it could be wrong, but it should have been right;

bad brain day, so i will be brief.

• have managed to work on fic for the first time in months and months. unfortunately what i need to do is revision, which i have always struggled with, but i'll do my best because i really want this fic done and out already. i wrote the first draft in 2023 and it's been languishing since... i gotta just get it done. (it is the endwalker installment of my wolgraha fic series.)
• started trails in the sky the 3rd, but haven't gotten very far in yet.
• no progress on site stuff yet. maybe this week? we'll see.

onwards.

i guess it's not really a liveblog since i'm writing this after the fact. whatever.

anyway, i've finished trails sc! took about 55 hours; thank god for the turbo button during some of the more tedious parts. a spoiler-free review is below, followed by indepth talk on chapter 8 and the final chapter.

Lives up to its predecessor in terms of scope of world and story, but gets bogged down by so-so villains in sharp contrast to the excellent character writing of the main party. The majority of the game retreads areas from FC, though the new dungeons are a joy to explore. Worth it for Estelle and her story, but some patience is required to tolerate the parts in between.

( spoiler talk )

on to 3rd! i think i'll start it tonight, but i may not get further for a few days. also, now that i've finished SC, i'm looking forward to the FC remake even more... there were some callbacks in SC to stuff i'd really quite forgotten in FC, and it'd be nice to revisit. the new graphics are truly gorgeous; i saw a gifset today and just about cried seeing kloe in motion. THAT'S MY GIRL.

we cleared aloalo savage last night! and because i liked it so much (and it's sort of an ultimate-lite) i want to talk about it. (most of us didn't play these jobs, though; i just don't like the red mage weapon.)

aloalo island has three versions: variant, criterion, and criterion savage. variant is casual content for 1 to 4 players; the enemies scale based on how many players are in the instance. i did aloalo variant when it came out, and about a year later with a friend. variant dungeons have 12 different "routes," although in practice there's just three different paths and the things you do along those paths lead to slightly different boss mechanics. it's a neat idea, but unfortunately there's very little longevity to the content: once you get through all 12 routes, there's little reason to go back unless you're farming cosmetics or collectibles. (i had to redo the secret route of aloalo about 10 times to get the last triple triad card i needed from it... which was a real pain in the ass, because the secret route requires doing very specific actions to proceed.)

criterion, on the other hand, is more difficult content intended for 4 players. curiously, it cannot be outclassed with better gear: you're locked to the level it was when it came out. this means that it's still got teeth, even an expansion and a half later, and you have to do it right. additionally, resurrection is restricted: each player gets one rez per boss fight that they can use on a fallen player.

the structure of criterion is a couple of add/trash pulls between the three bosses. the adds here do NOT fuck around: they're mini-bosses in their own right, with mechanics you have to respect lest you die. there's also environmental hazards — the first add pull of aloalo has tornados moving through the arena that you have to avoid while you're fighting the adds.

all that said, once you clear each boss you get a checkpoint, so you can work on each one at a time. and since you do have one rez per player, it's fairly forgiving; you can screw up and still progress. since it's only 4-player content, the mechanics aren't overly complicated... in theory.

in the savage version of a criterion, however, you cannot rez. at all. you must clear all 3 boss fights and all add pulls without anyone dying. additionally, you only have a set amount of time to finish, so you can't stop between encounters.

now, to talk about the bosses...

( Read more... )

anyway, we're going to try and clear a few more times tonight, so wish us luck! aloalo is the only criterion savage with decent rewards (shiny weapons) so we started here, but we're hoping to go on to the other two. rokkon terrifies me and i haven't even stepped into it yet...