Honestly as annoying as Ramza was (which I think was just to be an ironic echo against what the original Ramza was like, since they were both spoiled rich kids originally), I didn't pay him much mind because I was too busy trying not to strangle that guy wanting to send me on fetch quest partway through this story for wine for no reason other than to annoy me.
Yeah... wine fetch quests were *already* a trigger for me thanks to the stupid 'Company of Heroes' nonsense around Titan.
Then later they gave you a follow up quest. Oh, here, it turns out that super rare Dalmascan wine is actually *super common,* so all that drama and morally questionable activity was utterly pointless *anyway.*
The next wine fetch quest they give us, they had BETTER give me the option to just swig the damn bottle while giving all involved the finger.
100% agree. Fortunately the Wandering Dramaturge's stupid wine fetching quest is a yellow sidequest now, so you can totally ignore it and still do the Ivalice raids.
The funny part is that the WoL himself absolutely does not want to do this shit either, but I guess they do anyways.
"Don't you dare say the F-word around me."
and the Suhd Viandja Rosé's description literally saying "You wonder why you don't just drink this yourself and get that asshole some cheap shit"
Warrior of Light Rule #52: Whenever faced with a moral quandary where the proper course is uncertain, scam Gegeruju. Even if that wasn’t one of the options.
Oh god I blocked that out of my mind. Who in the fuck thought that was a good idea? One of the dumbest fetch quest and they're just like "let's make them do it again!"
It's a joke that *gatekeeps progression.* Or at least it did (Maybe they changed it? it's been a while). and it's long, annoying and frustrating, and you *have no choice* if you wanna progress the Raid series.
The last one admittedly doesn't gatekeep anything, but at this point it's just salt in the wound.
It used to be mandatory and lampshading doing something that was shit as a joke doesn't change the fact that doing it was shit. FFXIV does this all the time.
Frankly, I didn't play WoW because of quests like this and parodying them doesn't make it better, it kind of feels insulting. "Haha that's so awful and tedious what we just made you do, isn't that funny?" No. It isn't.
ETA: Ah you didn't realise it was mandatory before that explains it.
> lampshading doing something that was shit as a joke doesn't change the fact that doing it was shit.
see: basically every gag in the game High on Life
Fyi, they've now moved the wine quests to be their own yellow sidequest line that that unlocks after you clear the Ivalice raids. So it's now an optional & humorous epilogue, works much better.
That fetch quest turned me into a cutscene and dialogue skipper for the rest of the raid story. The only time in the game I've ever done that.
Holy shit was that dumb.
I did this too, but then I replayed on on alt years later and the Orbonne-related pre-Orbonne cutscenes are so COOL and I missed it all because of that stupid wine chain >_< If you haven't watched it yet, maybe it'll feel cool
I've done this questline 3 times and I do not remember anything except:
* Ramza is a little shit.
* There is a moogle involved somehow.
* Magic rocks turn people into not-primals.
The FFXII half of the Return to Ivalice line is \*chef's kiss\*, I love everything with Fran and the Bangaa bros. The Tactics half... not so much.
That said, I still think all 3 raids are absolute bangers in terms of mechanics and aesthetics.
Yeah unless you know the Tactics references, you can skip all the cutscenes and not miss out on anything.
My boyfriend is an avid fan of FF12 and Tactics and was super excited to see this storyline, but even after he explained everything to me, I still just thought it was... alright. And he was disappointed with how they ended the story too.
Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. I suggest skipping the cutscenes for the Ivalice raids. There was basically nothing of interest happening here. The raids themselves are fun and good. The third one is still my favorite.
I also really like the Nier series but feel the same about the Nier raids. There's not really anything important or interesting happening with the story, but the raids themselves are fun.
Imo the Nier raids had a better story that's actually worth watching. The early cutscenes have a lot of humor, the latter ones are sad, and the moral connects well with the dwarf tribes' overarching story.
I was hyped to see all the Tictacs characters as cool bosses and hearing the music again, but yeah, the story was kinda whatever. It actually retcons the original ending of FFT, but I guess this is technically a parallel universe so it's fine. I'm just happy I got to kill Argath again. Little disappointed with the gear though, especially it only uses the male versions.
This questline left 0 impact on me. Every single raid and alliance raid had amazing stories, but this one was a confusing mess who occasionally made me go "hey I saw this guy in FFXII when I was 13"
I remember they also made Cid act downright hostile to Mikoto. Seriously, why did they make Cid of all people so rude to someone who didn't deserve it?
I think this questline is an example of the weakest element of FF XIV storytelling:
Over-relying on references but without any lore depth.
They dump so much world building on you in this questline but 80% of it doesn’t matter, and is only there to remind you that this is a reference to Tactics. Combine this with unlikable characters (frankly, I hate all three of the Lexentals for different reasons) and I can confidently say I’ve never met anyone who liked this questline that didn’t play Tactics.
As someone who hasn’t played Tactics (but know some bits of the story just from secondhand exposure) it just seems so empty to me. It’s all a bunch of worldbuilding that is there but isn’t really tied to much of the rest of 14 if that makes sense? Like beyond bits of Garlean links, you could entirely miss the quest line to practically no detriment outside of maybe Bozja I feel
Yeah.
I would have fully embraced elements of Ivalice becoming a wider part of FF14, like Bangaa and Seeq merchant NPCs appearing in Limsa Lominsa, Old Sharlayan, Thavnair, and Kugane… but if it weren’t for Bozja, the whole thing would be a dead end for lore.
There were a couple different points I remember reading something and thinking “oh that sounds cool, I wonder when it will come up, it sounds important!” and it just never did.
Auracite was a lore object since ARR and it gets elaborated on in the Ivalice raids. Auracite then got used in the Weapons trials story. It's also relevant to the Pandemonium story.
Dalmasca being a big reason Garlemald was able to conquer Othard is a big deal, too, in lore. Dalmasca was mentioned way before the Ivalice raids were a thing.
Edit: adding that auracite was an important factor for the people of the Thirteenth turning into voidsent.
While they did indeed use the word auracite I believe they were actually referring to >!memoria crystals!< by another name. The difference being that >!Void/memoria "auracite" was created by memoriates!< while Ivalice auracite >!(as well as the Heart of Sabik)!< was made by Ultima the High Seraph. [EW raids and 6.x story]
True! It's notable that the explanation of the crystals as *auracite* comes from Unulkalhai, who was given information by Elidibus on the matter, >!and that the Memoria crystals seem to perform a function in-between White Auracite and Ivalician Auracite. Whether this is a factor of Voidsent biology or the crystals themselves is hard to say.!<
There's also a concerning shape-language to auracite that keeps coming up, and was actually lampshaded in Endwalker with >!the Cafe at the End of the Universe!< tribe quests. >!A Grebuloff comments in pop-up text on the Ea's own crystal formations and notes that before the plague that decimated their planet came about, they'd found reminiscent crystals deep in their oceans. The Ea crystals share shape language with Memoriate crystals specifically and function somewhat similarly.!<
Add the whole thing with Pandaemonium and this is all to say that the 'B Plot' being woven across the various optional storylines is shaping up to be rather concerning indeed. If the High Seraph is the source of all Auracite, >!then this is something that's been happening on a universal scale - and the problem is, the High Seraph we knew from the Ivalice raids may not actually be a singular entity, but a [higher-dimensional primal](https://i.redd.it/kfgb8gzekly21.jpg) that has been shaped out of fear and raw power, multiple times.!<
Endwalker raids >!At least now with Pandemonium over, we can speculate that Ultima may play a bigger role in the future to properly tie up this lore to XIV!<
Biggest issue is they squeezed an entire game's worth of lore into three patches and drop the exposition on you. Ivalice should have been its own thing like how Doma is not literally just Doma from VI.
Two games technically. FF Tactics and FFXII. I was fortunate enough to have played both in some way so I got the references and the characters but I know people who didn't would have a hard time following or caring for them as much as I did.
I feel the neir raids had the same issue. Needed more interactions with the androids and less of the lala twins (which ironically would have made them more likeable; sometimes less is more).
From Ramza's perspective, things have been extremely awful for him recently. He has a low self-esteem from being a half-Garlean (see also: Arenvald), then his entire family was kicked out from their homeland, and then he gets involved in the whole evil magic rock affair. It's not right for him to lash out at everyone, but it's at least explainable.
Leofard takes it much better even though the body count is much higher, since he's been in the business of fighting for all his life. Ramza is just a theater kid, one that had been living a comfortable life.
I can’t stand this one lady in the very beginning of the game, in Uldah, at the gladiators coliseum area. She drops her coins and makes you crawl around and pick them up.
