I’ve mentioned in past Final Fantasy XIV reviews that the third major patch after an expansion is usually where the storyline of that expansion wraps up. Endwalker was an exception, as it concluded the entire MMO’s story arc in the main 6.0 patch, but Dawntrail returns to the standard format. These secondary climaxes and resolutions are often just as dramatic and impactful as those from the main expansion. Heavensward and Shadowbringers in particular had fantastic finales that have stuck with me long after moving on from their respective expansions. Dawntrail, by contrast, has had a lot of work to do, on account of the main patch feeling weaker than past expansions. March’s Seekers of Eternity (7.2) made up a lot of ground, ramping up the intrigue and setting up a showdown between our heroes and the enigmatic Calyx. Now Patch 7.3, The Promise of Tomorrow, has arrived to conclude the story, so let’s dive right in!
The Promise of Tomorrow picks up with the Warrior of Light and company investigating the recent chaos in Alexandria caused by machines mysteriously malfunctioning. After suffering a major loss early on, our heroes find a lead on Calyx, the Endless villain behind everything, and discover a heretofore unknown facility that might have some answers. This section of the story is kind of interesting because it involves a series of puzzles that players have to solve to progress. None of the puzzles are what I’d call even remotely challenging, but they do require players to investigate their surroundings and make some basic deductions. This is a nice change of pace from most story content, which is generally just some form of “go here, click on that, talk to someone.” To be clear, there’s still plenty of that in this patch, but this puzzle sequence helps break up the monotony a little.
After finally finding Calyx’s whereabouts, the Warrior of Light and friends set off to do what they do best. This leads us to The Promise of Tomorrow’s new dungeon: The Meso Terminal. This dungeon is fittingly similar to Dawntrail’s Alexandria, featuring facsimiles of the old kingdom that create a visual spectacle, accompanied by an epic orchestral arrangement of the expansion’s ending theme, “Smile.” The second boss of this dungeon is a standout, as it essentially splits the party into four separate one-on-one fights based on role. I actually look forward to re-running this dungeon on other roles to see how the fights differ.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an expansion-concluding patch without an epic trial fight, and The Promise of Tomorrow has quite the noteworthy specimen. I won’t spoil anything, of course, but if you’ve taken note of the plethora of Final Fantasy IX references throughout this expansion, you can probably guess which boss makes an appearance. The normal version feels a little too easy, though it does have an interesting middle section that, like the dungeon, forces players to fight on their own for a while. The Extreme version turns things up a notch as expected, but while it has a few tricky mechanics, it too feels easier than other similarly situated trials. As always, your mileage may vary depending on your experience and the job you play.
Once you’ve defeated the trial boss, you’re treated to a mostly satisfying but slightly predictable series of events that wrap up the Alexandria storyline. Now that we’ve seen how Dawntrail’s story comes to a close, I can safely say that they managed to stick the landing after stumbling out of the gate with the main expansion and Patch 7.1. The Promise of Tomorrow doesn’t reach the heights of Heavensward or Shadowbringers’ conclusions, but it’s solid enough and helps restore a little goodwill for the next expansion.
But the main story isn’t the only thing you get to do in The Promise of Tomorrow! There’s also the next leg of the Final Fantasy XI tie-in Alliance raid series, Echoes of Vana’diel. This time, players travel to San d’Oria and take on another series of familiar FFXI baddies. There’s a nice variety of areas to see as you progress through the 24-player raid, though some are kind of “blink and you’ll miss it” short. My favorite is an airship sequence from Chains of Promathia where you fight two well-known mechanical bosses simultaneously. It’s a unique setup in that you have to jump from ship to ship while fighting enemies; there’s even a bit of a minigame aspect to it at one point when you have to dodge a slew of AOEs while still leaping off your current vessel in time. Definitely a set piece experience! There are a few other bosses that are recognizable even to my inexperienced eyes, and the fights are pretty fun, if overall a little bit easier than Patch 7.1’s Jeuno.
Unfortunately, the story for this leg of the raid series is short and forgettable. You unlock the actual raid very quickly, which is nice, but after completing it, you essentially go on a sidequest that doesn’t do much to develop the characters or plot. The central conflict in this chunk of the story mostly feels like it retreads an established issue from the previous leg. Here’s hoping that the conclusion in Patch 7.5 is meaty to make up for this.
One last area I want to cover in this review is that The Promise of Tomorrow adds a few notable quality of life features. First, Cutter’s Cry gets the Duty Support treatment in this patch, and while the devs removed a lot of the meandering tunnels you previously had to navigate, they also eliminated a shortcut that let you ignore enemies in two areas. So it’s a bit of a “one step forward, one step back” situation. The bosses are largely the same, outside of a few minor tweaks that I barely noticed, but then again, they weren’t in dire need of an update either.
Second, phoenix downs are finally useful! The iconic Final Fantasy item was previously only usable in certain limited circumstances (i.e. out of combat, at close range, etc.), which made them functionally useless outside of most content other than Deep Dungeons. Now, they can be used in battle, in an expanded variety of instanced content, and by players outside of your party, making them much more helpful when you either don’t have a healer or your healer is dead. They are still not usable in harder content, though, so healers don’t have to worry about being completely replaced — at least not any more than they already do! [Editor’s Note: Sounds like healer talk for someone often running with a Warrior!]
Finally, there’s a host of smaller additions in The Promise of Tomorrow, including the long-awaited addition of chat bubbles, improvements to Cosmic Exploration, and the option to display a cast bar underneath the nameplate of certain enemies. This last one can be particularly helpful when fighting two bosses at once, as it makes it easier to track what each enemy is doing without having to use focus targeting. One other incredibly minor improvement that I really like is the option to display bangs when wearing headgear. I know it’s just an aesthetics thing, but fashion is the endgame, after all, and I always hated carefully selecting my character’s hairstyle only to hide it under hats or hoods.
All in all, The Promise of Tomorrow is a good expansion-concluding patch. The battle content is fun, the main story wraps up a troubled plot with more grace than I initially expected, and there are a few nice quality of life updates to round things out. Having said that, I’m glad that we’re finished with Dawntrail’s story because I’m eager to move on and see what’s next. Here’s hoping that patch 7.4 lays the groundwork for something fantastic when it releases later this year!
