ranzware
Final Fantasy 14 is one of my favourite videogames, and has been for the better part of a decade now. But when I try and get a vibe check on where the game is at, the one word that constantly pops into my head is: Strange. It’s in a rather odd spot right now, isn’t it?
It’s a game that’s floating in a weird limbo state, shackled to an aging design and a sluggish patch cadence, despite promising some very cool things on the horizon. Things that, by the time they actually release, I fear may arrive too late.
But I don’t want to go all doom and gloom immediately, and in months since Harvey Randall took a look at the state of the game last year, a lot of stuff has happened. It’s a tale of two halves: One before Dawntrail’s release, and the aftermath of one of the lowest-rated expansions the MMO has seen to date. So let’s take a look, shall we?
Endwalker finished to relatively little fanfare
For the most part, the first six months of 2024 were awfully quiet. We had the final patches of Endwalker, and the introduction of Wuk Lamat. We’ll… get to her, eventually. Folk were relatively excited for the groundwork Patch 6.55 laid down for Dawntrail, and our new hrothgar gal was mostly well-received after her initial debut. That will change, but like I said, we’ll get to that.
But aside from our new furry friend, the patch stories came as they went: In quite a muted fashion. Despite the main story wowing on release, that feeling slowly shrank into a bit of a shrug and an “eh”. I actually quite liked the introduction of Zero, the Reaper avatar of our long-time frenemy Zenos, but her story was very much a bottle episode.
She wasn’t unpopular, but the relative disconnect between the narratives past and future left the whole thing in a bit of a grey area, ultimately standing on its own but not exactly standing out.
Relic weapons wrapped up without much fuss too, due to just how easy they were to complete. Chuck a few tomestones—which you get just for doing all your normal stuff—at a vendor and voila! You have a weapon.
It’s a game that’s floating in a weird limbo state, shackled to an aging design and a sluggish patch cadence, despite promising some very cool things on the horizon.
Endwalker was also by far the easiest expansion for obtaining a relic weapon, the biggest barrier to entry being the fact you had to play through the entire Manderville questline (which has been going since A Realm Reborn) in order to unlock them. Is the weapon’s ease of access a good thing? I guess it depends on who you ask, but the resounding feedback seemed to be that people missed having some sort of grind or challenge to tackle through the expansion’s patches.
So yeah, Endwalker wasn’t exactly the huge dramatic build-up of expansion’s past. But we knew that: Dawntrail is the beginning of a new narrative arc, one with a greater focus on exploring new areas and cultures rather than world-ending threats. Could it live up to a decade of meticulous world-building and character development?
Speak with Wuk Lamat
The short answer is, uh, not really. Not right now, anyway. Dawntrail launched at the end of June to middling reviews. Resident lore enjoyer Harvey Randall lamented that the expansion contained “a great story with a ton of potential, but it’s told so poorly that it nearly ruins the whole thing.“
That was a kinder assessment than what most gave it, too. Daniella Lucas gave Dawntrail a score of 80 in her review—not tragic by any means, but also the lowest score PC Gamer has given out of the MMO’s five expansions, with the second-lowest expansion being Heavensward’s 87. The only part of Final Fantasy 14 to actually rank lower—apart from its paltry original 2010 release, of course—was A Realm Reborn, which was awarded a 79.
Now I’m not saying our reviews are the be all and end all of this game, but it’s a good brief overview of where the expansion has landed compared to its predecessors. The mixed reception has come almost entirely down to its narrative, with a sluggish story and characters overstaying their welcome being cited as some of the biggest issues Dawntrail faced at launch.
It’s essentially A Realm Reborn all over again, having to lay the groundwork and re-establish the stakes that will inevitably grow and evolve over the next several years… except the game is already dealing with over 10 years of narrative baggage. It’s never going to be easy to do something like that—capture the feeling of new adventure in a game folk have sunk thousands of hours into at this point—but Square Enix seemed to miss the mark by a mile.
While there were a multitude of issues, one name kept popping up across forum posts, Reddit threads, and the slew of negative Steam reviews: Wuk Lamat.
The resounding feedback seemed to be that people missed having some sort of grind or challenge to tackle through the expansion’s patches.
Yeah, remember our adorable hrothgal from Endwalker’s final patch? Anyone who’s played even a few of Dawntrail’s quests will certainly remember her, because she’s everywhere. She’s stitched into every single narrative beat within the expansion, and we’re just there to stand in the background and quietly nod as the story moves along with her.
Her unrelenting presence has, to say the least, not gone down well with players. Videos, reviews, and discussion posts criticising her and the narrative surrounding her permeated Dawntrail’s early weeks. She was only introduced to the game less than a year ago, and yet a recent analysis found that she ranked third for most dialogue across every single expansion, only beaten out by twins Alphinaud and Alisae who’ve been present since the very beginning.
Bee-fore it’s over I’ll capture your heart
Criticisms around Dawntrail’s story have stood in stark contrast to the reception to the expansion’s actual playable content. Dungeons and raids have felt like a return to form for Square Enix, and players have pointed out how much better—and crucially, more challenging—they feel compared to what we had in Endwalker.
Healers were healing again. Mechanics were catching people out. Players were wiping to dungeon bosses! It’s all basic stuff, sure, but it’s something that had been sorely missed. The trivialisation of Endwalker’s fights is something the game’s own battle designer admits the team went a little far on—a lack of any downtime for melee jobs took away from any real strategising or planning they had to do, and what should have been hard-hitting raidwides or tankbusters felt more like tickles for healers.
