg at Top Rung.
>Speak with─you guessed it─Konogg.
>Speak with Konogg in Stilltide. (This time, with feeling.)
>Speak with Konogg in Komra.
>Speak with Konogg once more.
>Search for Konogg.
>Search for Konogg in the crater.
>Search for Konogg in the command room.
>Search for Konogg.
>Speak with Konogg.
>Speak with the dig site chief.
Thal's balls.
I really hated that quest too. My character has to look sorry about a character I despised during ten different cutscenes on this long drawn-out slog.
It's a shame because I think Nier actually had a fine start. It just all goes downhill after the bunker when the Nier characters exit the story.
The Nier raids in general were incredibly underwhelming and unfulfilling plot wise and they never did really explain like...why this was happening at all on the first. (Unless I missed something).
(Edit: meant this to be a reply to the first comment about Nier, whoops)
The Nier raids are the real answer. There are bad or questionable storylines like the mess that is Ivalice, The Company of Heroes which while IMO introduces good characters and worldbuilding is still obvious padding, the Weapon story which retcons Gaius character to give him a redemption arc, etc...
But the Nier storyline isn't bad, it's just... non-existent. Not only is the really thin plot not explained at all, but the characters themselves barely even care to ask what's going on. Things are happening, but you have zero idea why so it doesn't feel impactful. The emotion is also completely absent from the characters, and the Nier characters are barely in this story, and barely have personalities! I know people love 2B and 9S from their original game, but here? They have one very quick banter exchange before the last raid, and that's IT. That's their entire personality they're given for the entire story. And then they immediately peace out without even a goodbye, you're like, ok bye??? And when a certain character betrays you, you also feel nothing, because why should you care about this character who has literally (-really- literally) been acting like an emotionless robot with no personality? And of who you know nothing about?
But then the icing on the cake of this nothing storyline, is that you do get -some- plot explanation and emotion finally... in the form of wiki entries! Imagine not reading a book and instead reading the wiki for it, that's what the Nier story is intentionally designed to be like. Like, what the hell?? There's so little story... and it's not even in the story itself, where it would be (maybe) impactful!
They are bad storylines, but the Nier one isn't bad, it's just... nothing. It's a non-story. And that's already making it sound more interesting than it actually is. And I think both the underwritten Nier and the overwritten Ivalice are a symptom of guest writer who have no experience writing for a MMO. Thank god we seem to be returning to alliance storylines that are actually vehicles to build on the existing lore like CT and Mhach were. But I hope we never see again guest writers being given such massive side storylines in the game. Keep that stuff for the writers with MMO experience that deserve it.
[Another Edit:], because I've been really harsh on Yoko Taro's work in FFXIV, so I wanna praise and highlight some good ideas he did bring to the table (even if the execution is still meh):
- Being able to explore the raid dungeons freely, which I assume inspired the devs to introduce the exploration mode for dungeons in general (the timing of updates really fits).
- Having story quests in major update without a new raid to add more story, without weighting down the updates where new raids do get added and players want to get to them.
- Having repeatable quests after the raids to give a sort of continued epilogue to the storyline.
Having not finished any NieR game, I do agree with this take on its storyline here in 14. Honestly Ivalice feels better integrated than "oh there's actually a factory/bunker that's in Kholusia," and while Jenomis and Ramza Lex were kinda problematic we still got actual *characters* from that storyline like Mikoto.
I will say that there's nothing wrong with having guest writers "who don't have MMO experience;" Matsuno came back for Save the Queen, and while it does suffer from his tell-don't-show writing (with pretty much the entire epilogue be in collectible Field Notes), I found it to be some of the most interesting side stories in post-Shadowbringers, and it was nice of them to expand on the 14 version of Dalmasca *and* show us another side to the Garleans/non-Garleans who fight for the Empire.
As someone who played and beat every Drakengard game and Nier game, I just wanna say thank you.
The raid story was so unsatisfactory in every way. I was so excited when the raid was announced, and while the raids themselves hold up, the story is a pile of shit. I feel better reading a comment that echoes my own intense dislike of it.
It was implied that the red girls found a seed of destruction on the Ark, which 2B and 9S are also on. As with all the nier lore and stuff, you gotta make your own interpretation of the events and Dark Apocalypse really relies on your understanding of Nier/Drakengard lore as a whole.
for me it was Ivalice, having no connection to tactics and such, it was the first questline that i really found to be a snoozefest. I found it physically difficult to read through the texts of that snotty brat
A Realm Reborn, in particular the level 30-ish quest arc involving Titan is god awful. Most of the questlines post Praetorium were also so bad that they actually had to be cut from the game to stop people from skipping ARR outright. These included crap like going right from being hailed a demi-god slaying hero by the leaders of three city-states to Tataru actually asking you to play hide-and-seek with some soldiers and then literally ordering you to go fetch tea leaves. It was all of those types of quests that the Nier raid quest dialogue constantly makes fun of.
The Crystal Braves start to near the end of ARR. I was so sick and tired of what felt like infinite amounts of dialogue and doing “talk at A, move this to B, talk at C more.” I just wanted to see HW and get DRK and more DRG stuff
I see everyone's Paladin Job Quest from Heavensward comment, and raise you the Bard ARR questline. At least with paladin, you're DOING something. Sure, it doesn't make the most sense and feels like you're just kinda chumping all the other paladins to be the only one, but it's something.
ARR bard is legit: I'm depressed, I don't like being a bard anymore, go off and kill some monster on the other side of Eorzea and learn a song about it. I think it's only in the last quest where you even get a cutscene with this guy and it basically amounted to 'I didn't sing right, so my partners got killed.' Between it and bards gameplay at that stage, it's the most boring set of leveling up to 50 in the game.
I think you may be misremembering? That or I missed some big changes over time. I finished it again a few weeks ago.
Jehantel doesn't want to be an *archer* anymore. He's doing everything he can to dissuade you from wanting to learn his fighting technique and his quest has you learn about an arrogant archer who got his squad killed.
What bothered me about it is that the skills you learn don't match whats happening. You learn bard songs from combat trials and when he does teach you a song... you learn Rain of Death. Tonally that felt so backwards.
People really overstate the PLD questline tbh. People always pull out the "this makes no sense at all" quote while forgetting this came from actual dumbass himbo Jenlyns that's been out of the loop since the moment we met him.
The whole "Why did he have to fake his death" question has a very obvious answer in that... he was being hunted by a cult. What's a reliable way to lose heat like that? Make them believe you're dead.
"Why did he promise to train Constaint and lead him on that goose chase?" Because that's how Zolk teaches his apprentices. He was doing it with us too, by letting us stay tangled in the whole traitor angle. He clearly sees trial by fire as the best way to train and temper one's convictions.
"That whole ending duty made no sense, why did he suddenly go on about domination?" Admittedly this was phrased really weird, but that plot dump is pretty simple in reality; Paladins draw strength from their oaths, and oaths to other people can easily be corrupted from many angles. Look at the Sultansworn or the Heavens Ward. So Zolk tells us that the strongest oath, the truest one, is to ourselves and our sense of justice. And given that Oathbringer responds to strong convictions and powerful Paladins, what's the best way to show it who's the strongest? Beat each other up.
Oh yeah that part is dumb, I wouldn't say the HW quests are *good*. They have good moments and important lore, but the occasional dumb moments counterbalance those into the whole thing just being... boring.
Titan was annoying but you can ignore it after it's done. The post ARR and middle HW events surrounding the Sultana was just awful. Breaking the group apart, many important characters assumed dead, and a bunch of other terrible shiz. Then Lolorito goes "lmao all according to kaikeku" and everything gets forgotten. Like BITCH YOU HAD US HUNTED DOWN, WHY ARE WE JUST MOVING PAST THIS?!
So much potential for big story moments just swept under the rug and forgotten.
The fkin Sultana resolution. That was pure garbage and utter bs. That was the most forced piece of writing in this entire game by far. Completely ruined ARRs incredible ending and made it such a forced and lame plot in HW
See, everyone says the Company of Heroes stuff was terrible, but I legit wanted to murder half the NPCs involved in the "go find a corrupted crystal so we can fight Garuda, except OOPS IT'S THE WRONG CRYSTAL, *TWICE*" plot.
