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New TV stand is much less crowded, plus it has room for a Series X once I get one, which the old one did not.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward After taking a break from the game midway through the expansion, the Endwalker launch finally motivated me to go back and finish it. I hadn't stopped because I wasn't enjoying it, far from it, it's just that I had been playing FFXIV for like 2 months straight at that point and this is the kind of game that takes basically all of your time and I wanted to play other games. I was only going to take a short break but that ended up being like 3 months. Woops. Once I got back into it, though, I couldn't stop until I was done. This game has a way of sucking you in and consuming all your time. Looking back through the thread, I don't think I ever made a post for A Realm Reborn, so I guess I'll cover that as well. The ARR part of the story is pretty uneven but it has its moments and, considering the circumstances under which it was made, it's honestly way better of a campaign than it has any right to be. And then there's the 2.x updates, a series of roughly 80 level 50 quests you have to get through to reach Heavensward, which... ooof. Even after they updated it to trim the fat and remove some filler (it used to be over 100 quests), it's still a slog to get through. Here's the thing, though. About halfway through the 2.x quests, the story starts getting really good and the climax in the 2.5 update that leads directly into 3.0/Heavensward is honestly one of the best story moments I've experienced in a game in a looooong time. Whether or not it's worth to slog through 100 hours of quests that vary in quality from "boring filler" all the way to "pretty damn good" just to get to Heavensward will depend on the player but I'm really glad I went through with it because holy shit, Heavensward! This is classic Final Fantasy through and through. People aren't exaggerating when they say it's the best single-player Final fantasy story there's been in like two decades. I love FFX, FFXII, and hell, even FFXIII! But none of them come close to Heavensward. It's just peak Final Fantasy. You've got dragons, dragoons, an evil pope and you fight a God at the end. What more could you possibly want? And apparently Shadowbringers is supposed to be even better so there's no way I'm stopping here! I'm also really glad I've been playing the Pixel Remasters in parallel to this because Yoshi-P's love of classic FF is pretty apparent throughout. There are so many references to FFI-III that would've gone completely over my head had I not played them. It ends up making FFXIV feel like a love letter to classic FF and it kinda rules. I'm honestly getting really excited for Final Fantasy XVI, because if the quality here is indicative of what we'll get then it could be the best single-player FF in quite a while. And this isn't something I ever thought I would say after the absolute mess that was FFXV.

And the award for "Most Unexpected Announcement" goes to: