For those of us looking for great storytelling in a role-playing game, massively multiplayer RPGs have usually been the black sheep of the genre's family. Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward , the first major expansion for 2013’s FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, breaks that trend, and does so admirably. While the main story of A Realm Reborn is nothing to frown on, Heavensward takes that foundation and pushes it toward the heavens to emerge as the finest Final Fantasy tale that developer Square Enix has told in a decade. That's especially helpful here, as it helps outshine some of the expansion's rough leveling slog and Square Enix's decision to gate the new combat classes behind hours of pre-expansion story content.

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It's important to note that the impact of the story hinges a lot on knowing the personalities and backgrounds of various characters from the initial story content for A Realm Reborn, and thus Square Enix made the unusual decision to require players to finish all of the main story content from patches prior to the expansion. For anybody who’s been subscribed and actively playing this whole time, that's not a problem, and brand-new players who've bought the expansion ahead of time will be grateful for the roughly three levels of XP the 16 or so hours of level 50 content yield on the journey from levels 50 to 60. On the other hand, if you're coming back to FFXIV with a level 50 character after an absence of several months, as I was, the catch-up work and delayed gratification required can be daunting.But, I've found, it's worth it. A Realm Reborn's final string of level 50 patches hinted at the quality of writing that comes in Heavensward, and reaching the moment when the gates to the new realm of Ishgard open rightly feels like a momentous event. The story of Heavensward itself explores themes of betrayal, redemption, and hidden truths in a reclusive realm with surprising dexterity, and it wraps it all in one of the finest tales about dragons in any medium. In Heavensward, one of A Realm Reborn's most one-dimensional characters becomes one of the saga's most complex as he wrestles with guilt over his former arrogance. Elsewhere, devious scheming leads to welcome romps in the zones from before the expansion. It’s not without stretches of padding, of course, and events occur that leave the most memorable storyline leading up the expansion stripped of its initial power. But with its enjoyable corresponding cutscenes and hints of related events yet to come, even this relative narrative low-point moment has its appeal.So I can forgive that choice, but the practice of gating the three new combat "jobs" of Dark Knight, Machinist, and Astrologian behind that 16 hours of level 50 story content as well stings much more. It makes some sense from a lore perspective, as these are Ishgard-specific classes, but waiting that long is a sure buzzkiller if you’ve mainly come back to FFXIV to play the new classes, only to find that you still have to put many more hours into jobs you were already tired of despite being at the previous level cap. Even worse, the requirement to finish all that content first means that I missed out on all the XP the story quests could have given at least one of those new jobs. Seeing as how there was already an Ishgardian zone in A Realm Reborn in the form of the Coerthas Central Highlands, it seems possible that Square could have just placed the trainers and their quests there and thus allowed access to the classes before the gates of Ishgard even opened.As for the classes themselves, they're fun – and I wish I'd had the opportunity to play through the whole expansion as the gunslinging Machinist instead of my arrow-flinging Bard, although both currently seem a bit weak in comparison to other jobs. The tanky Dark Knight at last introduces the "big sword" class that so many players have been wanting, and the Astrologian is a healer with tarot-like animations that are just as fun to watch on the sidelines. (They, too, seem a bit weak.) Fortunately, not all such related content is gated; if you wish, you can level a new character (or pay for a race change) as a member of the new Au Ra race, whose human features and scales and horns recall the dragons at the center of the expansion.Among the chief attractions of Heavensward are a variety of stunning new zones that complement this tale of dragons and the occasional wild tribe. It starts out predictably enough, with the same snowy landscapes we saw before the expansion, but then the story whisks us off to surreal landscapes where rocks float about the sky as though in a painting by Magritte. From the towering Gothic spires of Ishgard itself to the hovering peak of Sohm Al, Heavensward is full of visual surprises.True to the expansion's name, these are landscapes meant for flying, especially with the new black chocobo mounts you get early on in the story. I'm generally not a big fan of flying mounts on account of their tendency to take us out of the "living" world, but the concept works well enough here since so much of Heavensward's content centers on the aforementioned floating rocks that make getting around on foot a bit of a pain. I do, however, like how Heavensward makes you work for the privilege of flying by gathering "aether currents" through exploration and quests, resulting in real satisfaction when my chocobo first pointed its beak towards the sky.I don't regret that, in part because the dungeons were so fun. Heavensward might have a great single-player story, but it also shows that Square Enix hasn't forgotten that FFXIV's main focus is overcoming challenges with other players. It hit me harder in this regard than most MMO expansions, kicking off with a required hard-mode battle with a new primal at level 53 that's complicated enough that I've seen multiple groups fail entirely. But it's also quite satisfying to beat, and it hints at what challenges Square Enix might have in store for us with coming patches. The four-man dungeons maintain this momentum with fun battles and occasionally memorable settings, complete with squabbles with key figures from the lore. It all culminates in a final battle that's as challenging as it is unexpected.That's all true of the leveling content; now all we have to do is wait to see if Square Enix can maintain this pleasing mix of story, dungeon design, and fun through upcoming content updates. As great as these individual components are, they're not terribly different from what's already in FFXIV; and in fact, the new flying mounts, the new race, and the new jobs represent the only genuinely new features. But that also means that this an expansion in the truest sense of the word, and it does its job well.