A few years back, a storm knocked down some powerlines in my area, and my apartment was left without power for four days. This happened to be toward the tail end of a long falling-out I was experiencing with my friend groups, so I found myself alone for four days with nothing to do (except go to work; annoyingly, my office still had power, despite being at best a mile down the road). Poking around my apartment, I found an old copy of the NES Game Atlas my mother found at a thrift store years ago, leafed through it, and was inspired to play the original Legend of Zelda - a game I'd tried and failed to get through numerous times over the years. I had a decent amount of battery in my Switch, so I spent a couple days in a powerless apartment playing Zelda, bringing my Switch into work so I could recharge its battery, reading my Atlas with waterpowered flashlights as I tried to navigate Hyrule and put an end to Ganon's reign of terror.

This, I think, is probably the type of experience you have to have to get the intended effect of Zelda 1 these days (well, maybe not the "losing your friends" part). Zelda 1 is a game about discovery, born from Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood nostalgia of exploring the countryside. There's an aimless, directionless design to it; the player is naturally guided along to things like getting the Sword right away and entering the Eagle dungeon right away, but there's no reason they have to. It's a really cool and unique design that the Legend of Zelda series didn't really revisit until Breath of the Wild, but it does mean that unless you have some sort of external aid guiding you along, like a map or friends, you're likely to just flail about aimlessly until you lose steam. At the same time, for me personally, it's such a fine line between "I'm getting help to direct my playthrough" and "I'm experiencing a game vicariously because I followed a step-by-step guide" that I tend to struggle with - so having an official guide to cross-reference, not rely upon, made for the happy medium I needed.

One thing I don't see discussed a lot is the original game's title theme. Like, yes, it's largely an arrangement of the overworld theme, thrown together at the last minute in place of Koji Kondo's original plan, a cover of the not-actually-in-the-public-domain "Boléro". But I've always been entranced by its slow cadence, playing over that shot of a bubbling waterfall, then over the text crawl as the main theme slowly kicks in. It's sort of a majestic first impression the game gives (as much as anything describing 'PRINCE DARKNESS "GANNON"' can be called majestic, anyway), and while I've read testimonials from 80s kids crediting the golden Game Pak and boxart for conveying this, I definitely think the title and opening crawl contribute to this, too.

In some ways, Zelda 1 feels like Gen 1 of Pokémon. The game is extremely janky; everyone knows it's extremely janky; a huge part of the game's reception is around what a moonshot miracle the game represents for its era, in spite or even because of this jank. Like, there's so much to the game that a person just knows and takes for granted through pop culture osmosis, like bombing and burning stuff or shoving blocks around. If you're at all familiar with the original Japanese release, it's interesting just how much stuff is left vestigial in the localization, like how you fight Pols Voices (screaming into the Famicom's second controller's microphone) or certain pivotal late-game hints being completely exorcised. And it's fun to rib it for how weird the translations are - "DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE", "DIGDOGGER HATES CERTAIN KIND OF SOUND", "ONES WHO DOES NOT HAVE TRIFORCE CAN'T GO IN", etc - but so much of that is also considered to be part of the experience, a sort-of gamer's Shibboleth. It's a rite of passage to be told that EASTMOST PENNINSULA IS THE SECRET, a hint that you likely will not act upon because it's so isoteric (it's referring to the top-right screen in the overworld - there's an invisible passage at the top).

Actually, I appreciate that Zelda 1 is in on its own joke. When so much of the game is bombing and burning random stuff, it's really funny that the game takes the time to riff on it. Everyone knows IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY, ironically, but PAY ME FOR THE DOOR REPAIR CHARGE is also really funny the first time you run into it. I'm also fond of I'D BET YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE MORE BOMBS, delivered immediately after you spent a bomb to open the way into the guy's room. I tend to fall into the trap of seeing things I wasn't around to experience fresh as being these great monolithic statements, where Popular Thing X was this great Thing that came unto and forever changed the face of the world, when in reality it was just a thing that a couple of guys went through a creative process and made. People think about the things they make, and they often try to have fun with it. It's important to remember that, too, and actually experiencing self-aware jokes a creator makes within the same body of work helps with that humanization process.

Zelda 1 doesn't have a ton of music, something you really become aware of when you look at surrounding material (there's a reason the Super Show always reaches for covers of the Overworld/Underworld themes). But I do appreciate that Death Mountain is given its own theme. It's harsh, droning, and oppressive - perfectly in cadence with the massive final dungeon, the sanctum of Ganon's power, and a place friggin' called "Death Mountain". Clearly, I think the music the game does have is well-used; mostly I appreciate that there are legs to it beyond the Overworld theme being (rightfully) iconic.

I did collect all power-ups and hearts during this playthrough. But I did not play the Second Quest, so I'm not marking this as Mastered. Still on the hook for a second playthrough, some ol' day.

There is a famous story, perhaps apocryphal, about when Friedrich Nietzsche went to see Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. At the end of the four hour performance, he burst out of the opera house supposedly gasping and yelling "I need air!".

