Someone is probably wondering why it took us so long to publish Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers review, the third expansion of the MMORPG Square Enix that has now been out for a couple of months. Get comfortable, because it's an interesting story. We closely followed the evolution of Final Fantasy XIV but, alas, we had stopped at the first update of the excellent expansion Heavensward, two or three years ago. Time is running out, there are so many other games to follow and all the rest, you know. Later, when the second expansion, Stormblood, came out, Square Enix didn't send us any code to cover the event, and so we gave up returning to Eorzea on that occasion as well. So, when we instead received the Shadowbringers code to download and play the new expansion at launch, we found ourselves having to complete the Heavensward campaign - also called Main Scenario Quest - that we had left pending, then that of Stormblood and finally the transition missions between the second and third expansion.
We are talking about over two hundred missions including cinematics, long dialogues, displacements, dungeons and fights. Anyone who plays Final Fantasy XIV knows that the campaign works a little differently than MMOs like World of Warcraft: You can't venture into new areas and unlock the features of an expansion without getting there by following the storyline. Fortunately, Square Enix gave us a couple of codes - usually paid services for ordinary players - to "skip" the expansion campaigns and get Shadowbringers right away with a level 70 job. We just didn't use those codes. Why should we have ruined the best part of Final Fantasy XIV, which is the story? So we took it easy, tackled the pending campaigns, and for good measure we also completed all the optional raids that Square Enix has released over time. We liked Final Fantasy XIV so much, an MMORPG that certainly has had its ups and downs, but that has thrilled us like a real final Fantasy traditional. And it is with this in mind that we finally started Shadowbringers.
The story inside out
Our rush to the new expansion was like a roller coaster ride. Tiring climbs, thrilling descents, moments of calm, twists and turns and some swearing. The script of Natsuko Ishikawa bends to the rhythms of an MMORPG, a genre that by its very nature must necessarily tighten the players in its grip and dilute the contents over time, since that time is paid for with a monthly subscription. Ishikawa, however, took advantage of this expansion to fill in details one of the most detailed online worlds in which we have had the pleasure of living a virtual life. Shadowbringers, in this sense, it represents the climax of a chess game that lasted years in which Yoshida and his have characterized supporting actors and antagonists, told myths and legends, sowed clues and cited the mythology of the Final Fantasy franchise to the utmost. So when we faced off against Zenos yae Galvus in a duel, it seemed like the end for Garlemald's empire was now upon us, when a completely different battle was about to begin.
Shadowbringers, in fact, takes place not in the world we have come to know, but in another "reflection" of Hydaelyn, a parallel dimension commonly called First. It is from this realm that the Warriors of Darkness came from that we faced between Heavensward and Stormblood: we discover that a century before our arrival, the five warriors defeated the forces of evil with the help of the Ascians, but in doing so they caused an imbalance in the natural order of things, so that the world is now immersed in a perpetual day and no longer falls at night. With the help of the Scions who arrived in the First before us, we will discover that we have to take on our turn the opposite role of Warriors of Darkness: our task will be to track down and defeat the monstrous Sin-Eaters that dominate the region of Norvrandt, so as to restore the day / night cycle and put an end to the domination of light before it also invades our original dimension. This is obviously a rather unusual perspective, although there are only ambiguous definitions.
The word to the characters
What sets Final Fantasy XIV apart from virtually every other MMORPG still out there is the incredible attention paid to characters secondary. Our alter ego is a predestined one, the hero or heroine that everyone looks at with admiration, a stereotypical and uninteresting figure: the real protagonists, in fact, are all our supporting actors, and our adventures are a reflection of those who live with us. Over the course of four campaigns, Final Fantasy XIV establishes an unbreakable bond that finally explodes in its fullness in Shadowbringers: the new Main Scenario Quest is a story of redemption and discovery, but it's not just ours. Ardbert, the character who appears in all the introductory cinematics and who represents the player, finally takes on a real identity, representing the Warrior of Light who has failed and who can now only observe the Warrior of Darkness as he saves his world. It is a brilliant meta-narrative that involves and moves.
