SPEAKER_1: Hello, and welcome to Did It All for the Moogle, a very serious podcast.
SPEAKER_1: Episode 1, thank you for joining me on this...
SPEAKER_1: I'm Bill, I'll be your co-host for a very interesting examination of JRPGs, sometimes anime, and of course all the latest and greatest in Limp Bizkit news.
SPEAKER_1: You might be wondering why this show even exists, and I ask myself that every single time.
SPEAKER_1: I spun it off of another podcast that nobody also listens to, and you might be wondering why I would spin off a podcast that nobody listens to into another one that nobody's going to listen to.
SPEAKER_1: It's a lot of boredom and also a side of perfectionism, so it's a spin-off of my main show, The Dead in Road Show, and this segment, Did It All For The Moogle, became increasingly out of place, which is odd to say about a show that sort of is about whatever the hell I want it to be, but it became increasingly out of place, and so I decided it would be best for it to be its own show.
SPEAKER_1: And so here we are now.
SPEAKER_1: This show is going to be an examination of the JRPG genre.
SPEAKER_1: It will not necessarily be a news show, although I will talk about some news topics as it becomes relevant, but I would like it to be more evergreen.
SPEAKER_1: I'd like to talk about the things that I personally care about, and so whenever that is something that is newsworthy, then I will bring it up.
SPEAKER_1: But I will only talk about something if I feel that the discussion around it will be conducive to an interesting discussion, if that makes sense, rather than just becoming a press release regurgitation sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of my stance on podcasting and analysis in general.
SPEAKER_1: So, for example, later in the show I want to be talking about Final Fantasy XIV's most recent FanFest announcements.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not just going to go bullet point talking about the FanFest announcements.
SPEAKER_1: I want to talk about the broader discussion around those announcements and what that sort of means for the direction that the game is going in.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that's much more interesting for me to talk about and I hope it's more interesting to listen to rather than just sort of saying, hey, new shit, go buy shiny shiny.
SPEAKER_1: And so a little bit about me and my stance on JRPGs.
SPEAKER_1: I came to the genre fairly late, although looking back, I now realize that a lot of the games that I played as a kid were molded after JRPGs.
SPEAKER_1: I just didn't know what that was or what the genre was because they were like really bad licensed games that were turn based.
SPEAKER_1: I remember playing Lord of the Rings The Third Age for PS2, which was literally a knockoff of Final Fantasy X.
SPEAKER_1: But I didn't know that at the time because I was like nine years old.
SPEAKER_1: So I had no idea that all these super cool mechanics and buffs and debuffs that I was applying to the Eye of Sauron in the Final Battle were just copy and pasted from Final Fantasy X.
SPEAKER_1: I had no idea.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't play Final Fantasy X until I was like 19.
SPEAKER_1: But what got me into the genre was Persona 4 back in 2012 because I was one of 14 people that bought a PlayStation Vita.
SPEAKER_1: And so that was the best game on that console.
SPEAKER_1: And so I bought it and tried it and I fell in love with it.
SPEAKER_1: It's what got me into JRPGs.
SPEAKER_1: It's what got me into anime.
SPEAKER_1: For me, that's what got me into Atlus games in particular and SMT.
SPEAKER_1: And so at the very top, like SMT is like the pinnacle of JRPG design, mechanics wise, thematics, story.
SPEAKER_1: Basically everything is what I like compare everything against.
SPEAKER_1: Any other game, it's like, well, does this feel as good as SMT combat?
SPEAKER_1: And my sort of barometer for that is that SMT is so good because anything that you can do to the enemy, they can do back to you.
SPEAKER_1: The same exact attacks, the same exact debuffs, the same exact weaknesses that you can inflict on the enemy, they can in turn inflict on you.
SPEAKER_1: The same exact press turns, so you inflict a weakness and they get an additional turn.
SPEAKER_1: It's the same maneuvers.
SPEAKER_1: And I just think that's great, just that even playing feel, that chess-like feel to the combat is incomparable.
SPEAKER_1: And so sometimes I feel like I have high standards and I'm unfair to a lot of other games, particularly because the combat systems are not as good as SMT in my eyes.
SPEAKER_1: And so another thing is that I gravitate more towards turn-based games than action combat games, which is not to say that I don't like some action combat games.
SPEAKER_1: I do.
SPEAKER_1: But I do prefer turn-based most of the time.
SPEAKER_1: It's just like I've just been indoctrinated by SMT.
SPEAKER_1: And it's hard to pull out of that.
SPEAKER_1: And so you'll see me talk a lot about SMT.
SPEAKER_1: A lot.
SPEAKER_1: And if you're also a fan, then this is going to be the show for you.
SPEAKER_1: Another thing about my sort of approach to these kinds of games and anime in general is that I don't really enjoy talking about the same kind of things that I see in a lot of other, I guess, more common discussions of these games and anime, especially anime.
SPEAKER_1: And this isn't to say I'm not like other girls kind of thing, you know?
SPEAKER_1: But I guess maybe it's just because I'm really old at this point, but the waifus and the fanservice and all that kind of shit, it doesn't do anything for me.
SPEAKER_1: These are cartoon drawings, right?
SPEAKER_1: Especially Persona.
SPEAKER_1: When Persona 5 came out and introduced, especially Royal, brought in this whole new audience, and then Jokers and Smash Brothers, and now a whole new audience is exposed to it, and it was a lot of people's first Persona game, and everybody's favorite streamer played it, and it was the biggest JRPG since probably Final Fantasy VII.
SPEAKER_1: Everybody played it, especially a lot of younger people.
SPEAKER_1: I don't really...
SPEAKER_1: Discussions about waifus and best girl and all that kind of shit, if you're enjoying yourself, fine, go have fun.
SPEAKER_1: But these are high school students.
SPEAKER_1: I'm a 30-year-old man.
SPEAKER_1: The older I get, the creepier it becomes.
SPEAKER_1: And so even when I was closer in age to the casts of these games, I still felt very weird about it.
