A Green Mushroom

I walked by the Square Enix booth a bunch during PAX because of where it was located by one of the main entrances.  Over the course of the convention I watched a bunch of live gameplay from Square Enix games on the floor and got some hands on time myself. Quick impressions of their offerings in no particular order: Final Fantasy Explorers  - I got hands on time with this one.  It's one of the only games they showed off that's releasing soon.  It's shaping up to be a fun little handheld action RPG.  I'll probably pick it up when it comes out. Just Cause 3  - If you're a fan of Just Cause games then you're going to love this one.  Otherwise it's kinda generic and meh.  I fall more into the later group, but I know people will be nuts for this one. FFXV  - Still looking good, but it seemed like they just had the demo on the floor that I had already played at home... twice. FFXIV  - They had a special Revana fight set up where you...

One of the goals on my gaming to-do list was to keep playing the daily Trial Roulette in FFXIV as long as I'm having fun with it. A couple days ago it stopped being fun for me. I've never been a fan of endgame grind or the gear treadmill that happens when you reach max level in a MMO.  That's where my character is at currently in the newest expansion, Heavensward.  I was doing only one trial every day (the one I think is the most fun) but even that has lost it's appeal. I'm not done with Final Fantasy XIV.  I still think it's a great game.  But I am done with it until they do the next major content patch.  I want to experience new things in my games, and I'm not getting that from FFXIV right now.  Luckily for me, they've been fantastic about releasing regular content and story updates in the game. Now I just have to wait for the next one to land.

I'm inspired by Izlain's post on the first day of this Blaugust event.  He has created a gamer to-do list.  I'm constantly doing this in my own head as I'm working through my backlog, but I never formally write it down. But since I loved his idea so much, I think I will write it down this time just to try it out.  It might be nice to have a gaming to-do list formally written out.  Izlain did a top 10, but I think mine will be slightly less: Persona 4 Golden - Continue playing until I either beat the game or grow bored of it and decide to retire the game. Hearthstone - Get to at least rank 20 by the end of the month.  Do the Tavern Brawl's every week for card packs. FFXIV Heavensward - Do the daily trial roulette as long as I keep having fun with it. (I'm already bored of the other roulette options) KOTOR II - Finally try the PC version since it got a major official update and has a community content fix patch on Steam. Valkyria Chronicles - Get ba...

After hitting level cap and completing the story in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward I feel like I'm pretty much done with the game until the next story patch hits. The end game content of MMOs is usually tuned to be really fun with a consistent group of people.  Typically this is called a Guild but it goes by many other names.  In FFXIV it's called a Free Company. I have a fantastic free company and they're always up for running content with anyone.  They're super inviting, friendly, fun to talk to, and a blast to run content with. "So", you might ask, "what's the problem?" Well, I have kids.  2 little kids under the age of 5.  They need things at all hours of the day.  It's better now that they're both out of the baby and toddler stage, but they still consistently need things even after they're all tucked in for the night.  Sometimes it's some water for their water bottles, other times my little one needs help with the pot...

Ok, I finally finished the main story of Heavensward.  Let's talk. This is Final Fantasy XIV's first expansion and for me it's a mixed bag.  There's both good and bad. First, The Bad.  I hated leveling through this expansion.  Heavensward increased the level cap from 50 to 60.  The first 5 levels weren't too bad, but the xp curve after level 55 drove me crazy.  The story no longer gave enough experience to keep leveling up and I had to do a ton of grinding.  I nearly gave up on this expansion at level 57, 58, and 59.  I would finish literally every quest available to me and still have half a level of experience points left that I needed.  It was infuriating. But the reason it was so infuriating was because the story was level gated... and the story was fantastic. So, let's talk The Good.  The story is amazing.  It is easily the best story in an MMO expansion that I've ever experienced.  It builds on the story ...

This still isn't my full review of Heavensward, but I need to vent a little bit. The story in this expansion is great, I have fun every time I get to do main story quests.  But, the experience curve in Heavensward is crazy. There is so much downtime between levels and since story content is level locked it gets annoying quickly. I would pay good money to just skip leveling and be able to play the story quests of this game without being interrupted. I want to see the end of the story, but I really don't like grinding levels in MMOs.  It's not my thing.  I hope this doesn't turn me off of the game permanently.

The first expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, Heavensward, launched yesterday!  I've been really excited for this expansion and I don't know if I've ever felt this invested in a MMO before.  I'll write up some more extensive impressions for my Final Fantasy Project later, but for now I wanted to talk about launch week. Although Heavensward technically "launched" yesterday it has really been launched since last Thursday.  Anyway who preordered the game could get into the servers starting late last week and get to the expansion content.  That includes me and a lot of people in my Free Company.  It's been fun being in this early access phase but it's also been frustrating. The frustration comes with trying to log in to the game.  If you can get into the game and log on to your character the servers are rock solid.  But, what often happens, is you try to log into your data center (the step before character selection) and the server doesn't respon...

