oh god, why did i bother? I hadn't played it since I briefly revisited a year ago on PC and the vanilla game is every bit as janky and ugly as I remembered. Like the fool I am I had deleted the mods I previously downloaded to make space on my PC so lets fix that after revisiting the vanilla game for a bit.
I'm playing on PC because mods and the only console I have that can play it is my old PS3 anyway and only a masochist would enjoy revisiting that version (come on Bethesda do something good for once and hook up console players with a decent updated version).
I needed a break between a series of JRPG's I'd been going through and figured I'd revisit an old favorite for a little while and come back to it between games.