Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Sunflower Samurai]

Finished DT

overall enjoyed the content itself
didnt dislike Wuk as much as i expected but otherwise i can see why people really fucking hate her

Sphene is the most god awful villian in the entire FF series
Id probably rank it low-ish in my personal rankings maybe even bottom on story alone
although if they stick to their guns on the content and potential reworks for 8.0 i might stay for those alone and/if the patch stories are ok

 

[Well Intentioned]

Sphene is the most god awful villian in the entire FF series

I keep seeing this sentiment but I'm curious as to why people feel this way.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

I keep seeing this sentiment but I'm curious as to why people feel this way.

Most people just see her as a discount Meteion with some Emet-Selch thrown in. Hard to like a villain when there have been 2 previous ones who did it better.

On top of that her plan is flawed from the start and she's just acting based on what she was programmed to do despite the pointlessness of it. When Graha points out that she's just prolonging the inevitable, she doesn't even acknowledge him and pretends to not hear him, offering no answer to the very real and factual argument that everything she's doing is for nothing.
I would say Sphene is less of a villain and the real bad guys are the scientists who created her to begin with. Their flawed designs ultimately made their AI want to genocide the universe to fulfill the purpose they programmed her with: To preserve her people.

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

I would say Sphene is less of a villain and the real bad guys are the scientists who created her to begin with. Their flawed designs ultimately made their AI want to genocide the universe to fulfill the purpose they programmed her with: To preserve her people.

So after Endwalker Yoshi and Co. created an other teengirl antagonist who wants to kill everyone? I know the Japs love little girl villians/horror monsters, but I have no idea anyone can take them seriously.

 

[Kane Lives]

So after Endwalker Yoshi and Co. created an other teengirl antagonist who wants to kill everyone? I know the Japs love little girl villians/horror monsters, but I have no idea anyone can take them seriously.

Apparently Yoshi and Ishikawa (EW and ShB lead writer) were not very involved this go-around. Koji-Fox were also absent from the EN localization team. All three were instead pulled to work on FFXVI iirc.

I think the results speak for themselves.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

I keep seeing this sentiment but I'm curious as to why people feel this way.

It was retarded that they show to you (the player) that she is there during the attack on Tulliyolal and then they still try to make the scions not suspect her

Most people just see her as a discount Meteion with some Emet-Selch thrown in. Hard to like a villain when there have been 2 previous ones who did it better.

On top of that her plan is flawed from the start and she's just acting based on what she was programmed to do despite the pointlessness of it. When Graha points out that she's just prolonging the inevitable, she doesn't even acknowledge him and pretends to not hear him, offering no answer to the very real and factual argument that everything she's doing is for nothing.
I would say Sphene is less of a villain and the real bad guys are the scientists who created her to begin with. Their flawed designs ultimately made their AI want to genocide the universe to fulfill the purpose they programmed her with: To preserve her people.

I think this sums it up and i agree with most of it

 

[Disc]

Most people just see her as a discount Meteion with some Emet-Selch thrown in. Hard to like a villain when there have been 2 previous ones who did it better.

On top of that her plan is flawed from the start and she's just acting based on what she was programmed to do despite the pointlessness of it. When Graha points out that she's just prolonging the inevitable, she doesn't even acknowledge him and pretends to not hear him, offering no answer to the very real and factual argument that everything she's doing is for nothing.
I would say Sphene is less of a villain and the real bad guys are the scientists who created her to begin with. Their flawed designs ultimately made their AI want to genocide the universe to fulfill the purpose they programmed her with: To preserve her people.

Which, if they go that route, might be an interesting way to take her if they actually explore it. the gap between Sphene the human and Speeeeen the Queen Eternal.

Really, the more i read, the more confident I am that this was a case of an 7.0-7.3 story being crammed into 7.0. Imagine if, rather than what currently happens, we closed down Living Memory after three patches. Because I was actually hurting a bit doing it already, can you imagine if we'd been thinking we'd have this beautiful place forever and then just... losing it midway through the patch cycle?

