Final Fantasy 14's Occult Crescent makes the game feel like an MMO again

I love playing Final Fantasy 14. You know, when I actually get to play. Not when I'm waiting to play: Idling in Limsa Lominsa, desperately waiting for that final healer to join my Party Finder. Except it's been 45 minutes and the tank's had enough, so they leave. And another one goes. And yet another. One by one the party dissipates, and I've been sitting on my arse for over an hour having not played the game at all.

And recently, every time that did happen, I'd exclaim the same thing: "Can Occult Crescent just hurry up and come out already?" Well, thank the Twelve, because it finally has. I've managed to sink in an embarrassing number of hours already and I gotta say, it feels like playing an MMO again.

I know that sounds silly, because Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO. But it's deprioritised overworld activity so heavily that I wouldn't blame you for forgetting that. Everything is funnelled away into instances, party finders, daily roulettes, none of them ever really intersecting in any meaningful way.

Sure, Occult Crescent is also an instance, but it's already proving to be a wonderfully condensed version of a more classic MMO experience.

Classic vibes

I guess that's because—in some ways—that's what Final Fantasy 14's field operations are. They sport a sizable map littered with world bosses and events, nooks and crannies to explore for treasure or points of interest, and mobs that actually hurt if you're even a couple of levels below theirs.

There's your classic obtuse quests, too. I was told to go and find "three architecturally distinct ruins" and survey their points of interest. So I did. Oh, but not those three architecturally distinct ruins? It's actually one ruin, one cave, and one coastal field? Classic.

Did that quest take me 90 minutes of mindlessly running around, stubbornly refusing to delve into Discord servers and Google searches to aid me? It sure did. But with Final Fantasy 14's quests often being incredibly linear and cutscene heavy (which I don't mind, but sometimes I just wanna run around and figure stuff out, you know?) it's been weirdly refreshing taking a more Guild Wars 2 approach to the whole thing.

Some of those 90 minutes were interspersed with tackling Occult Crescent's critical engagements—basically world bosses—and they've been the perfect midcore fights I've so desperately yearned for.

Mess up a mechanic? There goes half your health. Do it again? You're probably going to be dead. It's that perfect balance of personal responsibility without cocking up an entire party's run. I've been playing healer almost exclusively since entering Occult Crescent and it's been an absolute blast running around, resurrecting strangers, tossing the odd heal to a tank as you run past a FATE, all that good stuff.

It's that sense of community—forming temporary parties, running halfway across the map to rez someone who accidentally wandered in front of an enemy 10 levels higher than them, or providing help in shout chat—that is often lost in the rest of Final Fantasy 14's content, despite being such a core pillar of the MMO experience.

Plus, you know, the grind. Thankfully Dawntrail's relic weapon isn't quite the snoozefest of Endwalker's. For starters, you actually have to work for it. Diving into critical engagements and FATEs across the zone offers the chance to drop materials towards your weapon, and you'll need a fair few of them. I've found it the perfect balance of grinding while actually keeping me engaged and running around doing as much as I can, and it's all something I can do on my own terms and in my own time.

There are also the phantom jobs, the newest mechanic Square Enix has squeezed in. It's essentially just granting access to a couple of special skills, but it's a great way for the developer to toy with classes and actions that wouldn't necessarily fit in with the MMO's traditional job skeleton. I've been having a great time running Phantom Cannoneer on my White Mage, for example, since its instant-cast attacks give me that much needed movement when a million mechanics are going off one after the other.

It definitely ain't all perfect, though. There's a real "you snooze, you lose" vibe with how busy the mode is right now. I've lost count of how many times I've hurried over to a FATE that's barely been up for 30 seconds, only to turn up right as the final blow is being dealt. If you're not in, you're out, and it was only when I darted my eyes over to the time on the mode's first day that I realised I'd been playing for over two hours straight, so wrapped up in the chaos I'd forgotten to take a minute to breathe. My eyes and my head were very dry.

That'll let up as people max things out, and for now I'm kind of enjoying the relentless action. As much as I love Final Fantasy 14, the first year of Dawntrail being so focused on hardcore playstyles has made it a lot tougher to enjoy on a more ad-hoc basis. Again, the Party Finder wait times.

But now, having a grind I can drop into at any time—with a difficulty that just about satiates my desire for a little challenge—should be more than enough to keep me coming back and enjoying what feels like the most MMO Final Fantasy 14 has been in a hot sec.