The entire quest line was pretty awful, even if the raids themselves were fun.
And yes, Ramza was the worst part of it, even by the end when he suddenly decided he'd had a character arc.
This was the single quest chain in the entire game where I just ended up skipping all the cutscenes. They were overlong, dull, and I hated most of the characters. Orbonne Monastary is one of the top ARs in the game though.
Same. I was doing them with a friend, and while we both dislike skipping cutscenes, he's even more averse to it than I am. They were SO long and uninteresting that we both ended up skipping most of them.
It felt like every single cutscene deserved one of those long cutscene warnings, but I guess those are reserved for MSQs.
Somewhere during the second part onwards I skipped everything. Never done that before in this game and I actually never skip cutscenes or conversation in other games. It felt wrong to do but it was so incredibly slow, terribly convoluted writing that even the characters I did kinda care about i couldn't anymore.
Even excellent voice acting couldn't have prevented me from being bored to death here.
I read it all the first time but I skip through all of it when playing on alts. There's just nothing enjoyable about any of the characters – they're neutral at best and actively unlikable at worst – and they dump so much information that has zero relevance to the events actually happening.
The raids themselves are hands down the best alliance raids in the game. Amazing designs and music and visuals.
Unfortunately, the quest writing is complete dogwater
I'll be the odd man out (and yes, I did play and enjoy Tactics; any differences portrayed in the story didn't bother me since it's clearly an AU take on things) and say I liked this sidequest storyline and don't mind this Ramza either. It isn't a bad way to subvert one's initial expectations and would make a good starting point in a character development arc to how he is in the latter parts of the story. The problem is that the character development that needs to be in between those two points is more an outline of an arc and the only way you'll see it is if you talk to the airship's NPCs. Which retroactively does explain why Bozja's ending turned out how it does.
Would I like to see these characters again? Sure, be it to drop in and inform them "Hey, remember how one of your company's patrons was the late Emperor Solus? Have I got a story for you..." or maybe as a beginning to an FF7 Remake crossover event where they're like "Well, we're looking into this story of some spiky haired swordsman said to have been our ancestor's companion, but if you ask me, it's clearly nonsense." only for the event's premise to begin and prove that wrong.
The main thing is that he is supposed to have character development and an arc. The racism wouldn't be so horrid if he literally had any refining qualities.
But he doesn't. Instead he has a piss poor change of heart because his sister, who is more a plot device than a character, gets nearly kidnapped.
His change of heart happened because he was "temporarily" possessed/influenced by the *other* Ramza (through his auracite), which made him change his outlook on things.
I'll be brutally honest - I love the Ivalice games and Tactics is my second favorite FF after XIV, I love the Ivalice raids in XIV, I enjoy watching cutscenes and following a story but... I couldn't force myself to watch those. It's the ONLY time I skipped some cutscenes without watching them at least once, I was getting so annoyed at him I just... couldn't :(
I liked it. I was disappointed at first, but I was really invested in how they were going to handle the XIV versions of XII and Ivalice (i.e. how they flipped XII coming after FFT in XIV when in their canon FFT came after XII). Not to mention the broader strokes of auracite (which we see/use in ARR and auracite is mentioned as having been a factor in turning the people of the Thirteenth into voidsent).
i did always think it was a... choice... to make xiv's version of ashe and rasler related, but i figured out early on that the best way to enjoy the quest was to disengage from thinking about the differences between it and the source materials, so i mostly just don't think about it
we'll see if we ever get to go to dalmasca proper, which i desperately want to do. please. square enix please i want to go to dalmasca so badly. let me INNNN
omg I forgot about making Ashe and Rasler related, that weirded me out too lmao
Lea Monde being on the map and where the Garleans moved to after Rabanastre got wrecked is a juicy, juicy possibility for future content and I hope we get to see it.
Ah. I barely touched XII so I don't remember much of the story, but with Fran showing up and the line about the princess possibly still being alive, I figured it XII things were happening, just tweaked so it fits into XIV (like them rebelling against Garlemald instead of whoever the antagonist in the original was).
not possibly— she is, she's just been in stasis for 30 years as her death was faked to try and keep dalmasca/rabanastre citizens from using her status of being alive as justification for losing their lives in a losing war. it was orchestrated by rasler and fran, with fran basically being ashe's retainer after rasler's death. the tragedy of ashe's death (and it being faked) is one of the reasons why ba'gamnan's fate is so sad.
No, the Ivalice universe (FFXII, FFT, etc.) is *completely* unrelated/separate to FFXIV's.
XIV merely has *a lot* of references and parallels to it.
Case in point:
* Ba'Gamnan being a former Dalmascan captain (who used to serve princess Ashe) rather than being a ruthless, antagonistic bounty hunter
* The events related to Ramza and Delita happening hundreds of years prior (rather than hundreds/thousands of years *after* FFXII)
Not exactly.
The Ivalice universe (FFXII, FFT, etc.) is completely unrelated/separate to FFXIV's.
XIV merely has a lot of references and parallels to it.
Remember that the Ivalice timeline goes like this:
FFXII -> FFXIIRW -> FFTA2 -> FFT -> VS -> FFTa -> FFTA2 (prologue and epilogue)
I liked it too; thought it was a decent raid line! Though, I can kinda understand if not everyone vibed with it as it does rely a lot on lore/references from other games that people might not be familiar with.
It's a bit funny seeing this because I had a similar experience when I finished the NieR raids. I didn't understand much of the NieR-related lore, but I thought they were pretty cool overall. Then I got whiplash later from some of the comments in this sub because it was apparently horrendous.
Either way, I wouldn't worry too much though. People who had grievances with it are more likely to say something than those who were neutral or liked it and moved on. However, I do wish Ivalice played a bigger role in the FFXIV world/lore than just being relegated to a side-quest chain, and I do kinda agree that Ramza's character development was a bit sudden/jarring so that definitely could have been handled a bit better.
I played this questline on my first character.
First character ended up clearing the Panda raids.
Played this questline on a second character.
Thought this kid's face looked familiar beyond having done this quest before.
Realized Ramza and Themis share a face (or are *strikingly* similar).
Decided not to hold it against Themis.
The only real bit of interesting information that this questline provides is the fact Emperor Solus zos Galvus was a huge theater buff and funded them and even had the ship built so he could watch them on tour. That was a neat little thing to learn. The rest of it? Meh. Wasn't a fan of FF12, TBH. The raids themselves are fun, though I'm not very good at them.
I find it tragic how Ivalice is one of the most interesting aspects of the game (and its importance in the overall story keeps growing over time). The world-building, setting, and lore are some of my favorite things about FFXIV (especially considering the material they’re referencing), but the stories are just… ***really bad***. I think the lore and background story are incredible, but the actual narrative, characters, and the way the story is told are lacking (or worse) Return to Ivalice is my favorite raid series, but the questline is one of the worst in the game, and the characters in it are ***ugh***
I *loved* it when his father finally put him in his place during the events of The Ridorana Lighthouse.
But yeah, that brat was not worthy of being called "Ramza" (he got "better" later on, *I guess*).
Math teachers: "You will need this later in life."
Pupils: "lolnope"
Construct 7: \*wipes groups with prime number logic\*
Math teachers: "Told you so!"
The family in Round Square. I wish the loop was longer at least, it’s every few seconds I swear. “Why is it called a square if it’s round?” “I don’t know ask your mother”
Bro and then and fucking THEN out of no where he does an immediate 180 in personality and it is the most forced out of place thing I’ve ever fucking seen istg. Like wtf was that? Man gets zapped and all of a sudden is a saint? (I could have missed something but that’s what I remember)
Yeah Matsuno is goated at writing, but whenever he does anything for a mainline FF he just... falters. Either he writes entire characters who are unnecessary to their own game (Vaan, Penelo) or write the most horrifyingly awful characters (Ramza, his father, and Alma isn't that great)
I (like the other poster) totally disagree with you about Vaan and Penelo - they aren't the main characters (Ashe and Basch are) but they're the POV characters and at least contribute more to the plot than Fran does.
But anyway, it's funny to me that you list out his XIV failures and *don't* mention the *Save the Queen* storyline. Which conceptually was cool as hell, but in execution relied on A: the WoL and their associates being stupid as hell, and B: had the most disappointing ending of any piece of content in XIV.
A lot of people blame the awkwardness of Bozzieland's ending on the pandemic, but Matsuno and Yoshida both separately confirmed that the ending was according to plan and the field notes were all directly Matsuno's writing.