SPEAKER_1: And so you will not find that kind of discussion on this podcast.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe that is a relief to you or maybe that is a detriment, but I want to make that abundantly clear.
SPEAKER_1: I am much more interested in discussing the themes of games, how well a narrative is constructed, how well the narrative ties into the mechanics of a game, which is again a reason I think that SMT and the Persona games are sort of like top tier for me, is because they marry the mechanics of a specific game in particular.
SPEAKER_1: And the narrative incredibly well to go along with UI design, how the game is one complete package.
SPEAKER_1: And that's what gets me excited.
SPEAKER_1: That's what I enjoy talking about.
SPEAKER_1: And so I really think that this is the perfect time for the show, because this year is going to be incredible for JRPGs.
SPEAKER_1: Just this coming month alone, in a few days, it's going to be the release of the Persona 3 Reload remake of Persona 3, which we'll get to in a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: Then next month is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
SPEAKER_1: Later, at some point this year, I don't remember the date, if we have a specific date yet.
SPEAKER_1: We have Refantasio, whatever the hell that Atlus game is called, from basically the old Persona studio.
SPEAKER_1: There's just a lot coming out this year specifically.
SPEAKER_1: But I also like playing a lot of older games, and games that I've missed, because like I said, I call myself newer to the genre.
SPEAKER_1: I would not call myself an expert, just because I came to it later in life, like my very late teens and twenties.
SPEAKER_1: So I do like playing lots of older games, and especially like the catalog of old SMT games, which I've played most of at this point, except for the ones that are not like, don't have translations or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: And so I have an incredible backlog of JRPGs, and I usually try to have one going at the same time, like one RPG going at the same time.
SPEAKER_1: But whenever I don't, sometimes I have a really bad indecision crisis.
SPEAKER_1: And so a segment I had on the other podcast was the JRPG roulette.
SPEAKER_1: And so I would just put all the games that I was considering playing in a big old wheel, take a spin, and whatever it landed on, I would have to play it and come back and give some impressions.
SPEAKER_1: And so whenever there's not maybe a new game that I'm playing, I'll do that as well just because I can't make decisions sometimes.
SPEAKER_1: It's really bad.
SPEAKER_1: And so we'll do that.
SPEAKER_1: We'll have some discussions.
SPEAKER_1: And so I would like this to be sort of like a book club kind of thing where if anybody else is playing the same kinds of games, and you're interested in some critical analysis of them, to get involved in some discussions along with the show.
SPEAKER_1: And if a lot of this does seem like very insular and specific and kind of weird, that's mostly because my interests are very insular and specific and weird.
SPEAKER_1: So I do apologize, but that's just kind of, that's what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_1: But it should be fun.
SPEAKER_1: I have a lot of fun segments planned.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's enough for an introduction to what the show is going to be.
SPEAKER_1: The other thing is, is that since the genre, like the games are massive and take lots of hours to not even necessarily complete, but just to get a good sense of a lot of the time, which is a double-edged sword because it's what I like about them.
SPEAKER_1: But to have a podcast devoted to them, it means that it'll take me a while to sink my teeth into individual games in order to talk about them.
SPEAKER_1: I'm aiming tentatively right now to have at least one episode a month, which I think is doable.
SPEAKER_1: Whenever there are times where like just this week there's going to be a brand new mainline Persona game coming out, I'm going to be playing the shit out of it, right?
SPEAKER_1: But whenever there's leaner times where I'm not really feeling something and I can't really get into a game at the moment, it might be tougher for me to speak eloquently about a game that I'm not really invested in.
SPEAKER_1: And so we'll see what happens in that sort of instance when it arises, but the goal right now is one a month and to keep that going back and forth between episodes of Did It All For The Moogle and my main podcast, The Dead and Road Show.
SPEAKER_1: And if you'd like the sort of approach that I'm making here towards these games and occasionally anime whenever I feel like I've watched something that I have something to say about a specific anime, then check out that show as well where we talk a lot about how the internet is just, seems like it's dying all around us.
SPEAKER_1: We get into other media analysis, sometimes movies, TV, books, but also just like weird internet phenomena, conspiracies, cults, whenever it arises.
SPEAKER_1: Basically whatever else I'm obsessed with that isn't Japanese media will be over on that show.
SPEAKER_1: Please check it out if you enjoyed any little bit of this.
SPEAKER_1: Let's get into the more meat and potatoes of why this has come to be.
SPEAKER_1: I mentioned Final Fantasy XIV, so let's do our Final Fantasy XIV segment, XIV Reasons Why.
SPEAKER_1: So, a few weeks ago, the Final FanFest for Final Fantasy XIV took place in Japan, and we got the very last little major tidbits of what we're going to get for the upcoming expansion, Dawntrail.
SPEAKER_1: We'll get more granular stuff as we get closer to the release, like some information about specific battle system changes, and a couple other things, like they're changing a couple jobs.
SPEAKER_1: They're reworking Astrologin and Dragoon specifically.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, I should say, I should give my background.
SPEAKER_1: I forgot this is a different podcast.
SPEAKER_1: My background with Final Fantasy XIV, I've played since 2017, so that's like, I think that's mid Stormblood.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, I was like mid Stormblood.
SPEAKER_1: I've played since then.
SPEAKER_1: And basically since the end of Stormblood, I've basically been subscribed to that entire duration.
SPEAKER_1: I've done Savage Raids.
SPEAKER_1: I skipped the last two tiers of Savage Raiding because my static got completely burned out on Raiding and the game.
SPEAKER_1: Soured on Endwalker pretty hard in general, just mostly because of the lack of like repeatable content.
SPEAKER_1: If you're curious about my thoughts on like some of the main issues I have with the current state of Final Fantasy XIV, which I will be doing a lot of on this show as it arises, but I did an hour long sort of structured rant about Final Fantasy XIV's problems as of, I don't know, six months ago, which are still sadly relevant over on the Dead and Road show.
SPEAKER_1: And you can find that.
SPEAKER_1: It was called like the great Final Fantasy XIV rant or something like that.
