Heavensward does a lot better job of following character stories and creating a cohesive theme than ARR. The theme of Heavensward is vengeance, specifically, how does vengeance and animosity take different shapes. Then, how do we adapt to those different shapes of animosity, if we do at all? Its a bit trite for a video game narrative, but with the charisma of the cast it distinguishes itself enough. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it necessarily succeeds in saying anything interesting about its themes despite having entertaining characters.

Vengeance is fought between the dragons and Ishgardians after a war lasting a hundred years. Through the protagonist's journey to end the way, they find that it was the Ishgardians who betrayed the dragon's trust and violently pillaged their corpses for power. This leads to a long narrative of one of the main characters committing patricide in order to work towards a new order in Ishgard. Here, Heavensward wants to believe that a nation can change despite its history of blood and hate. However, Heavensward believes that nobles will always be first to make that change, and it only takes friends...and a change of heart.

The lower class people of Ishgard are never given a proper amount of time for the Ishgardian revolution to become truly meaningful. There is a moment where a small group is given a story which feels ignored by the nobles of the nation. However, this is only quelled by a fun tournament battle and a single sentence recognizing their pain. The equivalent of populist political leaders who only speak to the pain of its majority population, but does nothing to heal or help it.

This is my biggest problem with Heavensward, and it doesn't take away from how fun so much of the expansion is. This is especially true because Final Fantasy XIV has always glorified the bourgeoisie and empire . Why would an expansion suddenly change that?

There are some boss fights where my jaw was dropped because of the maximalism of the setpieces. And in typical FFXIV fashion, a lot of the story is agonizingly stretched out with quests. Nevertheless, its still the most fun I have had playing an MMO. I just hope it gets better!

It's amazing how much better this is compared to ARR, it feels like a reward for getting through that slog fest.

Here, the narrative is more urgent and the action is tight-packed, thankfully. The characters are allowed to be characters, and not lore dumps. They have clear motivations and their flaws are more apparent, allowing us to relate to them in a way that was not possible before. Even your Warrior of Light gets a semblance of a personality.

The classes also open up with new abilities and builds, which makes duty rolette-ing much more fun.

All in all, every Final Fantasy and RPG fan should play this at least once in their lives so those stupid french elves can make them cry their eyes out. This totally didn't happen.

big step up over ARR. but was disappointed it wasn't more markedly different, it's not exactly as risky as I hoped, both narratively and mechanically. still, i blasted through the Heavensward MSQ content (3.0, not 3.x) in roughly 10% of the time it took me to do ARR, so. i didn't not have fun.

month long gap between ARR and this because i spent a couple weeks leveling up a few alts bc I got a little tired of WHM (or rather, healing stresses me out, and i enjoy the stress, but i wanted something a bit less stressful for my first time thru stuff) and then a couple weeks off because I was annoyed they were making me do the crystal tower (which i ended up healing, actually, and it was kind of fun, and very easy. i just didnt wanna do it.) HW itself took me like a week....

(Review written right before the drop of patch 5.3, will be updated)

It comes as a great surprise to me, that an MMO I really didn't expect to enjoy that much over half a year ago now delivers me one of my favorite stories in video games. Heavensward immediately takes the lessons learned from A Realm Reborn and goes absolutely all-in, both the gameplay and the story reach new peaks that eclipse anything A Realm Reborn was able to put out in its patch content.

The story comes first, while certainly beholden to a lot of early first halfish pacing issues and trashy sideplots (especially a really disappointing end to a story started in Ul'Dah), once it hits it throws an absolute flurry of extremely quality punches. The themes of past conflicts, both in understanding that past and learning to move on, righting the wrongs and searching for a lasting peace, are front and center and explored gloriously. Even when the story continues to the patch content, it showcases genuine understanding in the difficult turmoil a nation faces when working through revolution that turns said nation on its head. Characters especially are fantastic, from Estinien's hatred that works in parallel to Nidhogg's own, to Alphinaud's gamewide character arc that stands resolute.

And the moments keep coming, up to the Final Steps of Faith the cutscenes proudly demonstrate excellent emotional moments and writing peaks as a whole. While it never actually reaches something of say, a "best work of all time" kind of status, its highs are still something I think about far after they've happened. Even the new Job quests benefit from a jump in writing quality, with especially the Dark Knight questline being an absolute treat.

The gameplay has improved too, with far more interesting rotations to juggle between all the new instances. Even the Main Questline combat is a bit more involved than it used to, although still not generally satisfying or fun to engage in (bar a couple exceptions). But dungeons are above decent on average now, with certain dungeon bosses being wipe-testers of sorts. Every single trial is a visual spectacle as well as an incredible fight on their own, including the MSQ trials and the Warring Triad. Again, I have to give props to Final Steps of Faith for being the culmination of everything that came before. The raid content this time around still ends up being half and half unfortunately, with item level creep and mechanical changes leaving the vast majority of said content pitifully easy (at least it's synced roulettes now though). The spectacle up till near the end isn't as special as Bahamut's either. That being said, the final turns of Alexander still ended up great with some genuine challenge.

The soundtrack and general aesthetic of Heavensward are also exemplary, with songs like Dragonsong being mainstays, and areas like the Sea of Clouds and Azys Lla especially being awe-strucking at points. Being able to fly around helps too, and getting said ability to fly isn't tedious at all in my experience, with every Aether Current you need to find to unlock flying in any particular area being literally right next to story objectives or side quest objectives.

Side stories this time around are kind of underwhelming unfortunately. Hildibrand is still funny here but not nearly as comical as ARR's did, and Scholasticate is neat but not something anyone should do at once without getting bored.

Even still, I left Heavensward giddy and having a tremendous time overall, and I wholeheartedly recommend playing FFXIV for it, especially now that it will be FREE with the next patch.

Also, Ser Aymeric is my husband and nobody else can have him. I will literally murder any nay-sayers.

(Ending disclaimer: I have yet to play all classes with their 50-60 rotations, and can only speak of a few. Review will update as needed when I go back to do that content.)

It's a pity I haven't write this the day I've completed it, because the feeling is much different then than now that I've completed all the expansions of FFXIV.

This is my least fav expansion, and not because it's bad (I really liked the final boss and the Dragonsong story), but the following ones are so good that it deminish the perception that I have on this one.

Still, I can't imagine such a big MMORPG with this kind of story. It's like playing a main FFXIV, which it is, but being a MMORPG I have some... issues with the genre's general storys that they put on them.

Anyways, I LOVE how this introduces so many things on the base experience. You'll have BETTER content the more you play. You'll have reasons to play day after day. And that's why I keep playing it.