Cleared the first two Titans (Hilda plus main character guy whose name I don’t remember), just reactivated the core in Arctus with Sophie. UnchainBlades EXXiV is not a particularly impressive game and not much has happened so far, so I’m not really motivated to write much about it. I’ll just jot down a few notes about this game in comparison with UnchainBlades Rexx, a.k.a Unchained Blades.
- The main character is the most forgettable guy I have ever encountered. I’m not trying to be cute, I genuinely can’t remember his name, and I only saw him 10 hours ago.
- Most likely he has so little presence because he refuses to tell us what his problem is. He wants to remove a curse. Okay. What curse? What does it do? Why does it need to be removed? He can keep his little secrets if he wants, but then he can’t expect me to support him or take an interest in his affairs.
- Alchemy has been vastly improved. Excavation points offer up more goodies, the alchemist fails less often, the storeroom is available very early on and you can unlock and actually make a lot of the weapons and armor fairly quickly. Great changes.
- Each party starts out with the capacity to hold 30 unchained monsters. Awesome.
- I don’t know how to feel about the consumable charisma bars. They’re okay, I guess.
- I don’t like what they did with unchaining. It’s too easy to stop the moving bits at the right moment (should have taken a screenshot but nvm). Even worse, you know right at the start whether you can unchain an enemy or not, so some battles feel like wastes of time. I liked having a 0.0001% chance of unchaining random strong enemies just by tapping it enough times with my weakest party member.
- The cast is good in general. There are no truly repulsive characters like the golem prince in Rexx, and the characters’ wishes are slightly less frivolous than in the previous game.
- Either I’m more used to dungeon crawlers now or Exxiv is much easier than Rexx, I can’t decide which. Let’s say it’s both.
- Either I’ve gotten the hang of monster conversations or they’ve gotten more reasonable, because I manage to make them happy about 80% of the time. Actually paying attention to their personalities helps a lot.
- Judgment battles are easier and less frequent. GOOD.
The story will probably pick up once I unite all three parties and the main character finally tells us what the hell his problem is. See you then.