SPEAKER_1: But anyway, so these are the last sort of like main, main like big, big sort of headline announcements we're going to get until the expansion is out.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: And so one of them being the fact that they wouldn't give us a release date for the expansion.
SPEAKER_1: And so normally they do things in such a predictable way.
SPEAKER_1: It's like, so this was the Japan Fan Fest.
SPEAKER_1: This is the one that always has the release date.
SPEAKER_1: We didn't get one this time.
SPEAKER_1: We only got a release window of summer.
SPEAKER_1: And some people are upset about that.
SPEAKER_1: Some people are like, OK, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: And it's a little off.
SPEAKER_1: But their reasoning being is because Endwalker was delayed.
SPEAKER_1: And that was such a big deal to them.
SPEAKER_1: They had never needed to delay something before.
SPEAKER_1: The game's director and executive producer cried on livestream because of it.
SPEAKER_1: So they just really don't want a repeat of that again.
SPEAKER_1: And so they just didn't give her a release date.
SPEAKER_1: But they said that it's on track.
SPEAKER_1: And so and they even said that it's going to be not on Square Enix's definition of summer, which could technically be like into a normal human's version of the fall.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: And they said it's going to be on Final Fantasy XIV's version of summer, which is supposedly also a rational person's version of summer.
SPEAKER_1: But that means to me personally is that we're not seeing that thing until August.
SPEAKER_1: You know, I really doubt we're going to get a nice early summer release for Dawntrail.
SPEAKER_1: But it's neither here nor there.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to come out when it's going to come out.
SPEAKER_1: You know, like there's not much any player can do about it.
SPEAKER_1: It's good.
SPEAKER_1: You know, it's just an issue of there being nothing to do in the game for like it'll be like 10 months, really.
SPEAKER_1: It's like it's like an excruciatingly long time, like in total.
SPEAKER_1: So like the last major patch hit was the other week or two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_1: And that just had the last little story bits that are teasing Dawntrail.
SPEAKER_1: And the trial that was sort of the showcase at FanFest.
SPEAKER_1: And the last relic step, which is just in this instance, a few more quests.
SPEAKER_1: And then that's sort of, that's sort of it until the expansion.
SPEAKER_1: Like that's, that's it.
SPEAKER_1: And that's rough.
SPEAKER_1: That's rough because we're getting the same, technically the same amount of content, like if you break it down numerically that we that we always did.
SPEAKER_1: If you look at Shadowbringers, if you look at Stormblood, obviously Stormblood had more.
SPEAKER_1: But again, that's not really the point.
SPEAKER_1: They pushed their patch cycle to be from in between patches, it being, I think, four weeks to six weeks, something along those lines.
SPEAKER_1: Anyway, they increased it by about two weeks.
SPEAKER_1: The number doesn't necessarily matter.
SPEAKER_1: So the time in between patches was longer.
SPEAKER_1: It felt much longer, especially because of the content that we were getting.
SPEAKER_1: It didn't feel substantial.
SPEAKER_1: It was sort of like you log in, you do that thing for maybe an hour, two hours, and then you log out.
SPEAKER_1: And then that would be it for months at a time.
SPEAKER_1: And that was sort of the cadence of the expansion.
SPEAKER_1: Unless you were a super, super, super hardcore raider, like not even talking Savage.
SPEAKER_1: If you were an ultimate raider, if you did the hardcore criterion dungeons, then you were eating good.
SPEAKER_1: But that's a small minority.
SPEAKER_1: It's bigger than people think, but it's still a small minority.
SPEAKER_1: Other than that, there was sort of nothing for you to do.
SPEAKER_1: And so now we're at the end of that cycle.
SPEAKER_1: We're teasing the next expansion, but now the wait for that is a brutal 8 to 10 months-ish.
SPEAKER_1: You know?
SPEAKER_1: Like that's rough.
SPEAKER_1: That's a rough timeframe.
SPEAKER_1: But people sort of misunderstand their reasoning for doing this.
SPEAKER_1: It's not necessarily the reason.
SPEAKER_1: The development team is working on the expansion, right?
SPEAKER_1: They're working on the expansion, and then they're also working on those first patches of content.
SPEAKER_1: Square Enix as a company, what do they have coming out next month?
SPEAKER_1: They have their biggest game release of the last four years.
SPEAKER_1: They have Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which is completely overshadowing even Final Fantasy XVI, which was a new numbered mainline Final Fantasy, just because this is Final Fantasy VII, and it looks incredible, right?
SPEAKER_1: So it's completely overshadowing.
SPEAKER_1: So in Square Enix, the corporate side does not see this as a content drought.
SPEAKER_1: They see this as, well, now people can play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth instead of Final Fantasy XIV.
SPEAKER_1: But the Final Fantasy XIV player base, while a lot of them are also people that are just Final Fantasy players or just RPG gamers in general, a lot of them aren't.
SPEAKER_1: A lot of them are people that only play MMOs.
SPEAKER_1: A lot of them are people, and I know these people.
SPEAKER_1: These are people that are in my FC.
SPEAKER_1: These are people that I see online.
SPEAKER_1: A lot of them only play Final Fantasy XIV, and maybe some other games too, but they only play online games, and their main one is Final Fantasy XIV.
SPEAKER_1: They're not going to play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
SPEAKER_1: That's fine.
SPEAKER_1: That game is going to do fine.
SPEAKER_1: That game is going to be okay.
SPEAKER_1: So for them, this cadence sucks.
SPEAKER_1: It sucks.
SPEAKER_1: These people are scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to find things to do in Final Fantasy XIV.
SPEAKER_1: Like trying to do Blue Mage, trying to get fishing achievements.
SPEAKER_1: It's dire out there for them.
SPEAKER_1: It's dire, you know?
SPEAKER_1: Anyway, I'm a little off track, but this is sort of the situation of Final Fantasy XIV right now.
SPEAKER_1: And so these are the last tidbits we're going to get until summer.
SPEAKER_1: And we didn't get a release date.
