Final Fantasy 14's hugely expanded free trial is now live along with major patch

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Patch 5.3 strips grind out of the early game.

Final Fantasy 14's hugely expanded free trial is available from today, and if you've not heard about it already, you might need to sit down and tighten your grip on your monocle. The trial has been expanded to include all content from the base game and its first expansion Heavensward, while its level cap has been done away with (you can now advance to level 60 as normal). There's no time limit, no subscription needed, and all of the content from A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and their post-launch updates is included (through to patch 3.56), although you will need to stump up for a subscription if you want to access certain social features, or play the rest of the expansions.

The reworked free trial is accompanied today by patch 5.3, detailed by Square Enix here. Reflections in Crystal's biggest changes are to do with the main quest from the base game, which has been reworked to lessen the grind; more bloated quests being trimmed or removed so they take up less of your time. "Significant adjustments" have been made to the quest rewards from the main and side quests in A Realm Reborn as well.

The patch concludes the storyline of the Shadowbringers expansion with new Main Scenario quests, and expands the Weapon Series questline with The Sorrow of Werlyt, a "story-focused experience culminating in a special event battle". There's also a new YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid named The Puppets' Bunker. It's the second chapter of the Nier: Automata-themed content created by Nier's Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro, once again featuring the android 2P.

On top of that, there's a frankly enormous list of changes and fixes to the game—one of the more notable being that you can now fly mounts over certain areas from A Realm Reborn.

Patch 5.3, AKA Reflections in Crystal, is live in Final Fantasy 14 now. There's a new trailer to ring in the changes, which you'll find above.

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.