Square Enix - Tested on the PlayStation 4 in 2021

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"You really have to play Final Fantasy XIV", is one sentence I heard so often during the last few years. After some forays into the genre of MMOs, I was never really hooked, as some of the games were more or like just digital meetups with friends for me. So I was hesitant about Final Fantasy XIV at first. I didn't like many of the newer Final Fantasies, and I didn't have the greatest of experiences in Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs.

In the end, it was the free trial of this game that let me try things out. I mean, what can go wrong if I could basically play a fully fledged game for free? Oh my, things turned out quite differently than I had anticipated.

This game is the direct successor to Square Enix' first MMORPG, "Final Fantasy XI" - although "successor" is a bit of a stretch, as the older game is still very much alive. Final Fantasy XI and XIV are known to have more intense storylines and better single player experiences than other RPGs. And indeed, this game is very much playable on your own.

The game plays on the lands of Eorzea, a place plagued with various threats and issues. The center of the story are three city states which each have their own issues. All together face the problem that some wild beings within their borders try to summon dangerous god-beasts that threaten to destroy the world. Additonally, a powerful empire tries to take over the lands while bandits and other thugs roam the countryside.

So every city-state has their own little army that is able to fend of the threats better or worse as well as some private mercenaries or adventurers that help out. And this is where the players step in with their individually created character who just happens to have a intense meeting with a powerful deity just as they enter the scene.

The story is laid out pretty good, and after a while and playing story mission after story mission, players will see lots of places in Eorzea and experience many of their inhabitants fates. There are quests that drive the story, while others are solely for collecting or item quests, yet many are accompanied with a extensive story. Most of the story is being told via textboxes, though.

But since this is an MMO, even with its heavy emphasis on playing story missions, there are some areas, mostly dungeons, that have to be played with other players. In that case, players can register in playing said event, and then a matchmaking process is going on in the background (with a rough estimation of how long it will take to have the players party ready), and then the dungeon and bosses are fight with this party of up to 24 players.

All in all, there is so much to play and experience in that game. The story is intense and pretty lenghty with lots of memorable moments, lots of side quests, building up trust in certain organisations, playing special missions with friends or other players, crafting stuff, playing against other players in certain areas. Well, of course it has to offer a lot, because the game costs a lot with a subscription fee every month. There is, however, a free trial version that allows players to experience the full base story up to level 60, which is can be up to 100 hours into the game. And then we haven't started talking about leisure in the Gold Saucer, a amusement park not unlike its similarly named variant in Final Fantasy VII.

The music has been composed by Masayoshi Soken, a long time employee of Square Enix, who had worked on several titles before, with some ties to Kenji Ito of the Mana series. The music bears some resemblence to the compositions of Nobuo Uematsu, and remixes of tunes made by Mr Uematsu have been done with much appreciation of the original music.

Final Fantasy XIV was initially conceived in 2010, but met lots of criticism upon its initial release. The game was completely overhauled and re-released, with new features being added ever so often. Even for the end of 2021, a new expansion was planned to be released. There is a very active community surrounding that game. During the main quest events, the ingame community is very understanding and friendly towards new players. In later dungons of later expansions, players are more focused on getting good gear and loot, and can be very harsh. But in general, the atmosphere within Final Fantasy XIV is a very welcoming one.

Given the initial age of the game, some visual aspects or assets may look outdated, but the scenery can be very beautiful. The framerate on the original PlayStation 4 console (which was the basis for my test of A Realm Reborn) mostly runs at 30 FPS (unlocked), peaking at 60 sometimes in closed areals. In heavily populated cities or at some certain hotspots where lots of people gather, the framerate can drop into the low 10s.

There are lots of different lands to visit, each with their distinct flora and fauna. Most areas can be traversed by foot, so if players desire, they can walk from one huge city to another one. It will take some time, though, but sometimes it's fun to just explore the scenery. We have a pretty extensive screenshot gallery available, where you can take a look into Faye Shin's adventures. Faye is my character in almost every game with an character that can be individually created.

Heavensward was the first extension released in 2015 after the games' first initial release in 2010 and a reboot some years after. I wasn't sure at first of how to cover this DLC, whether it should be treated as its own game or just an addon like in our Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review.