SPEAKER_1: So some people are upset about that.
SPEAKER_1: I can see why, but at the same time, it's going to come out when it's going to come out.
SPEAKER_1: What is knowing that it's going to be August 25th or whatever really going to change?
SPEAKER_1: I guess you could plan your PTO already.
SPEAKER_1: But like, other than that, what are you going to do?
SPEAKER_1: It's going to come out when it's going to come out.
SPEAKER_1: Other than that, the major headliner was the new job was announced as Pictomancer.
SPEAKER_1: And I was genuinely surprised by the odd reception that this got.
SPEAKER_1: So Pictomancer, it's a job that it paints.
SPEAKER_1: And it's from Final Fantasy VI.
SPEAKER_1: And in Final Fantasy VI, it would paint its enemies in order to dole out attacks and status debuffs and whatever else.
SPEAKER_1: Here, it obviously can't paint every single enemy that it encounters.
SPEAKER_1: So it has a more generalized sort of set of utilities.
SPEAKER_1: And we don't know really a whole lot about it other than the fact that we know it has at least one buff ability.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of it.
SPEAKER_1: And oh, and it doesn't have a res.
SPEAKER_1: So this is coming off the heels of an expansion where, again, there were issues with the role that this job is being released into.
SPEAKER_1: So it's being released into the Magical Range DPS role.
SPEAKER_1: That's what Square calls it officially.
SPEAKER_1: It's more known in the community as the Caster role.
SPEAKER_1: It's coming off an expansion of where the Summoner job, which is also in that role, was completely reworked into something totally different.
SPEAKER_1: And where Summoner is a Magical Ranged DPS, but it now has very few actual casting abilities, where you have to sit there, like stay planted, and a cast bar fills up and you can't move, otherwise it'll interrupt your cast.
SPEAKER_1: I know that's a very basic thing, but I'm just for anybody that doesn't play Final Fantasy XIV.
SPEAKER_1: So that job was changed completely.
SPEAKER_1: It was basically scaled back until like almost nothing.
SPEAKER_1: It has very few abilities, and sort of those abilities replace each other in its different phases.
SPEAKER_1: And you're kind of just pressing the same four buttons over and over again.
SPEAKER_1: It's very simplified from what it was previously, where it was a very complicated cast-heavy job.
SPEAKER_1: And now it doesn't have any cast, it has a lot of instant cast abilities, where you just hit a button and it does it immediately, and you can move, like you have freedom of movement.
SPEAKER_1: So they said for Pictomancer that painting, they said something like painting takes time, and so it does have casts, but then it also has some instant cast abilities.
SPEAKER_1: This tells us absolutely nothing about the job.
SPEAKER_1: It tells us absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_1: Because even Black Mage, which is the job that's supposed to have these very long, powerful casts, also has, at this point, lots of instant cast abilities.
SPEAKER_1: Same for Red Mage.
SPEAKER_1: Red Mage is the other magical ranged DPS that has casting abilities that people prefer to it as a caster.
SPEAKER_1: It might at this point have less instant casts than Black Mage does, but it still has ways to use instant casts.
SPEAKER_1: Specifically, it has dual cast, it has the role action swift cast, it has acceleration.
SPEAKER_1: All the job, like every job in this role has instant cast abilities.
SPEAKER_1: So saying this tells us nothing about the job, nothing at all.
SPEAKER_1: The fact that it doesn't have a res though.
SPEAKER_1: So now we're seeing a dichotomy form.
SPEAKER_1: So two out of the four magical ranged DPS have a res ability.
SPEAKER_1: So healers have a res and two of these casters have a res.
SPEAKER_1: Red Mage and Summoner.
SPEAKER_1: Summoner has a res on a 60 second cooldown.
SPEAKER_1: No, I'm sorry, on a very long cast timer.
SPEAKER_1: It's on like a seven or eight second cast timer.
SPEAKER_1: But you could use Swift cast on it to cast it instantly.
SPEAKER_1: Otherwise you're standing there for a very long time to try to resurrect somebody.
SPEAKER_1: Red Mage is also known as res mage because it has dual cast, which means every second cast it produces is instant.
SPEAKER_1: So you can cast a spell, then you can cast res.
SPEAKER_1: That res will be instant.
SPEAKER_1: So it can just basically rapid res lots of people, only limited by how much MP it has.
SPEAKER_1: Black Mage does not have a res.
SPEAKER_1: It's damage, it has no buffs.
SPEAKER_1: It's what's referred to in the community as a selfish DPS because it only personally doles out damage.
SPEAKER_1: It does not give anybody buffs.
SPEAKER_1: It does not have a res.
SPEAKER_1: It is strictly focused on damage.
SPEAKER_1: So now we have Pictomancer.
SPEAKER_1: No res, but it has some kind of buff.
SPEAKER_1: Now we're getting somewhere.
SPEAKER_1: Now we know a little bit about the job.
SPEAKER_1: So where does it fit in to this role?
SPEAKER_1: Is it going to be more support like Red Mage, where Red Mage has rapid fire reses, it has magic barrier, which is a party mitigation tool, it has a weak-ish heal that can be situationally helpful, very rarely.
SPEAKER_1: You're in trouble if you're casting Vercure a lot.
SPEAKER_1: It's more useful to use it to proc dual cast, honestly.
SPEAKER_1: Then you have Summoner, which is more damage focused.
SPEAKER_1: It also has a weak buff, it has a weak damage buff, it has a res, but it cannot rapidly res like Red Mage.
SPEAKER_1: It can only really get off one rapid res, and then it has to stand there forever.
SPEAKER_1: So you're not getting them out quickly if something really goes wrong in your party.
SPEAKER_1: So where does Pictomancer fit in?
SPEAKER_1: At this point, it's really just speculation.
SPEAKER_1: A lot of people seem to think that it's going to be like the dancer of the caster role, which I think is more along the lines of people just seeing it look like a very feminine-looking job to start.
SPEAKER_1: And dancer is a very feminine job in presentation.
