Game Review: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

[dorchadas]

Even more so than for A Realm Reborn I'm not entirely sure how to review this. My previous experience of an MMO, I started at the beginning--or nearly so, at patch 1.8 of World of Warcraft--and stayed on the train for years until I finally left in patch 4.2 during Cataclysm. I could have reviewed each expansion as it came and talked about how Balance Druid startd out terrible, became good but not great during Burning Crusade, truly blossomed in Wrath of the Lich King, and then slid down a bit in Cataclysm while also talking about how the story was nonsense the entire time. I can't do that for Heavensward. There was one major patch while I was playing, patch 5.4, that reworked the monk and added more raids to Shadowbringers, but I'm not in Shadowbringers and I still don't have monk unlocked. I can't talk about tactical points, the original Ishgardian Restoration, mana management, astrologian card priority, or anything else that was a major point of Heavensward because by the time I joined they were all gone.

As such, a lot of this review will be about the storytelling, which is the part that everyone really praises Heavensward for. I heard so often while I was playing ARR that Heavensward was where the story really picks up, just wait for Heavensward, if you have any feels for the game now you don't even know what awaits you in Heavensward, over and over again from everyone. I tried to avoid letting cynicism or hipster dislike take hold and I'm glad I did, because I'm here to report that Heavensward is one of the best Final Fantasy stories ever committed to ones and zeroes. That does mean that from here on, there will be massive spoilers, because I can't really talk about what makes it amazing without discussing the story's twists and turns. You have been warned.

"And so they came, at a friend's behest. Heroes once celebrated as saviors of Eorzea, brought low through treachery, their names blackened with royal blood..."

Heavensward begins in a similar position to A Realm Reborn, though for different reasons. In ARR, the Warrior of Light is just another travelling adventurer from a far away land with no local bonds or ties, come to the Eorzean city-states to make their fortune. In Heavensward, the Warrior of Light is suspected of killing the sultana of Ul'dah and, along with the remnants of the scattered Scions of the Seventh Dawn, flees to the isolationist city-state of Ishgard for sanctuary.

Ishgard was introduced in the main ARR quest, which made it obvious what kind of place it was--a city of deep religious faith and deep divisions between nobility and commoners, with the centerpiece of the quest chain being a false accusation of heresy levied by a priest who was secretly a heretic himself. For a thousand years, Ishgard has defended itself against the "Dravanian Horde," a group of dragons led by Nidhogg who have relentlessly hurled themselves at its walls. The final dungeon of ARR is "The Steps of Faith," where the Warrior of Light repels the dragon Vishap and an army of lesser dragons at the very gates of Ishgard, a battle whose scars are still visible in the beginning of Heavensward. The Dragonsong War kept Ishgard's troops at home during the Battle of Carteneau and almost as soon as the Warrior of Light arrives in Ishgard as a ward of House Fortemps, they are caught up in the aftermath of Vishap's attack and the political machinations of the Ishgardian High Houses, all overseen by the Temple Knights and witchhunters of the Ishgardian Orthodox Church.

To be honest, the Church was less evil than I was expecting. FFXIV is a JRPG, after all, and everyone knows that if there's an organization in a JRPG modeled after the Catholic Church then it probably actually worships Chaos or spends most of its time summoning ancient demons (shoutout to Final Fantasy Tactics!). I really expected that halfway through the game, I'd learn that the Church were secretly worshipping a Primal, or that they were in league with the dragons to prolong the war to maintain their power, but no. The Church in Ishgard is about as evil as the real Catholic Church was historically, which is to say that it was vulnerable to corruption due to priests' greed or lust, but that it still does much good for the people of Ishgard. The kind of organization where you can see that men are fallible but the ideals still hold.

No, the real enemy in Heavensward is the cycle of violence.

"Children of the land, answer this
Why must you turn to empty bliss
Tell me why break trust, why turn the past to dust
Seeking solace in the abyss?"