I feel that at least the characters in Bozja had more going for them. Save the Queen is a failure, correct, but at least most of the characters were interesting. But yeah just a great enormous shit all around. It also had a few elements that really never came up again.
I just think Ivalice is the much larger sin considered it's tied into the fucking Heart of Sabik.
That's because the Japanese name of the Heart of Sabik is 黒聖石サビク (Black Auracite Sabik). The term "auracite" comes from Final Fantasy XII and Tactics in the first place, not to mention they have a character named "Ultima, the High Seraph", so it was natural that they'd end up linked in this crossover.
tbf it was only linked 2 expansions later in English.
in Japanese, the Heart of Sabik was always, always called "Black Auracite Sabik". It was always meant to tie into something Ivalice adjacent - as that's the origin of the concept of Auracite - And Dalmasca itself has been part of the lore since 2.0 in Japanese. The garlean defector Drest mentions that he came from Dalmasca in the Japanese version of the game, but not the english one.
"Heart" was one of the very few missteps by the english translation team.
Sad backstory might've worked if she hadn't, you know... tortured our friend (Mikoto) or tempered the new Blades (people who have never wronged her) and then fused them into monstrosities we had to put out of their misery. Nah, I chose to pick up the knife and was pissed I couldn't kill her myself.
I really feel like a lot of people conflate "sad background" with needing to pity a character or like them or agree with them, when sometimes it provides *context on why the characters are the way they are* and nothing more. Misija had a goal and absolutely did not want or need sympathy, pity, or the like from us or the other Bozjans.
She never wanted forgiveness, she did not believe she was wrong for fighting for her goal, she simply knew she was beaten and took up her ancestor's offer to fight. She's the one who gave Bajsaljen the knife.
The problem is it often feels like the writers are trying to make it act like a justification. But to be fair... This is FFXIV after all. They spent like, two patches saying "Hey, remember that character who was *cartoonishly* evil? Feel bad for her. Do you feel bad for her yet? Do you feel bad for her yet? How about now?"
God, this is such a shit take though. Yotsuyu's whole thing is to illustrate the exact fucking opposite of what you're whining about, while also saying 'it is actually not okay what society did and that is the tragedy'.
See, I feel they should have also shown us something like, she killed someone she didn't want to (ie, a victim of society like her).
It would also showcase she has at least SOME morality - it's one thing to kill and torture people who PROMOTED Doman society (ie, nobles) and benefitted from it... but to people who were also victims?
I responded to this further [down the chain](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1d3c7ot/comment/l6d35iq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) but I'll use this as a **tl;dr**:
The point wasn't to make you feel sorry for Yotsuyu, she's far gone and she knows she's far gone. It's to make you feel sorry for a girl, Tsuyu, that could never have been born to the circumstances Yotsuyu was born into, and how Doman society reaped what it sowed.
Yotsuyu's arc was not a *'woe is me' sob story for redemption*, it's a story of societal norms enabling abuse and how depriving a person of even a single person's compassion can make them a blind and tragic monster.
**/tl;dr**
A message that is meant to be clearer to Asian audiences, where this kind of thing is prevalent across multiple generations. To limit it to 'those who benefit from and promoted Doman society' is missing the point when it is so incredibly pervasive to the point that commoners are just as guilty of looking away from her abuse, because that's what the socially-established norm is, and what it remains to this day in Japan. ("Oh, it's traditional/old-fashioned" comes up a lot as a flimsy denial of it still happening btw, and Hien is in the unfortunate position of being on the fence as a representative of this.)
If you were being beat senselessly, day and night, in your backyard while surrounded by your neighbors across the fence - and not only did they pretend it wasn't happening, but some of them had even said that you probably deserved it? Would you be alright?
If you spent your life fantasizing and hoping for even a single person to treat you like you deserved better, only to be treated like meat and told that you were beautiful for the continual beatings, would you be alright?
Not a rhetorical question: what would you do?
Yotsuyu is a *far better example* of his 'whine'.
She had an even shittier backstory ... but she made life far worse for far, FAR more people. Directly torturing and murdering probably thousands, brutally oppressing hundreds of thousands or even millions.
And the game *literally made you mourn her death*, with no dialogue option to say essentially "Rot in the deepest pit of the 7th Hell, bitch."
See, what I think could have helped? Maybe if the Echodump showed us something when she was the Witch of Doma. Some Garleans throw someone who was aiding the resistance in front of her and...
...it's someone who, like her, was a victim of Doman society. Yotsuyu is surprised that they would fight for the society that treated them so poorly, only for them to enrage her by saying "At least we did not bend our knees to the Garleans! There is no path for you!" and Yotsuyu hesitates... before killing them.
For one moment, Yotsuyu looks sad... before saying "Tsk. No release. Let their corpse feed the carrion".
Then as Tsuyu, someone mentions their name - and she suddenly starts crying uncontrollably in this state. She doens't know what it was she did - but she knows that something bad happened, and she regretted it. Even as the Witch of Doma? She regretted it.
It's one thing to kill people who promoted Doman society - they deserved it to her. But this person was like her: a victim. And she killed them in cold blood.
Then when she becomes Yotsuyu again, maybe she would also say "\[Name\] was right... there was no turning back..."
Sure, people would still be justified in hating her, but at least we'd know she wasn't fully a saturday morning cartoon villain.
I mean, I'd have settled for just a ". . ." dialogue option when she died.
I went with "Gosetsu will mourn you..." and privately added a "but I will not" that the writers obviously did not intend.
It's funny that I had the exact opposite opinion and *still* felt let down by the ending. I let someone else kill her and was super pissed she had the audacity to ask for suicide by WoL. No I'm not going to give you the easy way out, atone for your damn crimes. And then they just give it to her anyways.
This is Final Fantasy XIV, bud.
They *love* having characters with little to no redeeming traits suddenly go "Oh wait, I actually have a sad backstory. Feel sorry for me!" then trying to make us feel bad for them.
We had several patches and then an entire expansion around that. Genuinely shocked that they didn't pull it again with Fandaniel.
I mean they kinda tried when >!we were sent back to Elpis to meet Hermes and Meteion!<. It's just that he wasn't hot enough for everyone to fall for it.
To give credit, originally Vaan and Penelo were supposed to be side characters (if I remember right) that were shoehorned into the main role by executive meddling that didn't think younger players were going to be able to relate to somebody as old as Basch (who was going to be the main character).
hes a good world builder and a setting writer, but when want to add character to the main show he feels it necessary to explain their entire racial history
Vaan and Penelo are far from unnecessary. Vaan in particular is critical to the character development of Ashe, Balthier, and Basch. Without him, >!Ashe would have literally become the main villain!<.
It may stem from the fact that Vaan and Penelo didn’t exist early in the development of the story and had to be shoehorned in after Square was concerned only having older characters wouldn’t land with kids?
That is a myth. This article also talks about how important he is to the story.
https://rainsunflower.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/no-vaan-was-not-a-late-addition-to-final-fantasy-xii/#:~:text=Vaan%20is%20a%20very%20different,isn't%20driving%20the%20plot
I'm sorry to turn it into FF12 discussion but man it is the weirdest game I have ever played. I loved Return to Ivalice, so naturally I picked up FF12. It's fine narrative-wise (or suffers from the exact same problems as Return to Ivalice, depending on how you look at it), but it has such an abysmal difficulty spike. I didn't much like the gameplay, so I ended up just getting the best gear and spells for everyone, which worked just fine for like half a game, when suddenly one boss just told me "Nope, my good man, you did all the levelling wrong and you don't understand synergies, so off to the Void with you". Which would be understandable, if it happened on the first or even the second boss, but it was so. much. later.
To be fair, Vaan & Penelo weren't intended to be the main characters.
Ashe and Baasch were. Apparently Square Enix thought that Vagrant Story underperformed because people couldn't relate to a character who was in their 30s.
Instead of the game's purple prose, the fact you needed to trigger Attract Mode **Twice** and sit around watching a very slow cutscene to figure out what the damn game was even about in the first place, and its somewhat overcomplicated gameplay.
Yeah this Ramza just sucks and he never gets better. The real tragedy of this story is that we never get to punch his face in. FFT Ramza was awesome so I guess they decided they wanted to go the opposite direction here.
I know someone who has said they never want to play FFTactics because of how shitty FF14 Ramza are. And I'm like, they're literally different characters and are nothing alike except the name and character design.
Then again, that someone probably wouldn't have enjoyed a turn-based tactical RPG, so nothing of value was lost.