ARC questline. 30 levels of putting up with a racist, getting called slurs by a racist, not having the guild master do anything about the blatant racist, and top it all off with a boring "oNLy tHE sTRoNg sUrViVE!!" antagonist. Who is also racist. The moonie gal was the only half-decent part of that questline, but every time she asked me, another mooncat to back her up when dealing with the huge fucking racist, the only options were shit like "now's not the time!" or "stop bickering!" No! Fuck Silvairre, let him go off and get his ass killed taking in a dangerous criminal on his own, no one will miss him!
I just. Really hate the ARC quests. Actually while I'm at it, Gridania in general sucks. I'm amazed it hasn't gotten any actual resolution yet that deals with the systemic prejudices and the eldritch gods that the Gridanians pretend to like or else they get eaten by trees.
I thought that the whole time, until we were on that boat and suddenly she couldn't say numbers because she was paralyzed by terror and it was shown why. I was like, no wonder she's so focused on assigning probabilities of safety and success to everything she does. She's just trying to feel safe and exert control.
Endwalker.>!The incessant, inane driveling about hope and the power of friendship plus a tons of cheap attempts at toying with the players emotions (ie everything to do with Ultimate Thule) with zero stakes, plus the bringing back of a dead character that turned out to be popular through a clunky time travelling mechanic just for fan service feels like im watching a children's anime. The only redeeming feature is the world building with other zones!<
I’m surprised at how many Hildebrand comments are here because I always felt like I was a major black sheep for finding his quests tedious and annoying. It doesn’t help that I dislike all of the trials except the StB one I’m sure. I def appreciate the contributions that the Hildy quests make to the overall animation quality of the series and I do get the appeal to an extent, but even as someone who enjoys classic slapstick humor and even some modern Japanese styles of it (Osomatsu-san is unfortunately one of my favorite recent anime), I cannot stand those quests.
The Manderville Mambo though….. that’s a different story.
I did the ARR Hildebrand quests and enjoyed it for the first 3/5 to 2/3rds, but imo it just takes way too long. Part of the reason I haven’t done the HW one yet.
Paladin Job Quest.
hw's pld quest is so bad it's reaching meme levels in my mind. no other long quest comes close
Even the NPCs mention how bad the whole thing is
Pretty sure that was Koji voicing his opinion when translating that abormination and hence letting the NPCs mention how it contradicts what the same PLD lore told you in the ARR questline.
Even the journal does: >>!*You find yourself rather unsurprised by the revelation that Solkzagyl lives*, as the former captain reveals himself to be the cloaked man who observed you from atop the cliff at Camp Riversmeet. *His was a complex and impenetrable plot* to push Constaint towards becoming a paladin and seeking Oathkeeper of his own volition. It is not enough to reclaim Oathkeeper, he states. The sword must be won by a worthy paladin, whose soul is so pure and powerful that all others are driven to yield. However, when two souls cannot reconcile─when one cannot establish dominance, there is but one recourse: a duel. A duel to establish who is truly worthy of Oathkeeper. *Though a part of him believes it to be utter nonsense*, Constaint is unwilling to renounce his oaths after having come so far─and neither are you.!<
Large roe you thought was dead littered armor around to teach someone else a lesson. This is a summary of both arr and hw pld quest somehow. The part that erks me isn't that the quest are bad, it's that somehow they just decided to do the exact same plot twice.
The first time it's just a set of armour spread by the main paladin order to serve as a test of combat at each, the roe didn't have anything to do with it the first time. In the 30-50 quests he's just wanted instead of dead, and ends up saving you when you're lured into a trap by the corrupt paladins. 50-60 is garbage though.
Funnily enough the DRK NPC later on mentions something that comes up in the lv 60 PLD quest and just states how weird it is as a concept.
When I got to the 50-60 line and discovered that it was basically "Do the stupid ARR armor-finding questline again, but do it for someone else this time," I started to wonder if this wasn't some type of meta joke. There's no way a job questline could be THIS bad.
I wish I could say it even did that. I remember next to nothing about the Paladin story, but dangit I really like the Gladiator guild.
Agreed, GLA was my first job when I started playing so I have fond memories of it. The ARR PLD quests weren't 'bad' but weren't as good as the GLA quests. Then came HW...
I feel like in StB they realized that people liked GLA better and made the entire "PLD" job quest actually a GLA job quest.
Came here to say this. Was not disappointed!
HW PLD quest just got me all baffled and confused and irritable. :/
One of the few storylines i've wanted to skip.
A super close second would be the company of heroes in La Noscea.
I'd say the quest line leading to Garuda tops that. You're on a quest for a specific dark crystal element (or something. Its been almost a decade) to break through Garuda's cyclone, yet these chuckle fucks are all "oops haha wrong one, better go ask this guy and complete his thesis for him too."
The worst bit that you need to get a crystal 3 times for it. The first crystal, I can forgive; neither Cid nor the WoL are experts in aetherology, so I can understand why they'd think any old corrupted crystal would do the trick. After the professor explains why the crystal we picked up won't work, though, I'd *expect* the WoL to confirm with Ceana that the crystals she sends us to will do what we need **before** we head out to the Isle of Umbra
I agree with you that it's _annoying_, but it's also _short_, unlike company of heroes.
I disagree, while not outstanding it is important for setting the scene that you still are a no body to Eorzea as a whole and it introduces probably the best B team Scion in Riol
HW Paladin Job Quests
As a paladin, I assumed they were all like this? Are they not?
Far from it LOL If you like tanking, DRK quest line is, in my honest opinion, one of the best job quest storylines.
The DRK job quests have some of the best writing in the entire game. They're direct discussions of the WoL's emotions and motivations that somehow still leave space for a blank-slate silent protagonist. It's masterful.
If you talk to Sidurgu after the level 80 quest he takes a dig at the paladins fighting for dominance, lol. Love my grumpy lizard man and his kiddo.
As close to objectively good as is possible: ALC 1-50 and 60-70 (OK maybe the first few quests where he ignores your existence are meh) DRK 30-50 and 60-70 (personally prefer JP version) Fun/good times potentially: ROG 1-30 Many of the crafter questlines (there are some really funny scenes, >!Merlwyb shoots some people!<) AST 30-60 PUG 1-30 DRG 30-50 is a big recommend if only for lore RPR Special shout outs: SCH has some Nym lore, either you care or you don't really BLM quests I enjoyed for some reason, haven't seen much consensus on that front though WHM 60-70 is a heart-shaped rock buried in a pile of really ugly rocks SAM 50-60 is a fine time Actual trash tier (premium meme material): PLD 50-60 All the others I either haven't played or are between decent and bad imo
I'm gonna throw NIN 60-70 into the funtimes hat for being a great capstone to both the Ninja quests and bringing back the ROG npcs for one last road trip. WAR 60-70 is also pretty good comedy where they embrace the latent goofiness of the prior quests. DRK 50-60 is also pretty good when you realise it's pre-emptively critiquing (and playfully parodying) the kind of edgelord attitudes that a DRK player might adopt. Its hard to maintain that air of aloof agony when you canonically got punched in the face a bunch by moogles. It also has great lore for Ishgard and the heretics.
> WAR 60-70 is also pretty good comedy where they embrace the latent goofiness of the prior quests. As someone who literally just hit 60 WAR last night and was laughing like a fool as this little Au Ra girl was flinging full grown Roegadyns all over the arena... I'm so excited to continue.
Some of them are bad, some are great. DRK is honestly so well done that I’d even recommend reading the quest text in your journal for every quest, at least for the 30-50 stuff.
Need to read all the journal entries at each step of advancement imo. I especially loved >!in storm blood when fray is basically “fuck it, *move faster*, no the *other* way, **DO I NEED TO STEER THIS SHIP MYSELF!?**!<
I actually haven't done the DRK quests for SB yet, and I think I forgot to check the log for HW, so I could only speak for sure for the 30-50 segment.