Dawntrail’s eight-player Arcadion raids have also been well-received. While it’s widely acknowledged that the savage versions are perhaps some of the game’s easiest fights, they’re incredibly dynamic, unique from each other, and experiment with mechanics like Honey B. Lovely’s slightly looser approach with things like the heart meter and randomised tethers that have caught me out on more than one occasion.
Each fight having its own unique song—something which isn’t afforded to every raid in this game—as well as voice-acted segments with the boss as well as commentary (as you’re canonically engaging in these fights as a form of entertainment, like boxing or MMA) bring so much life to these fights. In terms of spectacle, they blow Endwalker’s Pandaemonium series out of the water.
There’s also the first ultimate of the expansion, Futures Unwritten, which has gone down a treat with hardcore folk. It certainly helps that it’s based on Shadowbringers’ Eden raids, probably the most beloved in the game. But it mercifully toned down the difficulty somewhat from the nail-biting Omega Protocol ultimate of last expansion, bringing a balance of theatrics and execution that my ultimate raiding pals have really enjoyed.
That’s all stuff we’ve sort of seen before though, but Dawntrail has introduced a brand-new flavour of battle content in its 24-player chaotic raid. Meant to sit somewhere between an extreme trial and the first couple of savage raids in terms of difficulty, the first chaotic raid has taken the final fight of A Realm Reborn’s World of Darkness alliance raid and turned it into its own, more difficult encounter.
The reaction has been… mixed. Personally I’ve had a great time with the fight, with relatively easy-to-learn mechanics and a balance between personal responsibility and wider checks to make sure the team is synergising. But there are also pretty valid complaints to be had: There’s a strict body check in the fight that essentially requires all 24 people to be alive lest you snowball into a pile of corpses a mechanic or two later.
We’re almost nine months into Dawntrail’s release, yet there’s no steady grind to keep people like me coming back.
Body checks can be frustrating when you’ve only got seven other folk to worry about, but having 23 other people to account for has caused friction in more than one party I’ve joined. I think part of that is down to the fact there’s a pretty healthy mixture of casual players and more seasoned vets trying to take on this fight, and the divide between the two sides is clear.
Scouring the forums, I’ve seen more instances of in-fighting between the two playstyles than perhaps any previous expansion. I understand the frustration on both ends—things are pretty dry on anything more casual players can do right now, with most of the early patches dedicated to getting more difficult fights out of the door to appease the hardcore Warriors of Light.
But I’ve seen folk calling for Square Enix to never do another chaotic raid, and I simply couldn’t disagree more. I think it’s a great in-between difficulty with, crucially, decent rewards. Some fine tuning and a little more balance towards personal responsibility could see people taking to the fight much more, I feel.
A new coat of paint
So hey, that’s most of the core gameplay parts of 2024 out of the way, but Dawntrail introduced something else, too: A graphical upgrade, the first major overhaul of its kind since A Realm Reborn in 2013.
There were some teething issues—literally—but the game looks downright gorgeous thanks to it. Characters have been smartened up and look less crusty, and Square Enix has been going back and adding new set dressing to its earlier zones to breathe new life into them. It’s something I sincerely hope continues as we get more patches. Personally I’ve never thought the game looks downright horrible, per se, but I’ll never say no to some plucking and pruning here and there.
Another thing to get a bit of a visual overhaul was the dye system. We’ve gone from a measly single dye channel to two. Two, I tell you! It’s definitely been more valuable on certain items of gear than others—I don’t think teeny-tiny zips were the thing people were hoping to change, Square Enix—but it’s opened up for way more creativity, which I’m always here for.
So, what’s next?
Well, here’s where we are right now: A meh story, great battle content, but a continued content drought that has people growing increasingly weary with the game. Because—and no offense to the incredible and hard work the folk over at Square Enix are doing—what we have right now simply hasn’t been enough.
We’re almost nine months into Dawntrail’s release, yet there’s no steady grind to keep people like me coming back. Relic weapons are still a good couple months away, for example. Why am I waiting an entire year into an expansion (that’s halfway through its life cycle, by the by) to engage with a nice slow burn that I can tackle in bite-sized chunks at my leisure? Compare that to World of Warcraft’s recent patch cadence—which Harvey actually went ahead and did and came away shocked at just how slow Final Fantasy 14 has been in comparison.
Dawntrail also seems to be falling into the same trap that, so far, most of its content has catered for more hardcore players. While the Chaotic Raid was a great bridge between casual and seasoned players, the only other alternative has been Ultimate or Savage raids. Great for some, not so good for others.
But, I’m hopeful for change on the horizon. Patch 7.2 is set to release later this month, bringing about the thing I’ve been wanting so desperately since Dawntrail launched: The large-scale field operation, Occult Crescent.
A big ol’ instanced map that actually chucks challenging overworld enemies at me, gives me something to grind out and makes Final Fantasy 14 feel like the MMO I sometimes wish it was. It’s finally something to chip away at slowly, rather than a thing you dip into for a couple hours once a week and all of a sudden you find yourself dreading those Tuesday resets.
There’s also Cosmic Exploration, the more casual lifestyle content akin to Heavensward’s Ishgardian Restoration. Another thing to slowly tackle at my leisure, and something that’ll break up all the hours I’m going to inevitably spend grinding.
These are things people need: Something to reel them in for small chunks of time, every day or two, to keep them engaged. Something that makes the drought feel a little less dry. Whether it’s going to bang with the community is a different story, but god I hope it does.
Because if it doesn’t, I worry it’s only going to further cement the frustration that myself and many others are starting to build towards the game. I love Final Fantasy 14, even in the times where the game makes it hard to do so, and I’m desperately rooting for 2025 to be the year it can stand back on top as one of the MMOs I can’t stop telling all of my friends to play.
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Kurt Indovina
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