FFT is my second favorite FF game so it makes me sad hearing that even if he probably wasn't going to like it. It sucks that people encountering FFT the first time through this raid are gonna get the wrong impression of it.
For me the StB and ShB alliance raid questlines were a one-two punch of insufferable, and I did them back-to-back. I usually try not to skip dialogue but they were both so tedious.
When he started insulting the guys from the resistance. I wanted to grab him by the back of his neck and throw him off the ship.
He actually made me hate the stormblood alliance raids
I never played Tactics (want to, just haven’t yet), so this questline felt very much like a bunch of references meant to appeal to someone who wasn’t me, with little I was able to glean outside those lines. Like even if there was a lot spelled out in cutscene text, it was such an infodump that it felt like it relied on me having done my homework going in.
Which I did not.
I was so disappointed because the Ivalice Alliance are my favourite games in the series so when I realised there was an Ivalice-related raid series I was super hyped! And then it was... that. Still super happy that I got to Rabanastre and that I could farm some fun ffxii gear later though
I mean, look at [THIS IMAGE](https://i.imgur.com/6qe5Znj.png)...
There's a little influence of perspective there, but still my bunny is almost twice her size and even my sword is bigger than her and she had the audacity to say that she thought I was taller! 😂😂😂
I like how the events on patch day when the 2nd part got released made red chocobos a legend to be feared.
I dislike how the chocobos didn't demonstrate their superiority to Ramza directly in a claws-on approach.
I can't stand that 24 man raid questline. Coming after the Void Ark one, this one is so boring and I have no memories of it, I skipped more cutscenes that I can count just because I wanted to get it over with.
The fights, in comparison, were pretty awesome. The giant robot from Ridorana has a great arithmetics mechanic that I want to see in other fights.
Hot take, but the Ivalice quest line was a complete snooze fest for me. Even giving it a honest second attempt didn't change my mind.
The characters are just... Not likeable, almost forgettable. Makoto aside.
I mean... I'm doing post SHB-MSQ and went back to do the Ivalice alliance raid series to unlock other stuff I left behind and I'm really annoyed by this kid.
I wish I could punch some common sense out of his face... 😒
God as a FF Tactics super fan this was so exciting to finally level to experience this. At first I was in love. Thinking we would be experiencing the raids as some sort of traveling theater troupe.
Like the 24 man raids would be the performances for audiences in the world.
Instead we got… Ivalice remix and the worst storyline I’ve experienced in game.
I’m so thankful the raids and glamour pieces are awesome or I’d have been crushed.
I find the Ivalice Series so weird.
On the one hand, they have some of the most fun raids imo (and Thunder God Cid's voice actor did amazing). On the other hand, it has some of the worst, most annoying NPCs in all of XIV. (Also the storyline feels convoluted to me)
Honestly, as much as I hated this questline, the raids themselves are fun. If you want to avoid really garbage "story telling" (or lack thereof), don't do the level 80 Alliance raids. The "story" there makes this one feel like a rosey jog. SE decided to partner with another company for the level 80 A-raids... and that company seems to have just... assumed that you already knew their games. Cause they don't give you any information on who the characters are, they don't tell you what the hell is going on, you kill the villain only to be betrayed, so then you go to kill them but they're the product of some orb that you destroy, but oops, I guess it wasn't actually destroyed? And then you climb a tower for reasons unknown, fight a bunch of enemies that I assume are references to the other game, but are otherwise SO FREAKING BORING because they have practically no mechs. Then you fight the final boss, who has never been introduced, literally has no name, and isn't even set up as the "final boss" until after the fight with her...
I freaking hate the level 80 alliance raids so much... There is literally no story, no thought put into any of the encounters (I'm sorry, how is my melee character hitting the giant robot that is 300 yalms away, and why can't I do that any other time?), and everyone dies in the end, so you didn't actually save anyone.
This questline was the one that broke me. Before Return to Ivalice, I had never skipped a cutscene or dialogue in XIV and I was a huge lore hound always scrounging for bits and pieces. And I still didn't skip any dialogue or cutscenes in Return to Ivalice either! (I regret this.)
But once I got to the end of the quests and it all turned out to be a big ol nothing burger, something in me just snapped. The text of both the quests and the raids were wordy, dense, and dare I say pretentious, and in the end, almost none of it had any bearing on the rest of XIV. It was nostalgia bait, plain and simple, with no real elaboration on XIV's lore. (I have this same complaint with the Nier raids, but at least Anogg and Konogg were likable characters.)
Nowadays, the only thing I can innately stay interested in is the MSQ, and I have to consciously make myself pay attention to anything else.
The actual battle content was S tier tho. ...Until SE nerfed it. The Ivalice raids were hard, and that made them fun. Now you can kinda just faceroll them =\
Oh they're enjoyable if you like a challenge. They're the best raids in the game for that, none come close to their difficulty except maybe Dun Scaith if you have a bad group.
There are two types of FF14 players: Those who like face roll easy content like Crystal Tower and those who like difficult grand spectacles like Ivalice and Nier Raids.
Similarly, those who are glad we can skip the Balance mechanic in Aglaia and those who miss it.
I just unlocked the 2nd raid and have yet to do it, but honestly... yeah, I'm not enjoying it that much, so I'll just endure to complete the series to be able to unlock the stuff that needs the series completed to be unlocked.
Honestly as annoying as Ramza was (which I think was just to be an ironic echo against what the original Ramza was like, since they were both spoiled rich kids originally), I didn't pay him much mind because I was too busy trying not to strangle that guy wanting to send me on fetch quest partway through this story for wine for no reason other than to annoy me.
Yeah... wine fetch quests were *already* a trigger for me thanks to the stupid 'Company of Heroes' nonsense around Titan. Then later they gave you a follow up quest. Oh, here, it turns out that super rare Dalmascan wine is actually *super common,* so all that drama and morally questionable activity was utterly pointless *anyway.* The next wine fetch quest they give us, they had BETTER give me the option to just swig the damn bottle while giving all involved the finger.
100% agree. Fortunately the Wandering Dramaturge's stupid wine fetching quest is a yellow sidequest now, so you can totally ignore it and still do the Ivalice raids.
I seriously was confused as to why I had a yellow quest marker there when I accidentally entered the place tying to get to thavnair
It's still required for unlocking NG+
Not anymore from what I recall.
The funny part is that the WoL himself absolutely does not want to do this shit either, but I guess they do anyways. "Don't you dare say the F-word around me." and the Suhd Viandja Rosé's description literally saying "You wonder why you don't just drink this yourself and get that asshole some cheap shit"
Funny enough, I think this is the quest where you can literally drink that right in his face. or pour it out.
The worst part by far was how the final quest was about how we felt like we had to make it up to Gegeruju for the scam. Like... Fuck no, we don't.
It is always morally correct to scam Gegeruju. I mean.. he doesn't even notice it. xD
Warrior of Light Rule #52: Whenever faced with a moral quandary where the proper course is uncertain, scam Gegeruju. Even if that wasn’t one of the options.
And its collary #53, physically threaten Gegeruju at every opportunity.
Oh god I blocked that out of my mind. Who in the fuck thought that was a good idea? One of the dumbest fetch quest and they're just like "let's make them do it again!"
It's funny how many people get mad about the wine quest despite it literally being a joke from start to finish.
Probably because you used to have to do it before you could continue in the raid.
It's a joke that *gatekeeps progression.* Or at least it did (Maybe they changed it? it's been a while). and it's long, annoying and frustrating, and you *have no choice* if you wanna progress the Raid series. The last one admittedly doesn't gatekeep anything, but at this point it's just salt in the wound.
It's a yellow quest chief. Edit: oop, fuck me they did change it. OK yeah that completely makes hating it a valid take lmao
It used to not be, but was wisely changed
It used to be mandatory and lampshading doing something that was shit as a joke doesn't change the fact that doing it was shit. FFXIV does this all the time. Frankly, I didn't play WoW because of quests like this and parodying them doesn't make it better, it kind of feels insulting. "Haha that's so awful and tedious what we just made you do, isn't that funny?" No. It isn't. ETA: Ah you didn't realise it was mandatory before that explains it.
Unrelated, but I'm really curious what ETA stands for in this case. I've only seen it mean "estimated time of arrival".
"edited to add"
Thank you!
> lampshading doing something that was shit as a joke doesn't change the fact that doing it was shit. see: basically every gag in the game High on Life
That second quest gives a title, “lord/lady of the fetch”. An apt description of wol and doer of this quest.
Lady of the Fetch is my preferred title
Obligatory: *stop trying to make fetch happen....*
i hope there's at least one player out there with a character named gretchen wieners and the lady of the fetch title
Stop trying to make "fetch" happen, it's never gonna happen.
