Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

 PlayStation 3
User Score
9.2

Universal acclaim- based on 247 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 228 out of 247
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 247
  3. Negative: 15 out of 247
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  1. Odettehr
    Jun 24, 2015
    10
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The best expansion that i played on my alll life in mmos.The story is great, music excellent

    The scenary are beautiful, memorable character, new jobs are really funny, new abilities for all jobs are good
    The only bad point, i don know what i need to do for level another jobs to lvl 60    … Expand
  2. Starlightzz85
    Jun 24, 2015
    10
    I have been playing MMORPGs since the Everquest 1 days and have probably played every major MMO under the sun. I have experienced a lot of expansions, but Heavensward is in an entirely different league. I can honestly say it is the best expansion in the history of MMOs. It is the largest expansion ever released, and also very high quality. The amount of improvements over A Realm Reborn isI have been playing MMORPGs since the Everquest 1 days and have probably played every major MMO under the sun. I have experienced a lot of expansions, but Heavensward is in an entirely different league. I can honestly say it is the best expansion in the history of MMOs. It is the largest expansion ever released, and also very high quality. The amount of improvements over A Realm Reborn is staggering. The story writing is even better than before. The zones are huge and some of the most beautifully designed zones to ever grace an MMO. The music is amazing. They added a lot more voice acting in this one to please all the players that wanted more voice acting, and plenty of the voiced narratives is high quality stuff. The flying is handled perfectly, unlike the way WoW originally added flying, SE got it right. Being able to fly right out of the gate can break an MMO that was not designed with flying in mind, such as it did in WoW which is why they removed it originally. In HW you must unlock all of the aether currents in each zone to fly in that zone. Most of them you find through exploration, while a smaller portion comes from quests in the zone. By doing this SE not only answered players craving for more exploration, but also makes it where players can't just instantly skip over everything, and once you unlock flying there are plenty of quests and other locations that open up. SE plans to continue making full use of flying through future updates. They also made mobs in the open world more challenging as many complained that the mobs in ARR were too easy, but they did not make them so hard that casual players would hate the game. It's the perfect balance. The amount of details and love that went into this expansion is apparent. The cohesiveness and polish of it all blows other traditional style MMOs out of the water.… Expand
  3. ValValentine
    Jun 24, 2015
    10
    Amazing!, all you could ask from any MMORPG or a FF series game, great Main Story full of CS-voice, dynamic events (FATES), great music, traditional questing more relevant now, beautiful and HUGE new maps, great dungeons and new primals. All jobs got new skills, 3 new jobs, flying feels great, new FC (guilds) options. 10/10
  4. sandytaru
    Jun 25, 2015
    10
    Square Enix knows how to tell a heck of a story, and if you're playing a Final Fantasy game for the story, Heavensward delivers. Improved motion-captured machinima breathes life into characters who were a bit robotic in ARR, and the new DX11 support allows for even more impressive visuals throughout the game (if you have a video card with the chops to max it out.)

    This is classic Final    Square Enix knows how to tell a heck of a story, and if you're playing a Final Fantasy game for the story, Heavensward delivers. Improved motion-captured machinima breathes life into characters who were a bit robotic in ARR, and the new DX11 support allows for even more impressive visuals throughout the game (if you have a video card with the chops to max it out.)

    This is classic Final Fantasy storytelling at its finest, with the most challenging fights rewarding you with 30 minutes of epic movie afterward as a prize.    … Expand
  5. Strejdatom
    Jun 25, 2015
    10
    Of course that this game has some flaws, every game has some. But there are things that just kept me playing for almost 2 years and counting.

    First of all, the expansion has shown how Square Enix listens to suggestions. They made bigger locations for us, better main story quests, our characters have become more included in the story and finally show much more expressions. There are many    Of course that this game has some flaws, every game has some. But there are things that just kept me playing for almost 2 years and counting.

    First of all, the expansion has shown how Square Enix listens to suggestions. They made bigger locations for us, better main story quests, our characters have become more included in the story and finally show much more expressions. There are many little things that people asked for in forums and SE just implemented them in Heavensward.

    The story fights are challenging enough but not hard, so even casuals can finish them, while the real challenge got kept for extreme primals and most probably Alexander too.