But there were so many weird parts of that. Like... why, out of universe, did they set up a reason for sphene to not do anything while we were fucking up living memory? Like, not just not able to attack us or something, she is just completely a non-factor as everything she's fought to preserve crumbles to nothing.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

But there were so many weird parts of that. Like... why, out of universe, did they set up a reason for sphene to not do anything while we were fucking up living memory? Like, not just not able to attack us or something, she is just completely a non-factor as everything she's fought to preserve crumbles to nothing.

It's explained that once she begins interdimensional fusion, the process for it can't be stopped midway. Not easily anyway. Cahicua then says that rather than try to stop the process, that she'd accelerate it to at least be able to save the endless stored in the Meso Terminal. Obviously when we go into the terminal and try to reason with her, it's pointless and she's set on just killing us, possibly forcing us to turn into Endless and then going about invading dimensions and killing everyone to harvest their souls. Even if we got rid of all the Endless in those terminals, she can just refill them with new memories of all the people she killed and use the aether she steals to project them again.

Of course as Graha mentioned, if she turns everyone she kills into an Endless, no matter how much aether she takes from everyone else, she'll never be able to keep up with the growing demand. Souls aren't composed of just regular aether. It's special and can only come from the lifestream. Fuck with that and everything, all life goes to shit.

My favorite part about al this is that you had downies in the official forums crying that SE made them "genocide" a bunch of AI projections that aren't real people lmfao

 

[Disc]

It's explained that once she begins interdimensional fusion, the process for it can't be stopped midway. Not easily anyway. Cahicua then says that rather than try to stop the process, that she'd accelerate it to at least be able to save the endless stored in the Meso Terminal. Obviously when we go into the terminal and try to reason with her, it's pointless and she's set on just killing us, possibly forcing us to turn into Endless and then going about invading dimensions and killing everyone to harvest their souls. Even if we got rid of all the Endless in those terminals, she can just refill them with new memories of all the people she killed and use the aether she steals to project them again.

Of course as Graha mentioned, if she turns everyone she kills into an Endless, no matter how much aether she takes from everyone else, she'll never be able to keep up with the growing demand. Souls aren't composed of just regular aether. It's special and can only come from the lifestream. Fuck with that and everything, all life goes to shit.

My favorite part about al this is that you had downies in the official forums crying that SE made them "genocide" a bunch of AI projections that aren't real people lmfao

Yes, but that's not what I mean. Lemme clarify
Which writer thought it was a good idea to have sphene effectively sit out the last zone? No reaction, no meaningful response, to us taking out whole swathes of her people? She just packs herself in a box and does nothing. Couldn't she have had some really, really heart-wrenching reactions to watching the people around her die for good? begging them to hold on, even as they blissfully let go?

She effectively doesn't do anything that whole time, she just sits in her box and waits while we eat popcorn and ride some capybaras.

 

[Troon Whisperer]

Yeah, it would have been better if after every time we shut a zone down here hologram appears and she begs/pleads/screams at us to stop murdering her people. Hell, have her try to drive a wedge into the party by having her hammer home the fact that Cahciua is an endless so we'd be pretty much killing her for good.

 

[King Of Braves]

Yeah, it would have been better if after every time we shut a zone down here hologram appears and she begs/pleads/screams at us to stop murdering her people. Hell, have her try to drive a wedge into the party by having her hammer home the fact that Cahciua is an endless so we'd be pretty much killing her for good.

This would have made too much sense and taken away from Wuk Lamat as the main character you should only be listening to because everything she does is right.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

When Graha points out that she's just prolonging the inevitable, she doesn't even acknowledge him and pretends to not hear him, offering no answer to the very real and factual argument that everything she's doing is for nothing.

