Zirilius

Yep and now that WC3 runs on modern equipment after the 1.31 patch it's a great start.

The story of WoW pre-lich king sucked. A lot was inferred or required doing Raids to figure out. I think the story telling has only gotten better and outside of the writing of the pre-patch content (Ithink the story is fine but the writing very disjointed in the quests) they have grown leaps and bounds in their story telling.

You do need to have some investment in the world to really have some sense of scope and excitement.

@zombiepie: Final Fantasy XIII-2 is definitely a better "game" than Final Fantasy XIII but I think the core story of XIII is better than any of the later entries in the series. Final Fantasy XIII is a masterwork compared to the shit show that is Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII when it comes to story telling. Lightning Returns might have the second worst hope (with XIII being the best worst hope).

And for anyone who thinks XV is worse than XIII I beg to differ. While the story of XV requires viewing of alternative media's and feels very rushed by the end it at least adhere's to laws and rules that are clearly defined without the need to read a codex. While the anime and movie do make XV easier to play they aren't 100% essential either where as to have a basic understanding of which planet you're one or the difference between a l'cie and fal'cie are is confusing as fuck.

@zombiepie: XII is really close to my favorite Final Fantasy game of all time. VI has it with nostalgia but fuck is XII so good.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. @jeff is wrong! Hope is hands down the worst Final Fantasy character in any Final Fantasy game. I hate her more than I hate Leblanc which is a lot. He was part of the reason I took 3 years to beat this game. I'm not going to say much more bout him that you haven't already said except FUCK HOPE.

Let's get into the nitty gritty. I'm a XIII defender because I think this game actually does a lot after you get to Gran Pulse. The shitty part is that you have to force yourself to eat your veggies for the first 10 chapters before you get to the good stuff. Now that isn't to say that there isn't some okay stuff that happens before then but like you mentioned you barely have any context for the motivations of many of the characters prior to Chapter 5 and hell your still learning stuff in Chapter 10 and beyond.

I think this game does too much hand holding in the beginning parts of this game. Once you get the option to do custom chains and paradigms is when the combat for this game really opens up. Sure you can hit Auto-battle for 90% of the game but once you learn the system being able to game it with custom chains is amazing. Some of the later fights that are a bit tough on auto-battle can be trivialized by doing custom chains. Learning how to paradigm shift at critical times is also amazing. It's just a shame that even getting close to the end of the game there are still FUCKING tutorials for shit you've already probably been doing for at least 10 or more hours.

Snow is amazing in this and I agree that the portrayal from Troy Baker really sells me on the character. Despite him being kind of a dumbass he's got this earnest about him that I find infectious. He loves Serah! He wants to do right by those around him and he puts the weight of the world on his shoulders. When something goes wrong he blames himself, from what I remember, but he doesn't let his failures keep him from completing his job.

Lightning early on his a annoying but I actually grew to love her arc by the stories end. I'm having issues describing her arc without really getting into some spoilery stuff that happens later on but needless to say she's actually more nuanced then the early game lets on.

Sazh can go fuck himself. I think he's a tragic character trying to do some good but I honestly don't like him that much. Their attempts at comic relief with him fell flat for me. The unfortunate part is that he becomes a pretty critical party member later on for some fights so you can't fully ignore him.

I get your criticisms on Vanille but I didn't find her terribly annoying in this game (come talk to me if you ever play XIII-3). And I know you didn't get into the introduction of Fang yet but aside from Snow she might be favorite character in the XIII universe. Like Lightning I think they take too long to develop her character but once contextualized I think she's a great character. You can take it or leave it on the voice acting but having just come from X and X-2 I think you can appreciate Square at least tries to get people who do a decent job.

Looking forward to your later blogs as I'm curious to see if @thatpinguino turns around. I'm a bit behind on Deep Listens but hopefully with Battle for Azeroth coming out soon I'll have some podcast time while I game.

This feels like a repeat of something that comes up every year or so here.

For me the most iconic music is FF6. After that its a toss up of 14, 15, or 11.

In order

1.) Anthem

2.) Ghost of Tsushima

3.) Gears 5

4.) Skull and Bones

Would love to see FF16 but know the only Final Fantasy game there will probably be FF7 Remastered.

Yep and the fact they still haven't shown anything remotely close to what the original pitch of that game was. If this miss the February release date I have little faith that this game will actually come out.

Okay Rage 2! You sold me on getting you.

I hate their "exclusive" terminology. I know all companies use that but when you are calling mutliplatform games that launch on your system exclusive that's a bit misleading. Overall I thought the conference was fine but they didn't show anything to get me excited enough to start up my Xbox Live Subscription again. Gears 5 was the ONLY thing I gave two shits about this conference and that was almost completely ruined by the Gears POP reveal.

I actually thought that Halo Infinite was going to be a Halo Royale game they were going to play on stage and honestly thought that was how they were going to finish the show.

I love CD Projekt Red but Cyberpunk still hasn't shown me anything to get pumped about it yet. Like I need some tangible gameplay footage to honestly know if that game is for me. I loved the Witcher but I didn't like the direction Witcher 3 took compared to 2.

Also show me some more Gears tactics as I think that is moderately interesting to me.