The story told by the Ishgardian Orthodox Church, the founding myth of their society, is that following a vision from the goddess Halone a group of Elezen led by Thordan and his knights came to the fertile plains of Coerthas to found a city. There, while building the bridge that would one day become the Steps of Faith, they were suddenly and brutally attacked by Nidhogg and his legions of dragons. Thordan was killed by one of his own men, who came under Nidhogg's spell and pushed him off the bridge, but Thordan's son Haldrath took up his spear and fought back, taking one of Nidhogg's eyes and driving the dragon away. The eye was used by the people of Ishgard to found the order of dragoons, and ever since they and the Temple Knights have stood guard against Nidhogg and his brood's relentless attacks on the city.

This story is a lie.

The truth is that the ancestors of the Ishgardians and the dragons lived in peace for centuries, with the dragon Hraesvalgr and the Elezen Shiva even falling in love, until the Elezen learned that dragon's power is concentrated in their eyes. Thordan and his knights twelve killed the dragon Ratatoskr, daughter of Midgardsormr the father of dragons, and devoured her eyes for her power, and then they stole Nidhogg's eye as well when he came to avenge the death of his brood-sister. Thordan and four of his knights died in the battle, four other knights laid down their weapons in remorse for what they had done, and the others founded Ishgard's four high houses. These four knights concocted the myth of Thordan's vision and the Promised Land of Coerthas in order to cover up their crimes, and for a thousand years their descendants have ruled over the people of Ishgard and the archbishops of the Ishgardian Orthodox Church have known the truth and hidden it from everyone.

This seems like assigning blame is an open-and-shut case, and that's true if you only consider the initial betrayal. But the descendants of Thordan and his knights twelve did not spend the rest of their lives hunting dragons. They founded a city and remained there, and defended themselves when the Dravanian Horde came at Nidhogg's behest, and when all of them were dead and their children ruled the city, the dragons came again. When their children were dead, the dragons came, and a thousand years later the dragons still assault Ishgard's walls. There's a scene where Thordan VII, Archbishop of Ishgard, is asked about the truth of Ishgard's history and he admits Thordan's treachery and that he's known all the long, but states that it doesn't matter--Nidhogg does not apportion blame, Nidhogg does not care about guilt, and Nidhogg will not accept an apology. Nidhogg will not stop his attacks until every Ishgardian is dead and Ishgard is burned to the ground by dragonfire. There is no peaceful end to the Dragonsong War.

"To me, my knights!"

Every Ishgardian knows that the dragons hate them and want them dead. Every Ishgardian has lost a friend or a lover, a son or a daughter, to the claws of the dragons. Every Ishgardian knows that it is only by the weapons and faith of the Temple Knights and the dragoons that Ishgard remains safe, and they are right. It doesn't matter that the origin myth of Ishgard is a lie, because the story it tells about their existence is true. A twelve-year-old child in a village in Coerthas has done nothing against the Dravanians, and what are they going to think if they see their father ripped apart by the claws of a wyvern and their mother incinerated by dragonfire when their village is attacked? They'll grow up an orphan, hating the dragons, and the cycle will continue. The Elezen started the war but Nidhogg makes sure that it will never end.

As such, Thordan VII's actions make a lot of sense to me. He's ruthless about preserving the secret history because if the high houses lose their authority it'll open up Ishgard to Nidhogg's attacks. He directs the witchhunters to root out heretics because they undermine the Church's authority. His final bid for godhood--to rule over the world, destroy Nidhogg, annihilate the Primals and the Ascians, and bring an age of peace--are born out of knowledge that the Dragonsong War will only end when one side or the other is destroyed, and he will not allow Ishgard to be the losing side.

