#Please give me Sophia Zurvan and Sephirot

[ammyamarant]

I think a lot about the ultimate raid from Final Fantasy XIV Dragonsong Reprise (Ultimate) sometimes. Yes, it can be the wild predictions that I made that were supposed to be jokes but ended up true in some fashion. reddodgeballofprophecy.jpg and all. But also I just have to think about the direction they took it in. If you look back at the other ultimates, they're pretty much just "the fight you actually did, But Harder. With a secret mechanic you have to figure out to beat the fight." I didn't watch when my friends did Unending Coils of Bahamut for a reason I am not disclosing. But I did see Tiepo do The Weapon's Refrain (Ultimate) and The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) and that's pretty much it. There's a mechanic that didn't show up in the original fights that is required to find and do to beat the ultimate version.

(Since I don't want to retype all the names again it'll be UCOB for Unending Coils, UWU for Weapon's Refrain, TEA for Epic of Alexander, and DSR for Dragonsong Reprise)

There's a little bit of that in DSR. It's nothing like UWU where you had to pay attention after each primal and assign the limit break to the proper job role, or the cat in TEA. I'll also count proper Nisi here too. But you can't kill Thordan in phase 5 of DSR. The eyes in phase 4 have a mechanic where one of Nidhogg's eyes gets healed if the people it's chained to get hurt, and the other gets hurt if the people it's chained to get hurt.

(And aside, I LOVE THIS. I've said for a while that Nidhogg is the antagonist that stands out the most for me because he just hates. He hates from beyond the grave to the point he is reborn from further hatred. And in DSR, he hates so much that he's willing to kill himself to kill you.

I love Nidhogg.)

But overall? DSR is lore. It's a story. It's not just the Wandering Minstrel telling the story of you defeating these enemies, just... embellishing a bit, but it's a story about what if? What if you had the ability to save Haurchefant? How would the story have changed? Everything done in DSR is to further serve that story.

UCOB, UWU, TEA... they're all fantastic. There's something about seeing the Ultima Weapon at the end of UWU. Chills run down my spine when I see Perfect Alexander. But DSR? The full story told about what if. What if you could save the ones you lost. Is so goddamn good. No wonder it was pushed back. It had to be pushed back to be this polished.

The ultimate raid designers set a high bar with DSR. I hope the next one is just as high.

[the-wardens-torch]

Unpopular Opinion

I really want too see some monstrous and weird-looking female primals, and more female primals in general.  FFXIV is far, FAR better than most MMOs at male/female equality as far as its character and/or costume design, but it really bugs me that the primals are such a glaring exception. There are so few that are female, and they all have humanoid bodies with wide hips, narrow waists, and tits.

Give me at least one exception to the unspoken rule of "male until proven otherwise." Please give me a female primal that doesn't have secondary sexual characteristics resembling those of a human female.

Give me something that walks on all fours (Ifrit.) Give me something with freaky extra arms and legs (Ravana, Zurvan, Sephirot.)  Give me a potato in a loincloth (Titan.) Give me a slightly furrier potato without the loincloth (King Moggle Mog.) Give me something that doesn’t even have a humanoid body (Leviathan, Bismark, Phoenix, Bahamut.) Or at least give me a less youthful humanoid (Ramuh,) or a humanoid with kickass battle attire (Odin, Susano) for shit's sake.

But IF NOT BOOB HOW FEMALE?! Just call them "she" annnd you're done. And don’t you dare just give me an animal with curly eyelashes and a bow in its long, silky hair.

I really love what you've done with a lot of your other gender politics, but this fuckery still really bugs me.

((Attention new followers: I promise I don’t usually whine quite this much. I love this game, and I still think that Shiva, Garuda, Sophia and Lakshmi are kickass ladies and there’s no denying their power and importance.))