SPEAKER_1: But then also them just saying, well, it has a buff.
SPEAKER_1: And hey, dancer is the buff job in the physical range role.
SPEAKER_1: So these have to be the same.
SPEAKER_1: Sort of ignoring that Bard also buffs the entire party, like sort of more than dancer does when you think about it.
SPEAKER_1: Dancer is more focused on buffing one singular person and then buffing the whole party like once.
SPEAKER_1: So if you were saying that this is the buff one, you would kind of think Bard more than dancer.
SPEAKER_1: So I think it's more that the job looked more feminine, right?
SPEAKER_1: Like it's got these, you know, colorful effects.
SPEAKER_1: The job outfit was, I think it was pink.
SPEAKER_1: I can't remember, you know, like it's someone's a moogle.
SPEAKER_1: Like they brought out a model and, you know, the model was showing her midriff.
SPEAKER_1: Like it was a very feminine presented job, which is fine.
SPEAKER_1: Honestly, most of the jobs in Final Fantasy are sort of feminine in that way.
SPEAKER_1: It's why a lot of people play as a girl character.
SPEAKER_1: But a lot of people were saying that like, oh, this job just looks, it looks stupid.
SPEAKER_1: It looks like it's it's going to be terrible.
SPEAKER_1: It's like we have we have no way of knowing that it's going to be terrible.
SPEAKER_1: First of all, they always make the new jobs a little a little too strong.
SPEAKER_1: Endwalker Sage was like the best healer basically, unless you were super good at Scholar.
SPEAKER_1: And Reaper was very good.
SPEAKER_1: They had to buff all the other melees to get to Reaper's level.
SPEAKER_1: And Shadowbringers, Gunbreaker, they just kept giving it buffs, even though it was the best tank.
SPEAKER_1: Dancer was the best physical range in Shadowbringers.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't understand why Pictomancer is going to be bad suddenly.
SPEAKER_1: So it just comes down to like this weird dichotomy of not having a res because people are like, well, why would you bring why would you bring a Pictomancer when it doesn't have a res?
SPEAKER_1: And it's like, well, why do you bring a Black Mage?
SPEAKER_1: You bring a Black Mage because it has damage.
SPEAKER_1: And so then it becomes, well, why would you bring a Pictomancer over a Black Mage?
SPEAKER_1: Because Black Mage is always going to be the top damage.
SPEAKER_1: It's like, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_1: But not everybody can play Black Mage.
SPEAKER_1: Black Mage is a very demanding job.
SPEAKER_1: I guarantee you Pictomancer is going to be easier than Black Mage.
SPEAKER_1: Guarantee you.
SPEAKER_1: Especially with the current design trends of the jobs in this game.
SPEAKER_1: The way the Black Mage has kept its difficulty.
SPEAKER_1: It's like the only job that's kept its difficulty.
SPEAKER_1: I guarantee you Pictomancer is going to be easier.
SPEAKER_1: So that's why.
SPEAKER_1: And because it's a new job.
SPEAKER_1: It'll be stronger because it's got the new job buff.
SPEAKER_1: They might as well give it a little status icon in game that says new job, 2% boost to all stats.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, it's just a very, very odd reaction to it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm sort of in the opposite camp.
SPEAKER_1: And again, I genuinely don't try to be a contrarian because I am, well I was a healer main, but the healer balance is so, healer design mostly is so screwed up that I can't do it anymore.
SPEAKER_1: And so my backup was always caster.
SPEAKER_1: And the caster balance was so screwed up that I found myself not playing the game in Endwalker because of what they did to the casters.
SPEAKER_1: That's what has me worried though, is the caster balance.
SPEAKER_1: I'm worried that they're going to screw up again and just make casters as a whole just so useless.
SPEAKER_1: Not just Pictomancer, just casters in general be useless again, like they did in Endwalker.
SPEAKER_1: That's my concern.
SPEAKER_1: Especially because there's a new melee job.
SPEAKER_1: The other job is a melee.
SPEAKER_1: And I feel like that's going to be broken as shit.
SPEAKER_1: Because melees are already broken as shit.
SPEAKER_1: That's my concern.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I'm on the opposite camp where this job got me more excited.
SPEAKER_1: Mostly because it looks different.
SPEAKER_1: The issue with Final Fantasy XIV right now is that every job plays exactly the same.
SPEAKER_1: Cross-roll.
SPEAKER_1: Cross-roll, they all play the same.
SPEAKER_1: Hit your buffs at two minutes.
SPEAKER_1: You have a button that fills up your gauge.
SPEAKER_1: Spend that gauge at two minutes.
SPEAKER_1: That's it.
SPEAKER_1: This one could play exactly the same.
SPEAKER_1: It could, but it looks different.
SPEAKER_1: It's got a different aesthetic to it.
SPEAKER_1: The squishy paint sounds are a little much.
SPEAKER_1: I think they'll tone that down.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, it's a unique looking job.
SPEAKER_1: It's not just sort of just like blasting magic, you know?
SPEAKER_1: That on its own is worthwhile to have in my eyes.
SPEAKER_1: Especially compared to how fucking boring the other job looks.
SPEAKER_1: Viper, which is just Ninja with extra steps or less steps depending on how you look at it.
SPEAKER_1: It looks boring as hell to me.
SPEAKER_1: So that was really the main thing I wanted to talk about.
SPEAKER_1: Because I was genuinely surprised at the reaction.
SPEAKER_1: I saw the job and I was like, oh, yeah, cool.
SPEAKER_1: I bet people are excited for this.
SPEAKER_1: And I saw a lot of discussion was just, oh, this job is too goofy.
SPEAKER_1: Its aesthetic doesn't fit the game.
SPEAKER_1: I'm like, what game are you playing where this doesn't fit?
SPEAKER_1: What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_1: It's someone's a Moogle.
SPEAKER_1: It's painting shiny things and then doing elemental damage.
SPEAKER_1: What game are you playing?
