FF14: Endwalker in review – You can’t buy it right now, but you should

 

Final Fantasy 14’s servers are overrun on release. The test explains why people are queuing up for Endwalker.

The new Final Fantasy 14 add-on, Endwalker, was launched into Early Access on 3 December with bangs, trumpets and overflowing servers. In the past few months, the MMORPG experienced an unexpected upswing that repeatedly pushed its server capacities to the limit – which finally culminated in a sales stop.

So if you haven’t bought the main game yet, you can’t play Endwalker at all. And even if you bought the game in time or are not affected by the sales suspension as an owner of the original, this test starts with a warning for you. Because before you can enjoy the latest FF14 add-on, you’ll have to work really hard. But the reward is an emotional rollercoaster built over ten years.

 

Endwalker is the most important addon for FF14

On the gameplay level, Endwalker doesn’t differ much from the usual pattern of MMORPG addons. It brings a lot of new content for all types of players, with some of the new content being slightly delayed. The following content was added with Endwalker:

• Level increase from 80 to 90 with new abilities for the combat jobs

• Six new areas with quests, hunting monsters and level activities

• Two new jobs: Reaper (DD) and Sage (Healer)

• Eight new dungeons

• New Resources and Recipes for Gatherers and Crafters

In the next few weeks, four boss fights of the new raid Pandaemonium will also be released in “Norma “l and “Epic” and a fun dungeon where players can earn money and cosmetic items.

The free sequel patches with new content usually come at intervals of about three and a half to four months in FF14. They continue the story and promise new dungeons, raids as well as further content.

The MMORPG is fully playable in German and the cutscenes also have German dubbing. It’s a solid amount of content that will easily bring 100+ hours of gameplay. So basically a seemingly normal addon. The special thing about Endwalker, though, is that it’s the grand finale of a story that started ten years ago.

You can compare Endwalker to the final season of a TV series. The story and characters were built up over years. The characters went through changes and suffered from events just like on TV, but with the difference that the player was always a part of it and played a central role in the story.

That’s why it was extremely important for the FF14 team not to screw up Endwalker. It was supposed to be the grand spectacular finale that clears up the last lore issues, gives players a satisfying conclusion, but at the same time paves the way for something new.

What they delivered is a story experience accompanied by a top-notch soundtrack that left countless players in tears and made Endwalker one of the top-rated games of 2021 on Metacritic (9.5 user score out of over 1,000 reviews). Only it comes with a problem: you won’t be able to play Endwalker for a very long time. But let’s start from the beginning in the usual FF14 manner.

 

World like in a MMORPG, story like in a single player game

The premise in Endwalker is that the end of the world is (once again) upon us. And so you travel to the scholar city of Sharlayan with your NPC friends, who you have had by your side for many addons.

The goal is to gather information and find a way to stop the villains Fandaniel and his “master” and prevent them from destroying the world. The heroes, of course, face various obstacles that they have to overcome together with Y’shtola, Thancred, Estinien and so on.

If you don’t have a clue who all these people are, it’s no wonder. Getting into the latest addon without any prior knowledge is a bit like being thrust into the fourth season of Lost and having to figure out what’s going on.

The story of Endwalker builds on the events of the base game A Realm Reborn and previous addons. At the heart of the action are the two gods Hydaelyn and Zodiark. Many millennia ago, the goddess Hydaelyn split her opponent into 14 shards in an epic battle and imprisoned him on the moon to prevent the end of the world.

As a result, the henchmen of Zodiark have made it their mission to return their master to his original power. Then, in classic villain fashion, they plunge the world into darkness.

Now, when you enter the world of FF14 as a new player, a seemingly terribly banal storyline starts. You are the chosen one with a special gift, only you can change the world blah blah blah. Many of you will probably switch off at this point and I can’t blame anyone for that. But that’s where the mistake lies, because FF14 should be treated more like a single player RPG.

Solo in an MMORPG? You got it

FF14 plays almost entirely like a single player game during the story quests and is more reminiscent of classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy 9, Xenogears or Lufia. If you don’t want to, you almost never have to interact with other people. Group play is forced upon you a total of only two times in Endwalker. Most instances can be done in the company of NPCs.

You also appear like this in the cutscenes, alone or together with NPCs. Because you are the heroes of this story and it makes every effort to make you feel that way. The NPCs care about you, go for walks with you and also stand by you in battles. In this way, you build up a relationship with the characters that is normally only known from story-heavy single-player games.