Tristan und Isolde is four hours of musical tension that is only released in the very finale of the performance. There are unfinished cadences set up in the beginning of the opera that are not resolved until the very end.

Liebestod, or love-death, is the final music of Tristan und Isolde. Isolde is holding the dead body of Tristan and she herself dies, the moment the music resolves. And finally, after four hours of torture, everything is at rest. It is both orgasmic and suicidal.

Notably, Nietzsche loved Tristan und Isolde even after his relationship with Wagner turned sour. He knew, perhaps, that it was great because it was torturous. Like a love so good it kills.

The entire point of Etrian Odyssey IV is tension and release. Toying with how much the player can be pushed without breaking them, and allowing them moments of brief, ecstatic relief. Returning to town, finally coming out of a dungeon, though you've only got one party member still living. There are few games that so deeply understand and successfully deploy tension and release.

Going into the depths only to return back to town, heal up, and go back down again is among the most timeless patterns in video games. As such, it can act as the perfect stage onto which designers can cast all manner of creative terrors.

I love Etrian Odyssey IV. And yet, this is the first game I am reviewing before having finished it. I can't do it. I'm running out of the opera house gasping for air, but at the intermission rather than the conclusion.

It's the rhythm and the cycle, which is at once both the reason I love the game and the reason I cannot currently go back. I'm thirty hours in and probably not even halfway through. The game stretched me so thin that it wrapped me several times over around all ten fingers and I enjoyed every second.

Going back to town in Etrian Odyssey IV is about as pitifully restful as coming home and falling directly into bed after a ten hour shift, knowing you are just going back to another ten hour shift tomorrow and the next day and the next. That's the brilliant and terrible thing about the game's use of relief. It is so slight, so minuscule, that you are constantly kept on the razor's edge.

So I'm surrendering, for now. But I'll be back. That's the cruel thing about it. A tension so tortuously sweet that it can only be resolved by Liebestod.

Lich hits Evunda for 600 points of damage.
Evunda has been defeated.
<Evunda> FML
LEVEL DOWN!

Final Fantasy XI sort of confuses me. It has all the things I should absolutely despise in a game: pointless and tedious grinding, a confusing set of missions, poorly explained tutorials, an overwhelming reliance on fan wikis to do quite literally anything, a story that at first doesn’t seem all that special, a relatively boring combat system that isn’t very special in any particular way, clunky and old UIs... But I believe that Final Fantasy XI's imperfections make it perfect, make it loveable, and make it filled with an overwhelming feeling of “soul” that is very hard to come by nowadays with most MMOs, or hell, most games in general. It is such a bundle of love and joy that I find myself at a loss for words when prompted to describe it in length. But I will do so anyway, because I love this game; it helped me heal, it helped me develop my sense of self, and it brought me comfort at a time when nothing in this world did. These are my experiences and my honest feelings about a little video game called Final Fantasy XI. I hope you enjoy the read, and I'm sorry if it gets too heavy. Grab yourself something cozy to drink—some San d’Orian tea, perhaps?

I had known of Final Fantasy XI for a really long time and I always thought it looked cute, something about it struck a particular fancy I had in my little heart. The old, charming, and PS2-era graphics coupled with the wonderful musical score I had grown accustomed to listening to made me quite interested. I knew that I had to try it for myself. I gathered enough of my hard-earned R$ to purchase the ultimate edition and began my descent into a game that would change my life and my soul forever. And what a time it was—that December in which I started Final Fantasy XI. I had just graduated from high school (class of 23!) and was at a point in my life where I was deeply uncertain about a lot of things. Mental illness and being unsure about your past can really take a toll on you and mold you in various ways that are toxic and unwelcoming to other people. You begin to sort of hate yourself, hate the person you’re becoming, and hate thinking about where you’re going to end up in life, and it leaves you drained, pathetic, and sad. It’s never easy. In Final Fantasy XI, my aching mind wanted to find some form of salvation, some form of healing, just to find anything that I could hold onto, even if just for a little bit of time. I ended up finding something much more. We all have games that changed us, or that found us in a time where life was knocking at the door, telling us to come out of our little room we burrowed ourselves in. This was mine.

I’ve never made it a secret to anyone who knows me that I struggle with borderline personality disorder. It’s a nasty thing. I will not be divulging details on how it works or how it makes me feel here; this isn’t the DSM-5, and this isn’t a piece about myself. Now you, the reader, might think this information isn’t very relevant, but it is. When I spoke of healing, when I spoke of wanting to grab onto something when it felt like everything sucked and no one cared about me, it all stemmed from the fact that I was suffering from the ills of, well, mental illness. In this world, we have to find blankets, right? Someone or something to coddle us and make us feel safe, to sort of guide us in the dark to a world where we feel like we can finally be happy. As stupid and silly as it sounds, this was Final Fantasy XI to me. When the entire world is so dark, a little bit of light is all we need to keep going. Vana’diel, at that time, was my light.