    Yes, the quests are grindy, but tell me about a MMO that doesn't have grindy quests. It is a dream that will never happen, even GuildWars 2 felt grindy and dull after a while. I always read texts of quests so the story is kinda keeping me fine, but I believe that people, who just click trough every quests get bored, because all they do is kill, find something, gather something, go somewhere, talk to somwhere but don't know why they do that.

    And the way how they started this expansion is epic. No MMORPG ever had better expansion headstart than this. Even Blizzard worshiped by millions of people failed to start any WoW expansion smoothly. We all expected to be unable to play atleast for 2 days and I haven't got a single disconnect while playing 12 hours a day since the day of early access.

    By the way.. I never took metacritic pages seriously and I never will because even if you counted every bad thing in this game, it wouldn't deserve less than 4 - 5, but people who haven't even play this come here and put the worse score without hesitation and don't even bother to write a review. So if you are planning to buy this game, but the score seems to low for you, I suggest reading a few score 10 reviews and score 5 reviews and then just think if it is worth it.    … Expand
  6. Sensin
    Jun 23, 2015
    10
    Beautifully made expansion, best expansion ever added to any MMORPG! Square Enix has done it again, amazing graphics, great storytelling, an all around fantastic experience. Best MMO out there and deserves all the praise it gets. 10/10
  7. Kennyamr
    Jul 2, 2015
    10
    This is the continuation of the A Realm Reborn story arc. This directly follows what happens next after the great finale of ARR. Story is even better than what it was before the expansion.The addition of the new jobs has expanded the ways of players to run through content and the new abilities included in ALL jobs are giving us the change to reimagine our rotations and create new ways toThis is the continuation of the A Realm Reborn story arc. This directly follows what happens next after the great finale of ARR. Story is even better than what it was before the expansion.The addition of the new jobs has expanded the ways of players to run through content and the new abilities included in ALL jobs are giving us the change to reimagine our rotations and create new ways to play. The new areas are really really large and they make you work to be able to fly, it is a bit of a pain at first but as soon as you are allowed to fly, Oh, man you will LOVE it! the story is amazing again and all of the new adjustments are very very good in general. I am very happy with the expansion and I'm looking forward to finally beat Alexander when it comes out next week! Good luck fellow adventurers! o/… Expand
  8. Jabborwacky
    Jun 25, 2015
    7
    The good:
    1. Story is objectively better than that which came before it. Yes, stories can be objectively better when dealing with basic form and common sense. If a story provides giant gaping loopholes that the characters could have exploited to avoid catastrophic situations, you will notice them and it will suck. You will be happy to find no giant "poison vial implication" loophole here    The good:
    1. Story is objectively better than that which came before it. Yes, stories can be objectively better when dealing with basic form and common sense. If a story provides giant gaping loopholes that the characters could have exploited to avoid catastrophic situations, you will notice them and it will suck. You will be happy to find no giant "poison vial implication" loophole here like you did at the end of the "Before the Fall" patch.
    2. The new classes are interesting to see, if only for their story quests. Each provides a slightly different take on the traditional three roles, but for those hoping for something to break free of the trinity formula, you will be disappointed.
    3. The new areas are a welcome breath of fresh air. Despite my initial impressions from preview videos, each zone is refreshingly different from the last with the sole exception of Coerthas Western Highlands being fairly similar to Coerthas Central Highlands.

    The Bad:
    1. The inventory system: To understand the current problems with the FFXIV:ARR inventory system, you have to understand three things: First, we are free to play every class in the game on a single character; Second, FFXIV:ARR has a vanity system that lets you use older item skins over your current equipment if you so choose; and third, the same inventory space that will be used for half a dozen or more vanity sets will be used to hold any crafting materials you may be using or gathering. It's a glorious mess of epic proportions linked to a terribly managed server back end. The limits of a player's inventory prevent the exploration of all the game's many options on a single character without adding to the monthly sub by renting out more "retainers"- NPCs that act as the player's bank and auction house. Which brings us to number 2.
    2. Unlike games like World of Warcraft, where players have multiple factions with different story quests, FFXIV:ARR shares a single story shared by all players regardless of their origins. While the story does start out differently, it all converges together around the level 20 mark. This is old news, but is related to the continuing inventory issues. Cross-class skills require other classes to be leveled up, so two characters may end up leveling one of the same class regardless.
    3. The patch story wall: FFXIV:ARR runs on a linear story, so to get to the Heavensward content you'll have to visit all the story quests from the content patches. Whether you personally find this a detraction or not depends on how much you care for the story. The writing pre-Heavensward constantly shifts from adequate to terrible. The constant shifting between good and bad means that it inevitably drops the ball at some crucial moments, leaving the player tearing his hair out wondering why the characters would act a particular way when some obvious thing should have made them act differently. Before you get to where the story is genuinely good, you have to move through where development was clearly rushed.

