Eorzea, Ho!

Vana'Diel, the world of FFXI, is perhaps my favorite in video games. It won't be around forever, though, and it's game systems are getting stiff in their old age. It was time I really gave Eorzea a shot as a replacement in my life, if not in my heart.

Eorzea is the titular reborn realm of FFXIV, a legendarily troubled game, at launch. The relaunch sometime later has gone on to become a very successful game, and one living very near to the top of the subscription MMO genre. This is no accident.

With A Realm Reborn, and the two expansions out at the moment, Heavensward and Stormblood, S-E has just about nailed the fusion of FFXI and WoW that they seem to have been going for. XIV retains a lot of what made XI great in the flavor of the world, characters, writing, and overall spirit, not to mention a flexible class system. It also rounds off much of what made XI difficult, if not player hostile, in its heyday. This is where I see the influence of WoW. The experience of getting in game and leveling my character up to 30 has had much more in common with Blizzard's MMO than S-E's previous.

I am fine with this. In fact, this might be the platonic ideal of the genre, in my book. I have played a lot of WoW, and really enjoyed it, but never grown attached to the world. I have only ever stayed around as long as the desire to level up lasted, and never felt and draw to go back and revisit any parts of the world I had previously played in. By contrast, just about all of my affection for FFXI is tied up in the world of Vana'Diel, with consideration to the friends I made in my time there. Melding very strong systems and game loops and structures to very strong world building is just good sense.

I watched the noclip video series about FFXIV on YouTube, and I think Naoki Yoshida, the game runner, has a really good head on his shoulders for MMO development. I don't know whether he was ever on FFXI, but having played Ultima Online and WoW, he was able to bring knowledge of what others were doing in the space to his work on FFXIV at S-E after the game's initial failure, for its relaunch.

I could see myself playing a lot of XIV, and I am planning to stick with it, probably as a subscriber after my now 45-day free period ends. I hear Yasumi Matsuno has been doing some work on the game, and I am very excited to get through the story to those parts.

I have created a Marauder, named Warmaster Lupercal, in tribute to Horus Lupercal, fallen son of the Master of Mankind. My semi-RP justification for this is that Horus once spent untold decades in the warp accruing power before returning and laying siege to his father's realm. I posit that Eorzea was one of the places he visited, and did many good deeds and fetch quests before gaining the power he desired from that place and then moved on. My adventures in XIV are surely reflective of Horus' trials.

I have reached level 30 so far, at which point I am given to understand that I can change classes to Warrior, though I don't know whether I should or should not, yet. Perhaps its even necessary; I haven't done much research to this point, because I haven't really had to. I'm just enjoying playing the game and having it explain itself, for the most part, and not having to rely on extra-game research. I'm sure there would come a time where that would be necessary later on down the line, if I wanted to get hardcore, but for now I'm content to explore Eorzea at my own pace, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it soon.

Gaming While Abroad 2018

Having the Switch has been a real blessing in terms of the breadth and depth of experience available to play while way from home. I would never have thought to be able to take with me games like Fortnite, Bayonetta, Breath of the Wild, or the hottest new JRPG on the scene, Octopath Traveler, in the days of even the Vita or 3DS.

Much of my game time in Japan this year was spent with those, but I also checked in on a few others, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (for the kids, mostly), Shovel Knight, and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.

I took my 3DS along for the trip with the express purpose of playing Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, and I did just that. I got about 3 hours or so in. So far, so good. the dungeon exploration is reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey, though thankfully without the need to manually draw in features on the map.

I thought I might like to play some Rocket League, but my wifi speeds are apparently not sufficient for it to work well via the Steam Link on my TV, so I guess I will have to keep that bounded within the four sides of my desktop monitor for the time being.

Words from the East

Most from as east as the UK, some about the Far East.

The Red Path - This story sees Kharn being sent an emissary from Abaddon. The Warmaster of Chaos apparently wants the Betrayer's help in his upcoming 13th Black Crusade. Kharn has no desire to follow the will of anyone but the Blood God, however, so Abaddon is forced to confront him in person, which goes about as well as you might imagine. It turns out, though, the for a time, the will of Khorne is aligning with the rest of the Chaos Gods through Abaddon. The Red Path will see Kharn act in concert with the Black Legion in the campaign to come.

Shroud of Night - This is mainly the story of an Alpha Legion warband, a harrow, in the newly split galaxy after the eruption of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the great rift of warp space to have spilt forth after Cadia fell to Abaddon in his 13th Black Crusade. They have been hired, in a way, by an Emperor's Children captain, sent to the world of Tsadrekha to corrupt the beacon there, a telepath witch the ability to act in a limited way like the Astronomican. However, a Khorne berzerker lord is also laying siege to the planet, and Kharn himself is in the mix, as well. This was a cool book, also featuring Primaris Imperial Fists, Sisters of Battle, and the Living Saint Celestine.

Born of Flame - Book 50 of the Horus Heresy. This is a compilation, though, of stories about the Salamanders legion before and during the galactic civil war. It's three novellas and a couple of short stories all by Nick Kyme, who has also written a trio of novels within the larger series around the legion and their primarch, Vulkan. The final novella in the collection, Sons of the Forge, has a cool flash-forward ending showing the 40K Salamanders chapter discovering the artefacts of Vulkan's creation that the story was centered around.

A History of Japan to 1334 - Just what the title says. I have only just begun this tome, but it's interesting so far. I know a decent amount about Japan's history from the Sengoku period through the Edo period, but not a ton outside of those.