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[tinkaton]

☆ Had work off yesterday since I worked the weekend, so I used pretty much all my free time to play Final Fantasy XVI. That's right, I finally unboxed my PS5! That alone was more trouble than it should have been, given that the little plastic legs needed to get it to stand horizontally WEREN'T WITH THE REST OF THE SUPPLIES and were in fact in a totally different part of the box that I would have thrown out if not for Reddit. So that was an excellent packaging choice. What's everyone's favorite PlayStation design? I think we peaked with the PS2 thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Anyway, FFXVI. I've only gotten as far as the Garuda fight and now Clive and Jill are on their way back to Rosaria. I'm enjoying it so far, it hasn't quite caught my interest as much as my fave FFs yet, but I'm curious to see where the story goes. My main complaints are that it's not turn-based, which isn't bad I just like turn-based FFs (I have the accessories equipped that basically just let you button mash square and you win), and that I am having a weirdly hard time keeping all the different countries/factions/groups that are fighting each other straight. Like WHO are all these people. And one of my fave FF games is FFXII so like I can handle convoluted fantasy politics lmao. I think I'm sorting it out as I go but it's just like. Everyone's soldiers look exactly the same. Also everyone's bad accents are making me miss FFXII. 😔

This makes it sound like I don't like it sjdfhksjhdf but I do! I've just gotta get further in... I've gotta bounce between this and Octopath 2 which I still haven't beaten, oops. I shouldn't have started FFXVI until I did, but what can I say, I have poor decision making skills. And with FFVII Rebirth coming out soon...

Did anyone watch the new trailer that released with the demo? The most important takeaways: Barret sailor suit, Tifa and Aerith cute beach outfits, SOME GAME THAT LOOKS LIKE TRIPLE TRIAD, the dolphin, seeing my beautiful husbands Cid and Vincent, also Cissnei seems to be there for some reason, plus Roche is back to be weird at Cloud. ♥ And there was some plot stuff I guess but that's less important. I always pretend I don't care about FFVII as much as my faves but it's all lies, I love my stupid children...

☆ Speaking of watching things, I also watched this video by Mina Le about third places and friendships that I thought was really interesting. She does a lot of videos about fashion history, media fashion, pop culture, beauty trends, etc. that I think is fun to learn about so I definitely recommend her channel in general. This video discussed a bunch of different stuff about the lack of third places in modern life, how this affects building community, social media as a substitute 'third place' and the difficulty of maintaining friendships, and some other related topics tying in to all that. Interesting stuff to consider these days.

☆ I started writing up my January book reviews but they got kind of wordy so I think I'm going to just drop them in a separate post. I also finally bought paid time for this journal so I spent like the last three days just gathering and organizing and uploading icons lmao. Kinda surprised how hard it is to fill 150 spaces but that just means I'll have to keep hunting for more!!

Comments

[vriddy]

I'm not good at watching videos, but I'm going to try this one, the topic is really interesting and the speaker seems engaging.

I've been stuck in FFXVI since September... I never really warmed up to it. I think it's a good game, just not the kind I want to play and not really what main series FF games are, for me. With Rebirth around the corner, I'm going to have to decide if I want to finish it or properly abandon it and move on! We shall see... I haven't watched the Rebirth trailer but I really enjoyed the first remake episode.

Also you reminded me that I also had to google for how to make the PS5 stand hahaha. Not obvious at all.

[ai]

Another fan of turn-based combat here. It's probably why a lot of Square-Enix games have fallen to the wayside for me, but so it goes. There's plenty of other turn-based games out there for me to enjoy.

(I also think a lot of FFXVI suffers from having all of the nations kind of blend together, they really could have made people stick out a little more, but "the realism" I guess!)

Oh no, there's a card game in 7R now, huh... (it's so over for me)

[rionaleonhart]

I'm interested to hear the accents in Final Fantasy XVI sound bad to you! As a British person, they sounded pretty natural to me (with the exception of the occasional minor NPC), whereas I found Ignis and Luna's accents a bit distracting in Final Fantasy XV. Are there any characters in particular that are bothering you?

In any case, I hope you enjoy the rest of the game! It's not one of my favourites in the series, but I had a good time with it nonetheless.

Roche is back to be weird at Cloud. ♥

I haven't watched the latest trailer because I know I'm definitely going to get this game - I don't need to persuade myself! - but I'm so excited to hear this. Roche is an incredible addition. I could listen to him hitting on Cloud all day.

[tinkaton]

Mina's videos are all really interesting, if you enjoy this one I definitely recommend checking out her other stuff. :D The fashion history vids especially are super interesting to me.

I'm like well it can't possibly be worse than FFXV so it's got a low bar to clear for me lmao. Nothing about the characters I've seen so far really "pops" yet, though I'm still pretty early in the game so there's still time for them to turn it around!! I think Cid is the most entertaining so far, also I'd give my life for Torgal. But yeah, Rebirth is far more exciting now that the release is so close haha, I'm so intrigued to see where they're going to go with the story in terms of what they're going to change or expand upon.

[tinkaton]

I don't mind real time fighting, like I love Devil May Cry, Kingdom Hearts, etc etc, but with games that have whole teams with unique characters like FF or Persona I want to play all of them!! Like if it was real time and you could swap the player character I'd be happy enough with that, but it seems like here it's just Clive the whole way through? Which is a bummer. Let me play the dog, Tales of Vesperia and P3 let you play as the dog...

Yeah apparently it's some new game called Queen's Blood and we'll be able to collect cards and build decks? I played sooo much Triple Triad back in the day, hands down favorite video game mini game, so hopefully this one is fun too.

[tinkaton]

sjfhsdjf ok not that they sound bad like fake or anything, but more like they're all just British instead of people from some fantasy land. Like in FFXII they were pulling all sorts of wacky accents out of nowhere and I loved it lmao. Whatever Fran had going on was *chef's kiss* With FFXVI having a similar kind of setting I would have expected something less boring, but that's not the cast's fault or anything, just whoever decided to go that direction.

Roche was so funny I was sad he only had a little part in the first game, so I'm glad to see he's back. Also I have to share a screencap of Aerith and Tifa in their summery outfits if you haven't seen them because they're sooo cute. 😍

[tinkaton]

I think I've sorted it out by now! Hopefully lmao I could still be way off base. It was just confusing at the start because I thought there were only two nations, then it was like no there's three, then no there's FOUR--

I had to back in the trailer and pause to make sure that was actually Cissnei because I was like, of all the random characters to return??? But I'm not gonna complain either!

[ai]

Yes, that was the main thing that kept me from buying the game initially actually and why I told myself I'd wait until PC (cause then PC can workshop/mod in other characters to replace Clive if I so desired!) because it feels weird to have a party, but not... actually do anything with them. They're their own people, I guess!

I'll have to keep an eye out for it. A good card game always gets me excited! Thanks for mentioning it because it felt like I hadn't heard about it before now!

[vriddy]

I did end up watching the video and it was very good, thank you for the rec!

Haha, I loved FFXV and it's up there in my top 3 FFs of all times, so maybe you'll love FFXVI soon enough XD Torgal is great :D

[tinkaton]

Glad you liked it!

The plot is definitely picking up now that I've played a little more, but the characters are still kind of lackluster, so we'll see if one can make up for the other... For all 15's faults at least it had Prompto lmao