Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers – first look

When you first hear the name Shadow-bringers, it sounds incredibly epic. For us, it conjured up the image of a legendary game from medieval times – it is just that epic. This is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) on another level.

You might feel a little familiar when you open up the game for the first time and see people’s faces – people who you’ve known for a while. But then it hits you – you are a stranger, and you are in a land that is alien to you. When in Eorzea, you would have been cheered on by the multitude as the liberator, being the bane of Nidhogg, a royal knight as well as the warrior of Light. But here in this new universe, those titles mean jack squat. The name of this new and alien universe you ask? Norvrandt. What a name! Epic!

In this universe, the exact opposite happens – the warrior of the dark is celebrated. The storyline of this game is very good and just gets you in: hook, line and sinker. As you start off, there is a voice that you will hear, calling you, beckoning for help. This voice is the voice of the Crystal Exarch, who guards the new universe. This universe requires your immense warrior talent to help them get rid of the light that is a curse for them. They would require your help in restoring balance to this new world where darkness has ceased to be. The guardian also mentions the fact that he has dragged your friends into this world as well, giving them form here.

This story really brings out the battle between good and evil, dark and light in a beautiful way, where instead of championing the light, it is viewed as the clarion call of death brought on by the sin eaters, who are maleficent creatures looking to forever destroy Norvrandt with the light. Your mission here is to switch off the light: permanently!

What makes Final Fantasy such an addictive game to play is the fact that the entire story is not revealed in one go and is instead delivered on a piece meal basis through an update which comes like clockwork every three months. Through these updates, new maps, journeys and features are revealed which keep the gamer intrigued and stuck to the game. Playing this game requires a lot of commitment to the story because it will take up quite a lot of time to get around this world. This brings in a lot of drama and tension as one would have to wait for a while to get the next update to the game. With a very active gaming community online, you will have insane fun playing this game. But here’s the thing, you cannot just directly jump into this game. You will have to be patient enough to go through hundreds of hours of previous games to begin to understand the back story properly, so that you can appreciate everything that Shadow-bringers has to offer.