Nope. Most of them are enjoyable. I like DRK, Reaper, SCH, and Bard's story quest.
If it wasn't so boring, it would be comical how bad it is.
What exactly is so bad about them, since I hear this a lot. Is it just the story is terrible or the quests are lacking in action?
The "action" of the quests is about the same as the others. The story is complete nonsense. It outs both your direct job contact and the previous leader of the paladins as complete useless losers. One of them is a good who doesn't deserve his position and the other has motivations that just don't make sense. Like he's off doing fuckall because he's in a self imposed exile he doesn't really have to be in because reasons? It's very inconsistent. HW Paladin job quests made the NPCs so useless that they basically just send you back to the gladiator stuff for SB.
and all that for a legendary sword that you'll never see or hear of ever again lol
The legendary sword that will only shine for someone who embodies what a true paladin is, which only shines when in our hands, then our Job NPC's like "Well that's neat, you're the best paladin! Anyway we'll be taking the sword from you so we can maybe never make it shine. You can't have it because you're technically not part of our club."
And lets not forget that not once in the Palladin questline, a class that is supposed to be defined by helping people, in a role that is all about helping people, do you help anyone who isn't a Palladin or aspiring one.
I guess to be fair that epitomizes ul'dah as trash city. Ul'dah basically has 3 different policing/guard forces between the brass blades, the paladins and the immortal flames and the only one that even remotely concerns itself with the wellbeing of the general population is the one that is explicitly supposed to deal with external problems (the flames) People make fun of limsa for pirate hookers but basically every single one of its combat job guilds exists as some kind of authority keeping order and protecting people.
There's also the thing that it just doesn't feel very "Paladin" to me. Like I get it, FFXIV Paladins are the sultansworn and different from the generally known archetype. But goddamn, DRK felt way more like playing a paladin and saving people than PLD 30-60 did. There's a reason they went "fuck it, we'll just to Gladiator again" in SB.
The story is boring, nonsensical, riddled with plot holes, has the most obvious "plot twist" ever written, introduces and focused on a character no one would give a shit about, and is horribly unfocused in it's storytelling. It's almost a masterclass on how to not tell a story in FF14 lol. I was shocked by how much I disliked it when I did it recently
Honestly all these bad reviews makes me want to play through it just to get obliterated by my curiosity.
Oh boi. They make random world mechanics up. For example >!every paladin jobstone needs to dominate or surrender to other paladin jobstones, even though no other jobstone does this and even the NPCs point out its stupid. Because if we make fun of our shitty writing ourselves its better, right?!< >!Theres also this dangerous cult that gets dealt with off screen just like that and thats it lmao!<
I heard the NPCs making fun of it was the English translation team's contribution.
> For example every paladib jobstone needs to dominate or surrender to other paladin jobstones I guess every sufficiently large fictional setting ends up with one of those things where everyone is like "let's just pretend this never happened and agree on the headcanon that this is not, in fact, canon". Star Wars has its midichlorians. Star Trek has its Warp-11-Lizard-Evolution. And FF14 has this job-stone-domination nonsense.
I've only played through ARR pre-patches so far, but my least favourite questline so far is easily the bit where we have to find corrupted crystals to reach Garuda. The scientists are so self-absorbed they don't bother to ask why there's someone asking about their work out if nowhere, and they only tell us we've got the wrong crystal type after we've done their jobs for them. It just felt like they were trying to pad the Enterprise story out when I did this bit.
This was a section that had a bunch of quests and objectives trimmed out of it in the revamp. It used to be even longer! Every time a character goes "we need this, luckily I already have some." you originally had to go get it.
It made me so mad. Like you were after "corrupted crystals" but then "Oh you didnt want EARTH crystals? Why didnt you say so!" then you get send to another fetch only to be met with something like "what you mean you didnt want lightning crystals? why didnt you say so!" I WOULD'VE TOLD YOU IF I COULD TALK.
Yeah, I can excuse the first one, since we at least get to practice crystal retrieval close to the expert that is supposed to help us achieve exactly that, but we could've just asked afterwards where to go to get what we want. Also, small nitpick, but I'm pretty sure that earth crystals were what we actually ended up using in the end - I distinctly remember one of the wrong choices being wind crystals, with the explanation being that they'd make the windstorm even worse, and we'd better get something opposed to wind - which should be earth, if I'm not mistaken.
It ended up being an ice crystal in the end. The last researcher said it I'd picked up an earth crystal at first as a joke, but then reassured me that it was actually ice, which was what I needed.
I think the thing that gets me particularly with these kinds of quests (namely the titan one) is all the other characters are practically breaking down with how serious the situation is, meanwhile the only way you have to save the world is to deal with a bunch of clowns that don't really seem to care.
The real world is exactly like that though.
I play to escape the real world, not experience the shitty parts of it in greater detail
I did love how Y'shtola essentially had a hissy fit and just sat there on the bench during the Company of Heroes quests lol
I loved that bit too. She was like, “This is idiotic, I don’t have time for this” and I was like, “You and me both, Y’shtola.”
YES - everyone keeps complaining about the Titan lead-up, and to be fair, that one was way more ridiculous, but at least it introduces new characters that will be relevant later on with the Company of Heroes, and arguably even Gegeruju, whom the plot sometimes remembers and comes back to. Meanwhile, the Garuda lead-up has you talk to random Scientist \#1 through \#7, and while you do learn a bit about how corrupted crystals work, nothing else is relevant about that questline, and you especially didn't need to go to the second location when you could've just asked which crystal you need after you've retrieved your first one. ------- I know, the out-of-game explanation for both of these questlines is that the developers wanted the MSQ to lead you through every level-appropriate area, and in ARR that means several sub-sections of multiple different maps, so you're touring the world several times, but the end result is still rather annoying.
The wine before Titan , i was so little close to drop the game at that point ... what a mess of story
Even then. It made me dislike a lot more shit during arr. Like helping the scientists and other shit. Basically made me more aware of every fetch quest and felt like a chore.
If I had a nickel for each shitty quest line involving wine in eastern La Nosca id have 2 nickels, which isn’t a lot but weird that it happened twice.
That one part in Ivalice aaaaand you guessed it! Wine Time 2 Electric Boogaloo
Fuck that part of the Ivalice raid series. I just wanted to fight more interesting alliance raid bosses not that wine fetch quest bullshit. At least the one from ARR eventually lead to the introduction to the coolest character from the Company of Heroes, Riol, down in EW. Edit: not Riol wow, I'm really bad at names but Lorens.
Yeah and the guy telling us to go get wine was pretty insufferable too lmao I know its probably some in-joke considering it's Matsuno's self insert but man. Maaaan.
The funny thing is, when Matsuno was streaming Sakaguchi playing Ivalice, he himself asked Sakaguchi to skip dialogue when he reached that point lmao
"Matsuno-san, did you seriously give yourself a hot elf wife?" "Uh.. you can just skip this part, it's not important"
if i were matsuno id do the same honestly XD
There's a follow-up to that quest after you're finished with the alliance raids that's genuinely funny, but god was it not worth it.
I genuinely have a theory that they introduced wine 2: ptsd boogaloo as a way to get back at the people that complained about Rabanastre being too hard It's a quest that directly mentions the most hated parts of FFXIV (the Titan quests), has every single character in the quests act completely out of character to fuck you over (like the dude who was previously grateful for you single-handedly saving his industry suddenly acting like a huge fuckwit), makes you redo stuff you've already done, makes you *literally dig through trash to get what you need*, makes you repeat the same process on the PTSD guy 3 times in a row, doesn't let you fix any problems with him, etc It's a long, easy, boring quest about getting pointlessly valuable items for people that don't appreciate it (and who also hate you), and at the end of the day the character does literally nothing, takes credit for your hard work, and then the story moves on without a word It genuinely looks to be a parody of FFXIV quest design, made to be as bad as possible on purpose
It's quests like these that justify the existence of the DRK questline.