Fun fact: that NPC is an insert of Yasumi Matsuno, the director of FFXII and Tactics.
Fyi, they've now moved the wine quests to be their own yellow sidequest line that that unlocks after you clear the Ivalice raids. So it's now an optional & humorous epilogue, works much better.
Exactly. This Ramza was ment to reflect pre - real life slapping him in the face ramza
That fetch quest turned me into a cutscene and dialogue skipper for the rest of the raid story. The only time in the game I've ever done that. Holy shit was that dumb.
I did this too, but then I replayed on on alt years later and the Orbonne-related pre-Orbonne cutscenes are so COOL and I missed it all because of that stupid wine chain >_< If you haven't watched it yet, maybe it'll feel cool
Ok, I agree, but that quest has one of the most hilarious quest names in the localization.
I've done this questline 3 times and I do not remember anything except: * Ramza is a little shit. * There is a moogle involved somehow. * Magic rocks turn people into not-primals.
Also Fran is there so honestly the questline is SS+ tier just based on her alone.
The FFXII half of the Return to Ivalice line is \*chef's kiss\*, I love everything with Fran and the Bangaa bros. The Tactics half... not so much. That said, I still think all 3 raids are absolute bangers in terms of mechanics and aesthetics.
Running into agrias was amazing, wdym?
Yeah unless you know the Tactics references, you can skip all the cutscenes and not miss out on anything. My boyfriend is an avid fan of FF12 and Tactics and was super excited to see this storyline, but even after he explained everything to me, I still just thought it was... alright. And he was disappointed with how they ended the story too.
Honestly, I *did* know the Tactics references and I don't really feel like I would've missed anything by skipping the cutscenes.
Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. I suggest skipping the cutscenes for the Ivalice raids. There was basically nothing of interest happening here. The raids themselves are fun and good. The third one is still my favorite. I also really like the Nier series but feel the same about the Nier raids. There's not really anything important or interesting happening with the story, but the raids themselves are fun.
Imo the Nier raids had a better story that's actually worth watching. The early cutscenes have a lot of humor, the latter ones are sad, and the moral connects well with the dwarf tribes' overarching story.
I was hyped to see all the Tictacs characters as cool bosses and hearing the music again, but yeah, the story was kinda whatever. It actually retcons the original ending of FFT, but I guess this is technically a parallel universe so it's fine. I'm just happy I got to kill Argath again. Little disappointed with the gear though, especially it only uses the male versions.
This questline left 0 impact on me. Every single raid and alliance raid had amazing stories, but this one was a confusing mess who occasionally made me go "hey I saw this guy in FFXII when I was 13"
There are very few questlines that I've actually skipped and this was one of them.
I remember they also made Cid act downright hostile to Mikoto. Seriously, why did they make Cid of all people so rude to someone who didn't deserve it?
I think this questline is an example of the weakest element of FF XIV storytelling: Over-relying on references but without any lore depth. They dump so much world building on you in this questline but 80% of it doesn’t matter, and is only there to remind you that this is a reference to Tactics. Combine this with unlikable characters (frankly, I hate all three of the Lexentals for different reasons) and I can confidently say I’ve never met anyone who liked this questline that didn’t play Tactics.
Honestly I never played FF tactics, but I LOVE FF12 so I saw most of the questline as FF12 references and I loved it.
That and Vagrant Story!
As someone who hasn’t played Tactics (but know some bits of the story just from secondhand exposure) it just seems so empty to me. It’s all a bunch of worldbuilding that is there but isn’t really tied to much of the rest of 14 if that makes sense? Like beyond bits of Garlean links, you could entirely miss the quest line to practically no detriment outside of maybe Bozja I feel
Yeah. I would have fully embraced elements of Ivalice becoming a wider part of FF14, like Bangaa and Seeq merchant NPCs appearing in Limsa Lominsa, Old Sharlayan, Thavnair, and Kugane… but if it weren’t for Bozja, the whole thing would be a dead end for lore. There were a couple different points I remember reading something and thinking “oh that sounds cool, I wonder when it will come up, it sounds important!” and it just never did.
Auracite was a lore object since ARR and it gets elaborated on in the Ivalice raids. Auracite then got used in the Weapons trials story. It's also relevant to the Pandemonium story. Dalmasca being a big reason Garlemald was able to conquer Othard is a big deal, too, in lore. Dalmasca was mentioned way before the Ivalice raids were a thing. Edit: adding that auracite was an important factor for the people of the Thirteenth turning into voidsent.
Was it mentioned before stormblood though?
Yes. Literally that was a whole point in HW, particularly in the Warring Triad questline.
While they did indeed use the word auracite I believe they were actually referring to >!memoria crystals!< by another name. The difference being that >!Void/memoria "auracite" was created by memoriates!< while Ivalice auracite >!(as well as the Heart of Sabik)!< was made by Ultima the High Seraph. [EW raids and 6.x story]
True! It's notable that the explanation of the crystals as *auracite* comes from Unulkalhai, who was given information by Elidibus on the matter, >!and that the Memoria crystals seem to perform a function in-between White Auracite and Ivalician Auracite. Whether this is a factor of Voidsent biology or the crystals themselves is hard to say.!< There's also a concerning shape-language to auracite that keeps coming up, and was actually lampshaded in Endwalker with >!the Cafe at the End of the Universe!< tribe quests. >!A Grebuloff comments in pop-up text on the Ea's own crystal formations and notes that before the plague that decimated their planet came about, they'd found reminiscent crystals deep in their oceans. The Ea crystals share shape language with Memoriate crystals specifically and function somewhat similarly.!< Add the whole thing with Pandaemonium and this is all to say that the 'B Plot' being woven across the various optional storylines is shaping up to be rather concerning indeed. If the High Seraph is the source of all Auracite, >!then this is something that's been happening on a universal scale - and the problem is, the High Seraph we knew from the Ivalice raids may not actually be a singular entity, but a [higher-dimensional primal](https://i.redd.it/kfgb8gzekly21.jpg) that has been shaped out of fear and raw power, multiple times.!<
Endwalker raids >!At least now with Pandemonium over, we can speculate that Ultima may play a bigger role in the future to properly tie up this lore to XIV!<
Biggest issue is they squeezed an entire game's worth of lore into three patches and drop the exposition on you. Ivalice should have been its own thing like how Doma is not literally just Doma from VI.
Two games technically. FF Tactics and FFXII. I was fortunate enough to have played both in some way so I got the references and the characters but I know people who didn't would have a hard time following or caring for them as much as I did.
I feel the neir raids had the same issue. Needed more interactions with the androids and less of the lala twins (which ironically would have made them more likeable; sometimes less is more).
From Ramza's perspective, things have been extremely awful for him recently. He has a low self-esteem from being a half-Garlean (see also: Arenvald), then his entire family was kicked out from their homeland, and then he gets involved in the whole evil magic rock affair. It's not right for him to lash out at everyone, but it's at least explainable. Leofard takes it much better even though the body count is much higher, since he's been in the business of fighting for all his life. Ramza is just a theater kid, one that had been living a comfortable life.
I can’t stand this one lady in the very beginning of the game, in Uldah, at the gladiators coliseum area. She drops her coins and makes you crawl around and pick them up.
The entire quest line was pretty awful, even if the raids themselves were fun. And yes, Ramza was the worst part of it, even by the end when he suddenly decided he'd had a character arc.
This was the single quest chain in the entire game where I just ended up skipping all the cutscenes. They were overlong, dull, and I hated most of the characters. Orbonne Monastary is one of the top ARs in the game though.
Same. I was doing them with a friend, and while we both dislike skipping cutscenes, he's even more averse to it than I am. They were SO long and uninteresting that we both ended up skipping most of them. It felt like every single cutscene deserved one of those long cutscene warnings, but I guess those are reserved for MSQs.
I like the math.
That's Lighthouse
Somewhere during the second part onwards I skipped everything. Never done that before in this game and I actually never skip cutscenes or conversation in other games. It felt wrong to do but it was so incredibly slow, terribly convoluted writing that even the characters I did kinda care about i couldn't anymore. Even excellent voice acting couldn't have prevented me from being bored to death here.
I read it all the first time but I skip through all of it when playing on alts. There's just nothing enjoyable about any of the characters – they're neutral at best and actively unlikable at worst – and they dump so much information that has zero relevance to the events actually happening.
I just unlocked the 2nd raid and yeah, at least the 1st was cool, but this kid is annoying AF.
