Instead of talking about FFXI and brilliant story about “just” a mandy some people might have spotted while traveling through Campaign battles I’ll start with FFXIII which I finally finished. First Final Fantasy since starting playing the online behemoth.
To sum it up last scene with full-on CGI was beautiful to watch. So were every other scene of similar caliber, with various Carbuncles and other recognizable avatars from series taking part in grand parade and various other overtures that occurred throughout the story. Everything else in between, not that pleasant to watch. Story itself wasn’t so bad I guess but it certainly doesn’t work for overzealous acting that’s pulled straight out of some teenager drama. At least playable parts were old Final Fantasy with something different which made them, well, playable.
What boggles my little mind is because later I’m planning to check out challenge of otherworldly NMs in this game, or Cie’th (?) Missions, game allows to make a save after you’ve finished main storyline. And with that file, after beating the game’s last boss final restrictions have been lifted from FFXIII’s experience point table disguised under moniker of Crystarium. It allows you to continue from literally a lobby before final boss fight, with new stuff available and with characters who were more or less unavailable after the result of that ending suddenly sprung to the very party.
Now one could say that this is common with game but wouldn’t a better option be having Crystarium expanded just before the boss battle and giving players option to teleport away from that venue to what’s ultimately considered “end game” in this single-player title? It would open chance to become perhaps too buffed for the last fight but one would think those who would want to fight the boss would go straight ahead anyway. Now it just manages to be more tacky, and I’m not against checkpoints becoming available from main menu for one or each episode but it kind of fights the point of being RPG where your progression is measured by what you’ve done and what has happened to you and the world that surrounds you. Decisions that stick. They could always try to catch current game trends of episodic replays and really, I have nothing against that, quite contrary, it’s like rewinding to your favorite part of the movie. That might require removing one binding feature of current formula (experience grind) but that’d just reveal too much how faux this game is..
Babban Ny Mheillea quest however.. Found it on YouTube and figured that there’s a quest I haven’t done so I ran it for the fun of it. Call me useless semantic but story of this quest (and there’s nothing else to this quest really) is single most endearing thing on FFXI, at least it very much feels that way right now. In contrast to FFXIII there wasn’t a single thing having a fit every 5 seconds.
Beauty of it is that it’s very simplistic but brings up few important things about this game. To understand some of those it might help to have played this game for years but who am I to judge. It really transcends.
