# 46 - Final Fantasy XIV Online - PC
A Realm Reborn / Heavensward / Stormblood
I'm just going to ramble on some of my impressions on this game since I haven't done that anywhere else. So ignore the wall of text.
Final Fantasy XIV Online is a weird game that in a lot of ways I shouldn't like as much as I do right, yet it clicks with me anyways.
As of right now I have finished A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood's Main Story, not the Interlude that leads into Shadowbringers. And I have gotten a similar amount of enjoyment out of those 3 scenarios.
A Realm Reborn strikes the best feeling of an adventure, and the Multiplayer part of the MMO, all the different regions you explore, all the smaller story beats you do, like going into a haunted mansion, fighting the sirens on the shore of a distant islands in the middle of getting prepared for fighting Garuda, there is a lot of set pieces like those that make ARR a really enjoyable adventure, like yes the start is pretty slow, but there is always a slow part even in the future expansions, it also has the bigger amount of dungeons and boss fights, which makes it so you engage in that multiplayer aspect a lot more, and the stretch from the attack on the waking sands all the way to the ultima weapon is honestly amazing, Cid is a great character, and the focus on Coerthas in that strecht of the main story is something that helps Heavensward be so good in its story. It also has my favorite areas in terms of scope, they are big enough to have a sense of place in the world, but don't drag and you move to a new location quickly enough. Also the Crystal Tower is *chef kiss*
Heavensward has the best story, is focused less on just the adventure, and more so on the characters, Estinien, Alphinaud, and Ysayle were all pretty good, it also has some of the best locations in the game especially in the later half, but they are dragged down a bit by the level design, the pacing also can be weird, the whole build up of Hraesvelgr is amazing but the pay off doesn't really happen until the interlude, which can make part of the journey up to him lose a bit of its weight, but it manages to deliver anyways, the Interlude is where the expansion is at its best, the Dragonsong War and the Warriors of Darkness storylines are fantastic. The Void Arc raid is the highlight of the Interlude side scenarios.
Stormblood is the best expansion in terms of gameplay, the level design is better than Heavensward, is expansive but the design makes more sense in terms of the pacing of the quests and how you get to things like aether currents, the verticality is less annoying than in the Heavensward areas, it has the best set of boss fights, the Omega Raid is amazing, the gameplay gimmicks in some of the single player instances are a neat addition, it overall feels the best in terms of the gameplay, the story takes some hits, it has the elements to be as good as Heavensward, but there are some odd omissions, like the lack of an Y'shtola moment before the ending, or the lack of use of the underwater town, even if the Hisui and Kurenai side story there was cute. Also love Lyse, Hien, and Yotsuyu.
The really annoying part of the story so far is the abuse of the Nidhogg eyes, tho I do appreciate that villains while the game tries to make them sympathetic, they also allow me to just not give a shit and feel super satisfied from beating them, cause honestly by the time they try to make me feel bad for them, they do too much bad in the game for me to even care the Warriors of Darkness were well done in terms of being sympathetic tho, those are cool.
Now the actual best part of the game are the Hildibrand quests, which is why Shadowbringers probably won't be that good.
I love the world of Eorzea, like it feels like a nice combination of the older FF games with some Ivalice thrown in, and that is just my shit. The music is pretty good, it ranges from some really incredible tunes to at its worst a solid tune that fits the moment or area, tho I do appreciate a lot the fact that it heavily uses a couple of main motifs across each expansion. Honestly the only jarring parts of it is some of the 2nd phases themes like Shiva and Leviathan, the shift in genre doesn't really land well with me, even if in isolation I don't dislike the tracks themselves.
The gameplay systems are obviously at their best when you have party members, either it being other people in the multiplayer instances, or single player instances that give you party members, bosses as the game goes on even have a sort of bullet hell feel to them with all the AoE attacks they do which is super fun, but in contrast most of the normal enemy encounters aren't the most fun thing out there, they are also not really encouraged to do unless you are doing a quest because the EXP drops are pretty crap compared to a main scenario quest rewards, fetch quests are also not incentiviced unless you are just cleaning up the area because the rewards are not great, sometimes there is something cool like an emote, or an accessory but they are very few in relation to the amount of them that exist in the game. As the game is designed as of now, since I'm going to assume there was probably some rebalancing done so players could get through the main scenario at a fast enough pace, there is very little reason to do much beyond the main story, and the + sign side quests for an extrinsic reward. I like the Jobs of the Hand, especially the more you level up, the more fun it becomes as a minigame, Jobs of the Land on the other hand are too cumbersome, since you have to keep changing to that job to have something to do, if those jobs were something always equipped it would make it so the world will always have something eye catching for you to go do something off the beaten path, oh I see a mining thing or a harvest point, while also being engaged into maybe fighting an enemy or bumping into a FATE next. The world itself while cool, it could do with more FATEs spread throughout, so the world always has something to look forward to, cause there is a lot of cool areas, but since there isn't a quest or FATE active at times, then is just an empty spot that just looks really cool a lot of the times, and if there aren't many players around, then the harder more fun FATEs aren't good to engage with because you need more players to realistically get through them.
On the other hand, while in concept it would some like a boring drag to get through, in execution the slow build up of getting people in a town to trust you, doing a bunch of little quests that all culminate in a cool setpiece makes it all worth it, after hours of helping out different characters across the whole of Stormblood, that invasion to Doma Castle feels like the most satisfying thing ever, is so fucking good.
The game might get higher on my list later on or not, still got Shadowbringers and Endwalker to go through, plus is a pretty recent game I have played that has a lot of elements that I still have to think about, but as a whole it has been a worthwhile, special experience.
7/10
