Heavensward is the best story that Final Fantasy has ever told. Later expansions had great stories, too, but Heavensward immediately established a bar for FFXIV that it could never quite live up to. Every inch of the story is etched with meaning. The emotional burden placed upon the player in its first moments - trudging across a long bridge through the cold to reach solace in an unfamiliar land in the north. The way that Ishgard as a setting is fleshed out in every bare detail, such that the player can't help but come to call it home, even as the rot at its core is laid bare. The desperation inherent to the narrative, both that of the player character and their friends and that of the two nations at the story's heart. The way that the weight of millennia bears down upon you. Heavensward is a story about history; about the sins of our fathers; about love and loss; about holding on and letting go. There is much great storytelling in FFXIV after this point, but there is nothing else quite like all the quiet beauty of Heavensward: A calm moment around a campfire in Dravania. A push into the blinding snow of Coerthas, wind against your face. A small shared moment of resolution between two friends who have lost so much; a promise to never see another comrade fall. A last smile given to a dying friend. Many stories in Final Fantasy - and in FFXIV - are great in aggregate. Heavensward is great in aggregate, too, but its power lies in the thunderous emotion it conjures in every little moment.

Heavensward is also the best expansion that Final Fantasy XIV has ever had. This was FFXIV at the height of its creativity. Combat was still wonky and weird and dynamic like ARR before it, but increasingly complex and precise like what would come after. This was when the game's nascent raiding scene first exploded into something really worth paying attention to. It was when fight design managed to hit a point between weird uniqueness and consistent intuitiveness. The era of caster Bard and Ninja venoms and Cleric Stance dancing and Summoner rotations that require a dissertation to explain. It was FFXIV at its most intricate and layered, and ultimately at its most self-actualized.

Heavensward wasn't perfect, but it was what Final Fantasy XIV was meant to be - the truest expression of its core ideas.