Basically, Heavensward is more of the same. The game mechanics remain the same, but the story, which revolves around the city-state of Ishgard. The theocracy has isolated itself from the other Eorzian nations around the time of the last great calamity. Its people waged a war for a thousand years at the time the addon started, and it was the job of the players and their entourage to help the city in this war.

Especially as the dragons are gaining support from other humanoid people who join the squad of the heretics led by an elezen called Iceheart, whom with the players had a brief skirmish at the end of "A Realm Reborn".

The game is again split into two sections; the first is Heavensward's main story, the second a transition to the next DLC, "Stormblood". It covers a siginificant amount of new areas to traverse and also helps bringing some loose ends from "A Realm Reborn" to its conclusion.

The free trial version of Final Fantasy XIV extends up to the end of Heavensward.

The second expansion released in 2017 was "Stormblood". The story towards the end of Heavensward slowly evolves into this new story about the former countries of Ala Mhigo and Doma trying to get free from the Garlean empire, which occupied both countries a few decades ago. Both countries are supervised by prince Zeos, an especially cruel noble from the empire.

Again, like in Heavensward, the basic gameplay is mostly the same. The story is vastly improved in terms of presentation, with more voiced scenes playing. The story itself is also presented in a more complex way with two countries that lie far away from each other in need of freedom. Also, the visual presentation is somewhat improved, as Stormblood was the first expansion of Final Fantasy XIV that wasn't released on the old Play Station 3 game console.

Dungeons and bosses introduce a few new gameplay mechanics such as "Track & Field" style button mashing tasks at certain events. Also, at certain moments of the game, players need to control other characters than their individually created hero of light. The general gameplay hasn't changed since the initial release of "A Realm Reborn", though.

After the main story of that extension ended, Square released some additional story quests with new patches, and just as before, the game slowly transists into the next extension, "Shadowbringers"

This is the first extension that is not available in the free trial anymore, so this time players can expect that anyone in story driven dungeons is able to chat and communicate with each other.

Released in 2019, this expansion adds something new to the gameplay. Regular dungeons can now be played with a party of NPCs and does not necessarily require other real players anymore to finish the dungeon. This system is called "Trust" and ususally aides players with NPCs of appropriate levels. In there, gameplay is just as in dungeons with real players, but if the player character dies, the whole party will be reset to the last check point - which is difficult if players chose a class which is a bit low on defense.

Raids, meaining bosses with a party of eight characters, still have to be played with real other players, here the players cannot be exchanged with NPCs.

Other than that, the game itself is more of the same as seen in Final Fantasy XIV. There is an intense story that plays in an entirely different world plagued by light (which still resembles the original world especially from "A Realm Reborn" a lot). However, gameplay is not affected by the fact that the world is a different one this time, players can still move around in this world freely.

One interesting aspect is that the composer of this game, Masayoshi Soken, had to go to the hospital during the development of "Shadowbringers". This didn't stop him from composing, though. That's a sign of a very dedicated affinity towards his profession!

2021 was some year for Final Fantasy XIV. In the middle of the year, many players from other MMORPGs started to play Final Fantasy, and Square Enix was taken by surprise. The login times were severe for a couple of days, until Square Enix activated some measures that were initially planned for the release of "Endwalker", the extension that eventually released in December that year.

Endwalker is the addon that concludes the storyline initiated by "A Realm Reborn", and it indeed tries to resolve all of the story arcs that have been established so far.

Gameplay-wise, Endwalker does not introduce too many mechanics. The "FATE" system of Shadowbringers is still here, the main story offers several dungeons and three boss raids, where one can even be played with NPCs, a thing that usually is limited to dungeons. There is a new gameplay element during certain quests that requires players to stick close to NPCs as they traverse certain areas. During these events, players and NPCs can find special spots to have talks about certain events or locations.

There are also some new events where players are required to sneak up on some NPCs, kind of like in a stelath game.

The year Endwalker was released, Final Fantasy XIV was incredibly successful and remained to be what it always was. A story intense RPG with a MMO part on top and lots of friendly players. Especially for people who were part of the story since the game was released in 2013 posted how they felt sad towards the end of Endwalker. Even if Square Enix plans to expand Final Fantasy XIV even further, the story around Hydaelyn is over.

Three years after Endwalker, the newest Expansion, Dawntrail, arrived. The story initially started in "A Realm Reborn" was concluded with Endwalker. So this time, the heroes that circle around the Scions of the Sevent Dawn had to find new ways of living their live. As the post game of Endwalker indicated, they all went west. In the fairly newly discovered continent of Tural, there was someone that needed the help of our "Hero of Light" - Wuk Lamat, adopted daughter of Tural's leader, Gulool Ja Ja.

