Final Fantasy 14 has properly clicked for me as I catch up before Dawntrail

It’s finally happened. I’ve made it to the moon.

Back at the start of the year, we collectively wrote a piece about our gaming resolutions. Usually resolutions are made to be repeated every year and never achieved – but not this time. I said I planned to get up to date in Final Fantasy 14. I’m determined to make that happen.

And so now, in my quest to whip through the Eorzean adventure before the release of Dawntrail next month, I have finally made it to Endwalker. At long last, it’s clicked.

As a big fan of the single player games but not MMORPGs, I was initially hesitant to begin Final Fantasy 14 a few years ago. I didn’t quite know what to expect and its world seemed impenetrable to me: the Jobs! The duties! The terminology! The menus! The hundreds of hours of required time!

“Don’t worry,” my friends would tell me, “it gets good after a couple of hundred hours”. “Just get to Shadowbringers, then you’ll understand”.

The problem is, I’ve forever been playing catch up. Working my way through Final Fantasy 14 has felt like a part-time job, a chore where I’m always awaiting what comes next. With so much story to experience, characters to meet, places to visit, dungeons to explore (not to mention the myriad side activities), I’ve ploughed on with the mindset of “just get through it”, fuelled by a desire to understand what everyone else seemingly does, to see why it’s Square Enix’s most popular game, to finally finally get up to date.

Thankfully, I’ve now got to a point where I’m really enjoying Final Fantasy 14 and that’s down to a few changes. Some of those are thanks to Square Enix, others are my own.

For many, the Shadowbringers expansion represents the pinnacle of the game. I can see why. It’s a big step up from the previous expansions, with a shift to a new world, a cool story concept, and one of the game’s best villains in Emet-Selch.