SPEAKER_1: And I've mentioned how I've sort of like, you know, I have this love hate with this game at this point, especially because of Endwalker.
SPEAKER_1: And it is hard to get excited about like sort of like, you know, the dungeons and the areas that they show off, mostly because you'll be in those areas so infrequently.
SPEAKER_1: Like you'll just do the main scenario in those areas like once and then you won't really go out there again, you know.
SPEAKER_1: But it was genuinely surprising to see the aesthetic of some of the areas because it's like, oh, you know, we're going to the new world.
SPEAKER_1: Everybody kept saying this is the beach episode, right.
SPEAKER_1: But then to see like these super high tech ripped from cyberpunk kind of thing, it's like, oh, OK, maybe I will actually, you know, be interested again.
SPEAKER_1: Whereas before I was sort of like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know if this game is for me anymore, which I'm, you know, I still have in the back of my head.
SPEAKER_1: I'm like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: But then they showed off the key art for the Raid series.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm like, OK, all right.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, none of this fixes the core issues I have with the game.
SPEAKER_1: But it's like, OK, yeah, all right, let's see where you're cooking.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see where you're cooking.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, I mean, unless something drastic gets announced, which is not going to happen, are there some kind of large community controversy that I like to that I'd like to discuss?
SPEAKER_1: If it interests me, like the billboard thing or whatever else.
SPEAKER_1: There won't be much to say in Final Fantasy XIV for a good while just because of this content drought.
SPEAKER_1: And it's an expected drought.
SPEAKER_1: It's not surprising.
SPEAKER_1: Like it sort of was during Shatterbringers with COVID.
SPEAKER_1: That was like more passable because it was during COVID.
SPEAKER_1: Patch got delayed.
SPEAKER_1: They had to convert to work to home, work from home, you know.
SPEAKER_1: And at the same time, we had repeatable content to do in the meantime.
SPEAKER_1: So it didn't feel as bad.
SPEAKER_1: It really didn't.
SPEAKER_1: It's weird to say.
SPEAKER_1: It really didn't.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't have a separate second for this, but I did want to mention that I was prepping for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to come out by watching Advent Children for the first time because I hadn't seen it.
SPEAKER_1: Even though that's technically a sequel to Final Fantasy VII, but with the way that they're sort of bringing in all the disparate Final Fantasy VII media, I was like, you know, let me just watch Advent Children, you know, let me see what's going on in there.
SPEAKER_1: It is the most 2006 thing of all time.
SPEAKER_1: It is, it's completely incomprehensible unless you've played Final Fantasy VII.
SPEAKER_1: You don't know what the fuck is going on.
SPEAKER_1: And even then, even then, it's a little, the plot sort of, it's a little, it's a little all over the place.
SPEAKER_1: Like, but thematically, I think it is there, but it is so 2006 where just like all the cast is just like talking on cell phones.
SPEAKER_1: But, but they make it work mostly because the cell phones are relevant to the theme.
SPEAKER_1: Of, of like, you know, no man is an island and like needing to be connected to the people around you and the world itself.
SPEAKER_1: And but they use the metaphor of the then emergent technology of everybody getting a cell phone in 2006 to do that.
SPEAKER_1: It's like, man, it feels like a relic.
SPEAKER_1: But like, I can see what they were doing.
SPEAKER_1: It just looks kind of quaint looking at it 20 years later.
SPEAKER_1: And then the end credits hit.
SPEAKER_1: And then the theme song is a Gerard Way is a Gerard Way song.
SPEAKER_1: Like, yeah, this is this is straight up ripped from 2006.
SPEAKER_1: At the height of Black Parade, you got Gerard Way to do your theme song, which was very good, by the way.
SPEAKER_1: It was much better than anything off of Danger Days.
SPEAKER_1: I will say that.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, it was it was hard to follow the plot.
SPEAKER_1: I couldn't tell if they were fighting Bahamut or some other summon because Yuffie says that that was her materia.
SPEAKER_1: I'm like, why would Yuffie have a Bahamut materia?
SPEAKER_1: But then it kind of didn't look like Bahamut, but then it also did like a mega flare.
SPEAKER_1: So I was like, oh, I guess that is one of the Bahamuts.
SPEAKER_1: They never said what it was.
SPEAKER_1: And so I didn't know.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, I think I think the story a little goofy.
SPEAKER_1: I think the character work is pretty good.
SPEAKER_1: Like, I like I like this cloud that's still sort of damaged from the events of Final Fantasy 7, but he's not still like completely brooding about it.
SPEAKER_1: And I think it sticks to the original Final Fantasy 7 version of Zack more than the goofy Sonic the Hedgehog Crisis Core version of Zack, which I'm not a fan of.
SPEAKER_1: But I think we won't have a choice in that matter when it comes to rebirth.
SPEAKER_1: But oh, well, what can you do?
SPEAKER_1: It also looks very good for a 2006 movie.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, I think I watched the director's cut, which might have been 2009.
SPEAKER_1: But even so, it looks pretty good for CG from that era.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_1: I completely I broke my brain.
SPEAKER_1: And I thought that rebirth was coming out on the 29th of January.
SPEAKER_1: So I was like, oh, shit, why would Atlas do this?
SPEAKER_1: Why would Atlas release Persona 3 like a few days after rebirth?
SPEAKER_1: Like they must be either really confident in their game or super unconfident in Persona 3.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm like, they can't be.
SPEAKER_1: They can't be.
SPEAKER_1: This is like basically a new mainline persona game.
SPEAKER_1: They can't be like sending it off to die.
SPEAKER_1: And then last night I realized, oh, my God, I'm a fucking idiot.
SPEAKER_1: Rebirth comes out next month.
SPEAKER_1: It's still too close for me because that's just a month to play Persona 3.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not going to finish.
SPEAKER_1: I know I'm not.
SPEAKER_1: But still, that makes it a lot easier for me because I was like, how am I going to play both of these simultaneously?
SPEAKER_1: But speaking of Persona 3 Reload, let's go to the SMT Power Hour.
SPEAKER_1: That's a little too loud.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to have to fix that in post.
SPEAKER_1: So I've been prepping for Persona 3 Reload, which as of recording comes out in two to three or four days, depending on when the Steam unlock happens.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I've been prepping for that by doing the only thing I know how to do.
SPEAKER_1: And that is trying to cram in all of the Persona 3 Portable achievements under the wire, just at the last minute.
SPEAKER_1: And this is a thing that I keep doing, and I don't know why I keep doing it.
SPEAKER_1: So whenever Persona 5 was originally first releasing, I was like, oh, let me get ready by platinuming Persona 4 Golden on the Vita before it comes out.
SPEAKER_1: And I bit off more than I can chew.
SPEAKER_1: I started too late.
SPEAKER_1: And whenever Persona 5 released, I was simultaneously playing Persona 5 and finishing up Persona 4 Golden like that month.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know why.
SPEAKER_1: I was just like, oh, okay, well, I didn't do it, so then I could just finish this up, you know, some other time after I finish Persona 5.
SPEAKER_1: No, no, I played them simultaneously.
SPEAKER_1: I do not recommend that.
SPEAKER_1: I really don't.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, I was like finishing the compendium and prepping for the Margaret fight as I was like getting through, you know, the Persona 5 tutorial and the intro dungeon.
SPEAKER_1: Just, just stupid.
SPEAKER_1: And then whenever Persona 5 Royal was coming out, I was like, okay, well, let me compare.
SPEAKER_1: Let me compare the games.
SPEAKER_1: So let me get the Platinum for Persona 5 before Persona 5 Royal comes out.
SPEAKER_1: Let me do that.
SPEAKER_1: And so I did.
SPEAKER_1: And like it was the same thing.
SPEAKER_1: And then I didn't play Royal for a long time because I was like, well, I just played Persona 5.
SPEAKER_1: So let me wait on Royal.
SPEAKER_1: Like what is, what is wrong with me?
SPEAKER_1: And so I've done it again.
SPEAKER_1: And like, because in my head, I'm like, well, there's no way I'm going to go back to the other game.
SPEAKER_1: There's no way I'm going to go back to Persona 4 Golden.
SPEAKER_1: So I have to, I have to like 100% it.
SPEAKER_1: I have to definitively put it away, get the platinum, say that I did everything.
SPEAKER_1: It's a personal achievement of mine.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: But then they released Persona 4 on Steam.
SPEAKER_1: And of course I played it again.
SPEAKER_1: Of course I did.
SPEAKER_1: I have a disease.
SPEAKER_1: I have brain worms.
SPEAKER_1: I'm a pay pig for Atlas.
SPEAKER_1: And it's the same thing now.
SPEAKER_1: Persona 3 Reload is going to come out.
SPEAKER_1: I'm like, well, I'm never going to want to go back to Portable.
SPEAKER_1: It's like, what am I talking about?
SPEAKER_1: Why not?
SPEAKER_1: Reload doesn't have the female protagonist yet.
SPEAKER_1: So why wouldn't I go back to Portable?
SPEAKER_1: What's stopping me?
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, so that's what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_1: I haven't finished.
SPEAKER_1: I haven't finished yet.
SPEAKER_1: So I have to finish the game.
SPEAKER_1: I'm at the end.
SPEAKER_1: I'm in January, if anybody knows the game.
SPEAKER_1: I'm in January, which is the last month of the game.
SPEAKER_1: And it's weird.
SPEAKER_1: I'm almost matched up with the real fucking calendar in real life to this frigging game.
SPEAKER_1: I'm in January, just counting down the days.
SPEAKER_1: So I got to finish the game.
SPEAKER_1: I need to max out all the social links for that achievement trophy, wherever the fuck it is.
SPEAKER_1: Finish most of the requests, because I wasn't sure if I needed to do all the requests.
SPEAKER_1: Turns out you need to do most of them, because you need some of them for social links, and then you need some of them for certain fusion recipes.
SPEAKER_1: So you need to do that.
SPEAKER_1: I need to get all the characters to level 99 for vision quests in order to fight Margaret.
SPEAKER_1: I need to farm three ultimate weapons, and I need to farm best in slot armor and accessories for four characters.
SPEAKER_1: And then I need to fight Elizabeth, and then I need to finish the compendium in like three days.
SPEAKER_1: So it's like, why do this?
SPEAKER_1: Why set this deadline and then start it so late?
SPEAKER_1: And I just played this game last year.
SPEAKER_1: So that was the good thing.
SPEAKER_1: That was the good thing about doing this, is that like I could skip the story basically, because I didn't need a refresher, because I just played this game last year.
SPEAKER_1: Because Atlas ported this game just last year, making everybody think that they weren't going to remake 3.
SPEAKER_1: And then a few months later, announce that they're remaking 3.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, OK, cool.
SPEAKER_1: Confuse everybody.
SPEAKER_1: Confuse everybody with what is and isn't in reload.
SPEAKER_1: Not include the answer.
SPEAKER_1: Two years from now, release Persona 3 Reload Maximum or whatever they're going to call it.
SPEAKER_1: Include the answer.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe include the female protagonist.
SPEAKER_1: And you know I'm going to buy it.
SPEAKER_1: You know I'm going to buy it again.
SPEAKER_1: And then the same song and dance.
SPEAKER_1: The same goddamn song and dance is going to happen.
SPEAKER_1: Unless the achievements for reload are as easy as royal, which are stupid easy and you can get it one playthrough.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to do the same damn thing again.
SPEAKER_1: It's like how many times do you have to teach this old man this lesson?
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: I do not recommend anybody do this.
SPEAKER_1: I really don't.
SPEAKER_1: It is not good for your sanity.
SPEAKER_1: And if you're going to do it, give yourself enough time and don't give yourself a goddamn deadline.
SPEAKER_1: And if you do, use mods.
SPEAKER_1: Jesus Christ, use mods.
SPEAKER_1: If I didn't mod Persona 3 Portable, oh my God, would this be pain in the ass.
