So Damned Charming

Episode 42 – Gigantic Personality

This week is the first live show we have recorded in two weeks.  In the intervening time Bel, Rae and Ash went to Pax South, and Rae and Ash managed to catch the dreaded Pax Pox.  Kodra represented our podcast on the Inaugural episode of the TGEN Tribunal podcast featuring members from all of the various TGEN podcasts and then became the grand Wii Bowling champion of his cruise.  During the course of this episode my cast members try and convince me that I am a “media personality” to which I still deny.  In addition to all of this madness we talk about a lot of games.

Kodra talks about his experiences with the 3DS port of Citizens of Earth, playing a lot of Sudoku and the punishing game 1001 Spikes.  Ash talks about a week of playing Final Fantasy XIV, and the rogue like overture.  Tam talks about time spent playing the new generation of adventure games including Dreamfall Chapters and Life is Strange.  Rae talks about some FFXIV and her frustrations with the current state of League of Legends Lag, as well as the controversy of them completely blowing off Pax South.  Finally I talk about my experience taking media appointments at Pax South, and getting to play a lot of Gigantic and Moonrise.  We deep dive into Gigantic talkinga bout our experiences playing together, and what the various champions we played were like.

Finally at the end I talk a little bit about my joining the staff of MMOgames.com.  It is a big episode full of lots of stuff and I hope you all enjoy it.  We are happy to be back and happy to be hanging out and recording aggrochat once more.

So Damned Charming

One of the things that makes me happiest in life is when a bunch of my friends happen to be playing the same game at the same time.  Over the course of the last week Syl, Jaedia, Liore, Aro and a few others have started playing Final Fantasy XIV on the Cactuar server.  This morning was the first time I had actually caught Syl on since she started up, because of time differences and the fact that last weekend I was kinda a Pax South.  While waiting on one of my filters to run on the podcast this morning I popped over to see what she was up to in Camp Drybone.  While there I played show and tell with various outfits and then decided to show off my Draught Chocobo, the two player mount that comes from the recruit a friend program.  She I think jokingly asked if it could take her to Vesper Bay…  but sure enough that was precisely what I did.  Granted I had to run across three zones to get there but it was super enjoyable, and all the while she was emoting all sorts of happy things sitting behind me.

Its moments like this that make Final Fantasy XIV so damned charming.  Sure there are problems like goofy invisible walls, or things being gated behind group content… but the overall package is just so adorable at times it hurts.  I mean what is more awesome than a pair of Lalafell trekking across country on a big damned chocobo?  I love how group friendly this game is, that any one of us can easily help another guildie get something accomplished.  We have started over the last few weeks doing a guild raid night of sorts directly before our podcast on Saturday.  Last night we managed to catch a few people up with Shiva and Ultros, and then turned around and finished  the Chimaera fight for another guildie.  It is so painless to make this happen, no fiddling with hotbars, no fiddling with gear sets… the game just auto levels you down to the content that you need to run.  I think in part the ease of helping others is what leads to the game being so friendly to new players.

Hard Mode Roulette

Another thing that happened recently is we managed to complete all of the new set of dungeons, unlocking hard mode roulette.  I have to say it feels like Square has ramped everything about this patch up since in theory it is the last major one we will get before the expansion.  Everything is leading towards what feels to be us entering Ishgard and joining in the battle against the dravinians.  I spoke about the Keeper of the Lake dungeon earlier, and it definitely ties in to this theme.  The other two dungeons feel more like us dealing with consequences of our actions.  In Wanderer’s Palace we face the King Tonberry and through the course of the events end up defeating him.  Upon entering Wanderer’s Palace hard mode… we see that this really destroyed the Tonberry people allowing a beast tribe to come in and take over, enslaving them.  So here I am hanging out with my Tonberry  Buddies after saving the day.

In Amdapor Keep hard mode we are going back in to deal with the havoc that the cultists started the first time.  Cleaning up the remainder of the demonic hordes that were summoned.  This is really the first dungeon that it did not feel there was a vastly different storyline.  Granted you take a completely different path through the keep, and face entirely new enemies, but the story of the dungeon itself felt a little on the weak side.  I did remark several times at just how pretty the dungeon was this time around.  In all cases the new content was rather challenging, forcing us to use our limit breaks to get through almost every encounter.  So far of this new set I would definitely say that Keeper was the hardest, and is likely going to be the one folks bail on if any.  I felt like maybe Amdapor Keep was the easiest, leaving Wanderers Palace somewhere in the middle.  I love the hard mode dungeons and am amped to see what they give us with the expansion.  In the mean time I need to make my way into World of Darkness and see how that works.

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