Here's my take on how to improve it:

Have Sphene point out how much more technologically advanced her civilization are. They defied death, they mastered shard-hopping to the point that they aren't just making portals to chuck something or someone through, they're literally stitching the existence of their world into other shards. If anyone could figure out how to create a perpetual source of souls, it's the Alexandrians.

She could even try to recruit some of the scions. From Sphene's perspective, can you imagine how much of a boon it could be to get G'raha and Y'shtola on-side and supply them with technology that allows them to potentially achieve feats that wouldn't have been possible before? She probably would want the most intelligent party members who could potentially help her, as well as the WoL since there's probably not a stockpile of adventurers able to go to combat against cosmic-level threats.

Now the dynamic has changed massively. Do you go with Sphene's impossible plan that would save literally everyone ever if it works, or the Scions who are simply now trying to assert that "sometime we can't save people". You could even have Sphene quote "for those we can yet save".

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

This would have made too much sense and taken away from Wuk Lamat as the main character you should only be listening to because everything she does is right.

This is why I don't buy the "we're the mentors this expansion! you're just angry you're not the main character now!"

We're not the mentors lol. The one time Wuk Lamat fucks up is when literally everyone else also fucks up and lets her get captured by Bakool Ja Ja. There has not been a single time where Wuk Lamat made a mistake, or was about to and we corrected it. And whenever the answer needs to be found, Wuk Lamat is the one who finds it.

I don't hate her. But Wuk Lamat is written like a furry self-insert fan-fiction character. Especially since her only character flaw is the cop-out "self-confidence" character flaw (basically just "I'm epic but I also want to seem humble")

 

[Well Intentioned]

Most people just see her as a discount Meteion with some Emet-Selch thrown in. Hard to like a villain when there have been 2 previous ones who did it better.

I honestly found Meteion to be a stupider villain, just because Hermes is pants on head retarded. I do view Sphene as being a sort of inverse Meteion. Instead of wanting to wipe everything out, she wants to preserve everything and it's that flawed motivation that makes her a potentially interesting character.

On top of that her plan is flawed from the start and she's just acting based on what she was programmed to do despite the pointlessness of it. When Graha points out that she's just prolonging the inevitable, she doesn't even acknowledge him and pretends to not hear him, offering no answer to the very real and factual argument that everything she's doing is for nothing.

Yeah, there's a lot of issues that they just sort of dance around, but I chalk it up more to shitty writing than anything. There's a lot of potential on what they could've done with Sphene, the Endless, etc. Maybe I'm hung up on the potential versus what we actually got.

My favorite part about al this is that you had downies in the official forums crying that SE made them "genocide" a bunch of AI projections that aren't real people lmfao

This is part of what I mean, actually. To channel Mike Stoklasa for a minute, there was potential to have a really interesting Star Trek-esque exploration on consciousness, what it means to be alive, etc. along the lines of what they explore with Data (Measure of a Man) and the Moriarty character (Ship in a Bottle.)

I think there could've been something really interesting here but it got lost amidst all the other shit.

I would say Sphene is less of a villain and the real bad guys are the scientists who created her to begin with. Their flawed designs ultimately made their AI want to genocide the universe to fulfill the purpose they programmed her with: To preserve her people.

I think she's got the foundation for a good villain. A sort of 'road to hell is paved with good intentions', akin to characters like Arthas. But it, like just about everything else in Dawntrail's story, was handled very clumsily.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Having heard about how difficulty has been upped in 'regular' content, and how on the whole the content feels a lot better for everyone but healers and BLM, I'm admittedly curious to check it out, though being stuck on Dynamis until travel re-opens might be a curious little adventure. I do like how I predicted the BLM changes would make the class less intuitive, more rigid, and that they would be reviled both by BLM mains and by the same people it was supposedly being made "more accessible" for, but I mean who could have seen that coming? (every actual BLM player maybe)

I'm a bit torn on whether I should bother even paying attention to the story or just get to straight cutscene-skipping, though. Where I've heard nothing but good things about the actual content, I've heard nothing but bad things about almost every aspect of the story - and the EW postgame was so bad that I think I skipped the last third of all of it. I legit don't even know what happened to Zero and don't care.

