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final fantasy XIV: heavensward patch quests while heavensward was a great expansion. it never grabbed me quite as well as the base game’s patch quests did and never had the same highs as many of its best storylines. heavenswards patch quests manage to rival them. I'm still not sure it manages to surpass them as being my favourite chunk of the game but the new dungeons and storylines here managed to be some of the game’s best parts, and yet, its current storylines are all wrapped up on a more interesting note than many of them started on, and it's setting it up for a very bright future. naturally, the patch quests give you more dungeons, more gear (some of the game’s best—the current one i have on my catboy that you can see in the pics i took and are easily the game’s best yet), big cutscenes, new characters and more bosses. you even get some big new raids and harder versions of heavensward bosses if you want to take them on. it doesn't feel as big as the ARR patch quests but the quality is still very much there. 　 the story is the big thing, as with ARR, and it's really good. the final chunk of the dragonsong war stuff with nidhogg and estinien is easily the most interesting it ever got and the final confrontation with the former is easily one of the game’s highlights. one character showing up briefly there managed to have me crying for minutes after. the political stuff with the dealing with the peace treaties and how people have been reacting to it was really cool too. it's a really interesting idea and it handles it really well; how a populous would react to peace after thousands of years of death and war and the people, in this case a very interesting extremist group, who would not accept that end. it feels especially relevant now. the warriors of darkness get introduced and they're also one of the highlights of the entire game; this cool band of rival characters running parallel to the scions with their own goals. they're cool as hell and i love how they're just the default character models for the different classes as shown in trailers. it's a neat way of getting use out of those designs and they have a really cool story plus some great scenes. i loved their introduction and i loved the fight against them later on. you get thancred, yda and papilimo back, the latter having tons to do here and being one of the other highlights of the expansion. i won't say why but reals will know, some of his scenes also got tears out of me. you get big revelations with yda too that set up for the next expansion. though thancred doesn't get a ton do to, i do love his reintroduction scene—some very funny stuff there, though I'm iffy on his new design. he looked far better before, cuter before too. you meet kryle too, one of the new scions. she's nice and i love her design, though i don't have a ton to say on her yet. she just seems nice. it ties up the stuff with minphilia well too. though it's clearly mostly set up, it's still really interesting setup and I'm dying to see where they go with it. the ending stuff with the ala mhigan resistance is also really good if a little weirdly paced with not much actually happening up until the end, but i like what it's setting up and the twist at the end was really good, plus that final fight with omega was killer. it was a good way to end the expansion, though i think the shocking end to the ARR patch quests hit me a lot harder in the moment. the new dungeons are also pretty fun here, even some of the lesser ones like sohr hai (a combat gauntlet in a pretty cool sky island area with a fun moogle fight) are still good. it really shines with dungeons like the anti-tower, a huge mage’s tower you go up in reverse. it has some really breathtaking views of the castle suspended midair upside down and the trek in is one of the expansion’s highlights. there's also saint mocianne's arboretum, an overgrown botanical facility that has one of the coolest themes out of anything in the game so far. it almost feels like it could be from a horror game. nevereap feels like what if the sea of clouds was made into a dungeon and it's super pretty. the fractal continuum feels much the same for azis lia, though this is a lot less cool considering the zone it's based on. there's also xephatol, a huge tribal sky city which is super fun to go through and the last dungeon, baelsar's wall, which is the lowlight, i feel. it doesn't feel very distinct and in my head i keep mixing it up with a very similar one from near the end of ARR, it's a bit of a lame way for the expansion to end. you don't even get a real boss fight at the end. though the music for it is very good. there's some new harder dungeon varients, the main highlights of those being the hard versions of the great gubal library and the lost city of amdapor, the former mostly for its theme that still manages to be the highlight of even this part of the expansion and it's really cozy aesthetics—though i do wish the actual location was more different to its normal one. the other, however, is both a good bit different from its normal one, being full of