Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail review for PC, PlayStation

With the saga built up over a decade of time, Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion closed out one of the most beloved Final Fantasy stories in the franchise. With the ending of a new story, a new one must unfold, and thus we have the new Dawntrail expansion. Following the ending of Endwalker, see the group setting sail for new lands. We see our friends and heroes arrive on the new lands of Tural, with turmoil unbeknownst to them.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way now. I know what the general player base has echoed about thoughts on the series, but what gamers seem to be misunderstanding is that it’s setting up a brand new story. Comparisons have been drawn in tedium to Stormblood and A Realm Reborn, which are somewhat fair. However, this is the start of a brand new arc, so I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to previous expansions that blew minds like Endwalker or Shadowbringers, as those were building up and concluding a full arc. As a set up, I think it’s done rather well and introduces some fun new characters. With Wuk Lamat, the unfortunate target of the community’s thirst Bakool Ja Ja, and more, you’ve got a great new cast to really ring in the new continent and story beginnings.

Now that the story’s been covered (and avoiding details for people who haven’t finished it yet), I wanna go over some of the new gameplay additions, including classes. So as we know, each expansion means classes get overhauled, so some classes may have had skills consolidated or wholly removed. Alongside class changes though, we were given a great duo of new classes, those being Viper and Pictomancer. Viper is a brand new class loosely based on Sword Art Online according to developers during interviews and Pictomancer is a class from cult classic Final Fantasy VI. To much controversy in the community, Pictomancer has now become the best class for damage in the game, surpassing the previous best in its role: Black Mage.

Viper’s shtick is dual swords that can then be combined into a twinblade for execution of certain actions. Unleashing strong melee attacks, inflicting debuffs, and taking advantage of positioning, Viper is a monster on the battlefield. Pictomancer on the other hand is, well, a painter. You’ll be managing a paint meter to unleash incredibly powerful spells, as well as painting “motifs” to modify existing abilities or cast extra strong ones. A pretty powerful class that now out damages everything else in the game, with Reaper as a close 2nd place.

As with all expansions, there’s new gear and content to run, as well as a level cap increase. Players can now reach level 100 and earn a whole new suite of gear to equip and glam themselves out with. This includes new raid gear, which will lead into my next point. There is the start of a new raid series in Dawntrail, with 4 raids currently existing in-game. We can expect the next additions to those raids in future patches, as well as possibly more raid series to come. Some of the dungeons are quite honestly the most fun to run in the game, if not solely for the fact that it requires a good bit of effort to clear and you can’t mindlessly tank all the way to every wall. You’ll have to make sure you’re paying attention to your pulls so you don’t overwhelm the party!

The music and visuals are still just as incredible as expected, but with Dawntrail we also got the graphical overhaul that Yoshida-san and his team have talked about the last couple of years to really help increase the visual fidelity despite the limitations of the engine. Characters may be affected by lighting differently as well as having changes to how hair looks in the game, so to compensate for the dissatisfaction that players may have with how their characters look post-patch, we were given a free Potion of Fantasia to allow us to completely change our characters’ appearance. Not happy with how you look after the changes? No problem! Use the free item and completely change races if you want to. In addition to the visuals and free character change item, Female Hrothgar are now playable races as well! No more tiny Miqo’te cat girls, because now you can play as the muscle mommy cat girls.

I genuinely believe that Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail is a phenomenal start to a new story, and that I am very excited to see where the dev team takes us next in the post-expansion patch content. From adding in more EX trials for mounts, new dungeons, raids and more, Final Fantasy XIV fans are feasting with yet more great content from Yoshida-san and the rest of his team.

Note: Square Enix provided us with a Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail PC code for review purposes.