Lacking anything better to do until the expansion pack arrives in June, the Final Fantasy XIV dev team transformed one of the game’s biggest boss battles into a fighting game I’d play in a heartbeat.


It’s Yda’s fists of fury versus Livia Sas Junius of the Garlean Empire, complete with her custom white Magitek armor. The battle between the two warrior women has taken two dimensional turn in this crazy bit of developer fun, with all the trappings one expects from a modern day fighting game. They’ve even transformed the Limit Break meter into a super meter, and wait until you see Yda’s Limit Break counter, a lengthy sequence that could be Final Fantasy XIV’s answer to Knights of the Round.

My favorite bit is Thancred chumming it up with the two female Garlean soldiers. That’s so Thancred.


In other FFXIV news, yesterday Square Enix released the video version of the benchmark for the Heavensward expansion.

The benchmark gives players a chance to see if their system can handle the upcoming expansion, while dropping some sexy visual hints at what’s coming. The benchmark will be released Monday, giving players with less-than-optimal PCs nearly two months to upgrade before the expansion’s June release.