Final Fantasy XI Online (2002)

I just finished playing through the Episode add-on, Moogle: A Kupo D'etat.

The story was moderately interesting, but the rewards did not equal the effort. Many of the quests were introductions to various mechanics in the game. Harvesting, Mining, Chocobo Digging, etc. Other quests were lengthy and extremely tedious fetch quests in zones with sprawling dungeons and enemies that aggro even high-level characters. Worse still, the fetch quests had to be completed in one sitting. Once you begin, the quest progress reset if you zone out or log out for any reason.

If you plan on playing FFXI, I would skip the Moogle story unless you're a completionist.

I've found the deeper you get into FFXI, the harder the content and the bigger the challenge to get things done solo. Switching to Ninja was kind of a big deal for this. The job adds a lot of durability to your character, even further enhanced by using trusts that focus on buffing you.

I also finally picked up a respectable set of level 119 gear for my Ninja, which has been a huge help. (For those who haven't played, character level caps at 99, but end-game gear has a level value that can push you further. Combined level gear maxes at 119) FFXI has a bunch of end-game zones not connected to any story content. I cleared the Gods of Sky and the Dynamis city zones. The next stop is the Wings of the Goddess expansion and the Ambuscade end zones for even better gear.

Despite feeling overwhelmed by 20+ years of content, I feel I've made really good progress in the last couple of months. I've used forums like ffxiah.com to ask questions because there's a lot to learn, and it's not always clear what you need to do or how things work. FFXI is terribly vague about literally everything. No handholding here, folks.

Meanwhile, I took a small break to play through FFIV: Interlude. It was a short game for the PSP, but it was a nice distraction and fun to revisit characters from the FFIV game.

I am loving this game. When I first started adventuring in Vana’diel, I found the experience to be overwhelming. So many different systems, multiple currencies that can be earned different ways. A massive landscape to explore and very little direction given. This game does not hold your hand, whatsoever.

Now I’m leveled to the mid-thirties, I’ve got plenty of spending money, a solid team of trusts and a mount or six to ride. I feel like I have a solid grasp of the gameplay and I’m finding the quests and the stories they’re wrapped in to be quite enjoyable. There are still moments of tedium, but overall this continues to be a positive experience.

Today while working on a quest to break the level cap I managed to teleport myself into an alternate timeline version of Vana'diel by accident. The thing is, the game doesn't tell you that this has happened when it does. The only real hint you get is a cutscene that was totally meaningless to me, since I'm new, and the letter 'S' listed next to the name of the area it teleports you to. This 'S' doesn't stand for anything meaningful to me by the way, so it's very not obvious what's occurred. I presume the enemy layout of areas and stuff changes too, but as I'm still relatively new to this game , I didn't notice that I was in another timeline at all. I just went about my quest, following the guide I've been using because you realistically can't play this game without a guide.

I spent roughly an hour being frustrated at how wrong the guide I was using seemed to be about the layout of the dungeon I was exploring before finally dying to a group of enemies that seemed far too strong. After angrily googling around, I discovered everything about the alternate timeline as well as the fact that you can't do the quest I was working on in said alternate timeline, so I wasted all that time wandering around for nothing. I still don't know how you're meant to leave said alternate timeline outside of dying like I did.

I know it's 20+ years late, but god damn, this game could have been a bit more explicit about the "Hey, you aren't in the same world anymore, you need to leave if you wanna do your quests n stuff." If I weren't so annoyed I would probably appreciate the subtlety with which time travel was handled here. Like theoretically it's cool that you could time travel and not realize it immediately but the timing was just not good.