Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week the release of Dawntrail feeling more imminent, with a new peek at changes to jobs in 7.0. Plus, we check in on Square Enix’s other, other MMORPG, the one you can’t actually play.
This week’s newsletter is 1677 words, a 8-minute read.
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In the Live Letter broadcast last week, Naoki Yoshida and Creative Studio 3 showed off the changes to Final Fantasy XIV’s jobs in the 7.0/Dawntrail update, now little more than a month away.
What’s going on:
Yoshida introduced a Job Actions trailer, which shows off all 21 classes’ new or altered animations, and talked about the changes to each class briefly
Of course, one big focus in Dawntrail is the addition of actions up to the new level cap of 100, and adjusting classes’ overall action structure accordingly
Each of the overarching roles will have key role abilities strengthened at level 90 and above (Rampart and Reprisal for Tanks, Second Wind and for Physical Melee/Ranged DPS, Swiftcast and Addle for Magical Ranged DPS, and Swiftcast for Healers)
Some classes will be affected by the new expansion more than others:
Some are being made simpler (like Dark Knights’ having Blood Weapon upgrade into Delirium, or Black Mages restoring MP by using ice spells while Umbral Ice is active instead of as a regen effect)
Astrologian is seeing another big change, however, in that cards will no longer be drawn at random—instead they’ll draw offensive, defensive, and healing effects simultaneously
Summoners will have another Bahamut in their repertoire, Solar Bahamut
Among the actions in the trailer are those for the new classes, Viper and Pictomancer, and Yoshida shared some brief intros to their mechanics:
Pictomancers will revolve around painting “motifs” (the moogle and hammer animations in the trailer) and animating them to make effects; using spells fills the Aetherhue gauge, which can be spent to cast White Holy or Black Meteor
Vipers are designed for hotbar efficiency, using fewer slots than other classes; their various attacks apply buffs and debuffs, which are crucial to maximizing efficiency at different points in their combos; and ultimately they want to spend their gauge to activate powerful Reawakened abilities
Beyond the job changes, Yoshida also provided an update on the revised benchmark utility and overall graphics update: the latest version, as seen in the Live Letter video, looks better than the original benchmark already
This update is expected to be available around the end of May, but the exact timing is unconfirmed
Fantasia vials will now allow you to change and tweak your appearance for up to 60 minutes after originally using it (and after the Dawntrail update, a quest NPC in Ul’Dah will hand out a free phial)
What we thought:
It has to be getting difficult to keep all 21 classes feeling balanced after 10 years, so hats off to the whole team for putting in an honest effort
The game’s player base is massive, meaning there are so many people experiencing it in so many different ways at any given time—the overall distribution of actions has to be kept fair for players at lower levels who are unlocking things for the first time, while also keeping things interesting for the veterans who are maxing each class out
Likewise, with so many players, it’s going to be impossible to please everyone with changes to their favourite classes—some Astrologians are irritated to see their class reworked again, for instance, but losing the random element should be worth the pain
Summoner players’ disappointment for receiving another Bahamut is understandable, when there are so many other Eikons to draw from… but then again, being able to use Bahamut given this game’s lore sounds cool to me, as an outsider who sticks to tanking
Viper and Pictomancer look really flashy and interesting, if perhaps a little difficult to grasp without hands-on time
A grace period for Fantasia makes perfect sense, with or without the benchmark drama—I’ve made plenty of characters in various games that look perfect in the creation stage but like a Wish knock-off in-game, so it would be neat to see more games be this flexible
What’s next? There’s still one more Live Letter broadcast before the Dawntrail update—on June 14, although its focus is currently unannounced. FFXIV will be down for maintenance from June 26-28, and then early access will begin on June 28.
Thundaga Round!
Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis has increased its level cap from 70 to 80 with a new event this week; players can help push their characters across this gap with the limited-time Golden Bomb Rush event, and get free crystals from a new login bonus celebrating the new Battle Tower, Colosseum of the Chosen
Speaking of Ever Crisis, the dev team is hosting an official livestream next week, on May 28, to discuss “the latest updates, upcoming events, and more”
Over in War of the Visions, a crossover event with Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is underway, with the AC version of Tifa available for free
Copies of the Final Fantasy XIV Tabletop RPG Starter Box are beginning to reach reviewers (myself included!), so look forward to impressions on that very soon
Also during the Live Letter, Yoshi-P announced new crossovers between FFXIV and various brands—KFC in Japan, and… Mountain Dew in the US?
Players can redeem codes from officially marked products (starting June 28, after the scheduled maintenance) for items like physical merch or an in-game mount, dubbed the… sigh… Mountain Zuu
Players outside those regions are, unfortunately, unable to “Dew the Zuu”
With FFXIV taking center stage in the FF media cycle this summer, I thought it would be a good chance to take another look at Final Fantasy Lost Stranger, the ongoing manga series from Square Enix, Gangan Comics, and Yen Press. Back in issue 117, we took a look at the first two collected editions, and our unlikely hero’s journey only gets more complicated in the next two collections…
What’s it all about:
For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy Lost Stranger is written by Hazuki Minaze and illustrated by Itsuki Kameya; the plot revolves around a Square Enix employee and FF superfan, Shogo Sasaki, who is thrown into an in-game world when he’s struck by a vehicle alongside his sister and fellow SE employee, Yuuko
Shogo and Yuuko use their knowledge of real-world FF games to join an adventuring company, but soon tragedy strikes again and Yuuko is slain
Shogo discovers that some spells we players take for granted don’t work the same in this new world, with Raise being considered a myth
With the gift of being able to use Libra innately, Shogo journeys with the rest of their adventuring party: the White Mage Sharuru, the Black Mage Duston, and the Warrior Rei
Volume 3 picks up from the previous volume’s cliffhanger, where Shogo’s group has run afoul of the Magus Sisters while seeking information in this world’s iteration of Mysidia, and the plot continues through Volume 4
What we thought:
Previously, I said that this is one of the better isekai narratives I’ve seen; thankfully, over the course of these two books, Lost Stranger stands on its own two feet, feeling like a self-sufficient story
That being said, the way it incorporates certain elements of the games—particularly when it comes to the Magus Sisters and their signature gimmicks, and another FFIV allusion I won’t spoil—is pretty ingenious
Most of Shogo’s companions haven’t really been given the time they need to develop beyond their tropey portrayals so far, but the larger supporting cast does get time to shine
Cindy of the Magus Sisters in particular stands out as a diabolical villain… though it’s hard to take her seriously sometimes given her sensationalized design and/or wardrobe, which still seems to go against the grain of FF aesthetics
If you’re not as keen about all the isekai stories we get nowadays, Lost Stranger might still appeal to you, especially by this point in the story where it’s taken a backseat to the larger problems of Shogo’s new world
I’ll die on this hill until it happens: an anime adaptation of this story would be awesome and Square Enix should definitely be considering it
What’s next? If you want to read about a less tactful representation of Final Fantasy in comic/manga form, check out this week’s installment of our premium newsletter, the Kupo Chronicle, where we investigated a bizarre yet official adaptation of the original Final Fantasy! (Spoiler alert: Bahamut is packing heat.)
Around the Union
Much like the grueling fight with FFXII’s Yiazmat, our ongoing series on the ultimate challenges continue with “The Complete Evolution of Superbosses (Part 4)!” This installment takes us from Dissidia Final Fantasy, up through the FFXIII trilogy and FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, to FFIV The After Years (3D).
Lastly, we want to know: do you play FFXIV? Are you an active subscriber who isn’t caught up on the Main Story Quests, or have you never tried it, or somewhere in between?
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