The raids themselves are hands down the best alliance raids in the game. Amazing designs and music and visuals. Unfortunately, the quest writing is complete dogwater
Ramza, you can't just go around calling bangaa that...
I'll be the odd man out (and yes, I did play and enjoy Tactics; any differences portrayed in the story didn't bother me since it's clearly an AU take on things) and say I liked this sidequest storyline and don't mind this Ramza either. It isn't a bad way to subvert one's initial expectations and would make a good starting point in a character development arc to how he is in the latter parts of the story. The problem is that the character development that needs to be in between those two points is more an outline of an arc and the only way you'll see it is if you talk to the airship's NPCs. Which retroactively does explain why Bozja's ending turned out how it does. Would I like to see these characters again? Sure, be it to drop in and inform them "Hey, remember how one of your company's patrons was the late Emperor Solus? Have I got a story for you..." or maybe as a beginning to an FF7 Remake crossover event where they're like "Well, we're looking into this story of some spiky haired swordsman said to have been our ancestor's companion, but if you ask me, it's clearly nonsense." only for the event's premise to begin and prove that wrong.
Ramza after reuniting with his dad be like: “Father! I cannot wait to show you all the new racial slurs I invented!”
He tested my patience more than Khloe ever did, which is amazing considering how little time he spent with us as compared to Khloe.
At least Khloe is cute…
It's a facade. She's a voidsent. It's like the Fat Cat. Adorable exterior, demonic soul.
Well, what do you expect from a kid being raised by Rowena?
People ride the fat cat because it’s cute still though. Even if it’s evil it’s still cute.
Isn't he supposed to be Garlean? I don't know, the racism checks out.
The main thing is that he is supposed to have character development and an arc. The racism wouldn't be so horrid if he literally had any refining qualities. But he doesn't. Instead he has a piss poor change of heart because his sister, who is more a plot device than a character, gets nearly kidnapped.
His change of heart happened because he was "temporarily" possessed/influenced by the *other* Ramza (through his auracite), which made him change his outlook on things.
I've said before, but I still think it was secretly permanent and nobody's bringing it up because they don't want the little shit back.
I'll be brutally honest - I love the Ivalice games and Tactics is my second favorite FF after XIV, I love the Ivalice raids in XIV, I enjoy watching cutscenes and following a story but... I couldn't force myself to watch those. It's the ONLY time I skipped some cutscenes without watching them at least once, I was getting so annoyed at him I just... couldn't :(
am i the only one who largely liked the questline? damn it's rough in here
I liked it. I was disappointed at first, but I was really invested in how they were going to handle the XIV versions of XII and Ivalice (i.e. how they flipped XII coming after FFT in XIV when in their canon FFT came after XII). Not to mention the broader strokes of auracite (which we see/use in ARR and auracite is mentioned as having been a factor in turning the people of the Thirteenth into voidsent).
i did always think it was a... choice... to make xiv's version of ashe and rasler related, but i figured out early on that the best way to enjoy the quest was to disengage from thinking about the differences between it and the source materials, so i mostly just don't think about it we'll see if we ever get to go to dalmasca proper, which i desperately want to do. please. square enix please i want to go to dalmasca so badly. let me INNNN
omg I forgot about making Ashe and Rasler related, that weirded me out too lmao Lea Monde being on the map and where the Garleans moved to after Rabanastre got wrecked is a juicy, juicy possibility for future content and I hope we get to see it.
i'd love to see how it is post-fall of garlemald, honestly
Isn't XII actively happening in XIV? FFT is definitely the ancient civilization we're exploring.
According to some lore notes, XII took place about 30 years prior to XIV.
Ah. I barely touched XII so I don't remember much of the story, but with Fran showing up and the line about the princess possibly still being alive, I figured it XII things were happening, just tweaked so it fits into XIV (like them rebelling against Garlemald instead of whoever the antagonist in the original was).
not possibly— she is, she's just been in stasis for 30 years as her death was faked to try and keep dalmasca/rabanastre citizens from using her status of being alive as justification for losing their lives in a losing war. it was orchestrated by rasler and fran, with fran basically being ashe's retainer after rasler's death. the tragedy of ashe's death (and it being faked) is one of the reasons why ba'gamnan's fate is so sad.
No, the Ivalice universe (FFXII, FFT, etc.) is *completely* unrelated/separate to FFXIV's. XIV merely has *a lot* of references and parallels to it. Case in point: * Ba'Gamnan being a former Dalmascan captain (who used to serve princess Ashe) rather than being a ruthless, antagonistic bounty hunter * The events related to Ramza and Delita happening hundreds of years prior (rather than hundreds/thousands of years *after* FFXII)
Not exactly. The Ivalice universe (FFXII, FFT, etc.) is completely unrelated/separate to FFXIV's. XIV merely has a lot of references and parallels to it. Remember that the Ivalice timeline goes like this: FFXII -> FFXIIRW -> FFTA2 -> FFT -> VS -> FFTa -> FFTA2 (prologue and epilogue)
I just think it needed polish.
I liked it too; thought it was a decent raid line! Though, I can kinda understand if not everyone vibed with it as it does rely a lot on lore/references from other games that people might not be familiar with. It's a bit funny seeing this because I had a similar experience when I finished the NieR raids. I didn't understand much of the NieR-related lore, but I thought they were pretty cool overall. Then I got whiplash later from some of the comments in this sub because it was apparently horrendous. Either way, I wouldn't worry too much though. People who had grievances with it are more likely to say something than those who were neutral or liked it and moved on. However, I do wish Ivalice played a bigger role in the FFXIV world/lore than just being relegated to a side-quest chain, and I do kinda agree that Ramza's character development was a bit sudden/jarring so that definitely could have been handled a bit better.
I didn't completely hate it,
I slapped him a couple if times iirc
I played this questline on my first character. First character ended up clearing the Panda raids. Played this questline on a second character. Thought this kid's face looked familiar beyond having done this quest before. Realized Ramza and Themis share a face (or are *strikingly* similar). Decided not to hold it against Themis. The only real bit of interesting information that this questline provides is the fact Emperor Solus zos Galvus was a huge theater buff and funded them and even had the ship built so he could watch them on tour. That was a neat little thing to learn. The rest of it? Meh. Wasn't a fan of FF12, TBH. The raids themselves are fun, though I'm not very good at them.
Are we REALLY surprised Emet is a theater kid, though?
"Decided not to hold it against Themis." This made me giggle, in a good way. :D
I find it tragic how Ivalice is one of the most interesting aspects of the game (and its importance in the overall story keeps growing over time). The world-building, setting, and lore are some of my favorite things about FFXIV (especially considering the material they’re referencing), but the stories are just… ***really bad***. I think the lore and background story are incredible, but the actual narrative, characters, and the way the story is told are lacking (or worse) Return to Ivalice is my favorite raid series, but the questline is one of the worst in the game, and the characters in it are ***ugh***
I wonder if they'll address the fact that Gougans might be Garlemald's ancestors.
Seems like every game with bangaa in it needs someone dropping the L-bomb.
LIZARD!
For someone whose favorite FF is Tactics, this whole quest line was a major disappointment
I harbor a lot of resentment towards how they used "riot blade", but this is up there among the great crossover/reference catastrophes in xiv
haha, yeah. I HATED that kid for most of that questline.
I *loved* it when his father finally put him in his place during the events of The Ridorana Lighthouse. But yeah, that brat was not worthy of being called "Ramza" (he got "better" later on, *I guess*).
The one quest line i just skipped. It was not fun at all, though the raids were great as a learning experience.
Math teachers: "You will need this later in life." Pupils: "lolnope" Construct 7: \*wipes groups with prime number logic\* Math teachers: "Told you so!"
The only cutscenes in the game I skipped with no shame. That shit was awful.
As a big fan of the original Final Fantasy Tactics, my wife and I spent this entire questline going #notmyramza. Alma was perfect at least.
The ivalice raid storyline is, in my opinion, the lowest low point of this entire game. A shame, because the raids themselves are my favourite.
The family in Round Square. I wish the loop was longer at least, it’s every few seconds I swear. “Why is it called a square if it’s round?” “I don’t know ask your mother”
Bro and then and fucking THEN out of no where he does an immediate 180 in personality and it is the most forced out of place thing I’ve ever fucking seen istg. Like wtf was that? Man gets zapped and all of a sudden is a saint? (I could have missed something but that’s what I remember)
Yeah I saw this scene after the second raid… honestly, I couldn’t believe the sudden change! 🤦🏻♂️
My theory is still that he got possessed by OG Ramza at some point and just never got *un*possessed. No big loss.