In general, the characters and specifically your game character get a lot of focus. Endwalker is the climax of your journey and explains exactly why you are “the great chosen one”. And Endwalker does this in a believable way without the over-the-top pathos of being so terribly “special. ”

 

Of war crimes, nihilism and cat girls

The story is also far less predictable than one might initially think, with several surprising twists taking place that continually challenge the players’ established ways of thinking about the world and themselves

Here’s an example that doesn’t give away any concrete details, but which we’ve nevertheless packed as a spoiler for safety’s sake, in case you really want to jump into the game without any prior knowledge at all:

Warning: the following paragraph contains spoilers

“Since the release of the failed version 1.0, the Empire of Garlemald has served as the storybook villain in FF14. They are the conquerors, they enslave other peoples, exploit them and do a whole lot of other muhaha bad guy things. This thinking has been ingrained in players’ minds over many patches.

But now, in Endwalker, you enter the capital of Garlemald for the first time and once again experience a stark change of perspective. You experience in your own skin how exactly the inhabitants of the empire see you, the player.

And this can be a really painful experience, because the self-righteous conviction that the player is one of the good guys is strongly questioned. To the Imperials, you are a war criminal, an overpowered monster with nothing human about you. That’s what FF14 does, until at some point the division into the “good guys” or “bad guys” completely dissolves, leaving only characters with their own motivations, reasons, and varying amounts of blood on their hands.”

This example is also meant to illustrate that FF14’s story is much darker and, more importantly, more layered than one might think. To get to these very gruesome themes, you have to wade through prefaced colourful designs and cat girls, which can be off-putting to fans of serious and in-depth storylines.

But the beautiful façade is eventually shattered by the developers with a sledgehammer. What emerges are nuances and a depth that players of modern MMORPGs are often not used to. The main theme of Endwalker fits this like a glove.

Do we even deserve to exist?

In the latest add-on, the developers go one step further and question life itself. With the amount of suffering that happens in the world every day, one wonders: Why is life worth living at all? How does one “earn” the right to exist?

This sounds like philosophy and heavy fare, but it is brought to the players by Endwalker in a way that makes it easy for them to understand. Because the developers use everyday situations as a projection screen: a nice dinner together with friends, a fight with parents or the confession of a white lie.

As a result, when I played, I could empathise with many situations and understand why the characters acted the way they did. I felt joy and anger along with them. Big questions, like the meaning of life, suddenly felt very personal because I can transfer them to my everyday life.

In the process, the add-on’s plot repeatedly draws on events from the basic game, the earlier expansions and even the failed version 1.0 and presents them in a completely new light. Song lyrics or quotes written ten years ago suddenly take on a new meaning and you understand them much better.

Those who have played through the entire story of FF14 will experience big “AHA!” moments again and again, when the scales fall from your eyes.

A feast for the eyes and ears

As usual, the journey through the Endwalker add-on begins in one of the old areas and gradually leads you into the new landscapes. You strictly follow the story quest, which tells you exactly where you have to be at what time. New areas only open up when you have progressed far enough in the story.

The new areas convince with visual diversity, atmosphere and saturated colours. But of course this is all based on a ten-year-old graphics engine. And so the textures in FF14 cannot keep up with modern MMORPGs like New World or Black Desert Online. On the other hand, the developers have put all the more effort into the design of the areas.

The scholarly city of Sharlayan breathes the spirit of Greek antiquity, a piece of India can be found in the colourful Radz-at-Han and the dreary and gloomy Garlemald forms a strong contrast to the two cities.

The new dungeons are varied and take you through disgusting fleshy caverns, burning villages and other areas that I won’t spoil here. It’s also nice that you can complete these dungeons completely solo, giving you time to take a good look at everything.

Thanks to the trust system, you can take various NPCs from the story with you into the instances, who will then act as your party members. Although this feature is only available from Shadowbringers onwards, it makes the dungeons a lot more immersive and gives you plenty of time to look around.

It was also pleasing that I didn’t have to specifically grind at any point. The experience points you get from the story quests are mostly enough to give you a smooth leveling experience. Only every now and then did I do a leveling daily to fill up my XP bar a bit.

As has become tradition in FF14, the big boss fights are absolutely fantastically staged. The music in them is top notch and the effects get the most out of the MMORPG’s old tech.

Due to heavy spoilers, I won’t include screenshots here, but the boss fights are definitely a spectacle, giving you the epic feeling of defeating a really powerful enemy. I kept slipping out a “How cool is that, please?!” while playing and I also forgot to pay attention to the battle arena, which then resulted in some pretty embarrassing deaths.

