Reviews from

in the past


fee fee kseev is finally good again
narratively does everything right, and being able to play as other characters with a very simplified hotbar is a cool idea

Wow this prelude really starts off strong. Drops a ton of interesting lore for the world, has an extremely strong hook for Shadowbringers, and had a pretty solid dungeon. Really looking forward to Shadowbringers now, moreso than I was before

9/10

Back to our regularly scheduled programming! I'm finally into the story again, and all the Shadowbringers setup is really interesting.

This review contains spoilers

Finally we begin to leave Stormblood behind and the story's messy and failed attempts at geopolitics. The most interesting part comes at the end, when we discover the origins of the Garlean empire.

Having the whole nation being an Ascian operation is sort of an elegant solution that allows the writers to move back to territory more fitting for a Final Fantasy game—the Empire is bad not because people can be cruel and genocidal, but because of supernaturally mean creatures. As weak as that premise is, it allows the story to focus on the fantasy elements, from which FFXIV seems to be able to derive better characters.