Board 8 > SaveEstelle/LeonhartFour in New Houses: Trails into Zelda Fantasy Edition [SELF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Have you watched a sports anime before?

pjbasis posted...

Have you watched a sports anime before?

is this going to be a Haikyuu recommendation

It's on my Crunchyroll queue but I haven't opened Crunchyroll in a long time

I was thinking of some basketball ones, but I can certainly add another haikyuu recommendation to the pile.

Slam Dunk is my actual favorite one.

Whew, defeated the Svarog Mark in FFXVI. That was a tough fight! I've almost got the board cleared before I head off to Waloed next.

Finally saw Oppenheimer! Really liked it, and confirmed that I could have taken some aerial shots of filming from my old office had I not graduated literally a few days before they filmed there!

In Final Fantasy XVI, Clive finally bests Barnabas in an epic battle with great music and gets Odin's power. Joshua reveals that Ultima really wants the Ifrit/Phoenix hybrid, and he believes it's to cast the spell to end all spells. Could it be...

Time Kompression?! Ultima, Ultimecia, I see the connection!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie complete!

That was pretty good! A lot of nostalgia, of course, but it was enjoyable. If anything, I thought it was a little short (I mean, it's only 90 minutes and a lot of it is spent with Mario "training" to become a hero. It's almost like a comic book origin story movie in that sense). I actually thought Peach was the best character in the movie, but I thought all the important characters were solid. Jack Black did a great job voicing Bowser, but it was an odd choice to make being a Peach simp his primary characteristic. I feel like they try to establish him as a fearsome villain in the opening scene, but then he's just kind of a joke after that.

also I don't know if it's because of Chris Pratt and the Guardians movies that they included them but it felt weird hearing 80s songs in a Mario movie

Oh hey, I just saw that Wheel of Time season 2 starts September 1st!

I wish I could be excited about that, but I'm not optimistic at all after S1.

Yeah, I'll watch, but my expectations aren't super high. I'm just curious to see what they do with the story at this point.

Decided to give Baldurs Gate 3 a try. Seems good so far.

24 Season 2 Episode 18 complete!

I loved the image of Kate casually walking up on one of the gunmen and then casually shooting him.

So it took me until this point of FFXVI to realize that your Eikon shortcut abilities don't have to be from the same Eikon (in other words, even though you have Phoenix equipped, you can still assign an ability from Garuda to it, for instance).

Feels like that would've been helpful to know sooner!

Yeah, once you have enough ability points, you just equip the eikons you really like for their circle skill.

Well, I've been rolling with Phoenix and Titan for forever because I really like their skills, but the third one has been on a rotation because I can't find one where I like everything they do. This does make things easier by being able to mix and match because I love Bahamut's Impulse since it wreaks havoc on a Stagger gauge, but I'm not a fan of the other stuff it does as much.

Now I'm thinking of rolling with Garuda (for Deadly Embrace) with Bahamut's Impulse and Shiva's Ice Age as my third, and I might be pretty content with that.

LeonhartFour posted...

The Super Mario Bros. Movie complete!

That was pretty good! A lot of nostalgia, of course, but it was enjoyable. If anything, I thought it was a little short (I mean, it's only 90 minutes and a lot of it is spent with Mario "training" to become a hero. It's almost like a comic book origin story movie in that sense). I actually thought Peach was the best character in the movie, but I thought all the important characters were solid. Jack Black did a great job voicing Bowser, but it was an odd choice to make being a Peach simp his primary characteristic. I feel like they try to establish him as a fearsome villain in the opening scene, but then he's just kind of a joke after that.

also I don't know if it's because of Chris Pratt and the Guardians movies that they included them but it felt weird hearing 80s songs in a Mario movie

I thought the 80s songs were easily the worst part of the movie actually. They have so much fantastic Mario music to choose from and instead we get like 4-5 of the most generic movie songs. Not that they're bad songs or anything, just completely out of place imo.

Jack Black was the best. Bowser's jamming session with Kamek was great.

Haven't gotten much time to play Zelda recently but what little there has been finally led to the Zora region being mostly explored outside the Domain itself.

Finding the King in a random cave seemingly on the verge of death was a shock LOL.

126 Shrines.
805 Koroks.

To Gerudo Desert.

As I was playing FFXVI earlier, my wife told me, "They'd better not kill off Torgal. I'd rather they killed off Jill instead of the dog."

24 Season 2 Episode 19 complete!

Another torture sequence, huh. This one felt like the one from MGS3.

yeah, mgs3 definitely felt like it echoed 24 there!

Leonhart4 posted...

As I was playing FFXVI earlier, my wife told me, "They'd better not kill off Torgal. I'd rather they killed off Jill instead of the dog."

D:

In Final Fantasy XVI, Ultima gives us a brief history of the world. His race's world was destroyed by the Blight, so the survivors fled to Valisthea to harvest its aether (the purpose of the Mothercrystals) and craft a vessel to hold the power necessary to create their new world, free from the Blight (the purpose of humanity and ultimately, Clive). I would guess that the Fallen are the original humans before they became self-aware and woke to self-determination.

We destroy the last Mothercrystal, only for Ultima to create a new one, the "very obvious final dungeon" Origin. Ultima talks about the Logos, which is the ancient Greek word for, well, "word," "thought," or "reason." Wonder what the significance of that is.

24 Season 2 Episode 20 complete!

I can understand your point of view here, Mike, but you done messed up and you know it.

Also Carrie finally getting her comeuppance when Tony called her bluff on the blackmail attempt was so good.

Looks like I've finished all sidequests and Marks in FFXVI. All that remains is the final dungeon!

Curious to hear your thoughts after finishing

I am officially a homeowner as of today.

TheManaSword posted...

I am officially a homeowner as of today.

