Final Fantasy XIV

Creator	Square-Enix	Released	2010-
Medium	Video game [PC]	Misc.	Played up through patch 5.3

Synopsis

as final fantasy xiv is an ongoing and long-running mmorpg, it is difficult to concisely summarize--or to locate a concise summary of it because i'm a hack when it comes to summarizing things on my own. so, uh…i'm just going to forgo a synopsis here. 😔

Thoughts

[☆ Posted: May 1, 2023.]

SPOILERS WILL NOT BE TAGGED. EXPECT SPOILERS THROUGH PATCH 5.3.

if there ever was any meme i wish i could have smothered in the crib, it's the have you heard of the critically acclaimed mmorpg" one. beyond simply being annoying, the gross overhype it contributed to was a detriment to my time playing xiv.

because, uh…yeah…i feel pretty complicatedly about xiv.

i'm writing this now largely to put a cap on xiv for me. my friends are likely sick of my salt over certain aspects of the game, and despite how cathartic venting to someone else can be, writing a long ramble, i think, will let me lay this damn thing to rest finally. i want to make peace with the fact i think final fantasy xiv is mediocre in most regards.

"era, why are you being so dramatic about having an unpopular opinion?" because xiv is maybe one of the worst cases of "it gets better" and the moving goalposts for that i've experienced. i played up through patch 5.3 and put over 600 hours into the game. telling me now that it still has yet to get good is absurd. my opinion may not be popular, but i put in the time and effort to have some claim at least to my subjective thoughts.

going into xiv, my general perspective was not as a fan of mmos. i've never been an mmo person. the selling point for me with xiv was hearing that it was like a single-player jrpg slotted into an mmorpg. the much-lauded story of xiv was the draw. gaming, in a lot of ways, is a vehicle for immersive storytelling for me as i am placed closer to the action rather than existing as a passive viewer. there's a really unique perspective offered by art told in silico. the player character being a silent protagonist with dialogue you pick wasn't either a boon or a bane initially. crafting an mc versus playing as a fully formed character is a scale i lean towards the latter on, but i'm not averse to the former--it's just not much of a selling point for me. (with xiv, i ended up frustrated by the limited dialogue options if anything.) going by the fandom, it is a popular feature, and my goodness do people love their individual warrior of light. i won't lie: i am attached to my silly catgirl, and she was one of the few things that did have me saying i would play again at some point.

so, that's all to say: the mmo part was at best a nuisance to be tolerated for me because i wanted in on the scrumptious core of the story.

(not that i don't have gameplay opinions, but that's not the meat of my gripes.)

you know, i was going to have this be much less structured, but i'm writing off the cuff, and i think it'll be beneficial for me to break down this salt mine into subsections on the base game and expansions.

yeah.

that works.

i do just want to state firmly that i went in very positive on xiv. it would have likely been better if i went in expecting something more average, but…i probably wouldn't have been encouraged to give an mmo of all things a spin if not for the story's reputation.