The talented Ishikawa, however, does not limit herself to deepening our travel companions - especially Alisaie and Alphinaud, with an eye for the tormented Thancred - but also our rivals. Short cinematics inform us of what's happening in the source world as we fight for the First and provide a disturbing preview of the threats we will face in the future. And we can only watch helplessly, followed by Emet-Selch, the sarcastic patriarch of the Ascians that Ishikawa characterized so well that he turned him into one of our favorite villains in the entire saga. A little Kefka, a little Ardyn, Emet-Selch is not just a megalomaniac, but a tragic figure who constantly questions our beliefs about the distinction between good and evil, light and dark. Shadowbringers is more than just a simple one expansion: net of some slightly slower passages, especially in the central phase of the campaign, the story of Ishikawa and Yoshida not only reconfirms the quality of Final Fantasy XIV in terms of narrative, but easily places the MMORPG Square among the best chapters in the thirty-year franchise.
From one dungeon to another
We were blown away by the Trust System which allows players to face normal dungeons (also called Duty) together with a team of supporting actors controlled by artificial intelligence. This trick prevents damage dealers from suffering exhausting waiting times - even if we, playing Samurai, have almost never waited ten minutes in the dungeon again - and allows you to immediately face each new challenge in the company of the various Scions. History imposes us initially on our companions and, as in a real one JRPG, is not afraid to change the team during the Main Scenario Quest, adapting it to the developments of the script. In dungeons, our artificial companions perform better than human players: Square Enix's scripts are practically foolproof, although it takes a little longer to complete tasks as NPCs deal significantly less damage than real players. We hope that Yoshida decides to implement the system also in the dungeons before the expansion.
We liked the new dungeons, proposed in the story in a sensible way, following long chains of missions. Square Enix actually got the perfect formula for the type of MMORPG it is supporting, where even the dungeon they tell a story and the enemies are pure cannon fodder. The structure of these instantiated maps is fundamentally linear, but everything is spectacularized at maximum power and there are dungeons that leave you speechless thanks to a coherent and refined artistic direction. Similarly, we were surprised by the intuitiveness of the various bosses, all focused mainly on the mechanism of the telegraph; a moment before the boss launches a certain attack, a certain visual hint appears on the screen and the player, interpreting it, must react accordingly. While this is an established mechanic, Yoshida's game designers have managed to design elaborate encounters that keep players on their toes, forcing them to continually move around the battlefield.
Once we completed the campaign and tackled each dungeon, we also tested top-level encounters in the expansion's first eight-player raid, Eden, and the Extreme versions of the two Trial bosses we've faced throughout history, Titania and Innocence. If the latter are the usual enhanced versions of the same bosses - same mechanics, only more challenging - Eden is instead a raid consisting of four distinct encounters that follow the fights with the Primal in the first tranche of A realm reborn, only in a bizarre variation: Leviathan has two heads, Titan transforms into a jeep (!) and so on. Intuitive and full of mechanics, these encounters perhaps sin in length, given that the bosses are real sponges, and in the repetitiveness of an endgame for which Final Fantasy XIV continues not to shine: it essentially boils down to repeating the Duty and the Trial to accumulate currencies and key items to trade for new weapons, armor or accessories.
Experience the First
In the leveling phase we focused on a single Job for reasons of time and so we raised a Samurai up to level 80, occasionally playing the two new Jobs that Square Enix introduced with Shadowbringers: the Dancer and the Gunbreaker. The first is a rather particular remote damage dealer who plays in synergy with group mates but who did not convince us very much, perhaps because we have always associated the idea of the Dancer with a supporting role and this pseudo-caster seemed to us only a way to squeeze yet another damage dealer into a roster that is already overflowing with classes geared towards melee or ranged damage. The Gunbreaker is instead a very interesting tank, especially because you learn how to play it in a very short time and you have the feeling of controlling the battlefield without resorting to distinctly defensive skills: a force of nature, this Job is clearly inspired by Final Fantasy VIII and to the protagonist Squall Leonhart who, in fact, was holding a Gunblade.
As we said, the growth of our character during the expansion is articulated in the usual way and the player can alternate the missions of the Main Scenario Quest and the optional tasks to the evergreen Duty Roulette or other activities that award experience points. In this way, it is possible to keep some optional assignments that we can then complete with another Job, in case we decide to grow it: in that case, we would discover that Square Enix has made various changes to the mechanics of the various Jobs, although not always very successful. There is also a certain rigidity in the combat system which depends above all on the global cooldown still too high and perhaps a more relaxed view of the pace in the fighting.
