But without foreknowledge of it, most of the actually plotting is a touch dull, with some of the more important parts glossed over, and Ramza is a prick. There are loads of great references to Tactics. The raids themselves are excellent: they’re challenging even now, and have plenty of interesting and unique mechanics. The bits with Auracites and the lost region are interesting! Going on a very lengthy fetch quest for a bottle of wine is not, despite the quest name being a Seal reference.īut, for the most part, I can give this a pass.
There’s a lot of fluff and filler in these sidequests, and not a huge amount of character development. The characters you interact with are mostly either “dull” or “annoying jerks” Ramza, in particular, is in the latter camp.
My biggest problem with the Return to Ivalice raid series lies outside of the raids themselves. Yes, yes, Return to Ivalice is gorgeous and wonderful and generally really good. Efforts were made, and it’s not likely to impact the greater storyline. Personally, I have some difficulty thinking of that as hard canon, but hey. I’ll also give it a good amount of credit for tying Ivalice into Final Fantasy XIV‘s world and lore, both with it being a mythical region in Hydaelyn, and having ties to the origins of Garlemald. Boss design, visual spectacle, and a general sense of being involved in truly titanic battles are all ramped up to 100 here. If you want well-crafted raids, you will likely adore Ivalice. If you like Final Fantasy Tactics and, to a lesser extent, Final Fantasy XII, you will likely adore Ivalice. How much you like its plotting will probably depend on your tolerance for sky pirates and Voidsent lore, but it’s honestly enjoyable enough just for Cait Sith.Īnd then there’s Return to Ivalice, which is sufficiently (and at least slightly ironically) beloved that Ivalice raiders are a meme. Deathgaze, Diabolos, Califisteri, and the dreaded Ozma all show up here, and there are some fun (and cruel) mechanics even now. Heavensward‘s Shadow of Mhach wasn’t a crossover, but it had plenty of familiar Final Fantasy faces. Still, they tie into the main game’s plot heavily, so bonus points there. It also doesn’t help that dropping back to level 50 means that you’re missing out on most of your class abilities, so there’s not that much to do. The (now mandatory) Crystal Tower raids are pretty much a Final Fantasy III crossover series, and while they’re fairly neat, they’re a bit of a slog now that everyone’s hilariously overgeared.
Let’s start by quickly recapping the Alliance Raids so far. Fair warning: to discuss some of these elements I’m going to have to do some very light spoiling for Nier, Nier: Automata, the two Drakengard games worth mentioning, and (a bit more heavily) Final Fantasy XIV and the raids themselves. If it’s any consolation, the Nier raids aren’t perfect either - but I have to admit that they’re probably my favorite series of the Alliance Raids, despite some caveats. Apologies for the upset that statement’s going to cause. And no, the Ivalice raids aren’t perfect. We’re going to talk about the Nier raids, compare them to the other Alliance Raids, and talk about what they do right and wrong. I’m going to have take a deep breath and steel myself here, because I think I’m about to annoy a lot of Final Fantasy XIV players (or, at least, Reddit).