    I would rate FFXIV:Heavensward in the 8-9 category, but with technical issues holding back players from engaging the game in particular ways (namely the inventory) and the requirement of new characters to go through nearly two years of patched in story of fluctuating quality, I have to rate is as a strong 6. The improvements beyond the 50 story wall bump it up to a tentative 7. Should they fix the inventory issue, the game would be an 8/10.    … Expand
  9. Spira
    Jun 25, 2015
    1
    Expansion isn't enough to make me stay.

    Before buying this be aware you must complete all MQ before you get the content, that includes the new job roles which don't really add all that much to the game, the previous jobs are more than enough. As a Final Fantasy fan it brings me great pain to say the story is beyond terrible. The characters would be forgettable if they weren't so    Expansion isn't enough to make me stay.

    Before buying this be aware you must complete all MQ before you get the content, that includes the new job roles which don't really add all that much to the game, the previous jobs are more than enough.
    As a Final Fantasy fan it brings me great pain to say the story is beyond terrible. The characters would be forgettable if they weren't so annoying. The dialogue hurts my ears (I never want to hear mayhap or pray tell every again) It is weak and often feels more forced than the stories you get at the beginning of 80's pornography video.Also, HIDE AND SEEK MOOGLE QUESTS, enough said.
    The exp required to level up now is painful, fates were my favourite way previously because the dungeons are dreadful, but have received a huge collapse in the amount rewarded, and my pvp queues haven't improved. Killing other players is the only challenging thing about the game, the rest is easy.
    The look of the game isn't as great as it people make out, there are far better looking mmo's out there, Elder Scrolls looks a million times better and no one even takes that game seriously. I like to explore, and with the new areas I was left disappointed. They're bigger, but not big enough. You don't ever get that real feel of being in another world

    The biggest issue I have with this game, is that the battles continue to feel more like a puzzle than a battle. You have 0 freedom in fights. If you're a DPS you are constantly repeating the same combos over and over even with the new abilities, they're cool for about 3 minutes then they just fall into line with the auto-pilot way of playing.

    With the new jobs, they've added a great sword to the dark knight, sounds powerful? Wrong. We're led to believe that a dagger and claws would hurt more than a sword or axe, this is pathetic. There's also the new race which looks terrible. The females look like they have goats horns and the males look like bad photoshops.

    I'm sure the best content is yet to hit but sadly the game is dead now. I pre-ordered the game and was hoping for so much more, enough so that it makes me want to stay because I've spent the last 8 months of my life playing it. I'm certain fans will vote this down as not being helpful because they don't agree with my opinion but it's not going to change the fact I think this game and the expansion sucks.

    Also to anyone who can't commit to less than 20 hours a week of this game - Do not buy it. There is very little this game does to make it enjoyable for casual players who don't live in their bedrooms.    … Expand
  10. pizzasandwich
    Jun 25, 2015
    5
    Overall, I must say I found this expansion a let down.

    Good things first. The main story is way more interesting and well told than ARR’s original storyline, which was quite awful. The voice acting has improved and the music, of course, is wonderful. The new zones look great and flying is fun. Not so good things. The zones, while great looking, are still just quest grind hubs    Overall, I must say I found this expansion a let down.

    Good things first. The main story is way more interesting and well told than ARR’s original storyline, which was quite awful. The voice acting has improved and the music, of course, is wonderful. The new zones look great and flying is fun.

    Not so good things. The zones, while great looking, are still just quest grind hubs filled with generic and mind-numbingly easy to kill monsters that exist solely to be killed to complete fetch quests. You don't even need to kill them for loot, as your retainer, the npc that you store and sell items through, can be sent out to retrieve items for you while you do other things. Square-Enix stated the monsters would be harder this time around, but all they did was increase their HP pool. It is nearly impossible to die from these enemies unless you disconnect or pull several at a time and just sit there and let them wallop you. They all have very easy to dodge telegraphs, and other than that they just basically auto-attack you. And, of course, you can always just run 10 feet away to leash the monsters should you somehow not be able to kill them before they kill you.