Be that as it may, exploring the First was a pleasure. Yoshida and his followers have certainly taken advantage of the criticisms received in recent years and have managed to outline a much more organic progression that leads us to explore each map in an orderly way, without forcing us to long and tedious world tours to close completed missions or find the Aether Current that unlock the flight in the new maps: usually it is the Main Scenario Quest to lead you near the various Current, not to mention that some are obtained by completing certain optional tasks very fast. Most of the optional missions help us to learn more about this bizarre world and its inhabitants, but more often they are fetch quests of little importance, on a narrative level, which however engage the player with unnecessarily verbose dialogues.
A better world
That Shadowbringers is an ambitious expansion becomes clear as soon as you set foot in the Crystarium, the new headquarters for players in the world of First, an agglomeration above which stands the Crystal Tower. However, the Crystarium isn't the endgame hub of this expansion either - it's the lavish city of Eulmore, once released at the end of the campaign, to centralize the players with its vendors of top-level equipment. Virtually every map holds majestic surprises beyond the initial glance. The misty hills of Il Mheg hide a bucolic landscape that seems to come out of a fairy tale of European origin, and in fact Titania and her fairies reign over this region, while the forests of Rak'tika envelop in their coils a dangerous undergrowth and a lake that it holds, in its depths, the remains of a mysterious past. These maps are bound to change as the story progresses, sometimes irreversibly.
Although the engine is still the same, with its pros and cons, Shadowbringers appeared to us visually improved. Perhaps it is thanks to the meticulous attention to detail that distinguishes every panorama, every polygonal model and every kinematics, given that the engine is always the same and the most attentive eyes cannot help but notice a certain age now, although the direction and the tricks of programmers try to hide it whenever possible. Yoshida has tried to impose an all-encompassing flavor on his latest expansion, calling to collaborate no less than Tetsuya Nomura, who took the time to get his hands on the character design linked to Eden, and the creators of Never: Automata, Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito, who are working on the next twenty-four player raid.
However, if there is one thing that has accompanied us for all these hours - ever since we put our hands on Heavensward again, to be honest - it is the extraordinary soundtrack of Masayoshi Soken. There is nothing to do: the Japanese composer manages to channel a unique energy and solemnity into unforgettable pieces that maybe at the beginning can have a strange effect, but that over time not only conquer the player, but even succeed to carve out a special place when we end up associating them with certain moments in the game. This is the case of the rocking opening track that caused so much discussion when Square Enix unveiled the introductory cinematics, and which was then remixed to accompany the fights and, above all, the final fight, in a rearranged version that puts the chills and gases. the player like never before. Soken, who already in Heavensward and in Stormblood he had surpassed himself with an impressive variety of genres, in short, he is one of the main architects of the success of Shadowbringers, an expansion that all fans of the Square Enix title should definitely play.
PC System Requirements
Test Setup
- Processore: Intel Core i7-2600k @ 3,4 GHz
- Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
- Memory: 8 GB of RAM
- Operating system: Windows 10 64 bit
Minimum requirements
- Processor: Intel Core ™ i5 2.4GHz or higher
- Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce® GTX750 2GB or better
- Memory: 4 GB of RAM
- Operating System: Windows 7 / 8.1 / 10 (32bit / 64bit)
Comment
Tested version PC Windows Resources4Gaming.com9.0
Readers (21)8.4
Your voteAlthough Naoki Yoshida humbly argues otherwise, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV are now the last remaining contenders in the MMORPG Hunger Games. And on this round we have to admit that the Square Enix title has even won against the award-winning Blizzard. As you will have understood by reading the review, Shadowbringers is not only an exceptional expansion, but an extraordinary Final Fantasy in all respects. We've always said that the fourteenth chapter of the Japanese franchise receives less attention than it deserves due to the unusual category it belongs to and the monthly subscription that makes many turn up their noses, but now it's imperative: if you love Final Fantasy, you have to play Shadowbringers.
PRO
- The new storyline is sensational
- The Trust System for solo players
- La colonna sonora di Masayoshi Soken
- The art direction is extraordinary
- Getting to this part of the story without paid shortcuts takes a long, long time
- It remains Final Fantasy XIV for better or for worse, if you don't like the title Square Enix this expansion will not make you change your mind