Spoiler: Somewhere, in Rich Evans Ayypologist's autistic fanfiction,

the WoL died at the end of existence in the showdown with Zenos, was reincarnated without super-powers, and was forcibly pressed into a vacation arc. Notable Redditor Zero tried to disrupt the fun times, but the Scions intervened and said that -they- would handle the business on the thirteenth, and that the WoL should just chill and they'll call if they need you. And so the EW postgame was spent hanging out with Krile and Erenville, with the Trial series integrated as a series of wacky adventures that could serve as introductions to Tural. The scions are off-screen, we get to actually meet the characters we'll be going on this new adventure with, and we've had an effective power-level reset so it makes sense for the god-slaying savior of existence to get bamboozled by cartoon villains. Introduce fun little asides where we reconvene here and there with the Scions, ask how everything's going, insist that "hey man, if you need any help, let me know" and be beat over the head with the fact that there are, in fact, characters in this universe other than the WoL which have agency.

I'm still a bit bummed that the easy and obvious story route - tension between the Grand Companies and various nation-states of the Eorzean Alliance starting to fray at the advent of imperialistic ambition - was thrown out in favor of "lyse again, with a helping of amaurot again." Incredible to introduce a new continent / nation-state with which you can do almost anything, and then you just do shit you already did but worse.

 

[Soycast Guy]

Apparently Yoshi and Ishikawa (EW and ShB lead writer) were not very involved this go-around. Koji-Fox were also absent from the EN localization team. All three were instead pulled to work on FFXVI iirc.

I think the results speak for themselves.

I am curious why ishikawa wasn’t involved this time. I know she didn’t work on FFXVI so I wonder what it would be she’s working on. I’m guessing it’s one of those unannounced games the team is making.

My favorite part about al this is that you had downies in the official forums crying that SE made them "genocide" a bunch of AI projections that aren't real people lmfao

The rabbit negress literally explains multiple times that the endless aren’t anything more than illusions and to not feel guilty about shutting them down. FFXIV niggers have no reading comprehension.

Yes, but that's not what I mean. Lemme clarify
Which writer thought it was a good idea to have sphene effectively sit out the last zone? No reaction, no meaningful response, to us taking out whole swathes of her people? She just packs herself in a box and does nothing. Couldn't she have had some really, really heart-wrenching reactions to watching the people around her die for good? begging them to hold on, even as they blissfully let go?

She effectively doesn't do anything that whole time, she just sits in her box and waits while we eat popcorn and ride some capybaras.

Yeah that whole thing didn’t make any sense. It felt so lazy how she doesn’t appear at all to stop the scions or at the very least beg them to stop.

 

[Mouse Cop]

Having finished the MSQ, I would rate this expansion better than ARR and SB, but not as good as HW, ShB, or EW. Random, spoiler-filled thoughts about the story, what it means, and where it may go in future updates:

Spoiler: Spoilers

The Key

1. The Key first appears on Aloalo Island shortly before the Fifth Umbral Calamity, also known as the Age of Endless Frost. The Lalafell do not know where it came from, but they do seem to understand that it is powerful, because they pray for it to save them from the ice. Their entire civilization is transported to another shard (the Unlost World). It is stated that the Key functions only when held by someone with desperate, powerful desires.
2. Centuries or millennia later, the Unlost World has been devastated by the Storm Surge (presumably this was orchestrated from behind the scenes by the Ascians in preparation for a future Rejoining). The Lalafell are now called Milala, and they look to the Key for answers again. This time they decide to use the key to open a stable gateway to the Source; this gate is described by Y'shtola as perfect, the work of a master. Robor and Alayla go rogue and send the Key through the portal to Gulool Ja Ja, in whose custody it will remain inert for the next 20 years.
3. Later, Zoraal Ja uses the key to travel through the gate in the Skydeep Cenote. He then uses it to initiate Interdimensional Fusion, which physically takes a section of the Unlost World and fuses it onto the Source. The resulting area has the geographical features of both the Source and the Unlost World jammed together. Importantly, the souls of the people do not merge, as with a Rejoining. At the same time, a massive portal between the two worlds is left open at the top of Everkeep, which Y'shtola states is even larger than the portal opened by Zeromus.
4. After Zoraal Ja is killed, Sphene then uses the Key to effortlessly close this massive portal. She further uses it during the fight against her to open many portals into many worlds, siphoning their aether to empower herself. It is revealed during this fight that the Key is branded with the symbol of Azem. Afterward, the Key is now in the possession of the WoL.
5. The Ascians presumably knew of the Key. Emet-Selch states that he knows the true nature of the legendary "City of Gold," which is revealed to be Living Memory. If he is aware of the link between Tural and Living Memory, he is very likely aware of how it was made. Despite this, he does not seek out the Key.

Azem's Crystal

1. This crystal was imbued with the power to cast Azem's signature spell: the user calls on allies from across time and space, and those allies are then summoned to the user's side instantaneously.
2. There seem to be no limits to this spell's capabilities, as it was able to call both Hades and Hythlodaeus's souls from the Aetherial Sea on Etheirys all the way to Ultima Thule on the edge of existence. It was able to reconstitute the bodies and souls of the Scions in Ultima Thule after they had been sacrificed to provide a path forward. It even seems capable of summoning between the reflections of the Source, as the WoL was able to summon allies to the Unlost World during the fight against Sphene.
3. The crystal's power is invoked similarly to the Key's: the user must "wish upon the crystal with all of their heart."

Alzadaal's Legacy

1. In Alzadaal's Legacy, there is a stable portal to the Thirteenth. Note that Vrtra did not create this portal, he only discovered it. In the room just before the portal, Azem's symbol can be seen branded on the doorway.

Conclusions

1. Azem had mastery over "portal magic." We know this from his crystal. When Y'shtola calls the portal in Skydeep Cenote "the work of a master, perfectly hemmed, not a stitch out of place" - Azem is the master.
2. The Key is likely Azem's creation because it is branded with his symbol. Its ability to open and close portals at will, as well as to initiate Interdimensional Fusion, are both manifestations of Azem's power. In addition, the Key and the crystal both function similarly in that they need to be "wished upon" by someone with a powerful need or desire.
3. We know that Azem did not support either the Ascians or Hydaelyn in their conflict. He went along with neither plan. It's unlikely that he simply laid down to die; he probably made his own plans.
4. The Key has the ability to rejoin the reflections to the Source without merging the souls of the people. The Ascians had no interest in the Key because merging souls was what was most important to them. The Key is a middle ground between both sides, fixing Hydaelyn's fracturing of the Source without sacrificing all of the lives. Azem probably left the key behind for someone to find it and use it for this exact purpose.
5. Using Azem's power, we have already begun the process of repairing the damage done to the Thirteenth (if we assume the portal in Alzadaal's Legacy was in some way made using Azem's power). We have begun the process of repairing the damage done to the Unlost World. It is Azem's intention that we use this power to heal these fractured reflections.
6. In his last challenge to the WoL, Emet-Selch references 5 locations: the ruins beneath the waters of the Bounty (Alzadaal's Legacy), the treasure islands beyond the frozen waters of Blindfrost, the fabled golden cities of the New World (Living Memory), the sacred sites of the forgotten people of the south sea isles (Aloalo Island), and the continent of Meracydia. Of these 5, we have visited 3, and they all related in some way to Azem, the Key, and portals to other reflections. I believe that Emet-Selch was subtly pushing us toward Azem's path.