A Realm Reborn

it's…average? hardly the worst thing i've ever played, but looking back on it, the fandom is pretty harsh on it in comparison to heavensward. i am not about to burst out in defense of arr and how it is unfairly maligned by the fanbase, but…it's not that bad. it's fine. lukewarm. average. the devs managed to slap together something mostly coherent and with decent build up while also rebooting the entire game. i respect the undertaking here.
i started in gridania as an archer--which was by far the best possible outcome for me! lyse and papalymo are the scions attached to gridania, and i was increasingly charmed by their antics. (lyse would go on to be my absolute favorite character!) the story was pretty basic in its build up to grander things that would lead my goofy catgirl to pray return to the waking sands. i'd been told to temper my expectations for arr, and it was decent enough for me.
while i went along with archer long enough to get the upgrade into bard, the long wait for a duty to pop for dps put me off staying with it sooo fast lol. after the first or second msq duties, i crawled over to conjurer and followed that into white mage. it was a temporary job until i could get to ishgard and claim my true love: astrologian. i don't really remember much about the job quest storylines for archer, conjurer, or white mage beyond the archer one involving catgirl racism.
there really isn't much to say in specifics about the story in arr. it's chief concern is getting you to bounce around and set foot in each new zone for 2.0. here's an excuse to go here! and an excuse to go here! something something primals doing a naughty, so go fix that, wol! the most egregious stretch is the rightfully maligned quests surrounding titan. if you know, you absolutely fucking know. a lot of it is inoffensive and does its job in a way that i'm content to shrug at and keep chugging along with because i've been promised that it improves by leaps and bounds.
in hindsight, one thing i wish the expansions kept from arr was there being a central hub you would return to and see your main supporting cast at. arr doesn't leverage it nearly as well as it could have, but it at least gave a try at building a group dynamic. past arr's patches, it never really returns in a meaningful way or fails to hit because that groundwork was never successfully laid.
i've been relatively kind in my assessment of arr, so let me slap on the table what is some comically bad writing. when "thancred" betrays the scions to the garleans, i was fucking baffled by the characters acting like that wasn't really thancred. it took looking at the journal for extra quest info for me to understand that apparently, ascians can possess the bodies of others! far as i could tell (and as far as my xiv-playing friend could tell), this never comes up prior in the story! but it's a major plot beat. comedic gold.
alphinaud is by far the best character at this stage in game. lyse ultimately usurped him as my number one fave, but alphinaud is excellent. i really enjoyed everything about him and his development. his whole goofy crystal braves and general bond with the wol hit for me. alphinaud is good. (i also have some fondness for the 2.0 dub cast and rather missed alphinaud's va from then!)
i have extremely little to say about the praetorium and gaius. it sure happens.
the finale for the arr patches slaps. that was fucking great. easily some of my favorite stuff in the game until that point, and heavensward was an actual letdown for me after how much i liked this series of events. great sense of stakes and shaking up the status quo. great stuff for fans of alphinaud angst. great stuff for fans of raubahn who is one of the best written npcs in the game. good stuff.
coils of bahamut was also excellent and really makes me wonder what the fuck happened with the crystal tower because that is abysmally written tbh.
Girl Watch

welcome to a special sub-subsection where i trace the trail of my increasing salt at how xiv writes a lot of its major female characters. there won't be much here for arr, but oh boy! oh boy .
i like minfilia! she was nothing really special, but she wasn't that direly written in comparison to the other scions. only alphinaud stood out, and, like, guys!! minfilia is fine. in all honesty, i have to imagine a portion of the negative reaction she received was born from misogyny. if she had been a bland male character in a position of informed power, she'd get much more of a shrug from the fandom.
i had no issues with minfilia's storyline at the time i played arr. her choices at the end of arr's patches only begin to make me squint at the writing in hindsight.
y'shtola…exists. tataru is fine. i like alisaie in coils a lot! lyse had yet to be more than comedic relief with papalymo, but i found her charming.
this is getting ahead of the curve, but a moment of silence for poor livia. love that the game choose to retcon gaius encouraging her unhealthy relationship with him into her coming onto poor, poor gaius! he wasn't manipulating her, his adopted orphan daughter, and telling her to privately come to see him in his quarters for fucky reasons! she had an obsession with him that he didn't know how to deal with! it was totally platonic! gaius has become a popular character, so we have to retcon something skeevy about his past to make it the woman's fault because it certainly isn't okay for it to be a shared blame with the man in a position of power over her. this definitely isn't a trend that xiv has where it throws its female characters under the bus to serve fan-favorite male characters!

