Originally posted on October 22nd, 2019
Last night (with my friend Rina's help) I finished the Seventh Umbral Era quests in FFXIV, which takes me through patch 2.0, and the end of A Realm Reborn (I say it's the end because the credits rolled, but apparently the story of ARR continues through patch 2.5).
I liked it quite a bit! Though I don't have as good of a grasp on the story as i would like. I am going to list my impressions of it below.
For those completely unfamiliar with FFXIV and its history: when the game first came out, it was bad. Panned by critics, not doing well at all with sales, etc. This led to a complete re-working of the game. To facilitate this re-working, they basically wrote in a calamity, which you can see in the following video:
I gather from this video and what I know about the story from playing the game that the Warriors of Light (aka, the adventurers playing the game) were sent forward in time, five years into the future so they escaped dying in the calamity.
As ARR starts, you don't have much sense of who you are. You know you are an adventurer, but that's it. Also, the people of Eorzea (which is a portion of the world, and not the whole planet like I once thought) remember that the Warriors of Light saved them from the calamity, but do not recall the WoL's names or faces.
You start off doing adventurer-y things: running fetch quests, killing low level pests, etc. This gets you noticed, and soon you are doing more and more important things. I started off in the town of Gridania, where eventually I was chosen to represent the populace at an important festival. Shortly after, you are sent as an envoy to the other cities (flashback to FFXI here, which had a similar quest!) and eventually you meet the main characters: The Scions of the Seventh Dawn, who are trying to protect Eorzea from another calamity.
Now, I was familiar with all the characters a bit from their appearance in FFBE. I knew their names and what they looked like. Still, I was quite shocked when it turned out the leader of the Scions was not Y'Shtola the 5 star unit from FFBE, but Minfilia who was only a 4 star.
Also: Thancred was only a 3 star unit in FFBE, meaning he was very easy to get. The FFBE x FFXIV crossover events were raids, so you pulled units from raid summons and you got SO MANY THANCREDS that one got sick of seeing him.
Therefore, when I met him in FFXIV I messaged Rina and said "I was not prepared for Thancred to be a hottie." I mean, his FFBE unit was so lackluster (and rather annoyingly common). To borrow a phrase from Rina, I was personally attacked by Thancred's character, heh.
Folks: I am a healer. I play healers in MMOs, and the name I chose for my character actually means "healer". Therefore, I am a sucker for a character who's in pain. I just want to comfort them. And early on in the storyline, Thancred is sitting around the Scion's headquarters looking dejected, like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders, and yes, personally attacked.
So, the story continues, and the beastmen tribes are summoning their primals, which are a Threat to Eorzea and Must Be Stopped. Of course, you are tasked with stopping them.
Now, there's been times when your character exhibits strange behavior, like she has flashbacks or blackouts where Hydaelyn (which is the name of the world in FFXIV, but if I'm understanding correctly, is also the name of a god) speaks to her. It turns out that you possess the Echo, which is important because normally, the beastmen's Primals take humans under their thrall, but the Echo protects you from this. So you're able to fell the primals: first Ifrit, then Titan, then Garuda.
In the meantime, the Scions have been investigating other threats against Eorzea. Thancred was in charge of investigating the Ascians, Y'Shtola in charge of something else, I forget what. While those two are busy with their investigations, the Garlean empire (which wants to conquer Eorzea) hits the Scion's headquarters, killing many allies and taking Minfilia and others into hostage. Turns out the Garleans are interested in the Echo and want to learn more about it.
There's then an obscenely long quest line to prepare for rescuing the captured Scions. You learn more about the state of Eorzea since the Calamity happened during this quest line, but it's rather a haze to me. During this, though, you meet the character Marques, who survived the Calamity but lost his memory. Meeting you eventually jogs his memory, and it turns out he is Cid nan Garlond, who you've probably guessed is a brilliant airship mechanic. There's a questline to retrieve the Enterprise, an airship that disappeared during the Calamity. You do so, meeting Biggs and Wedge (fellow mechanics) in the process.
Once the airship is retrieved, you learn in a cutscene that Cid is actually Garlean himself, but defected because he wanted his talents to be used for peace rather than war.
Okay, so then it's the infiltration of the Castrum Centri, to save Minfilia and the others. When I finished this duty, I messaged Rina, saying, "jawdrop I did NOT see that coming".
