Unfortunately, this issue will be a little shorter than the prior ones, which is bound to happen from time to time as other games keep me busy. That said, I've still kept on track and haven't missed a week of playing Final Fantasy games yet. Only two games this week, so let's jump right in.

Prior to this I was calling these episodes, but since that sounded like a podcast, they are now issues. Here's a link to my last piece.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)

I've been wanting to start up Final Fantasy Tactics Advance again. It was a game a put a ton of time into back in college, likely around seventy hours, which is a lot for me these days. Curious how many hours I put into games before I started tracking my playtimes like I do now. Before I decided to clear out a save file to start a new game, I opted instead to open up a prior save and dive into a battle.

Two things about this game stood out to me immediately. The first is that combat movements and such are super slow. Why does it take so long to do even the simplest commands? The other aspect of the title that hit me was how overwhelming it was to dive back into a late-game save for this game. The UI is not very friendly for reminding you of what anything does or why some gear or items are better than others. I will have to try a new game save of this to get a better feeling. Though I might just pick up Final Fantasy Tactics A2 to see if I enjoy it more this time around than I did prior.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (PS4)

The rest of my time this week was spent getting through the rest of the post Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn content leading to Heavensward. While a lot of it has been tedious back-and-forth fetch quests, I finally started getting into the real meat of the content. A couple new dungeons, some great battles, some of the most interesting Final Fantasy side characters in years, and story beats that pull at your heartstrings. I get people not being interested in paying a monthly fee to play this, but it really has some of the best Final Fantasy content in many years. Were this a single-player game with this content, I imagine it would easily rank at the top of many fans' lists. As the final epic scenes played out, I finally got a credits roll on the patch content and am now ready to delve into the Heavensward story. I'm excited.