Heavensward

my least favorite expansion? my least favorite expansion.
let's start with some salty salt: goddddddddddddd, i hate haurchefant. one of my most loathed characters in the game! i'm not even glad he died because he died in one of the most obnoxious ways possible. he immediately put me off when i first met him in arr and then all the more so when i learned the english localization had nerfed his “friendliness.” i already found him a bit off putting, but if he had been a proper sex pest like he is in japanese, there would have been no ramp up to my dislike of him.
writing about why i dislike haurchefant is about as frustrating as the character himself. so much of it is mired in how inescapable he seems to become as a "person who is, of course, very important to your wol" and the fact he gets shilled where ysayle doesn't. it is…just…ugh. i never connected with him much in arr, and while it is nice that he gets the wol, alphinaud, and tataru into catholic elfville, he…ugh. i really can't talk about this without derailing into ysayle.
Girl Watch

where minfilia's fate in arr did not bother me at my time of playing, ysayle's treatment when juxtaposed with haurchefant's annoyed me deeply.
i am a fan of ysayle's character. i like how driven she is and how she contrasts estinien and how her faith is challenged, shattered, and rebuilt. her sacrifice to end a war she has put her entire being into is impactful. she makes a powerful difference. yet, the game drones on about haurchefant taking a blow for the wol. he gets a dedicated tombstone. he is lingered on by the narrative. and he, in the worst slap to the face, upstages ysayle when their spirits both appear at the defeat of nidhogg. he is placed ahead of her. fuck that. just utterly fuck that. ysayle fought and died for this cause, but because he's a fan-favorite male character, he gets to be positioned more in the foreground like he is more important to the scene. haurchefant had shit all to do with the war beyond living in ishgard, fighting on behalf of ishgard, and being the wol's pal. ysayle's character was entirely focused around the war; it was borderline tangential to haurchefant.
good to know the feelings of male characters are more important and need to be uplifted even when a woman is more integral to the story!
there's really not much else to say about women in heavensward. ysayle is its major lady, and it spits on her legacy to shill haurchefant instead. other women appear and are, like…there, but no one remotely on par with ysayle's presence and influence. lucia exists. y'shtola is brought back. there's some female dragons. all the good of ysayle's story leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because of how her arc concluded. fucking abysmal to not even be able to place her ahead of him.

the overall story to the expansion is…fine, i guess. not much of it has stayed with me, and a lot of memories are fogged over by irritation. i really don't have much to say. i think arr left more of an impact on me positively in the long term.
i like alphinaud's development! he was a real bright spot for me. this is the zenith of his character arc. going forward, he increasingly slips into flanderization despite me still liking him.
so, part of why i lost interest in playing past patch 5.3 is because i like estinien. he's a delight in heavensward in being such a freak. he ultimately joins the scions, however, and i don't trust the writing to remain interesting for him when he is a fan favorite. i want to keep liking estinien.
one of my favorite new character was, genuinely, emmanellian. he was interesting and delightful in all the ways the rest of his family wasn't. too bad his story ended with him replacing haurchefant in the military even though he clearly didn't want to be a soldier. a sad end for best boy…
the other new characters i adored were the astrologian quest ones! ohhh, astrologian did not disappoint! i love that job. a great aesthetic and fun to play! until the devs decided that every job had to be ruthlessly uniform and thus sucked the individuality out of astrologian by nuking nocturnal sect. another strike for "reasons why i never got around to playing more of xiv before deciding i was done forever"! but jannequinard and leveva? i looove them. one of the last things i ever did in xiv was complete the final astrologian-relevant quest because i just wanted to see them again!
i liked the moogles because they were moogles. they can be as lazy and awful as they want. they're cute enough to me to get away with it.
largely, i'd cite heavensward as forgettable outside of things that make me ripshit like ysayle's treatment post-mortum and the exceptions i really adored like astrologian. the hype played a part in me feeling underwhelmed, but, regardless, it was…decent at best? it had portions i liked. the whole failed to resonate, however. i found it more cohesive than arr, but also about on par with arr's writing.