I got my second class to the level cap in Final Fantasy XIV!  I now have my Bard and also  my White Mage at level 50! Healing has been really interesting because I've never played a healer in a MMO before.  I suppose I've probably fooled around with some at very low levels but I've definitely never taken one to the level cap in any MMO. It's amazing how I'm basically playing a different game when I'm a healer.  My job is to keep my party alive during crazy boss battles.  That's often easier said than done.  There's more pressure to perform than when I'm playing a DPS class, but less pressure than when Tanking.  It's actually hitting a sweet spot for me.  I can do tanking and DPS just fine but tanking is a bit too stressful to be fun. Now, when I'm running level 50 content I have options!  I can change up my playstyle for whatever mood I'm in!  It's also really nice to be able to help out members of my Free Company easier sin...

I leveled all the classes in Final Fantasy XIV to 15 or higher!  My Bard is still my main class at level 50 and pretty well geared, but I wanted to branch out.  The run from 1-15 gets a little grindy in the 10-15 range so I buckled down and just got it done for all the classes.  The best part about hitting 15 is getting access to the dungeon finder. As soon as a class hit level 15 I started taking it through low level dungeon finder and getting a feel for it.  I've found I'm really enjoying tanking and healing.  A big part of this might be the super fast queue times.  They're amazing! When I was leveling my main Bard class it would take 30-45 minutes to queue for a dungeon since I was DPS.  When playing a healer or tank it has never taken more than 5 minutes in the dungeon queue.  It's great!  As soon as I want to run a dungeon... I just do. Out of all the remaining classes I latched onto Gladiator and Conjurer.  These are the ...

I played to level 15 with all three magic classes.  Later, these classes evolve and split off into more than three jobs once they reach the job stage at level 30, but all Discipline of Magic jobs stem from these three classes. Level 15 is a key point in Final Fantasy XIV because it's the point at which you can use the Duty Finder to automatically find groups and run dungeons.  It's when the game really picks up and becomes much more fun. Dungeons are one of my favorite parts of the game and they also give great loot and experience.  I would much rather level via dungeons than via grinding out Leve Quests.  And that's what I've had to do while getting these classes up to 15.  Lots of Leve Quests. Actually, under level 10 isn't too bad if you do your class quests and your class hunting log.  It'll generally get you to level 10 without too much grinding.  But leveling from 10 to 15 is a slog.  That's where Leve Quests come in.  Unfortu...

I did my first raids in Final Fantasy XIV!  After finishing my run through of all the level 50 dungeons I figured it was the next piece of content to experience. There are two main sets of raids in the game at the moment, The Crystal Tower and the Binding Coil of Bahamut.  The Crystal Tower is much more approachable and newbie friendly, so that's what I did. I had a set of guildmates walk me through the entire thing.  This is definitely the best way to learn the fights.  I'm sure you could find youtube videos too, but learning from real people is awesome.  Especially people who will answer your questions and not get frustrated that it's your first time. They were all running it anyway because of the weekly incentive Final Fantasy XIV provides.  The game developers are so good at social engineering.  Once per week you can run through the entire Crystal Tower set of raids and if you complete all three raids you get an item that can increase the...

I "finished" Final Fantasy XIV, but I've actually still been playing it.  My twitter friend and free-company mate (guildmate) in the game, Belghast , encouraged me to jump back on and try some of the content that unlocks at level 50. Wow, there is a ton of content that unlocks at level 50.  When I wrote my wrap-up post I was at 84 hours of play time after leveling to 50 and completing the main story.  I'm now over 160 hours and I have yet to repeat content after hitting the level cap.  I haven't even had to run the same endgame dungeon twice. Let's talk about content.  Final Fantasy XIV releases huge amounts of content on a regular basis.  In one of their recent "small" updates they patched in an entire mini-game center and new location in the game called the Gold Saucer... on top of adding new story quests and dungeons. At this point, after 5 major patches, there is almost as much story after level 50 as there is leading up to level 50.  ...

Ever have one of those days where you try a bunch of games in your library and nothing will stick?  You just jump between games for a few hours before giving up on all of them?  That happened to me the other night. I think I'm finished with a couple more Steam games.  These are games from my positive impression pile back when I did my big backlog playtest.  Wolfenstein, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Saints Row IV are all good games but I can't seem to get them to stick. They're just not games for me at the moment even though I can tell they're good games. I don't think I'm in a big FPS mood, so Wolfenstein was fun for a few play sessions but I have no desire to play it to completion.  It's going in my "Games I'm Done With" Steam folder.  Maybe I'll revisit it in the future if I get a sudden FPS craving... but not anytime soon. Shadowrun: Dragonfall is good too.  It has solid turn based mechanics with a variety of classes and option...

