I'm genuinely impressed how much the Arcadion pulled out a strong ending for me, given how dour I was on the end of the second tier. I hated how much it looked like it was banking on Eutrope and Howling Blade's relationship, given how much of a character Howling Blade... well, wasn't.

Meanwhile, the Heavyweight tier largely stuck the landing on everything it was trying to do, and while I certainly have complaints, I can't just say it failed; it delivered most of the story it wanted to do. My initial takes are off on the first page, and mostly haven't changed, but the things I've baked on a little longer...

I'm still very thankful the Heavyweight tier sides with me in ALSO forgetting Howling Blade is a character!

I do think the balance of the bosses is... a little weird given what the overall flavor of the final tier is, and the problem is mostly Deep Blue and Red Hot: we were told the Heavyweights outright have no life outside of the Arcadion to fall back on, and therefore have nothing to lose going all-out against us... and then here are these two beach bros with a Tony Hawk Pro Skater theme as practically a joke boss in between the dominatrix and Triple H-style company man. Leaving aside that I don't even think they feel right to be difficult bosses (I'll leave that to the Savage raiders), they feel like a tonal break at the time when the story didn't actually need that. ...but I like The Mirror too much to actually be mad.

I still think the Lindwurm was a misstep, because it doesn't fit at all with the very consistent theme that the raids had up to that point; everything else goes Full Pro Wrestling, and then here comes a boss that could've fit in literally anywhere else. If you're gonna go 'the President was actually a good guy playing a bad guy' then sure, but c'mon, we know what a wrestling president playing the hell should look like, and this isn't that! Just let us fight Vince MacMahon!


Quote Originally Posted by Rosenstrauch View Post
Arcadion words, specifically:

And when everything is settled, what's next?

Everyone goes back to fighting in the lethal bloodsport. But now because soul usage has been removed, they don't have any safety nets.
This, though, is I think getting too deep into this story specifically and forgetting the context of the entire game around it.

We're not seeing a 'bloodsport in civilized modern society' thing, we're not exactly talking a metaphor for injuries in wrestling. Because... well, remember that outside of the Everkeep, there's a lot of people fighting a lot of monsters with much less of a safety net. We are one of them. Hell, the Tyrant at least was mentioned to be a hunter (I think Howling Blade too), this is a reality that the Arcadion story itself lets into its fights. This also isn't even the only bloodsport we've seen; the Bloodsands exist, Raubahn's whole story is rooted in it. It's not even the only bloodsport we have taken part in, as Blue Mage not only exists, it also adds context that Ishgard and Hingashi also have these.

As far as criticism of bloodsport, Fourteen's hands are sorta tied even if they want to do that; this is ultimately a game about how fun it is to fight cool enemies, not only do they want battle arenas in their inventory, they're also not the type to shame the draw of the game itself. So, the Arcadion picks a fight that doesn't have those problems: a disorder that exists in this specific arena, because of the nature of its fights. Less of a metaphor for sports injuries, and more a metaphor for steroid abuse.