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Lisotte Poena

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WAR #10: So Nier and Yet So Far

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Warning: This blog entry will include some spoilers for FFXIV current endgame content, particularly Nier, Bozja and Werlyt!

This outfit looks great in still shots but really just okay when actually playing it, for some reason

Wrathful And Resolute #10: So Nier and Yet So Far


Welcome back again friends, it's been a while since we've had another exciting entry of the WAR blog. And by "a while" I mean a little over a day. But you know, where we left off, we'd just caught up to the end of the 5.4 MSQ, and finally can see that "To Be Continued..." message in the game. But since completing 5.0, I did start delving into the endgame content, starting with the side-dungeons (The Twinning is awesome), and the Nier raids. The others kinda got left till I got caught up first with 5.3, then 5.4. So let's get into it!



Hey guys, it's Nier! In FFXIV! I wanted to like it so bad...


So, one of the selling points of Shb, particularly to new people, has definitely been the Nier content. The newest alliance raid serious in FFXIV, also with a lengthy questline of its own written by the famed Yoko Taro (guy wears a weird mask all the time!). I like Nier, I like Platinum Games (who developed the Nier combat system), I love FFXIV, and I also like the Dwarves. What's not to like about the new 24-man?

A lot, it seems. For me, this was a swing and a miss.

I never got super far into Nier Automata. I really, really wanted to like it, but the combat wasn't quite what I was hoping for after playing Bayonetta and while the story was interesting, it didn't quite grab me. I've heard you have to finish the game multiple times to really "get it" but I was kinda busy when I had the game so never did. I still like the character designs, the enemy designs, the color scheme, etc.

I was honestly pretty excited to hear about it in FFXIV. Also excited to get gear based on Nier Automata (until I saw how everyone and their cousin uses that gear at some point, lol). Maybe I wasn't coming at it from the best angle though, as I started the Nier quests right after I finished the 5.0 MSQ. I was getting ready for 5.4 and wanting to hop into the new EX trial and Savage, so I was catching up on endgame. I was advised in a Reddit question thread (usually a source of good information) to start running the newest Nier raid every week.

So, off I went, to Kholusia.

Even better, the dwarves were involved! I enjoyed them, and remembered the dwarves who you do the Nier questline with... whatever their names were, Eggnog and something like that that.

Well what do you know, under the mountain or something in Kholusia, there's basically a whole other, high-tech world hidden right there like something out of an Edith Nesbit book (now THAT'S an old reference). We end up getting into the Copied Factory pretty much right away, with this 2B lookalike, 2P. We have this big confrontation with 9S (who I remembered being an ally in Nier?). The zone is pretty interesting and all, pretty new style of enemies and such for FFXIV. I appreciated how quickly we unlocked this raid. I had absolutely no idea what was going on with the story here, but enjoyed that first 24-man, finished, and on to the next one right?

Oh, boy, how I was so wrong.

After the Ivalice raid series, I'd been thinking this one was a bit less... verbose? Though as someone with a lot of interest in FFT and FFXII I was more interested in that story. Nier puts the Copied Factory pretty early on, but there's a number of quests right after that. Including going back into the Copied Factory as a solo instance, and collecting things. Pretty cool idea to let us walk into an alliance raid area and all, but I was really starting to tune out of the story and the zone is kinda... cool but rusty? If that makes any sense. Doesn't help that alliance raid storylines are still not voiced.

We go through seemingly a million quests. There were additional quests added in 5.2 so it takes forever partly as a result of that. We do save 2P by getting new parts, but lo and behold, she's an enemy!

I honestly can't remember if the Puppet's Bunker, or that plot point happen first, but suddenly 2B is on the field and she is our new ally, with 2P as the villain.



I was actually kinda surprised in a good way that they flipped that on it's head, and now our ally was a villain. And now the two characters I actually remembered from Nier, 2B and 9S were on our side. But by this point I was so not digging the story that it didn't matter too much anymore.

As for clearing the raids weekly...

The coins from the raids still kinda mattered in 5.3 but it was near the end of 5.3 that I'd gotten here. I hadn't even gotten any Crystarium Allegory gear since I was advised to save it to buy mats in 5.4. It's nice to get the cluster for tier 8 materia but since I haven't overmelded, I found tier 8 materia pretty cheap. In 5.4, after wiping non-stop to Titan Unreal, I eventually started trying to do Puppet's Bunker weekly, but found it hard to stay awake on RDM in there and still kinda don't get the mechanics, so I stopped doing them regularly. I haven't done the 5.4 quests either. Hopefully the story will pay off in 5.5...

I really did want to like this questline, but I guess it's not for me.

After completing the Nier questline, I went ahead and started the Bozja storyline. By this point, the Southern Front was out, but I just needed the weapon. I went ahead and got the ilvl 505 weapon by doing the fates and dungeons. I think I'll talk about that questline when I get to Bozja later.

I also took care of the Sorrows of Werlyt quests and Eden quests through 5.3. I queued for these as I was working through MSQ and would come back to do the quests.

I did end up liking the Weapons/Werlyt questline


Big Fat Tacos!

I have to admit, I didn't get far enough into 1.0 to really get to know Gaius too well. And in 2.0 he just seemed like a villain to conquer that was slightly more interesting than other villains. And in what... 4.4 content, I was kinda annoyed that he came back, like nobody in FFXIV can ever really die.

But in the Shb MSQ quests he is in, and in the Werlyt questline, I really came to have an appreciation for Gaius. I came to have an appreciation for his adopted children too.



I have never seen Evangelion, but I have been told this storyline is pretty similar. It starts off with a good pace too, fighting the Ruby Weapon almost right away. I never got that far into FFVII either, but even though the Weapons originally seemed less interesting to me than, say, the Warring Triad, I ended up thinking they were cool and was interesting to see Nael pop out during the battle.

In the Sapphire Weapon quests, we ended up learning more about Gaius's children, and got maybe the raddest solo instance ever, with the G-Warrior! Sadly somehow I ended up neglecting to take screenshots of this part...

...or the next part that was even cooler, the Emerald Weapon quests. We have a real story now with a decent cast of characters, and it's revealed how Gaius's children are actually fighting to save their homeland from Valens. It actually ties in nicely to the status of the Garlean Empire falling apart with different Legati fighting amongst themselves, vying for power. Valens is a really evil, creepy dude you really just want to punch in the face. The Oversoul mechanic was pretty cool as well.

I have to admit, I kinda am not a big fan of part one of a boss fight, a cutscene, then a second form/health bar. I like when I see the boss at 25%, that I know I'm 25% away from killing it for good. But the Emerald Weapon has a good fight, in addition to a good story. And I got to know this fight a lot better, when I ended up facing the Extreme version... which we'll get to when we start talking about the high-end content.


Kind of more a short summary of stuff today. I'm interested in the different sidequest storylines, but I tend to be more interested in them from an "endgame" perspective of getting more gear and such, while being more invested in the MSQ for story by itself. Nier really was a swing and a miss for me. Whereas I really did end up enjoying the Werlyt questline so far quite a bit.

Did you enjoy the Nier quests? Do you clear every week? Or is Werlyt up your alley? Feel free to let me know in the comments! Next time on the WAR blog, we'll get to talking about the story aspects of the Eden raids:

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