Aw yeah, congrats!

Thanks. Now I get to have a ton of fun packing and moving.

Yeah, moving sucks, but hopefully it'll be the last time you have to move for a while.

congrats!

Congrats!

Final Fantasy XVI beated! I'll post some more in-depth thoughts later, but the last boss felt like something straight out of Persona (which makes sense since bonds is a major theme of the game). I was worried Clive would die at the end, and I was a little disappointed with how they justified it with the whole "oh guess I can't handle Ultima's powers after all" thing. It just felt a little cheap because I thought the last boss demonstrated Clive was worthy.

This also suggests Ultima's plan was doomed to fail from the start, which gives the ending a "Nier" type of vibe, like there was no way for anyone here to win. I mean, I guess it doesn't mean humanity is doomed, but it also doesn't feel like there's a way to improve their situation (other than developing technology to allow them to survive despite the Blight, which the Hideaway was working on, to be fair). Maybe the post-credit scene implies they did figure it out though. It's a bittersweet ending, but it feels heavy on the bitter and light on the sweet.

"That dawn will always come. That you will always come." Dawn comes at the end. He lives.

That's my ending.

This has been my wish for heroes in general (FFXVI ending spoilers): Don't have heroes promise to come back and then die. Stop making that a death flag. Let their sheer will to keep that promise help them overcome in the end.

TheManaSword posted...

I am officially a homeowner as of today.

Congrats!

24 Season 2 Episode 21 complete!

Man, just when I thought Sherry was out of the picture forever!

Strange Planet Episode 1 complete!

I don't know if anyone here is a fan of the Strange Planet webcomic by Nathan Pyle (the one with the blue beings; if you know, you know), but Apple TV+ made an animated show out of it. I decided to watch the first episode, and it was pretty fun! It's loaded with references to the webcomic and its silly terminology.

It's also apparently being produced by the same guy who made Rick & Morty, except this one is a very family-friendly show

Okay, time for my Final Fantasy XVI review!

Gameplay: Probably the easiest way to summarize it is "stylish but repetitive," and this really applies to all aspects of it. The combat looks amazing, but I basically ended up doing the same things in every battle (because it worked!). The sidequests all basically operate the same way with a few exceptions (uh oh, we need to go beat up some bad guys; oh thanks, here's your reward). They do compensate for it in major storyline battles by cranking the stylishness up to 11, and they pretty much always deliver. Oh, and the game is really easy, even by FF standards. The "Final Fantasy Mode" you can unlock for NG+ promises to ratchet up the difficulty, but I doubt I'll experience it for myself anytime soon!

World: Valisthea feels like a fully realized world. It's got a ton of mysterious lore that gradually unfolds over the course of the game, a wide variety of locations (with fantastic-looking backgrounds), and all the usual country archetypes you've come to expect in a JRPG. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of places you visit only once during the main storyline, and then you get locked out of them forever. I mean, I kinda get why they do it this way, but it feels like you spend a lot of time visiting the same 4 or 5 locations over and over again when it would've been nice if they could've given us an excuse to go back to Oriflamme. It's also a sadsack world in a lot of ways, but that's kinda the point.

Story: It's a really compelling story from start to finish. I don't feel like there was really a time where I was just bored and wanted the game to move on to the next plot point. They always managed to keep me invested and wanting to find out what was going to happen next. I think the story has a good flow to it and manages to keep you on your toes, even if the basic structure is fairly predictable. Also, if you're a fan of really long cutscenes, they're back!

Characters: Man, this cast is deep, which is a nice change of pace from FFXIII and FFXV, which have good casts but feel really small. They also manage to make them feel fleshed out with sufficiently tragic backstories (seriously, it feels like most of Clive's allies manage to tug on your heartstrings at least once), which differentiates it from something like FFXII, which has a big cast but feels like most of them don't do much or you don't really get to know them. It's hard not to get attached to even the minor quest givers in the Hideaway, which gives it a Persona 4 feel for me (I loved Inaba because the small town environment made it feel like you got to know everybody and they each had their own story arcs you could follow if you wanted).

Character ranking: Clive > Cid > Joshua > Torgal > Barnabas > Gav > Jill > Mid > Dion > Martha > Blackthorne > Otto > Quinten > L'ubor > Charon > Tarja > Jote > Harpocrates > Isabelle > Goetz > Vivian > Benedikta > Kupka

Game ranking: VIII > X > VII > T > IX > XVI > VI > XV > XIII > X-2 > XII > IV > V

Protagonist ranking: Squall > Tidus > Ramza > Cloud > Clive > Zidane > Noctis > Lightning > Cecil > Bartz > Vaan

Something like that.

I actually liked the ending. Also I liked the part where Clive Final Fantasyd Ultima then punched him in the face for 999999 damage. Its so dumb but I loved it.

sorry for the initial post without the spoilers if anyone saw it. turns out discord tags dont work on gamefaqs lol

Where does 7R fall in that ranking?

also, ff16 or theatrhythm final bar line for best FF of the year

V in last D:

Oh right, I always forget to rank Remake. I'd probably put it...Hmm...This is tough. Maybe right below XVI?

TheManaSword posted...

I actually liked the ending. Also I liked the part where Clive Final Fantasyd Ultima then punched him in the face for 999999 damage. Its so dumb but I loved it.

Oh, I loved the entire final boss sequence. It was super fun. I just thought killing off Clive at the end was lame.

FFXVI ending stuff:

Clive does not die and I will fight about this. It initially seems that way but the post credits scene makes it extremely clear to me that he's alive.

I really should do some sort of FF character ranking. It's been a long time since I've done one.

wow worse than IX?

the series really is in dire straits

I thought about putting it ahead of IX. I think it's close, but my nostalgia for that Golden Age of Square is strong.