Above all, however, the music of Endwalker is once again spectacular. The composer Masayoshi Soken has already done a very good job in the previous addons. In Endwalker, he takes the musical elements from before and reworks them. Just like the story of the addon does.

New Jobs for Connoisseurs

Also, I have already got around to testing the two new jobs Reaper (Reaper) and Sage (Sage) more extensively. They both have their own identity that sets them apart from other jobs and so far feel like a solid addition to the class kit.

• The Reaper is a melee DD who wields a scythe. He has a pet avatar that he can merge with for short periods of time. He’s fast, cool looking and, in avatar form, feels like he can take a lot of damage.

• The Sage is a shield healer who will complement the power healers White Mage or Astrologer in raid battles. He actively prevents damage with his shields, but has the unique mechanic in FF14 that he can heal other players (such as the tank) with his damage.

How the two new additions will perform in end-game raids remains to be seen. Basically, however, all combat jobs in FF14 are usable and if weaknesses in the balance become apparent, the developers will improve them with the next patch.

Final Fantasy 14 does not use a class structure with a skill tree like in other MMORPGs, instead you choose jobs. There are two new ones in Endwalker.

For now, players can expect two epic boss fights in the endgame, which drop weapons and accessories and serve as preparation for the raid in a few weeks. The raid will tell its own story and feature four bosses in normal and epic modes.

At this point, some of you may have noticed that I haven’t talked about PvP in FF14 at all. It’s because the big changes in it aren’t expected until around spring with patch 6.1.

 

Never Change a Running System

Since its relaunch in 2013, FF14 has strictly followed a certain pattern of updates. The addons also adhere to this structure, only they are a lot bigger than normal patches. Endwalker is one of them.

So if there are potential returnees among you and you’re hoping for big changes from Endwalker compared to previous addons, you’ll be disappointed. FF14 is just as formulaic now as it was before.

• Dungeons still consist of three bosses and a few trash mobs in between. Their difficulty level also continues to be negligible.
• There are three major test battles, two of which are in epic form.
• In the new areas, you can complete FATEs (Full Active Time Events), quests or hunting monsters to level up. You don’t have to hope for much variety in the quests beyond the normal “kill X monster, talk to person Y” pattern.
• With a few exceptions (Monk, Astrologer and Summoner), the jobs have seen little change. Most received some new abilities and a change in their cooldowns. Talent trees or similar do not exist in FF14.

• As always, the raid will bring four boss fights in normal and epic with the strongest equipment to date.
• The changes are happening more on a smaller level in FF14, and that is in the design of the instances and their gameplay mechanics.

 

The question of the barrier to entry

Is FF14 worth it for new players? Basically, I would answer the question with a “Yes, BUT …”. The yes part refers to the content structure of FF14. You don’t have to be afraid in the MMORPG that you can’t keep up with the veterans.

The game is structured in such a way that even old content from the base game A Realm Reborn and the old add-ons will continue to be used for the most part by players. This means that you will continue to find people even for a level 15 dungeon. The content is not dead.

That’s because of FF14’s clever daily system. It offers veterans fat XP bonuses and various currencies for running the old dungeons with you. This also applies to all the big boss fights, normal eight-player and 24-player raids, with the exception of Bahamut. You will always find a group to support you in this content.

The FF14 developers have also implemented a whole range of measures to make the start as pleasant as possible for newcomers.

New players are provided with a plant icon that identifies them as newcomers. This lets players in instances know that they should be considerate at the point if necessary.

In a special newbie chat, your questions will be answered by experienced players. You can also ask them in German and will always receive an answer.
At levels 50, 60 and 70, the game will give you an armour set with a matching item level to continue playing the instanced content. This ensures that you don’t have to grind for gear first.
Every odd patch (x.1, x.3, x.5) brings a raid that can be completed by non-hardcore players and serves as a catch-up mechanic. You can upgrade your armour there and thus prepare for the next patch or addon)).

So you can decide for yourself at what pace you play FF14. There’s no reason to rush to max level as quickly as possible, because there’s more than enough active content to keep you busy before that. But if you want to get to the current raiding endgame as quickly as possible, that’s also possible. That is up to you.

 

The roller coaster often begins with boredom

But before you can jump into the cool story, fun and diverse endgame, you have to get past the but part of my answer. Because that’s Final Fantasy 14’s one big weakness: the early game up to level 50 isn’t exactly exciting, to say the least. Logically: it’s ten-year-old content that hasn’t aged well.

