My Life As A Gamer: Final Fantasy XIV-A Realm Reviewed (Part Three)

The Rise of a Hero

Between Levels 15-20 the game opens up both in scope and in scale. You are sent, via a quest chain, to the other two city-states to acquaint yourself therein before returning to complete your mission: to launch a realm-wide public relations campaign meant to counter the plumetting morale of the city-states' population, whose despair opens them to corruption and subversion by hostile parties. It is also during this time that you get your first mount--a chocobo, fittingly--and thus transportation other than by teleportation and taxi is now unlocked for you.

Accordingly, so does the scope and scale of the adventures now open to you. It is during this period, when the concept of what a "Primal" is gets explained to you, that you first fight one; it is also the first time that you do instanced content for more than four players. These are called "Trials", and they are arena fights against a single boss. In Story Mode, they are very basic fights and hard to screw up for anyone with prior experience with raiding in World of Warcraft or anything like that. There are harder modes, which are unlocked later; some are not part of the MSQ and so you unlock as a sidequest.

Finally, as you go from Level 20 to 30, you complete the last round of Class quests (ending their stories) and get set up for the transition from Class to Job. During this time you will fight more Primals, unlock more difficult dungeons, and the narrative establishes you as the new Warrior of Light and a Hero of Eorzea for facing down such threats and winning. What makes these feats worthy of fame is the threat: getting mind-controlled by the Primal, called "Tempering", which--at this time--is irreversible and turns victims into fanatic cultists of said being.

It is during this time that you are brought into the Scions of the Seventh Dawn--a small group dedicated to realm-wide threats, focused on Primals--and the reason for your power is revealed: the Echo. The leader of the Scions also has it, and by means thereof do you get a lot of information dumped on you while plot threads play out. Your rise becomes theirs, and soon you're The Man and everyone knows your name and face.

This nicely segues into the Class-Job transition. Jobs in FF14 are specific professions, each of which builds around something called a "soul crystal"--"Soul of the Bard", etc.--and without it equipped you are locked out of Job abilities (and there are no more Class abilities). Each Job in ARR--with one exception, Blue Mage--builds off a Class; I began as an Archer, so I transitioned into a Bard. Each Job class explains the lore behind the abilities you pick up, even if most of them are easy quests to do, promoting emotional investment into the game's narrative and immersion into its setting.

By the time you finish your transition into your Job and you're well on your way through the midpoint of ARR, the MSQ will have you running here and there to smite Primals, put down dungeon threats, open relations with friendly aliens (which will lead to Beast Tribe reputation sidequests), and putting a big target on your back for the predators within the realm as well as without to zero in on. You--the player--will become aware of the internal threat of Ul'dah's Syndicate well as an increasing resurgance of the Garlean presence in the realm.

The capstone to this mid-point is your travel into Coerthas, the borderlands of isolated Ishgard, to recover Cid's airship in order to face the Primal known as Garuda. This will become foreshadowing for Heavensward, but for now its your time and deeds here that prompt (a) those aforementioned predators to move against you and (b) one of your own allies gets the "brilliant" idea that makes those predators' aims viable to pull off.

But that moves into ARR's final act, and for that I'll have you pray return to the blog tomorrow.