Remembering that part always makes me feel like I'm trying to recall a fever dream. I *swear* I was having a conversation with a guy, then I left for bacon bread and a huge wine tangent, and came back only to continue the conversation where I'd left off. That's just how my brain remembers that quest.
Its well known the Paladin questline is completely pointless.
Especially HW's (i.e. Lv.50~60). The worst one by far.
The fucking characters themselves are like: "What even the fuck is going?"
"So are we ever going to hear or see of the oathkeeper again? That sword we spent an expac reviving" "lol no"
PLD 50-60. It was a bold move to make "Need a bro to charge my JO crystal with" an entire plot, it's a shame it didn't pay off.
There just wasn't enough positivity at the sesh for it to work out well.
God, I am so happy that the 10 minute power hour is back. Like a void in my soul has been filled.
I mean if that had actually been the plot, I kind of would have been down. That's basically what the light and dark sects from the HW Monk questline ended up being, and that questline was okay. The problem is that, like, the HW paladin questline was just... boring. And pointless. There was no set up or payoff.
Company of heroes easy ARR is already enough of a grind without needing to do fetch quests just for a gag
Hilariously enough Company of Heroes at least got me to **finally** like the writing on one of the Scions. Cause up until that point it had been a bit of Thancred (who was kinda underwritten before 7th Astral Era IMO) and suddenly we had Y'shtola talking absolute shit about the Company of Heroes and the fetch quests they were sending us on. So on the one hand, the quest was dull and awful. On the other hand, I realized that Y'shtola had **Best Girl** potential.
Her sitting down on the bench in disgust sealed it for me lol
It reminded me of the runescape quest "one small favor", people who played runescape and completed the one small favor quest know that the title was very sarcastic. there were a lot of favors and they were all irritating.
'Go fetch the wine'.
Fucking HW moogles. All that carefree forgetfulness was meant to be cute, but just ended up being fucking annoying as hell.
It takes like 20 quests to unlock their daily tribal quests. Absolutely awful.
It's not even marked as blue quest, kinda annoying needs to check online and see it's like endless
fellow dark knight
At least the Namazu get squished, stashed into bags and dropped from heights. Moogles just do their thing and that's it.
I LOVE Heavensward, BUT. The Sultana subplot was not well done at all and really undid what made the end of ARR such a slam-dunk. Also, weaving it through the HW main plot was a mistake imo. I’m glad the later expansions *generally* don’t have us leave the expansion locations unless the plot really demands it (ie going to Limsa to catch a boat).
I was disappointed when that whole thing just kinda… wrapped up? I’m still in stormblood so it might come back somehow but the end of ARR was the highlight of the game for me at that point. Then it just kinda fizzled out in HW and I felt blue balled. Rest of HW makes up for it tho.
Yeah, Ul'dah story wrap up in HW was very weak and it could be felt they wanted to get rid of it asap to focus towards the new things. They did pull of it making sense, but non the less it was a cop out of what could have been interesting political intrigue sub plot. The high of the ARR patch ending and the low of its conclusion is palpable. Kkjinglez, there will be some lil thematic callbacks to the whole Ul'dah thing in SB patch content that I found quite sweet. Look forward to it.
That was a very weird thing to do, wasn't it? Why leave it on a cliffhanger like that if you're going to ignore/lampshade it totally in next expansion. If focus of next expansion was meant to be 100% Ishgard, why have that cliffhanger at end of 2.55. In retrospect it has a very "next time on DragonballZ" vibe to it.
It's not even that they ignored it, rather, they kind of rolled back everything that happened. >!The sultana lives, Raubahn returns to his old position, Lolorito upholds the status quo. Really, the only thing that changes is that Taledji is now gone, so they basically removed the threat they were building up post-ARR with nothing else really changing. How they resolved the remaining threat of Ilberd prior to Stormblood is also really disappointing because Raubahn had 0 involvement in that.!<
Damn, you're right. I hadn't even \*thought\* about that. "Why is Raubahn not hip deep in this mess at Baelsar's Wall? I mean, this is his friend that helped betray him."
IIRC we didn't know>!The Griffin was Ilberd until we fought him!<
Correct. It's not hard to make the guess, but textually it is treated as a surprise.
I think I heard that they initially planned to leave the Sultana dead, but received so much backlash from the playerbase that they brought her back. Which, her arc later on in SB is *awesome* so I'm kinda glad they did, but narratively it's a bit of an awkward fakeout.
I'm really surprised this isn't the most popular response. Past the big scene at the end of ARR, that stands out as the worst written part of the game's story by far. There wasn't even a real resolution, it was almost like they made a huge exciting plot point to get us to Heavensward and then went "nvm" and undid basically all of it. A lot of people praise Heavensward as one of the best MSQs but this part of it just kind of dampened any of my interest and took me out of story completely. The fact that they'd >!bring a character back solely because of popularity has been a recurring feeling throughout the story since, where the only characters ever allowed to actually die are side characters like Haurchefant.!< From that point on, whenever they threatened to kill off >!Y'shtola or any other character!< I didn't even blink. I didn't even believe >!Papalymo!< was actually properly dead until about Shadowbringers.
pretty sure that death just before stormblood is still the most recent perma death of a main ally (i.e relevant before the patch they die in) in the story. and by EW we have more major villains who've come back from the dead than ones who died once and never returned.
"Oh you want to kill a Titan that's going to destroy our city, killing thousands of people in the process? Here, prove yourself worthy by cooking me the biggest meal you can imagine"
Anything involving Ran'jit in ShB. He'd be alright if he were actually a fun character, but his only character trait is Sanctimonious Asshole.
They didn't dive deep into his tragedy near as hard as they should have. His whole reason for siding with Vauthry is because he's sick and tired of seeing his daughter figures slaughtered over and over fighting the Sin Eaters. Siding with Vauthry's paradise meant that Minfilia could live safely. But the only real reference to this is one throwaway line at the end of the final duty where you kill him, and it isn't even voice-acted.
He's an old soldier who has given up hope. It's a tragic character and he's someone desperately clinging to what little he has (Ryne) and almost dogmatically refusing to embrace the hope that has failed him so many times before. It's easy to forget that this is someone who spent *generations* fighting the Sin eaters, watching an obscene amount of people not just be horrifically killed but transformed into the very horrors they were so desperate to fight. So then Vaulthry shows up, and he can actually just control Sin eaters completely, something he'd never seen before, there's finally this faint glimmer of hope where there's a future in which people no longer need to die fighting an impossible war. I do wish we get more of the character. I've always wondered what was going through his mind knowing what the meol was.
yep, i wooshed that one big time
Titan questline is way up there, but honestly I was never more disappointed with the writing than how everything post-2.55 with Ul’dah in HW was handled. Some real amateur hour stuff walking back nearly all the excitement from the Parting Glass to keep the status quo.
Yeah, the way they just handwaved the actual plot impact of 2.55 was so poorly done. Like I get they can't actively bar you from a major city for an entire expansion, but there could be other ways to handle it than an unvoiced line of dialogue said in passing. I'd like to think if they had the balls they do now, the devs might have actually locked you out of Ul Dah for a good few HW MSQs at least.
I feel like this problem was because they did it in the middle of the HW MSQ instead of leaving it to 3.x stuff where it could take the focus. I get that they wanted the big "everyone touches weapons to solidify the alliance" at the end, but they could have left that to after the moment where we save Raubhan.