Stormblood

stormblood is the best one.
i swear i don't try to be divisive on purpose. stormblood doubtlessly benefited from me hearing that it was the worst expansion, so the hype wasn't there to undercut it, but i really did just like stormblood! it resonated well with me.
the lead into the expansion with ilberd forcing open conflict between the allied city-states and garlean-occupied ala mhigo hit for me! the need to force a stalemate into motion so something would happen because that is better than the years of nothing and the ala mhigan people enduring as refugees. ilberd was a bastard, but something in that addled desperation hit for me. the difficult and complicated reality coming up against ideals and desires is emblematic of stormblood. the ala mhigan resistance outside of their homeland waited and waited to no avail. it isn't convenient for the free eorzean states to be dragged into open conflict, nor is it thoughtful or kind or anything less than selfish utilitarianism. you refuse to move because of the cost to you and your coffers and your people, but i will make you move because it is the best option i have. an act of sheer self-destructive, self-absorbed patriotism.
raubahn relevance? raubahn relevance! nothing but adoration and wishing we had seen more of him from me here. while he largely features in the background on the ala mhigan side, him getting to liberate his home after so long is so sweet… the scene where nanamo tells him to stay and that she'll be fine is also so sweet. only the best for my raubahn!!
i understand the complaints about how unequally divided between ala mhigo and doma the story can seem. but, man! i did not get that feeling when i played through myself. the pacing felt natural enough to me, and yes, i would also have loved more time spent in ala mhigo, but it ultimately wasn't a particular detriment to me. everything in doma echoes back to ala mhigo in the form of what exactly defines a “nation,” what relationship exists between war and people. okay, i can't really talk about stormblood's themes without segueing into lyse's arc!
Girl Watch