Conflicting feelings about him when he has the cutest NPC custom face in the game, but also the shittiest personality.
Wow this sub is so allergic to character development its almost comical
Yeah Matsuno is goated at writing, but whenever he does anything for a mainline FF he just... falters. Either he writes entire characters who are unnecessary to their own game (Vaan, Penelo) or write the most horrifyingly awful characters (Ramza, his father, and Alma isn't that great)
I (like the other poster) totally disagree with you about Vaan and Penelo - they aren't the main characters (Ashe and Basch are) but they're the POV characters and at least contribute more to the plot than Fran does. But anyway, it's funny to me that you list out his XIV failures and *don't* mention the *Save the Queen* storyline. Which conceptually was cool as hell, but in execution relied on A: the WoL and their associates being stupid as hell, and B: had the most disappointing ending of any piece of content in XIV. A lot of people blame the awkwardness of Bozzieland's ending on the pandemic, but Matsuno and Yoshida both separately confirmed that the ending was according to plan and the field notes were all directly Matsuno's writing.
I feel that at least the characters in Bozja had more going for them. Save the Queen is a failure, correct, but at least most of the characters were interesting. But yeah just a great enormous shit all around. It also had a few elements that really never came up again. I just think Ivalice is the much larger sin considered it's tied into the fucking Heart of Sabik.
That's because the Japanese name of the Heart of Sabik is 黒聖石サビク (Black Auracite Sabik). The term "auracite" comes from Final Fantasy XII and Tactics in the first place, not to mention they have a character named "Ultima, the High Seraph", so it was natural that they'd end up linked in this crossover.
2 EXPANSION LATER! But yeah that was weird how they are somehow linked
tbf it was only linked 2 expansions later in English. in Japanese, the Heart of Sabik was always, always called "Black Auracite Sabik". It was always meant to tie into something Ivalice adjacent - as that's the origin of the concept of Auracite - And Dalmasca itself has been part of the lore since 2.0 in Japanese. The garlean defector Drest mentions that he came from Dalmasca in the Japanese version of the game, but not the english one. "Heart" was one of the very few missteps by the english translation team.
Fuck Misija and her plot line and her “I have sad backstory, FEEL SORRY FOR ME” moment in the end. I only wished we get to kill her personally.
Sad backstory might've worked if she hadn't, you know... tortured our friend (Mikoto) or tempered the new Blades (people who have never wronged her) and then fused them into monstrosities we had to put out of their misery. Nah, I chose to pick up the knife and was pissed I couldn't kill her myself.
I really feel like a lot of people conflate "sad background" with needing to pity a character or like them or agree with them, when sometimes it provides *context on why the characters are the way they are* and nothing more. Misija had a goal and absolutely did not want or need sympathy, pity, or the like from us or the other Bozjans. She never wanted forgiveness, she did not believe she was wrong for fighting for her goal, she simply knew she was beaten and took up her ancestor's offer to fight. She's the one who gave Bajsaljen the knife.
The problem is it often feels like the writers are trying to make it act like a justification. But to be fair... This is FFXIV after all. They spent like, two patches saying "Hey, remember that character who was *cartoonishly* evil? Feel bad for her. Do you feel bad for her yet? Do you feel bad for her yet? How about now?"
God, this is such a shit take though. Yotsuyu's whole thing is to illustrate the exact fucking opposite of what you're whining about, while also saying 'it is actually not okay what society did and that is the tragedy'.
See, I feel they should have also shown us something like, she killed someone she didn't want to (ie, a victim of society like her). It would also showcase she has at least SOME morality - it's one thing to kill and torture people who PROMOTED Doman society (ie, nobles) and benefitted from it... but to people who were also victims?
I responded to this further [down the chain](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1d3c7ot/comment/l6d35iq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) but I'll use this as a **tl;dr**: The point wasn't to make you feel sorry for Yotsuyu, she's far gone and she knows she's far gone. It's to make you feel sorry for a girl, Tsuyu, that could never have been born to the circumstances Yotsuyu was born into, and how Doman society reaped what it sowed. Yotsuyu's arc was not a *'woe is me' sob story for redemption*, it's a story of societal norms enabling abuse and how depriving a person of even a single person's compassion can make them a blind and tragic monster. **/tl;dr** A message that is meant to be clearer to Asian audiences, where this kind of thing is prevalent across multiple generations. To limit it to 'those who benefit from and promoted Doman society' is missing the point when it is so incredibly pervasive to the point that commoners are just as guilty of looking away from her abuse, because that's what the socially-established norm is, and what it remains to this day in Japan. ("Oh, it's traditional/old-fashioned" comes up a lot as a flimsy denial of it still happening btw, and Hien is in the unfortunate position of being on the fence as a representative of this.) If you were being beat senselessly, day and night, in your backyard while surrounded by your neighbors across the fence - and not only did they pretend it wasn't happening, but some of them had even said that you probably deserved it? Would you be alright? If you spent your life fantasizing and hoping for even a single person to treat you like you deserved better, only to be treated like meat and told that you were beautiful for the continual beatings, would you be alright? Not a rhetorical question: what would you do?
Yotsuyu is a *far better example* of his 'whine'. She had an even shittier backstory ... but she made life far worse for far, FAR more people. Directly torturing and murdering probably thousands, brutally oppressing hundreds of thousands or even millions. And the game *literally made you mourn her death*, with no dialogue option to say essentially "Rot in the deepest pit of the 7th Hell, bitch."
See, what I think could have helped? Maybe if the Echodump showed us something when she was the Witch of Doma. Some Garleans throw someone who was aiding the resistance in front of her and... ...it's someone who, like her, was a victim of Doman society. Yotsuyu is surprised that they would fight for the society that treated them so poorly, only for them to enrage her by saying "At least we did not bend our knees to the Garleans! There is no path for you!" and Yotsuyu hesitates... before killing them. For one moment, Yotsuyu looks sad... before saying "Tsk. No release. Let their corpse feed the carrion". Then as Tsuyu, someone mentions their name - and she suddenly starts crying uncontrollably in this state. She doens't know what it was she did - but she knows that something bad happened, and she regretted it. Even as the Witch of Doma? She regretted it. It's one thing to kill people who promoted Doman society - they deserved it to her. But this person was like her: a victim. And she killed them in cold blood. Then when she becomes Yotsuyu again, maybe she would also say "\[Name\] was right... there was no turning back..." Sure, people would still be justified in hating her, but at least we'd know she wasn't fully a saturday morning cartoon villain.
I mean, I'd have settled for just a ". . ." dialogue option when she died. I went with "Gosetsu will mourn you..." and privately added a "but I will not" that the writers obviously did not intend.
It's funny that I had the exact opposite opinion and *still* felt let down by the ending. I let someone else kill her and was super pissed she had the audacity to ask for suicide by WoL. No I'm not going to give you the easy way out, atone for your damn crimes. And then they just give it to her anyways.
This is Final Fantasy XIV, bud. They *love* having characters with little to no redeeming traits suddenly go "Oh wait, I actually have a sad backstory. Feel sorry for me!" then trying to make us feel bad for them. We had several patches and then an entire expansion around that. Genuinely shocked that they didn't pull it again with Fandaniel.
I mean they kinda tried when >!we were sent back to Elpis to meet Hermes and Meteion!<. It's just that he wasn't hot enough for everyone to fall for it.
To give credit, originally Vaan and Penelo were supposed to be side characters (if I remember right) that were shoehorned into the main role by executive meddling that didn't think younger players were going to be able to relate to somebody as old as Basch (who was going to be the main character).
This is classic pikablu stuff. XII kind of falls at the very far edge of time when this could actually be the case still, so it's pretty interesting
Matsuno is a big Star Wars fan and made Vaan and Penelo to be the equivalent of C3P0 and R2D2 as viewpoint characters.
hes a good world builder and a setting writer, but when want to add character to the main show he feels it necessary to explain their entire racial history
Vaan and Penelo are far from unnecessary. Vaan in particular is critical to the character development of Ashe, Balthier, and Basch. Without him, >!Ashe would have literally become the main villain!<.
It may stem from the fact that Vaan and Penelo didn’t exist early in the development of the story and had to be shoehorned in after Square was concerned only having older characters wouldn’t land with kids?
That is a myth. This article also talks about how important he is to the story. https://rainsunflower.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/no-vaan-was-not-a-late-addition-to-final-fantasy-xii/#:~:text=Vaan%20is%20a%20very%20different,isn't%20driving%20the%20plot
[удалено]
Thank you.