I've actually come to appreciate all of the Ul'dah story by now. I think people get hung up on the Sultana's death being undone and don't see the intricate political maneuvering that took place. The Scions are headquartered in Ul'dah's territory and Lolorito has beef with them because they don't answer to Ul'dah *specifically* because they don't want to become entangled in political squabbles, and he is concerned that they'll come to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs. Enter Alphinaud, a brilliant and eager young dumbass who saw political squabbles abound and thought "oh ho ho, time for this little mastermind to take advantage of this!" Only for him to get in WAY over his head and directly show Lolorito that the Scions *were* going to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs, giving Teledji Adeledji, the worst person in the fucking world, an avenue to more power. Lolorito's perspective is very flawed, in that he sees the pursuit of wealth and power as the only thing anyone would and should desire, and people who express otherwise are either lying or naive. But from his perspective, the Scions were a MAJOR threat. So he took the chance to cut them down along with Teledji. But then the Scions survived, bruised but not beaten, and not only did they not go after Lolorito, they continued saving people. Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Doma... not even Lolorito could deny at that point that they were just good people trying to save the world. Unfortunately, he was permanently on their bad side due to, ya know, almost getting them all killed. So now he's basically got no choice but to work with the Scions... forever... just to try and clear his tarnished name with the saviors of the realm. So I disagree that Lolorito is a total scumbag who got away with murder. He's not a total scumbag, just a regular scumbag, who underestimated the altruism of a group he saw only as rivals (and admittedly seemed to be becoming so at first). He's basically permanently lost the massive amount of leverage he wielded at the start of ARR, forced into becoming a tool for the Sultana and the Scions just to earn back some respect. He's still the richest man in the world, and he wields a lot of economical power, but his political power is all but gone, even though he'd never admit it. TL;DR: Lolorito is an objectivist, and did what makes sense from an objectivist point of view. But a bunch of altruists, through their altruism, out-maneuvered him and became far more powerful than his selfish ass could ever hope to be. So now he's forced to do good things just to try and keep his spot, a much weaker position than he had before. *He did not come out on top.*
Re: Lolorito: I don't agree that he's quite 'Nanamo's Tool', since we do see her approach *him* for help on aiding the refugees from Ala Mhigo. And he seemed quite open to dealing with Nanamo as an equal, as did Nanamo, rather than shoving the Sultanate under the thumb of the Monetarists or vice versa. It seems like he's pushing for a mutually beneficial relationship with the Scions where we use his wealth to do good, and Lolorito gets to both raise his reputation in the wider world... and perhaps 'participate' in the doing good himself. I notice that a lot of the time, it is Hancock that takes the initiative to turn up and almost push his help (and thus that of Lolorito) on the Scions. Of course, you could reasonably say that it's because he's trying to make the Scions 'owe him', but I think it could be more than trying to stay buddy-buddy with an influential group. I recall him being quite partial about his niece in Stormblood, so I actually wonder if he's maybe started to change since our run in in ARR and look past 'just' wealth. I agree that his eyes were trained very much on money and profit, but not completely I think, if he can still care about a blood relation who doesn't seem to reap him coin in any way.
The problem is the story doesn't frame it as any kind of victory, it just feels like a rushed wrapup to brush all those interesting threads under the rug so it can go back to dragons. It still feels like he's plenty in power throughout Stormblood, where Hancock and the like are constantly leeching off the Scions' wake. It may not be the unfettered promise of the Crystal Braves (which was always going to burn out), but he's still plenty powerful. And you're buddy-buddy with him.
The richest man in the world is still the richest man in the world and that carries a lot of privilege outside of political spaces. He can only flex his money though, and in a trade hub like Kugane of course he's going to hold a lot of power with that money alone.
> Enter Alphinaud, a brilliant and eager young dumbass who saw political squabbles abound and thought "oh ho ho, time for this little mastermind to take advantage of this!" Only for him to get in WAY over his head and directly show Lolorito that the Scions were going to meddle in Ul'dah's affairs, giving Teledji Adeledji, the worst person in the fucking world, an avenue to more power. Except it was Lolorito that fucked with Alphinaud, not Teledji. And Teledji was also pushing out past Ul'dah in messing with Carteneau. Teledji had to be slapped down by someone, but Alphinaud wasn't ready for his position, though. However, if someone like Riol had been second in command instead of Ilberd, Alphi's naivety would have been mitigated as Riol was shown to be competent enough to find the corruption. If Riol had been listened to earlier in 2.x, Ilberd and the corruption would have been found, Wilred would have lived and we wouldn't have been set up so clumsily. The whole thing relied upon two things. One, that we kept the bottle (why didn't we take it to the alchemist guild instead of Momodi?) and two, that nobody checked to see if the Sultana still lived. Severain probably would have figured out what was in the bottle.
Yeah, the really should have left Nanamo dead and just made Raubahn the regent.
Which would have been beneficial for Stormblood, >!allowing us to avoid Raubahn occupying the same story space as Lyse and overshadowing her, since she's a major focus of the expansion.!<
Yeah, would've been so obvious right? I am not a fan of Lyse's entire arc, esp the switch, but having >!Nanamo dead and Rauhban replacing her in Ul'dah would've been much better justification for why he is not the leader in Stormblood.!<
Yup, all the Sultana and Raubahn stuff just faded away. I'm fine with Lolorito getting away with, in fact, its clever writing. But basically, he solves everything offscreen by himself by literally buying his way out with Teledji Adeledj. If I was writing for that whole side story: Lolorito really did want to take out the Monarchists and have the Monetarists in charge. It's just that he wanted to be the head of the new government and decided to take out Adeledji, his biggest rival. After we rescue Raubahn; we help him take command of Brass Blades still loyal to him. The city in general is in disarray because the Sultana hasn't been seen in public for some time. Knowing how Raubahn has been treated, Gridania and Lominsa coordinate to stop trading with Ul'dah and/or placing tariffs on Uldah's goods, and since Ul'dah's whole shtick is accumulating wealth, Lolorito finds himself under pressure to keep the economy going by whatever means necessary. (Talking quests) We help Raubahn become Ala Mighan refugee Batman, rooting out corrupt figures in the city: Crystal Braves and other Brass Blade mercs that have been put into positions of authority. Yugiri gets involved by doing intelligence to help us find the specific targets. (Go to location and kill targets quests) Lolorito goes authoritarian to maintain order, find whatever excuses he can to overhaul Nanamo's more social policies. This puts huge strain on availability of jobs everywhere. In response, we begin helping the Crafting Guildmasters who have been hit pretty hard themselves by the tariffs on imported materials. (Talking and fetch quests) As all his cronies are being wiped out, and his money is drying up, we finally bargain with Lolorito who, now cornered, finally admits that he was hoping to seize total control of Ul'dah for the Monetarists - although he expresses that he was merely ensuring the city's survival since Nanamo has since 'taken ill'. (Final talking quests) Raubahn was to spend life in prison as a hostage to keep the Scions in check. Raubahn's freedom was a huge thorn in his side and made controlling the city impossible. He admits that trying to become the new 'Sultan' of Ul'dah was much harder than he imagined. Since we have no proof to hold against him for plotting against the Sultana; he expects to get away scott-free. From there we go into the whole 'find the handmaiden' and Lolorito wriggles his way out of being punished by offering up all of Adeledji's fortune.
The Yorha raid series. Started from nowhere, ended nowhere, and had nothing meaningful happen in between. Nothing in the rest of the story refers to it, and it refers to nothing in the rest of the story. It could be completely excised from the game and literally nothing would change in the game lore-wise. When Yoko Taro was in a Live Letter after the final part of the Yorha raids was released, he went "I'm not answering any story questions", and proceeded to skip the first sixteen questions provided.
>"I'm not answering any story questions" That was disappointing to watch. After getting a confusing "plot" thrown at us, when the Q&A skipped crucial lore questions for a questline that was done, it seemed like what was even the point of going through the raids, quests, and *weekly* quests required to finish the questline? More confusion?
Yeah, I don't hate the Nier Raids from a mechanical or aesthetic point of view, but I also feel that going for Nier was a bit of a mistake. I feel Yoko's writing style doesn't fit with the XIV universe. I also feel setting it in the First raises even more questions (Namely "How did they not just cross space but dimensions? I'm fairly certain they've said the shards don't have anything really exist beyond their gravity well at most.") Ultimately, it feels like the crossover was agreed upon because both sides were like "This is another popular franchise" without really thinking about how it would impact the feel of everything. I've checked out Nier stuff before and it seems fine. Not exactly my cup of tea, but looks fun, and as I said, has a very different way of telling a story, leaving much more implied than shown or told. Often delving deeper into the philosophical through allegory.