the main expansion stuff for stormblood is by farthe best showing for xiv and its ladies. it gets…less so in the patches, but i can put off talking about that for a bit! lyse, alisaie, yugiri, yotsuyu, fordola, cirina, sadu--it feels so easy for me to recall prominent women in stormblood, and outside of the patches, i'm scarcely critical of their writing. i really like each of them and enjoy their relevant sections of the story.
lyse is the absolute heart of stormblood, though, and my favorite of favorites from xiv! a lot about xiv will fade for me because i have no desire to replay, but stormblood and lyse will linger in my heart. much as i think the rest of the cast moved on too fast from papalymo's sacrifice, the contextualization of lyse's narration throughout stormblood being her talking to papalymo makes me a lot more forgiving. the way she held onto his memory and kept it so close throughout this journey without him… papalymo deserved better, but i'm so glad that lyse's grief followed her for an entire expansion.
I REALLY JUST LOVE LYSE. she comes into stormblood revitalized and idealistic, though still mourning for both her sister and papalymo. she's shed the guise of her sister and presents now as her raw, unfiltered self, returning to the homeland she left when so young. for all that lyse has maintained connections with the ala mhigan resistance, she hasn't been there and lived through the occupation. she's not worn and exhausted by what seems to be a fruitless endeavor of throwing bodies at the unmoving mass of garlemald, not chewed up and spit out when rising up has resulted in reprisal that chipped away at them. lyse outright doesn't understand when other ala mhigans refuse to join the resistance and want her to just leave. her reply to their resignation is righteous indignation; they are wrong to simply want to eke out a bearable living (if that even). why don't they fight? why don't they continue to fight? this time it can work out (even if this military intervention by the free city-states of eorzea is unwilling, manufactured in a way that does not permit them to back out or ignore the problem). lyse begins unable to temper her own determination with empathy for the necessary sacrifices a harsh reality demands for survival. she's distinctly entitled in her approach to her countrymen who remained in ala mhigo.
by the time she returns for the finale of the expansion, lyse has been exposed to myriad more cultures and peoples. she's matured, become capable of greater empathy for the difficulties of living in an occupied state and determines to meet her mistakes head on. she does her utmost to listen because a nation is formed from its people and their needs. ala mhigo has been wounded by the garlean occupation, and it's not a quick or easy one to heal. with zenos' defeat, ala mhigo is free, but that's not the punctuation lyse once expected it to be. she recognizes how much work remains and resolves to focus all of herself on rehabilitating ala mhigo, in rehabilitating its identity between its fractured people like she had to do for herself in stepping out from behind her sister's mask.
there's a lot more i could say about lyse, but jesus christ, this thing is already long enough, and i still have another expansion to tackle after stormblood. unsurprisingly, i find most of the criticisms of her character to be overblown. her assuming leadership of a resistance cell after conrad's passing is clunky, but it doesn't bother me too much. she isn't the individual ruling over ala mhigo in the interim as form a new government. her influence is felt, yes, but it gets truly overexaggerated by those who dislike her. she has connections, and she has proven herself. her acting beside raubahn is earned. she's really not that bad!
i love fordola as a mirror to both lyse and yotsuyu. she is an ala mhigan who crossed the aisle to work for the garleans, desperately craving to carve out a place for herself and to be recognized. zenos manipulates her, encouraging her to be ruthless in her pursuit of her desires. where yotsuyu relishes in cruelty against doma, never backing down until she is corner and pinned and sobbing because death is coming for her, fordola does love her country. if anything, she's furious that other ala mhigans won't fall in line like she has and climb through garlean ranks of citizenship. the continued resistance makes it harder for her to be viewed with respect, and it exasperates her to the edge of fury. fordola refuses to stop because she has already committed to this path and the sacrifices have to mean something.
the patches are where i am ultimately let down by the writing. fordola is given proper agency in 4.1 when she makes the choice to begin towards redemption. 4.2 and 4.3 make a complete mockery of yotsuyu's agency. it made me uncomfortable and astonished to play through 4.2 and 4.3 because i cannot believe this was serious writing that squeenix released. yotsuyu is infantilized to a childlike mental state with no recollection of her crimes or her suffering. her head is empty of everything but dango as her fate is dictated by the powerful men around her. she never receives even a modicum of the respect and dignity that fordola is allotted in her choice to accept redemption. yotsuyu is manipulated and pushed into believing that she cannot be better, that she cannot forgive. revenge is the only option, so she will sacrifice on its altar as tsukuyomi. it's rancid. absolutely fucking rancid. she is robbed of any justice. hien encounters one of her former abusers, a man who operated an establishment where yotsuyu was sold as a sex slave, and excuses him because, surely, he has endured enough being so afraid of yotsuyu taking her revenge against him! fuck hien. fuck these patches. complete and utter fucking sexist garbage.
i like yugiri, though. :) i wish she wasn't attached to hien, but yugiri is good. alisaie has a solid arc through the expansion, too. also, y'shtola and krile are there at points.
the highest of highs! and the lowest of the goddamn lows with patches 4.2 and 4.3.

zenos as a villain isn't terribly deep, but he's very effective. he is battle incarnate; he is what garlemald has made of itself. conquest is not infinite, but it is what garlemald sustains itself on, what subsumes its society. zenos cannot find meaning outside of violence, and he dies once the wol has defeated him because there will be nothing greater for him to experience. garlemald is as lost a nation as the ones it occupies, and it steers itself toward a bloody end.
i like stormblood. : )