Because Thancred, my hottie, turned out to be on the side of the Garlean empire. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
But lo! I was relieved in the very next cutscene, which happened back at the Scion's HQ and had all the Scions saying, "Well OBVIOUSLY he's in thrall of an Ascian and we need to rescue him!" Whew!
So, the three cities are in discussion together because the Garlean empire has made demands of surrender, and the cities are actually thinking of surrendering, but Minfilia, the Scions, and you interrupt their talks to give a rousing speech and the cities, instead of surrending, bad together for all-out war on the Garlean empire, which has a plan of several steps and of course you are leading all the most dangerous parts of it.
Here I want to talk about gameplay, rather than story. In FFXI endgame dungeons, the practice was to make a camp somewhere in the dungeon. One party member (usually a thief or ninja, but could also be a ranger--aka, a DPS, not a tank) would pull large amounts of mobs to the camp, and the BLMs would Sleepga the mobs. Then the party would pick off the horde one by one. Meanwhile I'm standing a safe distance away, acting as curebot.
FFXIV is totally different. There are no camps, and it's the tanks that attract the attention of the mobs. Instead of sleeping the mobs you fight a whole group at once. You must also dodge attacks. And healers have time to cast offensive spells, too. So, the party as a whole roams through the dungeon, killing hordes of mobs on the way.
I got used to this for the lower-level dungeons in FFXIV, because there is an event to collect mog tomestones, which can be turned in for gear, mounts, and orchestrion rolls. So I've been doing the low-level dungeons a LOT.
Well, the last two dungeons of A Realm Reborn are similar in that you have a roaming party killing mobs, but really, they are very short fights interspersed with semi-long unskippable cutscenes. And, well, I just didn't enjoy these dungeons. I liked seeing the cutscenes because YAY STORY but the fights went so quick I felt I wasn't earning my keep, and I kept getting lost and going WHAT DO? when there were targets to interact with.
During Rock the Castrum (the penultimate dungeon), there was a point where I was WHAT DO?ing very hard, because I didn't understand if I was supposed to be triggering a target or what, so i just stood there like an idiot. I did not enjoy that dungeon, and was shaky afterward.
Anyway! So you had fought these primals, right? Well, the Garlean empire had an Ultima Weapon, which if I understood correctly absorbed the primals powers or something like that, and they were going to use the Ultima Weapon to put a stop to you and conquer Eorzea once and for all, but Lahabrea (the Ascian possessing Thancred) did something to the Ultima Weapon's heart, and caused the Weapon to basically destroy a large part of the area around him. Meanwhile Gaius (the representative of the Garlean empire) is all NOO I DIDN'T PLAN TO DESTROY THINGS and Lahabrea is all SHUT UP, and Gaius dies by your hands.
When Lahabrea unleashed Ultima Weapon, Hydalean put up a protective shield over you. The shield can only hold for so long, and Lahabrea is sure he will win, but nope, you and your companions are victorious!
Then there is a scene with the Scions standing outside the Castrum waiting for your return, and losing hope because there's so much destruction and they think you perished, but eventually you ride out on Maggie the Magitek unit, with Thancred, no longer in thrall, slumped behind you.
Cue the celebration party, and the end of the Seventh Umbral Era. The three cities vow to work together to usher in peace for all. Then comes the LONGEST CREDIT ROLL EVER i swear it was like an hour, and i probably could have skipped it somehow but I firmly believe in watching the credits for works I really enjoy.
At the end of the credits, there is a roar and the ground shakes, which sets up the next part of the story: another primal threat?
So--I think I understood the story okay, but some of the finer points escaped me. I didn't really understand why the Garleans wanted to conquer Eorzea other than that's what Empires do, and I don't really understand the whole bit about the Ascians, though Lahabrea says they are trying to summon their god, Zodiark, so I think all their actions (including that of messing with Ultimate Weapon) were towards that end. But yeah, I was a bit confused by it.
Was it the BEST STORY EVER? No. It was good enough to keep me motivated to see more, but I think it was just decent. I hear things get better after this. On Twitter, someone posted a stick figure drawing saying. "how I play Final Fantasy: watch how hard I can CRY!" with the stick figure crying waterfalls of tears. I posted it in our Discord's XIV channel when I heard the following stories get better, and was told that this was accurate. So I'm eager to see more, which I'm sure I'll jump into tonight.