Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker (PC) Review

Storytelling is the anchor that every other aspect of the game supports. The main story quests of Endwalker tell an enthralling and riveting adventure, albeit after a slow start. The expansion begins just moments after Shadowbringers' end, where the Warrior of Light and the Scions chart a course for Old Sharlayan. Surprisingly little time is spent at this new hub in the journey as most of the narrative it has to tell takes place in the first two levels of questing. From there, it serves as a resting place for the Scions to regroup. The other branch of the starting experience takes place in Thavnair, an Indian inspired zone with bright colors and interesting culture. The introduction is pretty mellow, offering very light setup and information in contrast to arriving in Sharlayan and exploring its' neighbor Labryinthos but soon provides much more significance as an integral area that moves the plot forward.

From there onward, the pacing and story of every zone is exceptional. Each one has their own unique perspective to tell with the backdrop of the incoming Final Days. The latter half or so brings many unexpected surprises and new revelations that add to the overarching tale in meaningful ways. Outside of the writing however, quest design is rather weak. Aside from the typical design seen before, two new quest types are introduced. The best aspect of the new quests in where quest NPCs follow players and give insight on points of interest when you talk with them. This improves immersion and offers a new level of worldbuilding. The other side is follow or tailing missions. There aren't many, but they really slow the pace of the MSQ. To spice up the pacing of the activities themselves, one or two more Solo Duties would've gone a long way.

The cast of characters is largely familiar, which is fitting for a journey's end. The Scions each have very impactful scenes but some of the standout scenes involve Urianger, who hasn't gotten much time to shine in previous adventures. The entire English cast for returning characters all return to give great performances as per usual; and the new cast matches this quality. The English voice direction in Final Fantasy XIV very rarely shows any weak qualities and sells each personality and combined with the great writing set a gold standard for Japanese-to-English localization.

One character who has and continues to receive the short end of the stick is Zenos. After the Shadowbringers expansion and his re-entrance to the FFXIV stage, his character continues the same bland trend he's had before. In a narrative where everyone else has an evolving persona, he stands out as a very weak link. Naturally he was most active in Stormblood but in Endwalker, he has such a narrow motivation and mellow demeanor to the point where the player and even the Scions don't feel any urgency to engage him for the vast majority of this expansion.

The multiplayer content continues a very steady improvement in visuals, structure and challenge. The first dungeon, The Tower of Zot, sets an expectation with its visual design. The first and third bosses in particular showcase just how the combat designers can create interesting scenarios with visual markers players have seen countless times. The second dungeon, while a glorified elevator, keeps it interesting with background flavour in the first two phases and environmental traps in the third; capped with a boss whose appearance is sure to please many Final Fantasy fans. Going forward, the rest are visual treats; all with bursts of color to counteract often muted tones. The final three dungeons that make up the Expert roulette at launch really show how far the Luminous Engine can be pushed to deliver a fantastic spectacle. While the finer details still show their age, the colorwork and bigger picture continue to see vibrant advancements and the dungeons showcase this best.

In fear of spoiling them, we won't talk about the trials in this review in terms of plot and who they are. Despite that, it is safe to say that each is incredibly impactful and the setup around them creates intense anticipation for the fights. The music that accompanies them only adds to the epic atmosphere. These eight player fights should be praised for their visual variety and unique mechanics to keep players on their toes.

The glue that brings both writing and gameplay aspects together is the masterwork soundtrack composed by Masayoshi Soken. His music accompanies players every step of the journey and he brings his all to this score. His strategy of rearranging and referencing past songs works incredibly well to accompany the narrative and the wholly original music stands out too. Most of it stems from the main Endwalker theme akin to how a movie or television show would arrange their score which gives the new tracks a great deal of consistency while still finding new ways to adapt motifs. While some motifs and tunes return from previous journeys, they all exist to bolster the tale being told and really sell that finale feel.

This review was written from the point-of-view of playing as a Red Mage to Level 90, and bringing the new Sage and Reaper jobs to around level 80. Like Summoner, Red Mage got a retooling done for the better. Having 50 Black and White mana needed to use the melee combo down from 80 is so much easier to manage. Changing Scorch, Verflare and Verholy to area of effect is arguably the biggest and best change to the job since it allows Red Mages to finally not rely so much on Moulinet to deal consistent damage in between bosses in dungeons. Using the ability three times with 60/60 Mana also continues the AoE rotation seamlessly.

Sage and Reaper are the new jobs in town and both of them have some interesting aspects to them. Reaper, the new Melee DPS job has superb weaponskill and ability animations and has a rather smooth rotation albeit with a Job Guage acquired at Level 80 that takes some time to learn. Sage is definitely going to convince a lot of players to give healing a try. Part of why is that it starts at Level 70, getting ahead all of the pre-Level 50 experience other healers require. Sage has a lot of flexibility as a healing job and can also heal a partner by dealing damage. 130 potency every cast isn't much in the grand scheme, but it's a bit of extra juice before restoring and regeneration spells need to be used. Needless to say, both jobs will have their fans and we can't wait to bring them into harder content.

PC performance is largely the same as it usually is. In dungeons, it was hard to get a frame drop to occur on the computer used for review. Exploring zones often enough had some drops, but it was largely due to the volume of players roaming around. Servers continue to be very stable after a successful login to the world, which is all-important to an MMO. There are some players who still experience DirectX 11 game crashes, but the cause is still unknown and hopefully Square Enix will find a fix for this soon.