I was honestly surprised by the moral dimension of the conflict. As I mentioned, I expected the Church to be evil and I figured that would be about as complex as the war got. That there was a reason for their stance is already pretty good for JRPG writing, where there are any number of enemies who want to destroy the world for reasons that sound like they come from an intro philosophy seminar. Xande wants to destroy the world because in the end everything returns to dust so he might as well hasten it along, and though I'm told the Ascians get better motivations later on in the series, at this point all I know about them is that they want to destroy multiple realities and kill billions of people to bring back their god. Neither of those is sympathetic at all to me, but I can understand why Thordan VII felt he had no choice but to assume ultimate power. That power is the only way he can actually bring about peace.

From the memoirs of Count Edmont de Fortemps.

The end of the storyline is open conflict between Nidhogg and Ishgard, but much of the early part is a travelogue. With the Scions scattered after the FFXIV equivalent of the Red Wedding in Ul'dah, only the Warrior of Light, Tataru Taru, and Alphinaud Leveilleur remain accounted for. As Tataru remains behind in Ishgard, Alphinaud and the Warrior of Light leave with the Azure Dragoon Estinien Wyrmblood, the mightiest warrior in an order of dragon-slaying warriors, and Ysayle "Lady Iceheart" Dangoulain, the leader of a group of heretics. Their goal is to traverse the Dravanian Forelands and find a way up to Churning Mists, islands floating high above Dravania, and plead their embassy to Hraesvalgr. At least, mostly--Estinien thinks the entire mission is a fool's errand, but he's willing to go because Nidhogg lairs in the Churning Mists and Nidhogg must be slain.

Some of my favorite memories come from this section of the game, with the four travelers resting in the wilderness, meeting the Gnath and having to deal with the Primal Ravana, climbing Sohm Al and finding moogles above the clouds, and traveling through the ruins of the time when man and dragon lived together in harmony, all while Ysayle and Estinien butt heads. There's a great moment during a camping scene in Bahrr Lehs, where Estinien says:

"Sitting here, amongst these grand ruins, how can I deny that man and dragon once lived in peace? But for all that such an age existed, we are now in a time of war. Nidhogg killed my family, and no quirk of history will exonerate him. I may be ignorant of how the Dragonsong War began, but if we do not put an end to this conflict now, I can say for a certainty that it will only breed more vengeful souls such as mine. In my hands resides the power to vanquish a great wyrm. If Ishgard's survival rests on me wielding that power, I will slay Nidhogg myself...orders or no."

Estinien was that orphan I mentioned in my example above.

If Heavensward had tried to cast the dragons as the victimized heroes and the Ishgardians as villains I would have hated it, but it doesn't. Hraesvalgr is condescending and dismissive of the very idea of peace or humanity's worth and mocks Ysayle's faith to her face, and Estinien's single-minded pursuit of vengeance turns out to be both correct, since Nidhogg will never accept less than Ishgard's destruction, and his undoing. Everyone is just trying to do what they think is right, which is pretty much how real life is.

Also I really appreciate this section for redeeming Alphinaud for me. In most of ARR he's a know-it-all brat, convinced that everyone around him is an idiot and that only he can lead the Scions' diplomatic efforts. When this blows up in his face to the extent that the Crystal Braves, the paramilitary force he's cultivated to be the Scions' iron hand, betrays him, he learns some humility, and the journey to Zenith humanized him to me. Now he's one of my favorite characters when for most of the base game I could barely stand to listen to him. Sometimes, all you need to become a decent person is for all your decisions to go horribly wrong, your life to fall apart, and a price to be put on your head. I'm not sure that lesson is scalable, but it's nonetheless true.

The wonders of Allagan technology, and a whale.

