I arrived a stranger in Norvrandt, but I left as one of their own as even the simplest quests drew me in and made me truly care about the story being told there. There might be some awkward job balancing changes here and there, but the fumbles are never enough to take away from how magnificent this expansion is as a whole. Shadowbringers weaves such a beautiful tale that it's tough not to gush about each and every strand of it individually. What We Thought About Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers And although you have the option to skip over some of Endwalker's cutscenes, I have to wonder why you're really playing FFXIV in the first place if you do. The best storylines of its competitors often earn damning praise along the lines of "It's good for an MMO," but Final Fantasy XIV – especially in its latest expansions – manages to deliver an ongoing story that even outclasses many stellar single-player games. It's such a flex because no other MMORPG could pull this off so successfully. While this might sound excessive on paper, it actually largely works in practice.
The total running time of these cutscenes already outpaces entire seasons of some popular TV shows, and now, at level 88, I get the feeling that I'm not even halfway done with the story. Frankly, I've spent most of the last two days sitting through cutscenes – I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I probably only went into combat around 15 times from levels 80 to 83 aside from my daily dungeon roulettes, and even then I was usually only tasked with dispatching a handful of popup enemies on my way to somewhere else. Square Enix seems to have interpreted Shadowbringers' success as proof that its players are interested in a good story above all else, and it shows in Endwalker.
(I currently hesitate to say it surpasses it just yet, although several members of my free company have no qualms about making such claims.) Frankly, I've spent most of the last two days sitting through cutscenes. 2019's Shadowbringers expansion definitively proved that FFXIV deserves to be taken as seriously as any mainline Final Fantasy game, and from what I've seen of Endwalker's story so far, it's well on track to be Shadowbringers' equal. No regrets.Īt least it's easy to see why so many people are scrambling to log on. I thought about logging off then just so I could get video footage of that number for the final review but decided against it. Afterward, I managed to log on while the queue was still at a relatively agreeable 2,000, but some members of my free company (or "guild," if you prefer) had to wade through an 8,500-person queue for hours. I log on early and play late, so the worst I've seen for my home server of Ultros is around 1,500, save for one incident when the whole server briefly went down at prime time. (But let's not jump to that conclusion just yet: I'm still burned by Season 8 of Game of Thrones.) I do wish I were a little farther along, but Square Enix's decision to delay the official launch of Endwalker, combined with conflicts in my own holiday schedule, means I still have a lot of walking to do before I reach the end of my leveling journey.īy some measures I certainly could have been further behind, but luckily I’ve dodged most of the stunningly long queue times that have been shared recently on social media. Having gasped, cried, and laughed my way through much of the main quest, I'm ready to believe I'll still be saying all those hours were worth it when I reach Endwalker's conclusion sometime this weekend.
Somehow, Final Fantasy XIV only continues to get better after its 2013 reboot, and the stories I've witnessed over the last two days do much to justify the eight years I've spent with Eorzea's merry band of adventurers. It was all worth it." I’m maybe halfway through Endwalker's story and at level 88 out of the new level cap of 90 so far, but that's about how I'm feeling right now, too. Trembling with emotion, she says through tears, "It was worth it. In the early hours of Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion, Endwalker, a character listens to a tale of the many ordeals her friends had gone through while she was away.