In Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, when it launched, I was impressed, but not... overwhelmed. While leveling I got stuck in a very, very long queue for a dungeon that when I had attempted it, I failed, and I then had to move on to other things. Coming back to it, I'm shock and surprised at the almost night and day difference compared to launch, on a game that at launch was a night and day difference to the original launch of the game. FFXIV is something of legends in my mind now, for the various mechanics in play, and for that reason and considering I'm just at the actual content of the game, I think its fair to go over what most players have to go through to even access the expansion.

The Road to the Expansion

This isn't specifically related to Heavensward, but it's probably very relevant to you if you at any point never finished ARR. One of the very satisfying parts of FFXIV is that it is all a training simulator for the endgame. It approaches attunements and content gating in a smart and elliquent way. If you care at all about playing Heavensward and / or finishing the story, then you'll be forced throughout your career to enter dungeon after dungeon, with each one teaching new raid mechanics.

At the very end of the 2.0 story, you're faced with a trial that introduces advanced boss fight mechanics, followed by two 8-player dungeons that act as an introduction to raiding. They're easy mode enough that you can bumble through them slowly with any group of players and make it through, but hard enough to teach the lesson of what you need to do. This content is not avoidable. There is no skipping it. You can not reach level 60 without completing it. There is no way.

You must do the dungeons if you want to level easily and if you want to access any content. Imagine, if you will, that WoW required you to do the dungeons as you leveled and put a very convincing story spin on each to really engage you. You had to do these dungeons. They were required. You had some easy tools to do it, a dungeon finder, and they slowly got more difficult, and experienced players are lured into doing the dungeons for their own personal reward, so it's not impossible, but you still need to go through it.

This is the beauty of the game, that each player who plays, understands what the endgame is and there is no vagueness about it.

The New Jobs

Three new jobs were added, not to be confused with classes, each one of the primary roles (tank, healer, DPS). So far I've seen that they're fun additions to the game and more importantly encourage players to have something to switch off to. One of the glorious things about FFXIV is how easy it is to switch classes and jobs around, but you do have to level each of them up. These classes start at level 30 and are very easy to obtain, many players choosing to start over (at level 30) and play through the game again.

The interesting thing is that this is really helpful for a lot of new players, as experienced veterans are running old content even more so than with just the duty roulette, since one of the methods of leveling is grinding dungeons. This is a boon for players picking the game up for Heavensward.

New Features - Flying

My time with flying is limited, but fun, working in the traditional method. What I'm excited is to try it on console, as soon as I can get one of my own characters up to that point in the story and attuned. I want to try the game on the console, but I'll have to wait a bit more.

Closing Statement

Most of my time so far has been doing content I didn't play through because I had to move on to other things, but now that I've gone back, I can say that it's beautiful, well made, and for many this will be their Heavensward experience. I enjoyed it a lot and, if you're interested in playing, I ever so suggest you do. I can't offer a review or strong opinion about the expansion as a whole, but where I'm at so far, I am very much happy with the game, happy enough to put a good solid 12 hours a day in.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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