Shantotto Mayhem

Well, the final of the three add-on scenarios was released, and I have to say that I enjoyed this one. It was still the standard fetch quest, but it seems as if more effort was put into making this something that people would actually like.

I know the reward is some type of pants, but I haven't bothered looking into it. I still have yet to collect my reward from A Crystalline Prophecy simply because the stuff doesn't interest me. Not to mention, all of the gear is ass-ugly. Is it too much to ask that they make a set of matching armor? You have a cowboy trench coat, a Marvin Martian helm, and now some kung fu pants that the actual martial artists of Vana'diel can't wear.

Note to SE: Style IS important and drugs are bad, 'mkay.

Seriously, lay of the heavy stuff before you come out with designs for armor. Learn to match. I don't understand why we would get three rewards that don't go with anything we currently have and sure as hell don't go together on their own. Try this out. When you log in next, look for someone who has done all three expansions and got the rewards for the same job class. Now look at their gear and tell me that you aren't sitting in your chair laughing your ass off at how silly they look.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the expansion.

First, you start off by heading to Windurst and you witness the lovely Dr. Shantotto tinkering around with some new magic. Before you know it, she gets sucked into a little portal and poof...no more Taru. Chaos ensues when she returns and starts making plans to take over the world.

Before order is restored to the land, you embark on a journey that takes you to many places you may have forgotten about. Toraimarai Canal, the Cloisters, Sea Serpent Grotto, and the crowd favorite, Den of Rancor just to name a few.

You even get to craft some of the quest items. Isn't that exciting? Thankfully, I wasn't one of the first few people to try my hand at this crafting, otherwise I would've been paying 500K for something that will drop down to 500 gil in a week or two. Maintaining e-peen is a very expensive thing.

The final fight is either quite easy, or extremely frustrating. This all depends on the method you employ against the last Shantotto sisters. Someone had mentioned that they wondered what the fight would be like if you weren't given the optional boosts that you could collect. In a nutshell, it would be similar to a zerg, only you'd be the recipient because they would mop the floor with your behind in a matter of seconds.

In the end, it's definitely the better of the three add-ons, but that's to be expected. You're not going to make an expansion based off of your most powerful BLM in the entire game and make it absolute crap. Then again, anything is possible.

Here's a few shots that I took while progressing through. Check out the expansion sometime. The final cutscene was pretty funny.

Now this was funny. While we were killing our quest NM and dealing with adds, Shikigami Weapon decided to join in on the fun. Damn shame someone else claimed it.