My Life As A Gamer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward" Reviewed

Late last week, I completed all of the first expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, Heavensward. It's time to put down my thoughts. If you haven't read my review of XIV: A Realm Reborn, go skim those first and come back, and then to set the mood here's the original opening cinematic.

And to repeat the previous policy: There is no reasonable expectation of spoiler protection for anything older than six months. You've been warned.

On Humbled Knee

We begin our adventure falsely accused of regicide, our allies apparently slain, and exiled from the rest of Eorzea. With naught but the clothes on our backs, we flee north to the borderlands surrounding the Holy See of Ishgard where we previously exposed a false Inquistor and prevented multiple noble families of Ishgard the disgrace of being branded as heretics. The commander of Camp Dragonhead is one such ally, through whom we are able to find refuge in the isolationist city-state by being declared Wards of his house.

Upon arrival and being sequestered in the manor of House Fortempts, we establish an operational headquarters as we go about accessing our situation and repaying our hospitality using the only assets at our disposal: our skills at arms and the gear we carried. Due to aiding our patrons in their affairs we begins our involvement in earnest with Ishgard's thousand-year war with the dragons of the Dravianian Highlands, a holy war of total extinction.

A Narrative Challenged

After some initial (mis)adventures that see us being acquainted with the rest of Ishgard's borderlands, and the catastrophic climate change wrought by the recent Calamity (fertile farmlands instantly reduced to arctic wastelands), we find again a previous antagonist: the heretic cult priestess Lady Iceheart. After putting down a band of bandits tied to her, we chase her down back to her lair where we see her cultists ingest dragonblood and transform into dragons before us- something heretofore believed impossible.

Reporting this back results first in a concerted attempt to hunt her down, which succeeds but not before Iceheart challenges the Holy See's dogma on the Dragonsong War by telling us parts heretofore left out. As this goes on, we also encounter the severe class divide between Noble and Commoner in Ishgard--akin to pre-Revolutionary France; the Elezen are all but psuedo-French as it is, so it fits--and we end up getting involved in this also via meeting a bastard daughter of a nobleman turned revolutionary leader. These two threads come together when we get Iceheart to commit to a path of peace to end the war, a move that theatens Ishgard's status quo and prompts poltical fuckery to preserve it.

The move to seek a peaceful end to the war threatens the status quo because it threatens Ishgard's religious establishment. While you go along with the plan, and you even win the grudging support of Ishgard's best dragonslayer--Estinian, the Azure Dragoon (the one in the video)--to do it, the reality is that the entire situation is the result of yet more strategic fuckery by the Ascians who have the ear of the Archbishop himself.

While you travel with Iceheart and Estinian--who bicker like a married couple--to parley with the dragons, the Holy See via the Ascians plots to end the war to its satisfaction via summoning a primal more powerful than the most powerful of dragons. Given that this includes the dragon Bahamut (and its primal copy), that's a powerful one indeed, and due to the amount of ether required first to summon it and then to sustain it the raw chaos this portends pleases the Ascians greatly.

The conflict comes to a head after the truth of the Dragonsong War's origins is revealed: the Elezen were allowed to stay in Dragon lands due to the love afffair between an Elf girl (Shiva) and an elder dragon (Hrafsvlagr), and some generations of elves hence King Thordan conspired to kill the dragon Rathosfar for the magic power in her eyes; this murder--and it was murder--enraged her mate Niddhog who also lost both of his eyes to them in his quest for vengeance that turned into a bloodoath of extinction upon the elves of what is now Ishgard.

Iceheart, who believed herself Shiva reborn, is revealed as being delusional by Hrafsvlagr; the Primal Shiva she summons using her own body as a vessel is just mythical self-insert fanfiction and not the real thing. Her own paradigm shattered, as her moral presumption is destroyed, so she ceases any resistence to peace thereafter; the revelation on Primal summoning comes back later two fold as we end this journey in an Allagan facility in the clouds, Alyz Lla. First, we see the Archbishop and his Heaven's Ward knights take up the forms of King Thordan and his Knights of the Round in Primal form using the Eyes of Niddhog--and soon thereafter the souls of their Ascian allies, whom they backstab--to fuel this transformation. This leads to the conclusion of Heavensward's release story, which is this fantastic fight.

Change Ain't Easy

The patches between release and the prelude to Stormblood focus on the logical follow-ups to the story. Change is resisted on both sides, despite the calmer heads slowly prevailing. The late Archbishop's supporters attempt to sabotage peace talks multiple times, once using hostages in an obvious terror attack, while the Primal shade of Niddhog--using Estinien as it vessel--keeps trying to renew the war from without. You put a stop to both threats, with plenty of help, and you end up rescuing Estinien in one of the most daring feats of both martial and moral valor in a videogame I've seen in a long time.