Along with her, two of her siblings compete with her to be the successor of Gulool Ja Ja. The last contestant is a "blessed child" with two heads of a forest tribe. The story begins with our hero supporting Wuk Lamat in becoming the next leader of Tural. A funny aspect is that some of our hero's friends, other Scions, helped Wuk Lamats brother Koana in succeeding. Of course, later on the game will get more epic and even include some aspects from Final Fantasy XI - although much more entangled as IV was with Endwalker.

From a gampeplay perspective, Dawntrail again does not include new mechanics per se. It plays a lot like Endwalker with "follow me" missions, and the stealth missions are also back. This time, the main story (which consists of about 21h full of cutscenes) is more focused on story and mainly "run from questmarker a to questmarker b". There are some new boss mechanics in dungeons, but that was true for any new extension of this game.

"Dawntrail" introduced new visuals for characters and some of the newer areas as well as lighting and textures. To accommodate the changes that might have been done with characters, players got a free "change my visuals" item that allowed them to alter their character one time.

To avoid login queue problems like with the release of Endwalker, the team did a lot to shorten queues. And indeed, the waiting times upon login are quite short. The game itself follows the release cycle of earlier extensions with new dungeons coming up each bigger patch along with some new tasks, be it either a 8-person raid or an alliance raid with up to 24 players.

The fans, Wuk Lamat and Sena Bryer

Final Fantasy XIV is known to have a friendly community. Even if you mess in a party of random players which results in the KO of all players, usually, everyone is helpful and understanding. There are some try hards, which scold people who do not play perfectly, but they are few. However, with Dawntrail, some ugly things happened - outside of the game.

Wuk Lamat is an important character to the story - as written above, players help her effectively becoming the new ruler of Tural. She has also a very special attitude towards people. She is energetic, sometimes a bit naive and wants to befriend everyone. She's also quite the meddler and tries to help everyone she befriends. And she befriends a lot of people

There are many characters that players love - Krile, Erenville, even new ones like Cahciua. And they don't get as much screentime as Wuk Lamat in this expansion. This led some fans to get angry. Get angry on Square Enix, and eventually, they got angry at the voice actor, Sena Bryer. They don't like how Wuk Lamat talks, and it seems they don't like that Sena Bryer voices her.

Things got quite ugly. The fact that Ms Bryer is trans seemed to anger the fans even more as they started to threaten and harass Wuk Lamats voice actor. She even got death threats and the like.

Editors note: To be honest, I wouldn't even have noticed that Sena Bryer was trans from the voice - it just fits Wuk Lamat perfectly. I didn't get to read much news beforehand as to not spoil myself, and I'm quite shocked how things could have turned out so badly. So, to have things said: I like Wuk Lamat, I think the voice actor did a great job and I think it's highly disturbing how the game and the people behind got so much backlash because of how a character has been written. Shame on everyone who harrassed Ms Bryer because of that.

Three and a half years later...

I started playing Final Fantasy XIV just like any other game I played in February 2021. It offered a very good single player experience, and I followed the main story. For about 250 hours, I enjoyed the world of Ætheris and let my player avatar, Faye, be the heroine this land needed.

I let her learn new classes, master some arts and eventually was done with most of the important story's quest. But then, her true adventures begun.

Together with some great friends in real life, Faye embarked on new stories. She joined the run on treasure chests, repeated some tasks over and over again to get hold of good equipment and items. She looked for treasures, and when she was on herself, she did smaller and bigger tasks for the non player characters that roam the world of Final Fantasy XIV

Faye learned to heal, to fight and to defend. For over 1000 hours within the game, she became valuable to her friends in the world and she became valuable to me as she allowed me to play with my own friends in the real world.

Eventually, Faye was sent to retirement and was replaced by Ruby, who built upon Faye's experience (Which meant, I used a item to change her appearance and changed her name), because over time I found out that the race I chose for Faye was a bit dull in terms of emotions and expressions.

I'm still not finished with Final Fantasy XIV, but I felt the need to share the final thoghts after extensivee experience with you guys. Even if I still can't really compete with players who take XIV really seriously.

We'll never know where Ruby might end up next!