As mentioned above, you have to start your journey in the base game A Realm Reborn at level 1. You will be carefully taken by the game by the hand and gradually introduced to the world and the game mechanics. So that nothing happens to you on the way and you don’t hurt yourself.

This means that, for example, you will only use three to five abilities for a long time in the battles with a global cooldown of two and a half seconds, making your “rotation” feel very monotonous and sluggish.

Also, the first dungeons are rather dull from a mechanical perspective: don’t stand in the red circle, click on the glowing thing, hit the boss. They are easy and quickly manageable. After all, they are designed so that even complete MMORPG newcomers can cope with them.  For experienced players or even MMO veterans, however, they will be ridiculously easy and accordingly will not provide a sense of achievement.

This is a problem that FF14’s much-vaunted story also suffers from. Before you get to the cool and emotional parts, you first have to make it through the build-up phase. And that drags on for many, many hours.

In A Realm Reborn, the black-and-white façade is built up, which the developers later tear down so effectively. You get your first understanding of how the world works:

• You learn who the political factions are within this world and how they relate to each other.

• The most important characters are introduced here. You learn who they are, what motivates them and what role they play within the story.

• You get the first glimpse of the different enemy factions and their goals

Short: It’s a lot of blah blah. Except that it is very important blah blah that is crucial to the entire rest of the plot leading up to the final addon, Endwalker. A large number of the characters introduced at the beginning return again and again and play an important role right into the new addon.

That’s why a new player can’t jump right into Endwalker and try out the cool, sparkly end-game content with others like they can in WoW or ESO. A Realm Reborn is the foundation on which the entire story construct of FF14 is built, and it’s better not to leave it out. Accordingly, it is a pity that it is so dryly presented in places.

In addition, there is very little voice-over and you have to read a lot. So you have to slog through hours and hours of texts and really slog in places until the story finally picks up speed (I mean you, Titan storyline).

I know you hear this from almost every MMO these days, so it seems like an empty promise: “After 100 hours it gets awesome!” A lot of people roll their eyes at this and think to themselves, “Yeah, sure, definitely!” But FF14 actually delivers on that promise.

 

Try FF14, but not now

FF14 is an MMORPG that evokes a wide range of emotions in players. It doesn’t stop at the classic feeling of triumph after defeating a boss. Players are sent on an emotional journey full of sadness, fear, disgust, anger, joy, powerlessness, relief and many other emotions.

The Endwalker add-on is undoubtedly the culmination of this journey, bringing all the strands together. It provides players with an emotionally and story-wise satisfying ending worthy of the decade-old story.

It should still be kept in mind that FF14 is a JRPG and, in terms of narrative style and humour, will not suit everyone accordingly. But it is definitely not the colourful and silly MMORPG that many perceive it to be.

The only problem is that you have to deal with the boredom of the base game beforehand. Even though there are players who like the beginning part, I think a warning at this point is more than fair. I would still advise anyone interested in a very morally grey story with no real good or evil to take a look at the free trial of FF14, because it …

• .. is unlimited in time.

• .. lets you try all jobs up to level 60.

• .. Provides access to all content from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward without exception.

But don’t do it right now. Because currently the trial version is temporarily unavailable. The FF14 team had to stop the sale shortly before the release of this test, because the servers of FF14 are bursting at the seams right now.

Active players sometimes have to sit in queues for hours until they finally get into the game. The players of the free test version will probably not even manage to create a character on the overcrowded servers. All players will therefore receive a total of 21 days of free game time. However, there will be no change in the ratios for the time being.

Trying to get into FF14 now can only end in frustration. So it’s better to wait until the situation around the servers has calmed down and just keep the MMORPG in the back of your mind until then. It could become your new online home.

 

Editor’s verdict

Although FF14 is indeed an MMORPG, I play it more like a single player JRPG with strong MMO elements. The gameplay of the game allows me to decide when I want to play alone and when I feel like group content. Accordingly, FF14’s story is one of the absolutely most important aspects of the game for me, even though I otherwise enjoy hardcore raiding. And with a story that took ten years to build, I was pretty worried that the developers wouldn’t live up to that expectation. As it turns out, my worry was unfounded.

Shadowbringers will remain my favourite add-on because it is crisper and more focused, but the finale of Endwalker left me satisfied. My questions were answered and I got the load of emotion I was hoping for from the cutscenes. It’s a story that makes you think, asks difficult questions and resolves them elegantly without following a classic good-and-evil pattern. On the gameplay level, the developers continue to follow the formula they established years ago. The stiff content structure may become boring and monotonous for some players in the long run, but it has not bothered me personally (so far).