SPEAKER_1: I had to mod in Manual Skill Inheritance for Fusion.
SPEAKER_1: Oh my God.
SPEAKER_1: That does bother me that they didn't patch that in.
SPEAKER_1: They patched it in for SMT Nocturne.
SPEAKER_1: Why wouldn't they just put it in for Portable?
SPEAKER_1: A modder did it in day one.
SPEAKER_1: All that said, I am very excited.
SPEAKER_1: I get to play what is basically a new Persona game, even though it's a Persona game I know very well.
SPEAKER_1: I know very well at this point.
SPEAKER_1: I've been trying to keep myself as removed from all the changes that they're making as I can, so I can be as fresh as possible.
SPEAKER_1: But I am very interested to see what is different.
SPEAKER_1: I've seen a little bit, and I've seen more than I'd like to.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm very excited to talk about it as well.
SPEAKER_1: Join me soon for that, because I will have so much to say.
SPEAKER_1: I will have so much to say about Reload.
SPEAKER_1: Holy shit.
SPEAKER_1: And now for our last segment of the episode.
SPEAKER_1: It's time for the latest and greatest Limp Bizkit news.
SPEAKER_1: Oh shit.
SPEAKER_1: My fate is coming at the speed of light.
SPEAKER_1: He's out there.
SPEAKER_1: I can feel him.
SPEAKER_1: He's out there.
SPEAKER_1: I know he is.
SPEAKER_1: Fred Durst is out there.
SPEAKER_1: I can tell.
SPEAKER_1: There's something in the air.
SPEAKER_1: You might be wondering why devote a good portion of your show's branding to a combination of Final Fantasy and Limp Bizkit.
SPEAKER_1: Limp Bizkit.
SPEAKER_1: Or you might not.
SPEAKER_1: But if you are, I have an ironic appreciation for Limp Bizkit.
SPEAKER_1: I think they're very funny.
SPEAKER_1: And I just appreciate how genuine they are in their over-the-topness, I guess.
SPEAKER_1: And they've been sort of having a Renaissance in the past few years.
SPEAKER_1: And I was already sort of in my ironic appreciation of them whenever the Jack Final Fantasy Limp Bizkit meme came out.
SPEAKER_1: I was like, holy shit, this is just marrying two ridiculous obsessions that I have.
SPEAKER_1: And that sort of spawned the joke that I keep just burying into the ground, or the dead horse that I just keep whacking away at.
SPEAKER_1: So that's sort of the whole snowball effect of this whole fucking thing.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, no, this is Bizkit Bites.
SPEAKER_1: This is gonna be the part of the show where I talk about all the Limp Bizkit news whenever it becomes relevant, which is more often than you would think.
SPEAKER_1: They pop up when you least expect them.
SPEAKER_1: So at the end of last year, Limp Bizkit played a bunch of shows with one of my current musical obsessions, Hanabie, who I stumbled on mostly because I got into like J-Metal just in the last couple years through Babymetal, like years, years late, years late.
SPEAKER_1: And so I found Hanabie through that.
SPEAKER_1: And I've been listening to them pretty much nonstop for like the last year.
SPEAKER_1: And so yeah, they played a bunch of shows with Limp Bizkit and they played a festival in Australia.
SPEAKER_1: They played Australia's Good Things Festival and Limp Bizkit ended their set by playing break stuff with Yukina from Hanabie.
SPEAKER_1: And I'll play a little bit and hopefully not get copyright claimed.
SPEAKER_1: But you know, a lot of the stuff that I did today I'm.
SPEAKER_1: Now, yeah, there's a whole Durst and Limp Bizkit Renaissance.
SPEAKER_1: I'm here for it.
SPEAKER_1: And I will be charting their moves with great interest.
SPEAKER_1: You could find out more here.
SPEAKER_1: Only on Did It All For The Moogle.
SPEAKER_1: That's all I got for this first episode.
SPEAKER_1: I hope anybody enjoyed some part of this.
SPEAKER_1: It might have been a little messy, but who knows?
SPEAKER_1: So thank you very much for listening.
SPEAKER_1: I really do appreciate it.
SPEAKER_1: If you like this sort of analysis, check out the main show, the Denon Road Show, available wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_1: Also on YouTube, you can do YouTube search for Denon Road.
SPEAKER_1: It'll find, it'll get you there.
SPEAKER_1: It'll do it.
SPEAKER_1: And you can also find this show over on YouTube on the same channel, because I'm not making a separate channel, I'm too lazy for that.
SPEAKER_1: And you can also find this show wherever you get your podcasts as well.
SPEAKER_1: And if it's not on a platform that you would like it to be on, please let me know.
SPEAKER_1: You can email podcast at denonroad.media and I will put it exactly wherever you want it, but it should be on all the major podcasting platforms.
SPEAKER_1: And if you want to download it to your specific player with the RSS feed, you can go to denonroad.media and you can find all the links nice and easy up on the website.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, so I hope you enjoyed.
SPEAKER_1: If you didn't, you can also let me know.
SPEAKER_1: Podcast at denonroad.media.
SPEAKER_1: If you have any comments about the current state of Final Fantasy XIV, or you're also excited for Persona 3 Reload, I'd love to hear about it.
SPEAKER_1: So also hit up the email with literally anything.
SPEAKER_1: Literally anything, I don't care.
SPEAKER_1: Or maybe your thoughts on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth coming out soon as well.
SPEAKER_1: And like I said, try to do an episode monthly.
SPEAKER_1: The next episode will most likely be Persona 3 Reload focused, is what I'm thinking, because that comes out in a few days.
SPEAKER_1: And so I would really like to sink my teeth into that and then give some impressions.
SPEAKER_1: I probably won't finish that game.
SPEAKER_1: I don't like to rush through games in general, but especially a Persona game.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I'll probably be back with some impressions on Persona 3 Reload the next time.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, until then, thank you for checking this out.
SPEAKER_1: I really do appreciate it.
SPEAKER_1: We will see you the next time.