Shadowbringers

Girl Watch

we are going right into it! because yotsuyu's horrid treatment was the beginning of my loss of patience with xiv and how it shafts its female characters. ryne was the nail in the coffin for me--and probably when i really lost the ability to connect or trust xiv's storytelling.
so, between heavensward and shadowbringers, i came to really like thancred. he was gunning for a top position among the whole cast! then shadowbringers happened. i was eager to see him again. i knew he had a pretty meaty role in this expansion, and oh boy! urianger had a glow up and was actually being allowed to do things! y'shtola had a pretty okay section focused on her! thancred's would certainly appeal to me. “oh, sweet summer child,” i whisper to my past self as i type this. what they did with thancred did not, in fact, appeal to me.
much like ysayle, much like yotsuyu, ryne is robbed of proper focus. so distraught with the fact that thancred sees another minfilia when he looks at her, ryne determines it is best that she sacrifice her individuality and relinquish her body to serve as a vessel for the spirit of the original minfilia. ryne is effectively suicidal. but what does the story choose to center itself on? thancred's feelings. the other characters are concerned about how thancred feels and how what is happening to ryne will impact him. outside of a single conversation where urianger shows concern for ryne, it is about thancred. ryne's feelings are set aside in favor of thancred's. we can't center ryne in an arc about her becoming an individual. nope! how thancred feels about it is more important! fuck how everything about minfilia ultimately ends up serving thancred and how he feels. minfilia sacrifices everything to save the first, and her successor isn't even given the respect of her suicidal ideation being focused on her and not how the man most immediate to her feels.
and then, she isn't even centered that much in the finale despite being built up as so important! it's about the writer's pet catboy, g'raha, and his fanboyism of the wol. ugh.
ugh.
ugh.
ugh.
i really can't even be coherent at this point as i try to sum up all of my salt and fling it into the world to never pester me again. it's a trend. it's an insidious trend throughout xiv, and i am very, very, very tired of it. glad to know the scions are getting stacked with fan-favorite men! g'raha gets to join! estinien gets to join! giving a major arc to a woman and not centering it around a man? naaaah.
i'm genuinely sorry if you have read through this despite being a fan of xiv or these characters. i really have nothing left in me but salt. it makes me so exhausted. xiv kind of sucks outside of the main expansion story in stormblood if you want dynamic and interesting female characters. y'shtola is static. alisaie is great in stormblood, but begins to stagnate in shadowbringers just like her brother. part of what makes me so tired about it is how uncommon my opinion seems to be in the fandom. yotsuyu is so sad and affecting. it's cute to see thancred as ryne's father figure. i'm just going to go lay face down on the floor over there and groan loudly and crankily. i'm done. i'm so very done, and i am not enjoying it when i keep thinking about all this and cannot get past it. i've talked to friends who still play, and oh boy, they redid the cutscenes after the vault to extra lay on the haurchefant shilling. it isn't going to change. i put in over 600 hours.
i like lyna, though. i wish she had been given more to do.

the music is good, and a lot of the new areas have great atmosphere. emet-selch is a very solid antagonist.
a considerable amount of the cutscenes and plot beats are well executed, but they fail to resonate with me because the game never established a firm group dynamic in the prior expansions. yeah, the scions exist, but i never got invested in them as a group. i'm not emotional about them reuniting and doing things together even if it is very competently presented. the foundation just isn't there.
i think it is hilarious that you originally could do the msq without having done the crystal tower raids. my friend played like that and had no fucking idea who this catboy being dramatically revealed is. comedic gold.
ducking back in here the day after i posted this because it is vital to edit in that man...ardbert is good. everything about him hits with precision accuracy and makes me all the more bummed that shadowbringers didn't have a stronger emotional base to build from and also continued the trend of shafting female characters narratively. there's some great shit (like ardbert) in there!

mid. i can kindly call the sum of my experiences mid. it is not the best final fantasy story. it did not make final fantasy good again. i am very glad i got to play stormblood, but i'm deeply disappointed in how the writing for female characters trended overall.

i am done. i am lowering it into the grave. i am laying it to rest.

sweet dreams, my silly and illiterate catgirl. we had good times.

Adaptations & Other Versions

n/a.

Tl;dr

Do I like it? i like stormblood, excluding patches 4.2 and 4.3. everything else is a very mixed bag.

Do I rec it? i'm not the person to ask this. i would say no, but it is worth knowing that my opinions on xiv are very uncommon, and i've been marinating in salt. if you do play, then try to ignore the hype as best you can. it doesn't do the game any favors.