The Dragonsong War storyline was the main draw of Heavensward for me, but there were a few other story elements that I really liked. The main one was the Warring Triad story in Azys Lla, a group of floating islands based on the Floating Continent from Final Fantasy VI and once used as a cloning and research facility by the millennia-gone Allagan Empire. It's really the only place that the Garlean Empire appears, which was a bit odd to be after how prominent they were in ARR but I suppose fits with the focus on Ishgard. At the urging of a mysterious child, the Warrior of Light travels to the Warring Triad Containment Facility in order to defeat the Primals Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan, who you might recognize as Demon, Goddess, and Fiend from the pre-Kefka battle in FFVI. Since defeating a Primal just means that they vanish into aether until the next time that they're summoned, Allag developed the means to imprison them and sustain their forms to prevent them from being resummoned in an endless loop, and the Garleans are there in order to obtain that same technology to further their goal of ending the cycle of Primal-caused violence. This eventually ends in a Garlean/Scion teamup when the Imperial commander decides that since the Allagan containment technology is breaking down (after five thousand and fourteen years, six months, eleven days, seven hours and thirteen minutes without maintenance), it is useless to the Empire, but since the Warring Triad cannot be permitted to run free and the Scions are the only ones who can fight Primals without risking tempering, Regula van Hydrus is willing to ally with savages.

I don't think I mentioned this in my ARR review, but a plot point in FFXIV is that Primals, either deliberately or simply by proximity, magically brainwash people into being their cultists. The first time that the Warrior of Light experiences this is when they are sent to stop the summoning of Ifrit along with a strike force from Ul'dah, and when they fail, Ifrit breaths blue flames over the entire force and the Immortal Flames troops fall to their knees in worship. After the Warrior of Light wins the battle, the commander who ordered the assault takes them aside and lets them know that the Immortal Flames will have to execute all the other survivors because there's no coming back from tempering--unless you have the Echo, the magical plot power that gives the Warrior of Light the ability to watch cutscenes. The Garleans do not have the Echo and don't particularly fancy having to use wave tactics while also killing any of their own troops who are tempered, so the Scions step in to fill the gaps. The Empire is a brutal colonialist nightmare regime, about which more in Stormblood, but like with the Dragonsong War I appreciate when the enemy has a reason for their actions beyond "I'm evil." It's a consistent point in Heavensward that conflict comes from incompatible ideas of how to solve a problem, not a denial of the problem's existence or one side trying to impliment JRPG nihilism.

I have to admit, though, the real reason I love it so much are all the FFVI callbacks. Respect for the greatest Final Fantasy.

"Mhach, Mhach, beware the dark
keep away or lose your heart."

The alliance raids start off with no story at all other than "We're sky pirates and there's some treasure, go get it," but then delves into the War of the Magi between Mhach, Amdapor, and Nym. The zones are filled with demons (which thanks to the Warring Triad story, we know used to be people), creepy gothic architecture, and enemies named after figures from Irish mythology, which also leads to confusion between sashagee whenever we talk about it--she pronounces the names Mhach and Dun Scaith like they're written in English, as "Mahk" and "Done Skath"; I pronounce the names like they're Irish, as "Vahḥ" and "Dune Skaw," because the final-but-one boss of Dun Scaith is named Scathach and in Irish legend Scáthach lived in Dún Scáith, "The Fortress of Shadows." The storyline of these raids isn't super interesting but I love the aesthetics, and since glamour is the true endgame, I've run them a bunch of times trying to get gear for my jobs.

Also, the music for fighting Diabolos is Revenge Twofold and it is fantastic. One of my favorite boss themes of all time, to be honest. It's clearly meant for the Nidhogg fight based on the lyrics--the two revenges are Nidhogg's revenge on Ishgard for Ratatoskr's death and Ishgard's revenge on Nidhogg for all the people he's killed over a thousand years of war--and while it's not used for Final Steps of Faith, I'm glad they kept it in.

The other raid series is Alexander, which is my favorite Final Fantasy summon--how can you compete with a giant robot that's also an angel?--but in FFXIV I liked the Alexander story and disliked the aesthetics, which were mostly steampunk and growly metal songs. Having to go through the raids and fight robots to get to the next storyline was just something I suffered through to get to the next story. They did re-use the grandfather paradox, though, which calls back to Final Fantasy I and is a perfect end to Alexander's time-travel shenanigans. Shoutout to the way the music dims down to almost nothing when Alexander casts Timegate.