    Nearly every single non-dungeon quest involves killing these boring enemies or clicking on objects on the ground. They really went for quantity over quality. Despite the vastness of the zones, I never felt like I was on an adventure. All you do is tedious busywork. You’ll end up doing the same quests with a different script a hundred or more times. There are no dangerous open world areas at all. You can even attack an enemy that is engaging in conversation with another enemy and the other enemy just sits there doing its talking animation while you bludgeon his friend 10 feet away from him.

    The blandness of the enemies is a big problem with both the original game and the expansion. All enemies feel the same. They all either have one or all of the following: a cone/line AoE, a point blank AoE around them, or a targeted circular AoE. None of them feel unique. They’re basically all the same monster just with a different model. These telegraphs are incredibly easy to doge. And if you’re a healing class especially you can just stand in all of them and easily live.

    This is in stark contrast to SE’s previous MMORPG, FFXI, where each monster felt different. Crabs had high HP and defense boosting skills. Worms could not move like normal enemies as they lacked legs, but could cast magic. Often they would bind you in place and then start pelting you with spells. Mimics would draw your character in so you could not run from then and would poison you. Tonberry’s had everyone’s grudge, an attack that did more damage based on how many tonberries you have killed (which could be reset by paying a tonberry priest), and throat stab, a high damaging move that came out quickly that you had to pay attention for because there were no obvious telegraphs. Enemies like dragons and manticores were naturally tougher than crab or caterpillar enemies that were the same level. The enemies were even more unique in FFXIV 1.0. When you attack an enemy in FFXIV, you do not take in consideration what the enemy is at all, because it doesn’t matter.

    Even dungeon enemies suffer from this blandness. Aside from bosses, all enemies in dungeons are boring trash enemies that are pretty much impossible to die to unless the tank chooses to pull too many packs at once.

    Some of the bosses are fun, albeit quite easy, but, again, you have to wade through trash enemies to get to them. The dungeons are also all linear corridors, just as they were in the original.

    They also decided to bring over the Hunt system into the new zones. The Hunt involves an enemy spawning every x hours that is either a rank A or S (B rank enemies respawn immediately and offer no reward unless you have a quest to kill it). When these enemies are found, people either post the location in their hunt linkshell chat or shout the position in the chat. After some people show up, the enemy is then obliterated within seconds. This is how you currently upgrade your gear. You spam a handful of easy dungeons hundreds of times for tomestones (basically dungeon tokens) and then zerg easy monsters mindlessly. Basically, it’s the exact same gear treadmill as ARR. Equipment still just boring +base stats. No unique or interesting special effects to be found on the gear in this game.

    The new classes look quite cool, but all the classes in the game are quite homogenized.

    So despite how little effort was seemingly put into the quests, enemies and basically everything outside of the music, storyline and zone-design, creating the expansion was apparently so difficult for the FFXIV developers that Yoshi-P promised in an interview that they would never make an expansion this big again, which I find worrying and bizarre when the expansion isn’t anything amazing. It’s very average.    … Expand
  11. MGouki
    Jun 25, 2015
    2
    The graphics are good, but characters have low polygonal count. All races share the same battle animation. Battle effects will impress you during solo play, but they get in the way during group play. There's an option to turn them off; but you can't choose the particle count, how many effects can be at the same time, etc. It's all or nothing.

    Combat is slow and repetitive, every battle    The graphics are good, but characters have low polygonal count. All races share the same battle animation. Battle effects will impress you during solo play, but they get in the way during group play. There's an option to turn them off; but you can't choose the particle count, how many effects can be at the same time, etc. It's all or nothing.

    Combat is slow and repetitive, every battle you use the same sequence of skills with no variation. The game servers are laggy and it often gets in the way of defeating hard bosses that requires quick movements.

    The gameplay is still the same as the base game. You run back and forth talking with NPCs, who'll reward you with experience, increasing your level so you can participate in different content. But sadly, said content gets stale quickly; every dungeon, raid and bosses follow the same model as the base game.

    The countless side quests (tasks that are irrelevant to the story) and long dialogue gets in the way of the narrative, and minimal voice acting makes it hard to feel the atmosphere of certain scenes.    … Expand
  12. LastResource
    Jan 14, 2023
    10
    worth it and glad to play this game again. so much memories and nostalgia within this fourteenth game in the series. this expansion is breathtaking!

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