I’m honestly not sure what to write about Heavensward. As an expansion to an MMO, it does about what you’d expect it to do: it adds whole new, massive zones and flying mounts to traverse them, and it raises the level cap and jacks the experience curve up to make sure the ten new levels take about as long, or slightly longer, as the first fifty levels did. It adds new items and new crafting recipes and new gear and new dungeons and yadda yadda yadda.
It’s a well-built, well-designed expansion.
The issue I’m having here is that since the original launch of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the developers have been steadily adding sizable, free content updates every few months. To be sure, this is the first time an entirely new world map has been added, but all of the accompanying dungeons and trials and mechanics and world events and stuff are kind of obvious if you’ve played the standard game at all.
As the developers added content, all those months ago, they began toying with the various boss fights. Instead of every single fight just being a standard MMO experience, they began adding neat mechanics that can make or break a fight, but were mostly just fun ways to make a fight not boring at all.
For example: back in 2014, when A Realm Reborn updated to Patch 2.2, a new trial was added that pit you and your team up against Leviathan. The Leviathan fight itself took place on a massive floating barge, and as part of the fight the barge would get knocked about, sending people sliding back and forth across the deck.
In The Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard Mode) from Patch 2.4 , the final boss fight has mummies spawn and run across the arena, and if you get touched by them you also become a mummy, locked into running around as a mummy yourself until the effect wears off. It’s a fun mechanic you might not expect, and is genuinely amusing to see happen.
In The Steps of Faith, one of the last things players did before the expansion, you fight a massive dragon and as part of the fight two players from your party must utilize cannons to blow up monsters, and activate massive snaring chains to tie the dragon down so a third player can run up a huge tower to launch a ‘dragon killer’ ballitsa bolt to do big damage to the dragon — it has so much health that if you miss these once or twice you will probably fail the fight.
There are many other examples like this — SquareEnix seems to love playing around with oddball mechanics that keep each new encounter fresh. And while that’s incredible in a general sense, it leaves me at a loss with Heavensward. This trend was absolutely continued in the expansion, and for any new players coming to the game I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. For players already well acquainted with A Realm Reborn it feels like a logical, natural progression. Great? Absolutely. But not exciting.
So what does the expansion deliver to justify the price-tag? The new zones are massive, and mostly unique. Instead of being in either a forest, or a desert, or a plains area, there are winter wastelands, and floating islands, and dragon keeps, and giant ancient mechanical structures. There are flying mounts, and some of the old mounts were changed to (eventually) be able to fly as well. There’s a new race to play as.
There are two new hub cities, one an upward sprawl of towers and cathedrals and the other a goblin run ruin. There are three new jobs, one for each of the standard MMO role. There’s a handful of new dungeons, another handful of new trials, and the first raid of the expansion is set to come out in the next few weeks.
It carries the promise of continued updates and support, much in the same way A Realm Reborn did.
I think my actual issue is that SquareEnix has spoiled me. After almost two years of free, surprisingly robust content updates, to find out that their first expansion is a more intricate version of what they’ve already been doing has left me a little disappointed. Which, honestly, might be the best problem to have with an expansion. Despite some connectivity issues during the Early Access period, there hasn’t been a serious server issue since the official launch of the game. And it’s been fun.
It’s more Final Fantasy XIV, which is always welcome.
This review is based on a retail version of the Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward expansion, purchased by the reviewer.
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