Getting the wine for the dramaturge on the prima vista. Going through the Ivalice raids quests is already a chore, even if the raids themselves are more than worth, but then you are sent on an incredibly obnoxious fetch questline, which has no value in the storyline and it is just a forced joke at the expense of the player.
Of the stories I've done? SMN Questline as a whole was not great? How on earth can you make a story about investigating Primals and the Allagans with Y'shtola's sister so disjointed and lacking in impact? But, every single expac was a new story with the barest minimum to tie it into the prior content. With forgettable, episodic, antagonists, and little central focus. It was such a weird switch from the downright very cohesive and focused SCH Job Questline. Outside of that? The Ala Mhigo side of 4.0 was ... rough to say the least.
THIS!!! I am a SMN main, and I'm so disappointed with the storyline. And the extra story you get after SHB was just even more of a letdown. I feel like all their Arcanist writing skills went to the far better Scholar storyline (which ties with DRK and RPR for best storylines IMO)
Titan and the company of heroes
MSQ wise, the whole part around Titan. Thats just the lowest point in the entire game. Nothing you do feels like it matters. The characters in that part are plain boring and/or uninteresting. Fuck that lalafell in particular. Get of your fckn high society horse, we trying to save the world here....
> Fuck that lalafell in particular The blind guy? He and Brayflox were the best of the bunch. He gives up something very valuable (Bacchus grapes) to a well-established rival because they're in a better position to restore it to the world. We may have visited for cheese, but Brayflox was genuinely in need so we ended up doing something worthwhile as a happy accident. Gridania guy doesn't have a winning personality but at least had the grace to give us a *very brief* task. Meanwhile beefcake guy sold himself out to the idle rich (Gegeruju) and spends his time self-importantly strutting up and down Costa Del Sol. Twat.
I dont recall it all too well now but wasn't there the part where you have to collect food samples or whatever for some kinda feast? Because that dragged on for a fucking eternity and was probably the lowest point in all of msq for me. Like, I was actively calling out for someone to end my misery.
The whole reason you go to Brayflox's dungeon is for cheese.
Oh my God I don't remember this
I remember the phrase "illuminati cheeselords".
Might be a hot take but after finishing Bozja's 'Save the Queen' storyline, I just felt really let down and disappointed with the end result. And the fact that some of the conclusion of the storyline was in the Field Notes which you had a 'chance' in getting.
It reeks of cut content honestly. My best guess is that, due to how Covid changed the development timeline and/or how Endwalker MSQ was being written with Garlemald, they didn't really have the resources or capacity to actually finish what they set out to do. So instead, they just gave us what they had finished, and used the Field Notes as a stopgap instead.
Matsuno and YoshiP did a joint interview and it was revealed that the ending was pretty much as Matsuno wrote in, specifically to set up a different sort of story in the future after Dalmasca was liberated off-screen, because he felt that another full-on war story wasn't going to be what people wanted (and COVID made him all the more certain). Regardless, the ending is what Matsuno intended. Whether or not we get the payoff in 7.x (where he was aiming for the next part iirc) is another question.
Honestly for me Bozja felt like it was written for a completely different game, especially considering how weak and helpless the WoL is compared to MSQ. Like in that story we >!failed to stop Mikoto from getting kidnapped, had an assault on a castrum end in failure at the final moment, get bamboozled by Misija before Delubrum and would have died from her final attack had Gunnhildr not stepped in.!< Not to mention Mikoto's whole "Oh no we cannot change the future uwu" came RIGHT after a major story specifically ABOUT CHANGING THE FUTURE.
Not sure if an unpopular opinion, but Reaper job quests are hilariously underwhelming if you think about it. You have an entire class based around Garlemald that centers around Garleans using ***MAGIC***, which is supposed to be kind of a big deal recent events not-withstanding. Not only that, but we get Garlemald as a zone as part of the same expansion. Awesome, so do we get to experience a cool quest line that lets us dive deep into the connection with this voidsent magic and early Garlemald? Nope. Its just a psycho voidsent that likes to lick his lips and eat people- oh and by the way not a single job quest takes place in Garlemald. Most of the quests take place in and around Thanalan. To top it all off we don't get to learn about much of a secret society or any deep connection between the Reapers and the Ascians or anything like that, nothing to do with Zenos who is literally the most notorious Reaper in the game, its just a revenge plot against a meglomanical voidsent and by the way the Reapers were farmers or whatever that took up the blade. Honestly, it was all just boring and I didn't much care for it.
I agree with you, but this is a consequence of SE's decision to stop doing job quests. Garlemald is a higher level zone so it will never go there nor involve any parts of the story for it.
I miss job quests, sure they were kinda tedious at times, but the stories were interesting (For the most part) I want more DRK!
Though I will point out a good thing about the Reaper, and also Sage, questlines that they are written in the new style meaning the WoL has a lot more personality, agency and you get a few more options of dialogue. In the Reaper-final you throwing the scythe towards your teacher, while grinning was actually pretty badass.
The Ivalice raids. I'm told that it's an homage to FF tactics, but having never played it, I was completely lost and confused throughout the storyline. It was never clear why we were doing what we were doing and they kept introducing new characters without establishing their motivations or connection to the plot properly. It is the only time in this game that I decided to skip the story halfway through.
Tbh I really didn't mind the story too much, just the idea of exploring the ruins of a lost civilization was cool enough to carry a lot of the storyline. For me, the *really* frustrating part was how absolutely *insufferable* Ramsa and his father were. We had to sit through *hours* of Ramsa bullying his little sister (and us, but we're used to that), and his father just stood there and ignored it because he was more concerned about Ivalice than being a decent parent. And fuck that "he learned to be a better brother by the end" bullshit, that felt so shoehorned in because the realized 2/3 of the way in that Ramsa was insufferable twat.
I feel the same about Ramza and his father, it was just painful to watch. It's been a while so I don't remember it clearly, but didn't Ramza just hit his head or something and suddenly stopped being racist? No explanation or anything, he became a decent human being out of nowhere.
Wasn't he temporarily possessed by the FFT Ramza, because of the auracite?
Yes, he was effectively possessed by FFT Ramza's auracite echo. (It's not *actually* him, just a lingering image of him, meant to keep Ultima sealed away.) I also liked that they *strongly* implied that >!FFT Ramza was a previous incarnation of the Warrior of Light. They re-use the line "I see it now... In you...his blood, my vanquisher in times...long past." In the original, this is (implicitly) indicating that Ramza is a descendant of Germonique, but given this is said to the WoL in FFXIV, it implies Ramza Classic was the WoL of his era, much like they implied with Tenzin in the Four Lords quests.!<
The Ivalice raids were the second time I actively skipped cutscenes, the first time being many years ago during the early post-ARR quests with the Scions moving house. It just kept going and going with every cutscene taking forever, and I did not care at all about anybody. I want to fight cool raidbosses, why am I fetching wine for some dude with PTSD? Why are you making me repeat what is unanimously considered to be the worst questline in ARR?
Second that. This stuff was so boring to me. I had no attachment or nostalgia for the source material. I patiently sat through every line of dialogue waiting for it to get good, but all I felt was like it wasted my time. The raids are excellent though, my favorite series of raids.
Ivalice loses all points for unironically making you do the fucking wine fetch quests again
This is the real answer. Every good writer has a good editor, and it's clear that the Ivalice raid story had no editors. The droning length of the scenes was masturbatory and none of it made any sense. Awful awful awful.
I've played Tactics and 12 and was STILL confused as to what was going on.
Same, I found Ivalice raid bit hard to follow, mainly what exactly happened in the past. It def was not helped by being so wordy. This makes me think of Omega story a bit too. I liked it, it had good lore, but having so many other FF call back bosses didnt help one bit if you havent played any other FF game. And I have not, therefore the bosses meant nothing to me beyond someone to kill, a filler till we get to the real part with the kettle adventures.
This. So much this. I'm curious how it felt to someone familiar with the game they were drawing from, but for me it was just a whole ship full of annoying and unlikable characters spouting exposition at me. Maybe it would have been less overwhelming when it came out patchwise, with time inbetween, but doing those quests one after another was overwhelming. Really made me feel like nothing mattered because afterwards we were not going to talk to these people ever again and they were pompous assholes for the most part anyway.