I'm still playing Final Fantasy XIV and I'm still trying to get my head around everything the endgame has to offer.  But, I wanted to mention how impressed I am with their patches. Patch 2.51 just released last week.  In terms of Final Fantasy XIV patches it's a "minor" one.  A minor patch in any other MMO I've ever played would include some bug fixes and small balance tweaks.  This patch in FFXIV added the Gold Saucer.  It's an entirely new area of the game that is completely visually unique and has a bunch of new activities.  They added Triple Triad, a complete digital card game, along with things like Chocobo Racing and mini games scattered throughout the area.  This patch really impressed me.  It might be what convinces me to subscribe to this game. I mean, they just add so much content per patch.  Every "major" patch has added new storyline quests as well as 3 or more new dungeons or encounters to run.  They make other MMOs l...

Well I had a crazy week.  I barely played any games at all.  But I had some time to scan the headlines and keep up with gaming news. I realized that there aren't actually that many games announced that I'm excited for.  I was thinking ahead to everything I know of that is supposed to release this year and I only game up with a couple that I'm really interesting in getting. Final Fantasy Type-0 is the game I'm most excited for.  I obviously love the Final Fantasy series and this is the first time Type-0 is getting released in the U.S.  It's a gritty, mature take on war and it has the Final Fantasy name attached.  It's also an action RPG which is a departure for the series.  I've purposefully avoided most information about it because I know that I'll pick it up day one.  I'll always give a new Final Fantasy game a chance and I like discovering the world on my own. Because of my love for the series I'm also excited to get my hands on Fina...

I've been sick since last Wednesday.  I'm over the worst of it but now I just have this cold that keeps lingering.  I've been working from home and getting a lot of sleep but besides that I'm just floating between games and activities at the moment. It's hard to lock down on one thing and focus while I'm sick.  Instead, I'm kinda just sampling stuff and making a little progress here and there. I'm through the first dungeon in Majora's Mask 3D on my 3DS. I went back and spent a couple nights playing around with endgame content in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn . I'm playing Quiz Up whenever I have a few free minutes on my phone. I'm trying to finish reading Star War: A New Dawn on my kindle. I finished watching the Star Wars films in Machete Order . I played a little more Wolfenstein . I don't have anything big to report.  I'm still just trying to feel better.  But expect some of those fleeting thoughts above to...

In the end it seems like Final Fantasy XIV might not be for me.  Although I like the story and the Final Fantasy nostalgia I can't seem to appreciate the game as a whole because of it's MMO trappings. Every thing I dislike about this game is because of the MMO format.  With that being said, it still is one of the best MMOs I've played.  It's right up there with World of Warcraft in terms of quality.  The mechanics, gameplay, and graphics are all solid for a MMO. The best part of Final Fantasy XIV is it's community.  I've had the most positive experience in this community out of any MMO I've ever played.  Almost every time I was new to a dungeon the other players were happy to help.  It doesn't hurt that the game incentivizes playing through old content and helping new players. It truly is social engineering at it's finest.  Rewards are given for using the Duty Finder Roulette too.  The roulette will place you in any dungeon where you...

The title of this post could be taken a number of ways, but I didn't mean it in a good way.  I'm less than a month into Final Fantasy XIV after more than four years away from MMOs... and I'm already getting sick of the grind. After playing so many single player games I can easily see where they are artificially inflated grind between meaningful events.  I know it's because it's an MMO and they need to extend their content.  They need to keep people subscribed.  But, this amount of extra time and grind would never hold up in a single player game. I'm already sick of it less than one month in.  I'm pretty sure that doesn't bode well for my future with MMOs. I knew this was liable to happen if I tried out a MMO again.  I just didn't anticipate it happening so fast. It makes me realize how much I wish I could check out other MMOs for the core content without all the MMO trappings.  I would love to experience all the storyline quests in S...

I hit level 30  in Final Fantasy XIV earlier this week and the pacing came to a grinding halt.  And I do mean grinding. I was jarred out of the main story because suddenly I needed to go start a secondary Class from level 1 and get them up to level 15.  I've been playing an Archer, so in this case the secondary Class I needed was Pugilist.  I needed to get my secondary Class to 15 so that I could pick up an advanced "Job" that goes on top of my main Archer class. The Class and Job system isn't really explained well in the game.  I needed to ask some guildmates about it and do some research online to actually figure it out. In the end, I got Pugilist to 15 which let me pick up the Bard Job for my Archer Class.  It took multiple days and it totally broke me out of my groove. I finally got back to my level 30 main Class/Job which is now Archer/Bard and found that after level 30 the leveling slows down a lot.  No longer could I fly through the...

This is currently the last entry in the mainline series and I needed to give it a shot.  I was actually really excited to get into a MMO since I haven't played one since World of Warcraft in February of 2011 . Before I start, you should probably know where I stand with MMOs.  My first true MMO was Everquest when it originally released.  I played it for the first years of it's life through the second expansion.  I tried out a few MMOs after that but World of Warcraft was the only one that ever stuck for more than a month.  I played it a little bit with each expansion through Cataclysm.  Basically, I would play until max level and then let me subscription lapse.  Overall, I've probably sampled 10 different MMOs over the years for a month at a time. Final Fantasy XIV is my first MMO in almost four years. As I understand it, I'm actually playing the second version of the game.  The original game launched in 2010 with tons of issues and cause...