Dashing into that world of light, I made my character. A little blonde Mithra named Evunda. A sort of stupid and silly name with absolutely no thought of meaning behind it. I picked Warrior because I am very basic, and I didn’t feel like delving too deep into the magic or thieving systems just yet. Starting off in Bastok, a little stone fortress located right in the middle of Gustaberg, so polished and pretty and yet so daunting at the same time. I walked outside those Bastok gates into Gustaberg, and for a while I just... wandered around, listening to the music and killing whatever I came across. It was at that moment that, for some reason, I had a feeling of nostalgia. It somehow felt like home. Despite me never touching this game before, it felt like I had. It felt like somehow, despite a lot of turmoil, I found myself back somewhere I’d forgotten, but somewhere I desperately longed to be in. Leveling up and finding my way around the UI and the systems was a form of therapy. It was beautiful, really. I felt alive, and I felt in control of myself for the first time in a while. It felt like somehow time had stopped, and that was all there was to the world in that moment, killing bugs and leveling up.

And Evunda kept on going. Doing quests for the nations, adventuring, exploring, leveling up, leveling down, coming back to the mog house, dying, being revived by a kind passerby, earning conquest points, coming across new gear... Perhaps it is strange to feel such an overwhelming feeling of healing and kindness from doing tasks I assume other people would find tedious or boring, especially considering Final Fantasy XI’s clunkiness. But wow, it felt great! I was making so much progress that I even started one of the expansions, Chains of Promathia, and did a few quests regarding that. How cool is that? I felt so happy that I tried to share my happiness with everyone around me. I think it was around this time that I felt myself change in slight ways. I wasn’t really all that mean anymore; I wasn’t doing anything stupid or wrong. I was just a normal person. Perhaps it comes with being 18 and maturing, but even so, Final Fantasy XI sped up that maturity. I was met with kindness by strangers in the game, helping me with systems, explaining mechanics, and overall just hanging out with me. They didn’t know, but I needed that so badly that it kind of made me tear up some times.

I settled on being a Dark Knight, which is funny considering what my character looks like; it’s kind of jarring! A little tiny blonde Mithra wielding a scythe, wearing all dark, chaotic-looking armor, is quite the funny image. I did it because of the scythes. I am not immune to looking like a cool reaper. A DRK/WAR… A cool combo, I think... But mostly because I was too lazy to level up a second job alongside DRK, I just settled with my WAR, which already had 30 levels sunk into it. It was fun. It really was. I felt like I belonged somewhere in this little world, and it was Vana’diel! Being a part of it all, even if I am, by all standards, a very late newcomer to this game that's existed for so long, 22 years is a hell of a long time; I haven't even been on this earth for that long! To think it all happened in a single month…

December, huh… The jolliest of all months—Christmas and New Year's—all happen in December. I had navigated so much of the time before December completely alone and aimless on what to do with my life. I loved, lost, got hurt, felt like I was doomed, and at the end of it all, I think I became rather apathetic. I’ve been dropping tidbits of it here and there when attempting to explain what Final Fantasy XI did to me, but this is the part where it all comes into play. I have to be honest with myself; I was kind of a bad person. I said a lot of things to people that I now deeply regret. I broke friendships, broke myself, and broke so much. At the end of it all, I felt like the biggest loser in the world and someone who didn’t really deserve to live. Final Fantasy XI grabbed me by the collar, put itself around me, and warmed me up. Those nights where I drank tea while wandering around felt like a mother hugging her child. It’s embarrassing. Perhaps it’s even cringeworthy, but it’s how I felt, and it’s how I still feel. I still play, and I still enjoy myself. Sometimes I joke around about how much the game makes me want to die, but it is quite the opposite. I want to keep on going. I want to fix things. I want to continue healing and helping those around me. Final Fantasy XI woke me up to a lot of things; it’s inexplicable. All you need in life, as I said previously, is that guiding light. I found mine, not in a person or a figure, but in a silly little video game. How dumb.

Apologies if it got heavy; this is my heart. It’s what I’m putting out here for all you passersby to see. A little piece of my mind, a little piece of my life, and a little piece of my feelings are on this little website. I love you, whoever’s reading this. Please find yourself that blanket. Find your light. It can be anything; it can be a stupid video game; it can be a movie; it can be a book; it can be music. We all need it at the end of the day, I think. We’re all eternally lonely creatures on this little, messed-up planet. If we can’t have each other, we might as well have ourselves and our blanket. We can face the world when we’re ready, can’t we? I’m unsure of the answer, as much is bound to happen, both in my life outside of here and in Final Fantasy XI, Evunda’s little adventure and tale. But I believe the ending will be good; that’s what keeps me going.

And to close all of this, thank you, Vana’diel; you saved my life. I owe all I have right now to you. Have my eternal love and gratitude. The world cultivated there has a soul like no other. I pray for others to read this and try to understand it. Much love, forever and ever.

100.000 gil for some grass is criminal though I CAN’T FORGIVE THAT. I SPENT 4 HOURS GRINDING FOR THAT I DIDN’T HAVE MONEY I HATE ALL YOU FINAL FANTASY XI HYPER CAPITALISTS!!!!!!! (COME SAY HI IM EVUNDA LEVEL 56 DRK/WAR IN BAHAMUT I WELCOME THEE)