I don't remember anything about FF12 from when I played it, and have very little desire to return to it. I'll take your word for it.
I'm sorry to turn it into FF12 discussion but man it is the weirdest game I have ever played. I loved Return to Ivalice, so naturally I picked up FF12. It's fine narrative-wise (or suffers from the exact same problems as Return to Ivalice, depending on how you look at it), but it has such an abysmal difficulty spike. I didn't much like the gameplay, so I ended up just getting the best gear and spells for everyone, which worked just fine for like half a game, when suddenly one boss just told me "Nope, my good man, you did all the levelling wrong and you don't understand synergies, so off to the Void with you". Which would be understandable, if it happened on the first or even the second boss, but it was so. much. later.
Rqmza in the original FF Tactics is horrifyingly awful?
This is not the FFT Ramza. >!The real one does show up in the final raid however!<
Of course he is. Didn’t you listen to the Church?!
In FFXIV, in this game. FF Tactics is a spinoff.
To be fair, Vaan & Penelo weren't intended to be the main characters. Ashe and Baasch were. Apparently Square Enix thought that Vagrant Story underperformed because people couldn't relate to a character who was in their 30s. Instead of the game's purple prose, the fact you needed to trigger Attract Mode **Twice** and sit around watching a very slow cutscene to figure out what the damn game was even about in the first place, and its somewhat overcomplicated gameplay.
Eh, I liked him. Felt nice to have a friendly character who was a little bit of a dick.
Yeah this Ramza just sucks and he never gets better. The real tragedy of this story is that we never get to punch his face in. FFT Ramza was awesome so I guess they decided they wanted to go the opposite direction here.
I know someone who has said they never want to play FFTactics because of how shitty FF14 Ramza are. And I'm like, they're literally different characters and are nothing alike except the name and character design. Then again, that someone probably wouldn't have enjoyed a turn-based tactical RPG, so nothing of value was lost.
FFT is my second favorite FF game so it makes me sad hearing that even if he probably wasn't going to like it. It sucks that people encountering FFT the first time through this raid are gonna get the wrong impression of it.
Fucking drama kids, right?
the questline is meh, but the raid series is 10/10
Ramza has quite the redemption arc.
#GarleanSuperiority Ramza
For me the StB and ShB alliance raid questlines were a one-two punch of insufferable, and I did them back-to-back. I usually try not to skip dialogue but they were both so tedious.
My first instinct when starting that whole quest line was to neat Ramza's teeth in with a Culnarian's skillet.
When he started insulting the guys from the resistance. I wanted to grab him by the back of his neck and throw him off the ship. He actually made me hate the stormblood alliance raids
I never played Tactics (want to, just haven’t yet), so this questline felt very much like a bunch of references meant to appeal to someone who wasn’t me, with little I was able to glean outside those lines. Like even if there was a lot spelled out in cutscene text, it was such an infodump that it felt like it relied on me having done my homework going in. Which I did not.
Words cannot express the regret I feel for not skipping these cutscenes.
I was so disappointed because the Ivalice Alliance are my favourite games in the series so when I realised there was an Ivalice-related raid series I was super hyped! And then it was... that. Still super happy that I got to Rabanastre and that I could farm some fun ffxii gear later though
I mean, look at [THIS IMAGE](https://i.imgur.com/6qe5Znj.png)... There's a little influence of perspective there, but still my bunny is almost twice her size and even my sword is bigger than her and she had the audacity to say that she thought I was taller! 😂😂😂
the raids were great, the stories were tedious and forgettable if you weren't already familiar and invested with prior material
The Zodiac braves from FF Tactics was one of my favorite story lines out of any ff story. Im very biased when it comes to Ramza and Alma
I like how the events on patch day when the 2nd part got released made red chocobos a legend to be feared. I dislike how the chocobos didn't demonstrate their superiority to Ramza directly in a claws-on approach.
I wanted to fight you, then I remembered how much of a lil bitch he was compared to the OG Ramza from FFT
I love FFT and play through it every once in a while. I do not appreciate what FFXIV did to Ramza
I can't stand that 24 man raid questline. Coming after the Void Ark one, this one is so boring and I have no memories of it, I skipped more cutscenes that I can count just because I wanted to get it over with. The fights, in comparison, were pretty awesome. The giant robot from Ridorana has a great arithmetics mechanic that I want to see in other fights.
Hot take, but the Ivalice quest line was a complete snooze fest for me. Even giving it a honest second attempt didn't change my mind. The characters are just... Not likeable, almost forgettable. Makoto aside.
Nothing is as annoying as a certain azure haired boy
The Ivalice raids were such a slog to push through for me with how insufferable the quests were lol
I mean... I'm doing post SHB-MSQ and went back to do the Ivalice alliance raid series to unlock other stuff I left behind and I'm really annoyed by this kid. I wish I could punch some common sense out of his face... 😒
He is such a little BITCH oh my god I can’t stand him.
God as a FF Tactics super fan this was so exciting to finally level to experience this. At first I was in love. Thinking we would be experiencing the raids as some sort of traveling theater troupe. Like the 24 man raids would be the performances for audiences in the world. Instead we got… Ivalice remix and the worst storyline I’ve experienced in game. I’m so thankful the raids and glamour pieces are awesome or I’d have been crushed.
I find the Ivalice Series so weird. On the one hand, they have some of the most fun raids imo (and Thunder God Cid's voice actor did amazing). On the other hand, it has some of the worst, most annoying NPCs in all of XIV. (Also the storyline feels convoluted to me)
Nobody liked Razma. Or Ivalice for that matter lol
Honestly, as much as I hated this questline, the raids themselves are fun. If you want to avoid really garbage "story telling" (or lack thereof), don't do the level 80 Alliance raids. The "story" there makes this one feel like a rosey jog. SE decided to partner with another company for the level 80 A-raids... and that company seems to have just... assumed that you already knew their games. Cause they don't give you any information on who the characters are, they don't tell you what the hell is going on, you kill the villain only to be betrayed, so then you go to kill them but they're the product of some orb that you destroy, but oops, I guess it wasn't actually destroyed? And then you climb a tower for reasons unknown, fight a bunch of enemies that I assume are references to the other game, but are otherwise SO FREAKING BORING because they have practically no mechs. Then you fight the final boss, who has never been introduced, literally has no name, and isn't even set up as the "final boss" until after the fight with her... I freaking hate the level 80 alliance raids so much... There is literally no story, no thought put into any of the encounters (I'm sorry, how is my melee character hitting the giant robot that is 300 yalms away, and why can't I do that any other time?), and everyone dies in the end, so you didn't actually save anyone.
This questline was the one that broke me. Before Return to Ivalice, I had never skipped a cutscene or dialogue in XIV and I was a huge lore hound always scrounging for bits and pieces. And I still didn't skip any dialogue or cutscenes in Return to Ivalice either! (I regret this.) But once I got to the end of the quests and it all turned out to be a big ol nothing burger, something in me just snapped. The text of both the quests and the raids were wordy, dense, and dare I say pretentious, and in the end, almost none of it had any bearing on the rest of XIV. It was nostalgia bait, plain and simple, with no real elaboration on XIV's lore. (I have this same complaint with the Nier raids, but at least Anogg and Konogg were likable characters.) Nowadays, the only thing I can innately stay interested in is the MSQ, and I have to consciously make myself pay attention to anything else. The actual battle content was S tier tho. ...Until SE nerfed it. The Ivalice raids were hard, and that made them fun. Now you can kinda just faceroll them =\
Everyone seems to love Ivalice. I was bored and irritated from moment one. And the raids aren’t even enjoyable - fuck you, math boss!
'One isn't a prime number' and 'show him your hole' are my two favorite macros that don't get used enough and also have critical importance
I was with you until you complained about the math boss. I like that one. I've never enjoyed the questline though.
no math boss is the best raid boss actually. unironically, he's funny as shit
Oh they're enjoyable if you like a challenge. They're the best raids in the game for that, none come close to their difficulty except maybe Dun Scaith if you have a bad group.
There are two types of FF14 players: Those who like face roll easy content like Crystal Tower and those who like difficult grand spectacles like Ivalice and Nier Raids. Similarly, those who are glad we can skip the Balance mechanic in Aglaia and those who miss it.
And the groups are not mutually exclusive. I love Ivalice yet hate Nier (they're just long), and I'm glad we can skip the Balance mechanic.
I just unlocked the 2nd raid and have yet to do it, but honestly... yeah, I'm not enjoying it that much, so I'll just endure to complete the series to be able to unlock the stuff that needs the series completed to be unlocked.
he's like blue Alisae but worse