Hey me and my friends were talking about your god tier redesigns and my pal reversalsun on here was curious what your maid of hope take would be, if you made it to that one! Would you mind sending it to him if you did?
FFXIV is pretty notorious for having a slow start with A Real Reborn that a lot of people bounce off of. Seeing as you've now finished base Heavensward, I'm curious what your thoughts are and how your perspective of the game as a whole might have changed between the two expansions?
aaah I had no problem with the slow start of ARR personally! I always need a bit before entering into a new world when i start a new game and the pace ARR took was perfect for me to really get me into it slowly. I also kept straying off because like... i picked every classes i could and brought them all to level 30 before the Vesper Bay Massacre, so i was mostly fueling myself getting invested in class stories in the early game ahah
The beginning is a bit slow, i'm not going to lie. The one time it was the most jarring to me was everything building up to fighting Titan because my god i got it 100 quests to get there omg. But at the same time, i wouldn't have it any other way? It made me get attached to this world with lower stakes. the slow build make you connect a lot with random npcs who are just little guys mostly, it made the game feel so much huger, it gave me something to fight for.
My biggest grip with ARR, especially with HW in retrospect, is to not really give you a lot of time getting attached to the Scions, if that makes sense? I think we don't pass enough quality time with them at the begining, when it was revealed Lahabrea took possession of Thancred, I was shocked! of course! but also kinda like "i don't really know him that well though". Considering in comparaison how HW built up Haurchefant, Ysayle, Estinien and Aymeric in particular, i think it's a bit of a shame.
But at the same time i can work with it, there's something interesting with thinking of a certain emotional distance with Scions who aren't Alphinaud and Minfilna. It's just something i thought was to expect with the game but HW is proving me wrong.
But yeah once we hit the Vesper Bay Massacre to me this is when the plot really gets you gripped and I really love ARR onward from then.
But it's undeniable HW is the stronger plotline and stronger in the way it progresses. I still think it's good ARR is the way it is though, it gives reasonable stakes to start escalating from. If it started too big it would make next expansions less impactful. I was genuinely worried after beating Titan or something that the primal battles would feel too much like "same old thing i can always do" and i wouldn't feel the threat of them as it goes, but the stakes are managed so well that even by HW i was still shaking at primal battles.
I think like, ARR had a lot of padding between big quests, makes sense to me because they have to manage their stakes and make you care about the world you're on. But therefore it feels like the plot is a little more bare, less complex than it can be. HW's pacing is mostly pretty good, the quests feel logical with one another, you don't really feel like you're just doing random things before going to a main event....
But i DO think the double major plotline in HW is its weakest point, more specifically, sadly, the stuff that got out of the ARR cliffhanger. The Scions/Crystal Brave/Ul'dah part of the plot is the weakest, and the times we have to pause the Ishgard plotline for this plotline is always awkward and cheapens both plotline in doing so. And i did think this part of the plot was pretty underwhelming.
But the highs are so highs it sweeps the high of ARR pretty easily. ARR's greatest high to me is especially the banquet, and for now i'm frustrated that the follow up of this plotline was pretty lurkwarm so far and not really resolved yet. Still, there's still a lot of content for me to get through, and considering i disliked the way this plotline intruded the Ishgard plotline, i have to somewhat be glad those elements didn't come back to steal away the Ishgard's time.
As for my perspective of the game, it hasn't changed much. I've heard so much about the game i pretty much expected the slow start, and the fact it was going to pick up the pace. I'm familiar with FF games and structurally it feels like a FF game, it starts small and makes you care about people and then the stakes raise bigger, so the game just works the way i expected it to work. I guess the one point that changed was thinking that being invested for characters will be a little weaker, and HW proved me wrong and i can expect just proper time to get invested.
So yeah, i enjoyed ARR, I really loved HW, my opinion didn't really change because i already had expectations going in and so far the game is meeting them o7
I just want to thank you, the Ryojis you draw are so beautiful and they keep me healthy and bring joy to my life. Thank you so much. I love your style, it's so cute and lovable.
IM SO GLAD!!! THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! ;__; i love him.. .