At first I thought it was beautiful and I loved it. Then I had to find the quest locations.

Mechanically, Heavensward is still a hotbars-and-cooldowns MMO. There's even an article that aged incredibly badly about how Heavensward is more a patch than an expansion because so few changes were made to the core gameplay, and since I'm coming in late I don't really know how the game was played back in 3.0 anyway. There is one major change from ARR that was immediately apparent to me, however, and that is the zone design.

While ARR got flying mounts in 5.3, shortly after I started playing, the zones were designed without them and as such they're relatively compact, with points of interest being only a short trip apart. Heavensward has about the same number of points of interest per zone but the zones were designed with the expectation of flying mounts, so they're perhaps four or five times larger than the ARR zones. And what's more, you don't get flying or even a mount speed increase for each zone until later, so most of the main story quests require traversing these giant mostly-empty zones. Every time I had to teleport there, to find a hunt mark or meet someone for a quest, I'd do what I used to do in World of Warcraft when I was traveling long distances--look at the map, point myself toward the destination, and then just hit autorun so I could fly while alt-tabbed. In the ARR zones, I almost never do that and it's only partially because I can't. Mostly it's because it doesn't take that long to get anywhere and alt-tabbing would waste more time than it saves in me being able to read something else. That's not true for Heavensward zones, and especially early on when my mount would slowly shuffle along the roads as I made my way to my destination.

I've heard people say the zones are so huge because then Square would have room to add additional content to them later, and maybe that's true, but I'm coming to Heavensward five years after its release and they're still mostly empty. They'll probably be empty until the end of time. Not that much fun to traverse, honestly.

Anyone who has tanked (or healed) knows this rage.

Tanking isn't new in Heavensward but it was new to me, since HW was the first time I've ever tanked in an MMO. If you're not familiar with MMO combat design--and why should you be, since the golden age of MMOs was ten years ago--they're generally designed around three pillars of tank, healer, and DPS. The tank holds the enemies' attention, the healer keeps everyone alive, and the DPS does the big damage. In WoW this was a pretty rigid distinction for much of the period I played, with healers unable to spend any time doing damage, tanks having to carefully manage their skills to keep everyone focused on them, and DPS needing to coordinate their attacks to down the enemies one by one and incapacitate the enemies they weren't focused on.

In FFXIV none of that really matters. Crowd control barely exists as a skillset--the casters have Sleep, but that's about it--and there's no actual skill in managing aggro. Once tank stance is on, tanks' aggro generation far outpaces the aggro generated by anyone else, and every tank has easy access to an AoE skill. I started with dark knight--weirdly a tanking job in FFXIV--and since the class is HW-exclusive it starts at level 30 and already has access to Unleash, its AoE damage skill. I'd put on Grit, use Unleash on a pull a couple times, and the DPS would just AoE all the enemies down. Generally I'd pull two or three packs of enemies too, following the model of the tanks who had tanked the leveling dungeons I had played through in ARR. About the only thing that made tanking harder than DPSing was that since enemies were generally focused on me, I had more attacks I had to dodge. Rather than popping cooldowns to increase my damage I popped them to increase my resilience. In FFXIV, the hard part of tanking isn't the actual process of fighting the enemies, its keeping the maps of the dungeons straight so you can charge through pulling enemies behind you like a parade so that the other three players don't get angry that you're wasting their time.

sashagee tells me that it didn't always used to be this way, and that tanks used to have to turn tank stance on and off because they generated far more threat but did far less damage in tank stance back when HW was current, much like the ancient "Cleric Stance" that healers had to deal with. Looking on the internet, they also had a Parry stat that only worked against physical damage and only against damage from the front, so facing was very important. But by the time I arrived all of this was gone and tanking now consists of pressing one button and then doing what you were going to do anyway. It's really not any more difficult than the rest of the game, and probably easier than healing. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing more of it, especially since it shortens queue times so much.