hatched bugs and less spores and having a fantastic piano track that manages to be another highlight. i love its final angel fight too. others include the harder version of hullbreaker isle, a cool pirate themed combat gauntlet with a fun ending battle against mistbeard. the hard version of pharos Sirius, which has you going down the orange crystal-filled lighthouse from the top, ending in the ruins of its basement. it's solid. this was also one i somehow skipped in the original so seeing its original version, a zombie filled lighthouse, was super cool too. there's also the harder version of sohm al, a volcanic cave dungeon. this one is the worst of the new hard dungeon, but it's still a good time. it's just a little bland compared to the rest. i also did dusk vigil. this is just one i missed in heavensward that somehow totally slipped me by. it's a cool snowy dungeon with a nice boss arena, but not much to really set it apart i find beyond having a great remix of the western highlands theme and a really nice aesthetic to it with the falling snow and dilapidated castle. the music here is up to the usual standard for 14 music—a cool DMC3'y boss track with sephirot's theme "saint", some fantastic tracks in alexanders various forms which all come with really robotic vocals including one that feels super inspired by tokusatsu themes, some amazing dungeon themes like "unbreakable" which is the theme from the fractal continuum, "poison ivy" which is st mocianne's arboretum theme which has a really creepy energy to it but is otherwise a super relaxing track. the antitower dungeon also has a killer theme with "up the down staircase". i die for piano focused tracks and this is one of the best in the game. in that same vein is the hard difficulty version of the lost city of amphidor with its amazing piano track that’s name i cannot seem to find, but it's a total favourite and maybe even my favourite theme of the patch quests. it's fantastic. sohr khai and it's 15 minute long dungeon theme "apologies" also deserves a mention, as does the weeping city of mcach theme. i liked the theme that plays at the redbills ship but i couldn't find an upload or a name for it online, which is annoying. the hard mode version of the great gubal library also has another standout theme, possibly even the standout theme here. it's just the basegame’s song but better and that was already one of the game’s best tracks. dun scaith's track "shadow of the body" is probably the best of the main raid and dungeon themes. i love the violins in it. it almost sounds like it'd fit in well in nier gestalt. the final dungeon theme, "another brick" for baelsars wall is also great. i love how it incorporates the gridania themes, which is a great way to end the patch quests! there's some killer battle themes, too, like "in darkness, there is one" from the void ark dungeon which i think is one of the game’s best non-boss battle themes. the boss theme of that dungeon "voidal manifest" is also really good. Weeping City of Mhach's battle theme is also worth a shoutout. they really killed it with the raid music this time around. "revenge twofold" is another boss standout, as is sophia's theme "equilibrium" which might be the patch's best boss theme and easily one of the best songs in the game! "infinity" which is zurvan's theme is also up there, especially the first half which is heavily piano focused. i love the remix of the main boss theme in the nidhogg fight here too, felt super climactic, like a whole chapter of the game was coming to a close, which it kind of was. it fit perfectly and really added to the emotion of the fight. overall i don't think it's as good as the music in base heavensward or even the ARR patches, but there is some really solid stuff here and some parts like the new raid themes are really worth going out of your way to listen to. the alexander raids take the place of your big 8 person questline this time, similar to coils of bahamut, but a lot easier. it takes place over the course of 12 dungeon floors and a ton of quests, outside it taking place in the dravanian hinterlands and idyllshire. it's really solid and some of the game’s best dungeon content yet. each one is more or less just an excuse for a fun puzzle or a cool boss fight but all the bosses you find are really fun—especially the final chunk with alexander—and a really difficult trash compactor boss fight where you have to make sure enemies die in the right spots to prevent a team wipe. it has a cool steampunk mecha theme, one of the game’s best storylines yet with more Biggs and wedge content plus one of my favourite characters so far in with mide, a cool treasure hunter that always skirts the line with who she's siding with and it has a really good ending payoff that managed to get some tears out of me. the story itself is a fun little self contained time travel story with tons of really fun twists and ways it pays off twists it foreshadows super early on and a very cool villain faction, a group of goblins that can see into the future. i love how they go by the illuminati as well, it's cute. it has a killer OST to boot. each floor