Final Fantasy 14's Fall Guys event is, uh, a crossover that exists in a game. I've already made my feelings clear on the disturbing bisected Fall Guys hat, but it's also got some pretty weird netcode wonkiness.
I've done a spot of Savage raiding so I'm used to this kind of stuff, but for your average joe, the swap from mostly-forgiving dungeon telegraphs to barging into snowballs 'cause you know they're not actually there anymore? That's enough to give anyone whiplash.
That makes one of the game's achievements, "It's a Blunderful Life IV", borderline unachievable without weeks of grinding. To get the achievement and its associated title "King/Queen Bean", you need to win 100 games of Blunderville. Which, as mentioned, is really freakin' hard. Which is why someone doing it in three days has put the fear of god in my heart.
Shabu Shabu, or Syabumi Gift in-game, snatched the title November 2. Patch 6.51, which introduced the event, was released October 31. That means Shabu perfected the art of Fallguy Fantasy over the weekend, then went on to win 100 games against 24 other competitors.
Now, one might think they've just found an exploit or something—after all, the game will occasionally just dump you in a lobby with no other players to challenge you. Not so. To make sure their Bean Street cred was solid, Shabu's been posting videos of their strats to Twitter/X, which you can watch below.
Blunderville TA楽しいからみんなもやろう！！色々開拓してみたり最適化したりして全体的に少し自己best更新した。①2:09→2:11(-2秒更新)②1:55→1:58(-3秒更新)③2:16→2:19(-3秒更新)④2:24 pic.twitter.com/YAOKGKAcUDNovember 2, 2023
My favourite trick by far, however, is how Shabu overcomes one stage in particular. To set the scene: You're on a circular obstacle course. The round ends after a handful of contestants are eliminated.
To keep the pressure on, a wind elemental named Typhon spins at the centre, throwing out gusts of wind. Move too slow, or get hit by a hammer, and you're dead. Shabu, however, just gets hit on purpose to invincibility-frame through Typhon's wind gusts, staring the poor guy dead in the eye like they're challenging him to do something about it.
鼻息逆走ワザップ見つけたｗ pic.twitter.com/tpIYt4z0HSNovember 2, 2023
Sometimes, people are blessed with gifts. It just so happens that Shabu Shabu's gift is being unnervingly good at one particular event in Final Fantasy 14. Granted, I'm sure those speedrunning skills are applicable—I shudder to think what they could do with Kugane Tower or something.
I myself do not intend to get 100 chicken dinners any time soon, but I'll be studying Shabu Shabu's strats, and I fully intend to try them in my own games just for kicks. Who knows. Maybe one day I too will become a King Bean.