You feel anxious about this place.

Heavensward also introduced the concept of Deep Dungeons, which is essentially a roguelike in an FFXIV context. I'm a huge roguelike fan--I have reviews on this very blog for Spelunky, Tales of Maj'Eyal, and Darkest Dungeon, plus a brief comment on Dungeons of Dredmor. I've been playing Angband and Ancient Domains of Mystery for decades even though I've never come close to beating them, and same with Unreal World, though that one doesn't even have an end-state. When I first saw sashagee running endlessly through the same rooms over and over I wondered why she put up with it, but when I looked into it more and learned it was a roguelike with randomly-generated levels and death ending the runs...well.

The Palace of the Dead is a set of mysterious ruins unearthed in the Black Shroud forest, with ancient magics laid over the ruins that fill them with terrible monsters and prevents the usage of most normal equipment, all of which is an excuse to have characters start from level one and fight through a series of randomly-generated floors filled with traps and treasure and thankfully no food clock (though there is a timer). Floors randomly have various "enchantments," such as increasing player HP, preventing all natural healing, or the dreaded Gloom which makes every monster harder, better, faster, and stronger. Counteracting this are "pomanders," items found in the ruin chests that can remove floor enchantments, increase damage or defense, increase the odds of getting treasure, resurrect the player after death, or any number of other benefits. Like any roguelike, it's all random and sometimes you end up with an impossible situation, but part of the gameplay is adjusting to what the RNG throws at you.

PotD is designed for four players, but it's possible to enter it alone for the true roguelike experience. When Heavensward came out this was thought to be impossible, but Square put in an achievement for it once Stormblood came out and red mages were introduced, and nowadays people have done it on many other jobs. It's one of the hardest achievements in the game, to the point where only a handful of people in the world still have it, and I want it. Am I going to get it? Probably not--PotD solo on higher levels is a nail-biting experience, since a huge number of the monsters are simply impossible or have RNG insta-kills against a single non-tank target and a bunch of time is spent sneaking around them and picking battles. A single mistake can end dozens of hours of work, and when FFXIV already takes up so much of my gaming time, do I really want to spend more of it creeping through random levels over and over again so I can call myself "The Necromancer"?

I'll spend more time creeping through the lower levels to power-level my jobs, though. PotD gives great XP and it's a lot of fun as long as you don't just spam levels 1-10 over and over again. There's even a creepy flying head mount!

Kupo.

After all the disasters that Ishgard suffers during the Dragonsong War a reconstruction effort is necessary, and its up to the Warrior(s) of Light to contribute. The big crafter content in Heavensward is the Ishgardian Restoration, which mostly involves making a bunch of specialized items and turning them into the NPCs for Skybuilders' Scrips which can be used to buy special mounts, emotes, minions, and so on. In a sense this isn't different from much of the rest of the game, which is generally some variant of "do dungeons," "grind FATEs," "craft things," and so on, but as with the rest of HW it's the surrounding context that makes it great. The man overseeing the reconstruction is Francel de Haillenarte, the nobleman accused of heresy in the Ishgard introduction quests in ARR, and many of the reconstruction quests deal not with the physical buildings but with the moral reconstruction. After a thousand years of war, can man and dragon really live in peace? I've already commented on that a bunch before so I won't do so again, but the themes of Heavensward run through even the repetitive grindy content.

The main problem I had with this is the same problem with all FFXIV crafting, which is that the end goal is to gain high enough stats and good enough gear that you can write a macro to automatically complete any craft at high quality. But reaching that point removes the actual gameplay and reduces it to "start craft, hit macro, alt-tab out." It's not super fun to check Twitter while waiting on a bunch of crafts to finish, but when the Ishgardian emotes sell for 750,000 gil and I can make enough scrips to get them at a fraction of that cost, then maybe it's worthwhile to take some time to read. So much of playing an MMO is measuring how much time something takes vs. its reward, even in a game as story-driven as FFXIV, and the Ishgardian Restoration is no different.