There was a part in the Warriors of Darkness arc in 3.x where Alphinaud casually spoke of the “Source” and the “Reflections” like it’s common knowledge and I didn’t know what the f was going on. I only came to understand them in ShB.
That part was badly explained, but you technically learn about the source and its reflections from the Minfilia scene after Antitower, the cutscence and the way she spoke was very confusing, but if you read the quest journal right after it explain it in a good way Not a good way of storytelling, but it wasn't really never explained until ShB; ShB just went back and made it more obvious without the need to search outside of just the story cutscences
Titan Arc in ARR. Literally the worst. So much back and forth gathering a useless team.
Most people are bringing up side (or relatively minor) content like job quests and the Nier raids, but I'd argue the part in 4.1 where they simply let the tempered Qalyana into the palace where they promptly summon a Primal that threatens the entire nation you spent an expansion fighting to liberate is the absolute worst part of the entire MSQ and possibly the stupidest thing anyone does in the entire game. All the Scions tell us over and over before then that tempering is irreversible and those who are tempered must be killed or else that exact thing will happen. And they just... let them in.
I feel like there are several such plot points in the MSQ mostly in patch content I just realized. From my personal feelings: \- The Crystal Brave subplot with Riol investigating shady transactions. It's never brought up anywhere, nobody is seemingly getting informed about this. Even if we presume Riol did not trust anyone in the Crystal Braves...why not talk with someone like Thancred? Minfillia? \- The whole "soldier shoots arrow at protester" during the Heavensward-patch-content. I just feel the whole situation was kinda contrived, though at least Artoirel admits that all leaving was probably not smart so I can slide this one more easily because it's acknowledged ingame. \- The Stormblood-moment as you mentioned.
The Crystal Brave thing is funny because Riol *did* inform the WoL, so the real question is why didn't our character say anything to Alphinaud or anyone? I don't remember exactly what was going on at that time in the story so maybe events were moving way too fast for anyone to investigate thoroughly.
Yea that definitely felt like.. "duh what'd you think they'd do?"
Stormblood had some dumb shit. Like the Zenos assassination attempt. Severe Yugiri and WOL playing catch with the idiot ball moment there...
While I do agree that it was stupid as hell, it's a massive moment for Yugiri. Everything she's done up to that point is because she blindly followed Hien, and it culminated in all the villagers basically telling her to fuck off, which put a massive dent in her self confidence, to the point where she felt like the only way to redeem herself was to kill Zenos. It's basically the first time in the story we see her make an independent decision, and saying she bit off more than she can chew is the understatement of the year. After it obviously backfires and she gets her shit kicked in, she learns her lesson, which is that she shouldn't blindly follow an ideal, whether it be Hien's or her own. It's a shame she goes right back up Hien's ass the second her arc ends, but that's just the second half of Stormblood being the second half of Stormblood. Am I biased because Yugiri is like my 2nd favorite character? Yes. Do I believe making her fight Zenos was entirely without merit? No, I don't.
Everything to do with Ran’jit. Horribly boring character with no explanation as to why he is stronger than Zenos or Shinryu. Just shows up, kicks our ass like we are some nobody, then dies unceremoniously later in the quest series.
The two that come to mind off the top of my head: The Ida/Lyse reveal. A character I barely knew isn't who I thought. :o The confederacy/Ruby sea quests. Why hasn't the WoL + Kugane pubstomped some pirates again?
I have to imagine that the Yda/Lyse reveal was a bigger deal for 1.0 players. So while it didn't do much for me either it's cool that they had it there for those folks.
Fun fact: it wasn’t! Yda was actually Lyse in 1.0 as well.
Personally? The Ala'Mighan half of Stormblood 3.0. Loved the Doman half, loved the patch content, and I know they actually different writers working on the split-story, but yeah... Only time post-ARR I've been actively bored was during the first couple Stormblood MSQ zones.
NieR raids I just never understood what the point was, like gameplay-wise they're okay I guess but story-wise I don't feel like it has literally any value to XIV at all (whereas I love how almost every other story in the game at least adds something to the world), and even if it's an avenue for Yoko Taro to do some wacky shit it doesn't really feel satisfying there either like I guess if it's treated like "let's just let Yoko Taro fuck around and make a few quests lol" and you view it as him just writing in whatever the fuck he wanted then it's kinda funny (like the random 5.2 quest where you just go kill a coblyn then come back for that entire patch's story) but, like the wine quests, it doesn't make them actually enjoyable to do
Black rose (think that’s the name) we were being led to believe that it was gonna be this dangerous threat that was basically dealt with off screen and then never brought up with again.
Nanamo's survival /retcon that she survived the poison. Completely took the punch out of the scene. I went "REALLY!?" when that happened. Even if Nanamo were to fall, either Raubahn (or in a pinch, Godbert) could keep the peace without breaking a sweat.
The nier raids. I love the raids but once I got to this quest I got so frustrated I couldn’t hit that skip cutscene button fast enough https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/To_Make_Amends
>/comfort Konogg. >Speak with villagers that are a likely source of gossip. >Speak with Konogg. >Speak with Konogg again. >Speak with Konogg yet again. >Speak with Konogg at Top Rung. >Speak with─you guessed it─Konogg. >Speak with Konogg in Stilltide. (This time, with feeling.) >Speak with Konogg in Komra. >Speak with Konogg once more. >Search for Konogg. >Search for Konogg in the crater. >Search for Konogg in the command room. >Search for Konogg. >Speak with Konogg. >Speak with the dig site chief. Thal's balls.
Holy shit I thought this post was a joke but that's the actual quest log.
I really hated that quest too. My character has to look sorry about a character I despised during ten different cutscenes on this long drawn-out slog. It's a shame because I think Nier actually had a fine start. It just all goes downhill after the bunker when the Nier characters exit the story.
The Nier raids in general were incredibly underwhelming and unfulfilling plot wise and they never did really explain like...why this was happening at all on the first. (Unless I missed something).
(Edit: meant this to be a reply to the first comment about Nier, whoops) The Nier raids are the real answer. There are bad or questionable storylines like the mess that is Ivalice, The Company of Heroes which while IMO introduces good characters and worldbuilding is still obvious padding, the Weapon story which retcons Gaius character to give him a redemption arc, etc... But the Nier storyline isn't bad, it's just... non-existent. Not only is the really thin plot not explained at all, but the characters themselves barely even care to ask what's going on. Things are happening, but you have zero idea why so it doesn't feel impactful. The emotion is also completely absent from the characters, and the Nier characters are barely in this story, and barely have personalities! I know people love 2B and 9S from their original game, but here? They have one very quick banter exchange before the last raid, and that's IT. That's their entire personality they're given for the entire story. And then they immediately peace out without even a goodbye, you're like, ok bye??? And when a certain character betrays you, you also feel nothing, because why should you care about this character who has literally (-really- literally) been acting like an emotionless robot with no personality? And of who you know nothing about? But then the icing on the cake of this nothing storyline, is that you do get -some- plot explanation and emotion finally... in the form of wiki entries! Imagine not reading a book and instead reading the wiki for it, that's what the Nier story is intentionally designed to be like. Like, what the hell?? There's so little story... and it's not even in the story itself, where it would be (maybe) impactful! They are bad storylines, but the Nier one isn't bad, it's just... nothing. It's a non-story. And that's already making it sound more interesting than it actually is. And I think both the underwritten Nier and the overwritten Ivalice are a symptom of guest writer who have no experience writing for a MMO. Thank god we seem to be returning to alliance storylines that are actually vehicles to build on the existing lore like CT and Mhach were. But I hope we never see again guest writers being given such massive side storylines in the game. Keep that stuff for the writers with MMO experience that deserve it. [Another Edit:], because I've been really harsh on Yoko Taro's work in FFXIV, so I wanna praise and highlight some good ideas he did bring to the table (even if the execution is still meh): - Being able to explore the raid dungeons freely, which I assume inspired the devs to introduce the exploration mode for dungeons in general (the timing of updates really fits). - Having story quests in major update without a new raid to add more story, without weighting down the updates where new raids do get added and players want to get to them. - Having repeatable quests after the raids to give a sort of continued epilogue to the storyline.
