As if Final Fantasy 14's free trial wasn't already generous enough, it now includes the best expansion in the entire game

Shadowbringers — (Image credit: Square Enix)

And so, the Final Fantasy 14 free trial copypasta gets longer once more. The MMO has been show-ponied around by the community for its rather generous free trial for ages now. First it was up to level 60 including Heavensward, and then in 2023 was extended to include Stormblood. And as of today's Patch 7.5, the free trial includes the best damn expansion of them all: Shadowbringers.

The free trial expansion was actually announced during the North American Fan Festival keynote over the weekend, but the news of its imminent arrival seems to have blitzed past a ton of folk. But yup! It's here! Well regarded as the best expansion of the bunch, Shadowbringers is the lethal combination of ridiculously good storytelling, wicked fun encounter design, and bunny girls.

Having Shadowbringers in the free trial means that you now don't have to fork out any money to have full access to every race in the game—that includes bunny boys and hrothgals introduced in Endwalker and Dawntrail respectively, as they only require Shadowbringers to unlock. It also means free trial players can dive into the Nier-themed alliance raids—2B leggings are about to get a whole lot more common, huh?

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There are still all of the usual limitations, mind. If you're looking to do some hardcore raiding without a subscription, you're out of luck as The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate), Weapon's Refrain (Ultimate), and The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) aren't available on the free trial. That's a relatively niche obstacle, though, and roadblocks that have the potential to be more of a nuisance is stuff like:

A 300,000 gil cap
No access to /shout, /yell, and /tell chat
No market board or retainers
You can't join a Free Company (FF14's guild equivalent)
No access to Party Finder
No PvP

If you're willing to work around those limitations though, you can squeeze a helluva lot of time out of this game's free trial. The inclusion of Shadowbringers easily brings it up to a good 500 hours of stuff you can wring out of it, which is absolutely wild to me. And being able to play the absolute peak of Final Fantasy 14 without even having to spend a dime? Now that's even wilder.

Let's just not talk about how long it'll actually take you to get there, first.

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.