There's an entirely separate ranking system that provides unique titles to people who provide the most crafts/gathers in a limited time frame, but none of them ran while I was playing. Even if they had, I wouldn't have participated--I got The Insane in WoW because there wasn't a time limit. I'm not interested in killing myself for ten days just so I can get one title that I'll never use because I macroed all my jobs to have separate, appropriate titles and "Saint of the Firmament" doesn't fit any of them. I can do without Crafting (Savage).

Come for the story and the kupo coffers. That's the message.

Edit: Only much later was I told that the whole Ishgardian Restoration wasn't in the game until 5.1, after the release of Shadowbringers! This is the problem with reviewing an MMO where they add content post-release. All of this is available once you complete Heavensward, though, so I'm leaving this here.

For those we have lost. For those we can yet save.

In the middle of ARR, during the slog through the Company of Heroes section where I had to do a bunch of stupid MMO fetch quests as part of the main story, sashagee kept telling me to stick with it and that the game gets really good in Heavensward. While the Company of Heroes storyline did pay off in the end--the "special tactics" they used to fight Titan involved throwing waves and waves of soldiers at him, all of whom had orders to kill anyone that Titan tempered--most of the early ARR quests weren't any different than those I could find in any other MMO. But once I got through Praetorium and went into fighting Primals and the Ascians, the game ramped up, and it really didn't let up for the entirety of Heavensward. From traveling with Ysayle and Estinien to facing down the Knights of the Round to searching for the missing Scions to fighting the Warriors of Darkness, I at least liked all of it and loved most of it.

The main draw of Final Fantasy XIV to me is that it's a big budget MMO, but it's also a Final Fantasy game. Several Final Fantasy games, to be honest, since each game and each expansion is its own story. A Realm Reborn did a lot to salvage the mess that was 1.0, but Heavensward was the first time that the team could really tell its own story and move forward withou the chains of FFXIV's initial launch dragging the game down and they really brought their S game. Now I hear that Shadowbringers is even better than Heavensward, which seems impossible to me, but it does fit the message I've been hearing for years--FFXIV is the best Final Fantasy game of the last twenty years.

And now once more, onward into the storm of blood that awaits me.

Comments

[dorchadas]

"A smile better suits a hero."

I was wandering around in the ward my FC house is in, checking out the houses, and I went into one and found it was some kind of Church of Haurchefant--there were a bunch of pews and an altar with his picture over it. I appreciate whoever built that's devotion.

thanks for reminding me that i really need to play tactics all the way through too.

Same, to be honest--it's been so long. I just keep waiting for it to come to Steam and it keeps...not coming. FFIII is on Steam but not Tactics? What justice is there in the world?

[faram]

wow, a whole church! what server are you on again? i wish i could see this.

I just keep waiting for it to come to Steam and it keeps...not coming

you and me both. every time those surveys from SE come out, i always mention it. i can't be the only one. i wonder the what hold up is. i've never played the mobile version because i heard the controls are wonky but i'd take that port on steam at this point. they are so weird about bringing stuff over there. i was elated when the zodiac age finally hit. i wouldn't mind the first tactics advance either. please se, i'm begging you.

[dorchadas]

Cactuar! Are you on Aether?

I wonder if it's a rights issue with Matsuno or something? Though the put all those raids in Stormblood, so I don't know.

[faram]

i am on aether! faerie!

& yeah, i have no idea tbh. i feel like i should ask a certain person ( Dreamboum ) tho.

[dorchadas]

I'm Ilyesen Valenroix of the Spoony Bards!

...I just went around my ward and couldn't find the Church of Haurchefant. I'm not sure if it got remodeled, or if I saw it when I was looking at random houses during the housing rush back in 5.35. Boo.

[faram]

i'm mog champa of the selectbutts
and that's a shame! maybe they did remodel
i am bad about logging in but maybe we could meet up sometime!