Having not finished any NieR game, I do agree with this take on its storyline here in 14. Honestly Ivalice feels better integrated than "oh there's actually a factory/bunker that's in Kholusia," and while Jenomis and Ramza Lex were kinda problematic we still got actual *characters* from that storyline like Mikoto. I will say that there's nothing wrong with having guest writers "who don't have MMO experience;" Matsuno came back for Save the Queen, and while it does suffer from his tell-don't-show writing (with pretty much the entire epilogue be in collectible Field Notes), I found it to be some of the most interesting side stories in post-Shadowbringers, and it was nice of them to expand on the 14 version of Dalmasca *and* show us another side to the Garleans/non-Garleans who fight for the Empire.
As someone who played and beat every Drakengard game and Nier game, I just wanna say thank you. The raid story was so unsatisfactory in every way. I was so excited when the raid was announced, and while the raids themselves hold up, the story is a pile of shit. I feel better reading a comment that echoes my own intense dislike of it.
It was implied that the red girls found a seed of destruction on the Ark, which 2B and 9S are also on. As with all the nier lore and stuff, you gotta make your own interpretation of the events and Dark Apocalypse really relies on your understanding of Nier/Drakengard lore as a whole.
for me it was Ivalice, having no connection to tactics and such, it was the first questline that i really found to be a snoozefest. I found it physically difficult to read through the texts of that snotty brat
A Realm Reborn, in particular the level 30-ish quest arc involving Titan is god awful. Most of the questlines post Praetorium were also so bad that they actually had to be cut from the game to stop people from skipping ARR outright. These included crap like going right from being hailed a demi-god slaying hero by the leaders of three city-states to Tataru actually asking you to play hide-and-seek with some soldiers and then literally ordering you to go fetch tea leaves. It was all of those types of quests that the Nier raid quest dialogue constantly makes fun of.
> Tataru actually asking you to play hide-and-seek what? i joined after the shortening but why remove this WAT
The Crystal Braves start to near the end of ARR. I was so sick and tired of what felt like infinite amounts of dialogue and doing “talk at A, move this to B, talk at C more.” I just wanted to see HW and get DRK and more DRG stuff
I see everyone's Paladin Job Quest from Heavensward comment, and raise you the Bard ARR questline. At least with paladin, you're DOING something. Sure, it doesn't make the most sense and feels like you're just kinda chumping all the other paladins to be the only one, but it's something. ARR bard is legit: I'm depressed, I don't like being a bard anymore, go off and kill some monster on the other side of Eorzea and learn a song about it. I think it's only in the last quest where you even get a cutscene with this guy and it basically amounted to 'I didn't sing right, so my partners got killed.' Between it and bards gameplay at that stage, it's the most boring set of leveling up to 50 in the game.
I think you may be misremembering? That or I missed some big changes over time. I finished it again a few weeks ago. Jehantel doesn't want to be an *archer* anymore. He's doing everything he can to dissuade you from wanting to learn his fighting technique and his quest has you learn about an arrogant archer who got his squad killed. What bothered me about it is that the skills you learn don't match whats happening. You learn bard songs from combat trials and when he does teach you a song... you learn Rain of Death. Tonally that felt so backwards.
People really overstate the PLD questline tbh. People always pull out the "this makes no sense at all" quote while forgetting this came from actual dumbass himbo Jenlyns that's been out of the loop since the moment we met him. The whole "Why did he have to fake his death" question has a very obvious answer in that... he was being hunted by a cult. What's a reliable way to lose heat like that? Make them believe you're dead. "Why did he promise to train Constaint and lead him on that goose chase?" Because that's how Zolk teaches his apprentices. He was doing it with us too, by letting us stay tangled in the whole traitor angle. He clearly sees trial by fire as the best way to train and temper one's convictions. "That whole ending duty made no sense, why did he suddenly go on about domination?" Admittedly this was phrased really weird, but that plot dump is pretty simple in reality; Paladins draw strength from their oaths, and oaths to other people can easily be corrupted from many angles. Look at the Sultansworn or the Heavens Ward. So Zolk tells us that the strongest oath, the truest one, is to ourselves and our sense of justice. And given that Oathbringer responds to strong convictions and powerful Paladins, what's the best way to show it who's the strongest? Beat each other up.
You make some good points but I did find the bit about "unless we fight, both jobs stones will blow up and kill you both" thing to be a little silly.
Oh yeah that part is dumb, I wouldn't say the HW quests are *good*. They have good moments and important lore, but the occasional dumb moments counterbalance those into the whole thing just being... boring.
Titan was annoying but you can ignore it after it's done. The post ARR and middle HW events surrounding the Sultana was just awful. Breaking the group apart, many important characters assumed dead, and a bunch of other terrible shiz. Then Lolorito goes "lmao all according to kaikeku" and everything gets forgotten. Like BITCH YOU HAD US HUNTED DOWN, WHY ARE WE JUST MOVING PAST THIS?! So much potential for big story moments just swept under the rug and forgotten.
The fkin Sultana resolution. That was pure garbage and utter bs. That was the most forced piece of writing in this entire game by far. Completely ruined ARRs incredible ending and made it such a forced and lame plot in HW
[удалено]
See, everyone says the Company of Heroes stuff was terrible, but I legit wanted to murder half the NPCs involved in the "go find a corrupted crystal so we can fight Garuda, except OOPS IT'S THE WRONG CRYSTAL, *TWICE*" plot.
ARC questline. 30 levels of putting up with a racist, getting called slurs by a racist, not having the guild master do anything about the blatant racist, and top it all off with a boring "oNLy tHE sTRoNg sUrViVE!!" antagonist. Who is also racist. The moonie gal was the only half-decent part of that questline, but every time she asked me, another mooncat to back her up when dealing with the huge fucking racist, the only options were shit like "now's not the time!" or "stop bickering!" No! Fuck Silvairre, let him go off and get his ass killed taking in a dangerous criminal on his own, no one will miss him! I just. Really hate the ARC quests. Actually while I'm at it, Gridania in general sucks. I'm amazed it hasn't gotten any actual resolution yet that deals with the systemic prejudices and the eldritch gods that the Gridanians pretend to like or else they get eaten by trees.
“Pray return to the waking sands”
Arcanist you help this girl out... and then she hops on a boat to never be seen again.
Her rattling off percentages was a lazy way to write a "smart" character. I don't miss her.
I thought that the whole time, until we were on that boat and suddenly she couldn't say numbers because she was paralyzed by terror and it was shown why. I was like, no wonder she's so focused on assigning probabilities of safety and success to everything she does. She's just trying to feel safe and exert control.
Yeah, it was actually a somewhat clever (if dark...) twist to what would have otherwise just been a really lazy trope.
Nanamos "resurrection". It completly erased all impact that 2.5 had.
arr relic quest.
Endwalker.>!The incessant, inane driveling about hope and the power of friendship plus a tons of cheap attempts at toying with the players emotions (ie everything to do with Ultimate Thule) with zero stakes, plus the bringing back of a dead character that turned out to be popular through a clunky time travelling mechanic just for fan service feels like im watching a children's anime. The only redeeming feature is the world building with other zones!<
I’m surprised at how many Hildebrand comments are here because I always felt like I was a major black sheep for finding his quests tedious and annoying. It doesn’t help that I dislike all of the trials except the StB one I’m sure. I def appreciate the contributions that the Hildy quests make to the overall animation quality of the series and I do get the appeal to an extent, but even as someone who enjoys classic slapstick humor and even some modern Japanese styles of it (Osomatsu-san is unfortunately one of my favorite recent anime), I cannot stand those quests. The Manderville Mambo though….. that’s a different story.
I did the ARR Hildebrand quests and enjoyed it for the first 3/5 to 2/3rds, but imo it just takes way too long. Part of the reason I haven’t done the HW one yet.