There has been a question that has kind of been bubbling in the background of the entire premise behind Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, and that’s about how far we really extend the whole “summer vacation” idea. We were promised that the main story would have some stakes, and it did, but that also prompts questions about the normal raids, the alliance raids, and so forth. How do you mane the stakes through all of these? How do you make it seem as if there is a reason for players to engage and care about what happens while also not just offloading what would otherwise be dramatic main-story stakes to elsewhere?
It’s a bit too early to take the full measure of the Arcadion in this context just yet, but so far it’s working.
With Pandæmonium, we got excellent fight design marred by a story that, as I mentioned from the start, had already flubbed its stakes and its thrust right from the word go. Arcadion, by contrast, paid off its stakes early and keeps them on-point… and it doesn’t reduce the fight design in the process. So let’s talk about the normal raid series now that we’ve had the first round of bouts, albeit trying to avoid the big spoilers.
The story of the slam
First and foremost, I want to shout out the NPC that pulls some MVP work in this story: Metem. It’s easy to see him show up and think that he’s going to be a pure sleazy operator, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that does wind up being a late-hour twist, but Metem is a delight as exactly the level of genuine commentator and enthusiastic fight promoter that we need for this story to get over. He’s equal parts punchline and comedic foil. I think he’s great.
Now, he’s definitely not anything approaching main character status for obvious reasons; we have other characters that we’re actually following, and he’s much more of an observer. Some of what the story needs to do, then, is convince us that these stakes are real and worth caring about while also seemingly going very hard on the idea that nothing crucial hinges on what goes down in the Arcadion. It’s a tricky prospect, but in this case… I think it actually works really well.
While we’ve been getting normal raids throughout the game’s lifespan that have been accessible to everyone since Heavensward, they’ve always struggled with the stakes. Sure, I already talked about Pandæmonium, but it’s not unique in its stakes being weird; Alexander was a strange self-deleting engine in that regard by the end, but at its launch it seemed really weird that it and Omega weren’t part of the MSQ! These are major issues we need to deal with! Eden was at least a side story – that part tracked – but it felt as though the stakes were in many way still bigger than what was being communicated.
The Arcadion, by contrast… this is important. It’s a follow-up series that is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, going to have a big impact on the entirety of the population around it. But the world isn’t in peril if you don’t deal with it. It manages to be important without being overwhelming.
My biggest critique would just be that the story seems reluctant to lean in on the sort of outsized personalities that make the obvious wrestling personalities stick in the mind. We do get parts of that, so don’t get me wrong; rather, there’s space to go further, and the sense of trash talk and pageantry is absent. Yes, your opponents definitely come off like classic wrestling heels, but they don’t seem to know that.
Still, at the end of the day I am on board. It does still feel like a much more summer-vacation-ish plot for the expansion, but that’s what we were promised, and it is appropriate. I’m curious to see where we go next.
Slamming down the fights
So here’s a thing that you may not be aware of when it comes to me and these raids: I make a habit of not checking in on the community impressions of them right away. Yes, I take the pulse soon thereafter to get a sense of what other people are saying, since I do need to know whether the community as a whole thinks something is too hard or whatever. But I want my first impressions to be focused around my first impressions.
And my first impressions here are really positive.
To use the third fight as a great example, I had a load of fun with it, and my group wiped twice going into it blind. The thing was that every time I got nailed by a mechanic, I still felt I had gotten all of the information I needed and did, in fact, have plenty of time to dodge it. Even more importantly, my failure to use that information that led to my getting hit was not a result of my needing to stay in melee range or anything of the sort. I was just making mistakes.
Even more importantly, every single one of the fights makes use of at least a couple of familiar concepts but in novel ways. We’ve dealt with shattering floors before, but the first fight makes use of them in a way we haven’t had to cope with before – and some of that is under the control of players, not just the boss. The second fight’s stacking debuff is both really fun and predictable and really clever once you grasp it. The third fight has so many predictable tells but mixes them up in novel ways, and the last fight is so good at locking down portions of the arena on a rotating basis.
That’s not to imply that these fights are easy; they aren’t. I think it’s hard to fully gauge their difficulty right now because instead of going in with time-limited gear, we’re all kind of on the back foot, and gear is going to really change the equation here, but as of right now the fights always felt doable and engaging. I liked them. I thought each wipe was not frustrating, something that is far from universally the case on new content!
Mix in the fact that the arenas and visual designs of each boss are pure gold, and you have some absolute bangers here. I haven’t been this excited for more parts of an alliance raid in a long time, and I am into this. If we’re seeing a preview of how this expansion is going to feel with its side content moving forward… well, I am here for it.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I actually want to change gears a little bit in my slow roll of first thoughts and build off something I said in this past weekend’s What Are You Playing. I mentioned that I might kind of like this more than Endwalker, but the parts that don’t work really don’t work… so next week, I want to talk about the parts that do not really work.
Wisdom of Nym: The story beats that really work in Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail
Wisdom of Nym: The actual storytelling issues with Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s Arcadion brings the noise
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail’s delightfully light role quests
The Soapbox: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail, mortality, remembrance, and last chances
Wisdom of Nym: Spoiler-free impressions of Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail’s leveling dungeons
First Impresions: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail is a dense summer getaway for the MMORPG
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail’s relatively smooth early access isn’t a sign of doom
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