is super listenable and they all build on each other, all seemingly like small parts of a larger song that all comes together in the final fights. the sky pirate raids however are your big crystal tower equivalent, being these huge 24-person raids with some short story bits between. it's a lot more focused on the actual gameplay than plot this time around compared to alexander. there's a story here and it is good, but it's not the focus. it's a fun little adventure with a group of sky pirates tying to get treasure from a derelict ship and the ways it goes wrong. it gets shockingly scary and dark but i like how the cast always keeps it really fun and charming. i love all of the new characters here a lot. it helps that the new dungeons are also great. there's an event horizon'y spaceship, a cool ruined city (complete with ozma of FF9 fame appearing for a fun boss fight) and then a really rad alice in wonderland inspired dungeon for the final stretch with one of the coolest boss designs in the whole game at the end. they're all excellent and i might even call them some of the game’s best dungeons to date, the first and last of the raids especially. i liked this even more than alexander and that says a lot. this is a must-play raid if you can, though that is, if you can, because getting there can be a little tricky since not many people will be queuing for it, it took me hours to get into even one of them and that was at peak times for my server, so know that going in and group with some friends if you can to make the wait more bearable. there's also a few new trials. they have a short story to them involving a mysterious masked boy and a new empire general and they're probably my least favourite of the new duties, but there's a decent story with some very solid boss fights here. just don't expect a lot of story or a memorable cast, though i do like a few of the ending cutscenes. the first trial is sephirot, who has a pretty bland environment and design but a killer boss theme that channels DMC3 like nothing else. he's solidly fine but not massively memorable outside of his boss theme. the second boss is more fun i think, Sophia. she has an even better boss theme and i love the scale aesthetic of her arena stuff. she also reminds me a lot of something from SMT4, which i like. the last of the bosses is zurvan, who i don't like as much as Sophia but more than sephhy. he has a great OST, a cool arena gimmick in the first half with the dropping platforms and i love the JRPG endboss energy his latter platform has. plus, he has a whole mid-fight cutscene for one of his moves. i don't think the game has ever done that before??? it's so cool! also added were some new features—this is a patch after all. you could add tenants to your houses now, allowing effective digital landlording! i think it's funnier to imagine it that way. it also added to a lot of ARR mounts the ability to fly which for sure seems like it would have been needed. It'd be sad if my goobbue couldn't. you got beast tribe quests with the vanu vanu as well as more Hildebrand quests, new gold saucer minigames like lord of verminion, a reference to the lord of vermillion card game. though i do wish they actually added that card game to 14, it seems neat (and i think is connected to the lord of arcana series). triple triad as also seemingly added here, the card game from FF8, and something i really need to spend more time with. there are tons of new player mechanics like the hall of novice, the mentor system and the training bots. also the orchestron for player homes as well as flowers and an aquarium which both feel needed at least in my opinion. you got the treasure hunts which are super fun—i love doing those—plus more palace of the dead stuff if that's your thing. I've still yet to test that mode out but i really should. you got the raid finder, the recommended gear button, the differentiator between filler quests and ones that unlock stuff, apartments for people who can't get the houses, stuff you'll all probably use all the time that you barely notice, but that are really important, heck this is where the 14 day limit on the free trial was lifted, something i sure take advantage of. that's about all there is to it though. i think this is a step down from the ARR patch quests for me. those are still the games peak i think, but i did love how some of the new storylines opened up here and i think it managed to wrap up its expansion really well, plus a lot of those features added are really fantastic. I'd love to come back to ishgard some day since the place almost feels like home now. it's where i plan to buy a house in and it's one of the two area's i frequently just go and hang out in. the other is mor dhona by the by, but for now i am glad to be past it, I'm a little torn on stormblood from what little i have played since i started writing this. it's area's feel a little baron so far, but I'm excited to see where it takes me, i love its story setup and the little autumn forest at the start of its zone is really killer, but i guess I'll see where it takes me. I'm hoping the game continues to get even better.