Questions

How did Azem know that the WoL would be in Elpis to help with the Pandaemonium situation? Themis was expecting us, and he said that Azem told him that someone capable, someone Azem trusted implicitly, would meet him there. Did Venat tell Azem about the future when she was trying to get him to go along with her plan?

Where was the Key before it found its way into the hands of the Lalafell? Why did it end up on Aloalo island at all?

 

[Soycast Guy]

Having finished the MSQ, I would rate this expansion better than ARR and SB, but not as good as HW, ShB, or EW.

Honestly I’d still say stormblood is better, but it’s not exactly a high bar. Being better than ARR though, now that’s easy. Having played some ARR dungeons in my leveling roulettes, it’s borderline unplayable. I forgot how boring the base game was.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Yes, but that's not what I mean. Lemme clarify
Which writer thought it was a good idea to have sphene effectively sit out the last zone? No reaction, no meaningful response, to us taking out whole swathes of her people? She just packs herself in a box and does nothing. Couldn't she have had some really, really heart-wrenching reactions to watching the people around her die for good? begging them to hold on, even as they blissfully let go?

She effectively doesn't do anything that whole time, she just sits in her box and waits while we eat popcorn and ride some capybaras.

Yeah I'll admit, it's very lazy and shallow writing. At least in EW's final zone, you had Metieon appear after every section to smugly taunt the player about what was happening.
Sphene is just completely absent. We don't even get a "meanwhile..." with her and it's just shoddily written off as her just being busy or some dumb shit. She's a literal AI projection that can teleport and be anywhere and do anything within Living Memory, but showing up and getting pissed off or emotional that we're erasing her people that she facilitated the massacre of Tural to sustain is too much to ask for. Too busy doing calculations to care apparently.

This is why Sphene is generally disliked in the west. Nothing is done to foster any type of sympathy. From the get-go she casts suspicion and giving us only a couple of quests limited to only a single zone is not enough to get to know her and establish any sort of connection. We don't feel bad for her, we can only see her actions as morally reprehensible, sic-ing Zoraal Ja on everyone to murder even children for her own end. Even when Mister Inferiority Complex turns on her, I still couldn't feel bad for her and could only shake my head because she'd brought this upon her people through her own actions and decisions. Despite all of that she does 0 introspection and can only hyper focus on her one singular goal, foregoing any form of nuance that could have possibly been had. I couldn't muster any shred of pity for Sphene all the way through because I could just not reconcile her actions and it's compounded by the fact that her plans are so flawed that even when someone outright points out the obvious, the writer decides to have her cover her ears and go "alalala can't hear you". At least TRY to have her defend herself, even if her response is purely emotional. That would've been better than just not giving any answer at all. I felt infuriated when Wuk asks her if she could just make a new system that doesn't require so much dependence on souls so they'd have a better way to sustain their society and she just gives a flat out "No." without any elaboration despite Alexandria's overdependence on souls being the root of all their woes. Alexandria's society was built to fail from the first and it's just completely asinine to me that an entire civiliation would be this fucking suicide happy and make no effort whatsoever to find a better solution for everything. No, let's make a crazy AI and program her to be absolute batshit about helping her enitre kingdom dig it's own fucking grave for no fucking reason other than to prolong the fucking inevtiable.

Goddamn it irks me just talking about it. Fuck this story fucking sucks.

 

[Shieldman]

My quick review of the story:

First half was painfully boring, it wasn't even a "shonen anime" like some claim, it's closer to a Kodomomuke if anything (story for little children, like Pokemon or Beyblade or some shit). I usually play with the japanese dub, so voice acting wasn't really a concern.

When the army invades the capital was the only part I actually felt interested. Some kind of multi-universal war would have been a nice hook for future arcs. But sadly, story started to faceplant soon after.

Last quarter of the story I was just disconnected, the contrived lore they created around the Endless force Spheeeeneee into yet another "tragic villain" and makes Erenville and Krille's plotlines fall flat, it just doesn't work.