There is one other narrative thread put down here, but you don't see it pay off until Shadowbringers, and that concerns the Warriors of Darkness. The TLDR here is that they were Warriors of Light from a parallel world that won the fights but lost the war; an overwhelming tidal wave of Light threatens to scour their world clean of all life due to their actions against all agents of Darkness, which will in turn make their world turn into Literal Hell due to collapsing into a void (think like falling into the Warp in 40K), so they came here to provoke you into fighting them so they could destroy you and thus this world to save their own- or so the Ascians they deal with said. Urianger gets a Magnificent Bastard moment here that is well worth the experience, and sets him up for his Job Change down the road.

Finally, the last thread is the prelude to Stormblood, where the Ala Mhigo Resistance gets a hold of the Eyes of Niddhog and uses them at the end of a very risky gambit to trick the Eorzean city-states into looking like they're invading Garlean Empire territory. This works far too well and forces that very war to go down- and a new Republican Ishgard joins the war effort.

And Now, Gameplay

Three new Jobs join the game here: Dark Knight (a tank, wielding a two-handed sword and wearing plate armor; shares gear with Warrior and Paladin), Astrologian (a healer, sharing some gear with Scholar, with a astrology theme), and Machinst (a ranged DPS, using a gun and robot drones, sharing gear with Bard and the later Dancer Job). All are unlocked in Ishgard, so you need to hit 50 on another Job first, but start at 30; don't sweat this, as leveling alternative Jobs is pretty fast, especially now.

Each of these Jobs has their own Job Quest series and a story to go with it. Astrologian's story is one of getting Ishgard to accept Sharlayan Astrologian practice as valid. Dark Knight is about coming to terms with yourself as the Warrior of Light. Machinist is a class struggle story of Noble vs. Common and Old vs. New. Dark Knight's story is widely regarded as one of the best in the game due to it being very focuses on a theme that is difficult to do in videogames without screwing it up, so even if you're not into playing a tank it's worth doing for the narrative experience. The other two are take-or-leave.

As for how each Job plays, Dark Knight is one of the easiest tanks in the game to play at all levels and thus is both in supply and in demand. Astrologian takes some time to get up to speed because of the RNG factor in how the cards work, but as a healer it is solid after level 50 and workable below that if your tank isn't a moron. Machinst is solid but has no group utility, so you have to be solid in your performance to be appreciated in larger groups over Bards, Dancers, and Red Mages in particular that do bring utlity.

The new dungeons, raids, and Trials introduced in the game are likewise fantastic additions. Do go out of your way to unlock those that are not guaranteed to unlock during the Main Scenario Quest, such as the Void Arc and Alexander raids at 60, because some long-term narrative threads are only seen here and not in the main scenario- some of which are actually rooted in A Realm Reborn (as Void Arc is; rooted in Amdapor Keep and Lost City of Amdapor). The mechanics seen in these instances do incorporate mechanics that were only see in ARR endgame instances heretofore, so they can surprise you, as they did me in The Great Gubal Library and its recycling of Hard Amdapor Keep's Demon Wall boss.

Flight works differently in the game starting in this expansion. Rather than reach the expansion's level cap, you have to attune to a series of ether currents in each zone; if you do so, you unlock fight for that zone only, and as each zone is at least twice the size of any ARR zone--with a much higher ceiling--you'll want it sooner than later and you will appreciate it as you level alternative Jobs through these zones.

Each Job in the game does get new abilities, and some get passive upgrades to existing ones, and the new endgame activity is Idyleshire--you'll stop by here during the 3.0 story--and while Ishgard has no residential district now it will after Endwalker launches so you want to unlock access to the Ishgard Restoration as soon as you hit L60 because that will grant you access to the district.

Conclusion

Heavensward took the promise of ARR and fulfilled on that promise. It is a fantastic RPG experience with a solid MMO experience, and many rightly praise this as being the best thing in MMORPGs (prior to Shadowbringers). If you are on the Free Trial, you have access to everything here as soon as you reach Level 60 and can get access to most of it as soon as you do the introduction sequence. If you weren't that keen on ARR, stick it out and get to Ishgard; this is worth the effort and a lot of doubters turned around due to this expansion.

Due to the massive flood of new players, you won't have any problems finding groups to do stuff, be it in random queues or with premade groups, even though this expansion and what it offers is several years old now. This is due to the game's design having evergreen longevity backed into it, making certain that nothing introduced is ever trashed and thus rendered irrelevant. Your tine spent here will be enjoyable. However, if you cannot stand how the game plays then this expansion does nothing for you.

Heavensward: 10/10

Postscript: I will talk about the narrative itself at the Study later this week.