my ps5 decided to delete my save file because echoes of the fallen didn't download properly somehow. so i had to replay the game bit by bit. honestly, i think i hated the worst parts of the game less this time around, in terms of the experience of actually engaging with the "content". but then the spectacle did not wow me at all like the first time, so overall a surprisingly worse experience. hate the story still, has no idea what it wants to be and fumbles due to mixed metaphors all over the place and cowardice in approaching conversations about race and prejudice. it is what it is. easily my least favourite game in the series, as enjoyable as the combat is (which, despite impeccable gamefeel is still substandard in mechanics on a casual engagement level - i understand there is "tech" but basic engagement with combat in this game is just MMO rotations) i come to this series for compelling melodrama, interesting characters and thoughtful and new approaches to sci-fi and fantasy fiction which this game just does not give me. "we have a god to kill" 🙄. even at its most "attack and dethrone god" moments in the series there's usually something texturally there beyond this sort of "indomitable spirit of humanity" trite shounen anime approach. there's just so much more to the fal'Cie or the Occuria or Yu Yevon in comparison to Ultima as far as their animation of the thematic material within their respective games. i shan't get started on the "politics". it has none (in the sense of in-fiction political mechanics, of course there's so much "politics" in creating art, even a work as empty as this one) it's just a weird aesthetic layer of terminology and maps that ultimately don't really matter. i don't expect the dlc to impress me very much, but i will be keeping an open mind.


ughhhh i didn't know DLC is region locked, i have a japanese disc copy of the game, but i bought the expansions on the european store. this is the second time mr yoshida naoki has cheated me out of my money after giving away FF14 starter edition a month before the expanded free trial