In the past, I’ve talked about what the final patch of a Final Fantasy XIV expansion typically feels like. There’s one last dramatic encounter that culminates in a flashy fight, a new (or newly revealed) character appears to entice the Warrior of Light to travel to wherever the next expansion takes place, and then…you have to wait. “You” the player, because the next expansion is still months off, and “you,” as in your avatar, because your allies need time to figure out what they’re doing about a new threat or how they’re getting you to this place you need to be. In this regard, Trail to the Heavens is no different than past final patches. But the circumstances of patch 7.5 are interesting in that they serve as a reflection of Dawntrail’s issues as a whole, and how eager a lot of players (myself included) are to get away from those issues, especially with the newly announced expansion, Evercold, on the horizon.
Trail to the Heavens begins pretty much where Into the Mist left off: the Warrior of Light and their allies are still stumped by the mysterious key, an artifact which holds the secret to inter-dimensional travel. Suddenly, a distress call interrupts the investigation. Voidsent are pouring into the Source for unknown reasons, and Garlemald in particular is in dire need of assistance. From this point on, the main story proceeds at a brisk pace—one might even call it breakneck. More on that in just a bit.
Arriving in the frozen wastes of the former Garlean Empire, you barely have time to meet up with old friends before you’re fighting your way through Trail to the Heavens’ new dungeon, the Clyteum. (No, it’s not pronounced that way, but that won’t stop the fanbase.) While the wintery environs are thematically appropriate for the upcoming Evercold expansion, and it’s nice to get a new mix of the Garlean theme as accompaniment, this dungeon is sadly kind of dull. The first two bosses, at least, don’t do anything new or exciting. The final boss ramps things up a bit with an interesting mechanic, but it may be too little, too late for some players.
After helping out in Garlemald, your next destination is the moon, because that big voidgate we used to get to the Thirteenth is a prime target. You can probably figure out where this is going, so I’ll simply say that a certain Endwalker character gets a nice cameo here, and I hope this is a sign that we’ll see more of her in the future. Before you have any chance to appreciate seeing an old friend, however, it’s time to fight Trail to the Heavens’ trial boss. Inexplicably, it’s Enuo from Final Fantasy V, which is somehow even more random than Into the Mist’s Doomtrain. What’s worse is that there’s very little explanation for his appearance, and upon defeating him, his relevance completely evaporates. The whole setup just feels kind of pointless, like the developers needed a trial but couldn’t come up with a compelling boss, which is unfortunate.
The trial itself is fairly standard for the normal difficulty. There’s nothing too punishing, but a few mechanics are a bit more challenging, and in general, you need to keep your eyes on the arena to survive. The Extreme difficulty is mostly on par with that of previous final trials, which is to say it’s not overly complicated or hard. It’s a fast-paced fight, though, and there are a handful of mechanics that operate as a body check if people don’t pay attention. Oh, and old-school Final Fantasy soundtrack fans will appreciate the electronic remix of “The Final Battle,” AKA Neo-Exdeath’s boss theme. Between Zeromus, Doomtrain, and now Enuo, we’re getting a healthy supply of EDM in Final Fantasy XIV, and that’s not even counting the excellent Pulse album and its follow-up.
Upon dispatching Enuo, things seem to calm down. But here’s where the hook for Evercold comes in, via a certain mysterious redhead and her…talkative doll. I won’t spoil what happens, but this is the highlight of the patch for me. Let’s just say I have no idea what we’re going to do about this new problem, but I’m excited for the journey ahead of us.
Having said that, I want to come back briefly to discuss the pacing of Trail to the Heavens. As I mentioned before, it is very, very fast. On the one hand, that’s a good thing. Events rarely move this quickly in Final Fantasy XIV, and it’s refreshing to have this kind of momentum for a change. On the other hand, the pacing is this fast because it has to be. I mentioned in my Into the Mist review that it was a little odd that the story focused so much on Krile and we didn’t quite get the buildup for the next expansion that we normally would. So things had to move lightning-fast in this patch to get us to the jumping-off point for Evercold.
The reason I bring this up is that Trail to the Heavens is the culmination of Dawntrail’s pacing problems as a whole. The entire expansion has suffered from poor character focus and uneven plot development. Take Crossroads, AKA patch 7.1, for example. Even at the time, its story felt poorly connected to the then-current state of Tural and Alexandria. In retrospect? It feels like an egregious waste of time that has no relevance to either the mid-expansion climax in patch 7.3 or the lead-up to Evercold. Perhaps Trail to the Heavens did not need to be quite so fast if the rest of the expansion more judiciously used its time. Of course, we still have a second part to this final patch that will include a few more main scenario quests in September. But at this point, I’m just hoping that the development team have learned from Dawntrail’s mistakes and that Evercoldwon’t repeat them.
Outside of the main story, dungeon, and trial, the other significant addition in Trail to the Heavens is the conclusion of the Final Fantasy XI Alliance Raid series. For the last leg, we head to Windurst, and the selection of vistas and bosses feels equally iconic and epic, even to my untrained eye. The Great Star Tree and an otherworldly arena where you fight a certain titular god are particularly breathtaking. Speaking of the fights, they continue to be a lot of fun to learn and execute. All four are fairly movement-heavy, and each has at least one or two tricky mechanics that keep the fights reasonably engaging.
I wish I could say that the story is engaging too, but besides an appearance from fan-favorite Shantotto, it’s really just more of the same. Bad guy shows up to taunt you, you fight his electrope recreations of major figures from Vana’diel, bad guy is defeated, you do a little sightseeing with your companions, and then wish them a fond farewell. Certainly, the nostalgia factor means that Final Fantasy XI players will get more out of this story than the rest of us, but I still wish they had done more with the premise. Being able to explore more than Lower Jeuno outside of the raids would have been nice; sort of like a reverse sightseeing setup where we become the tourist. The ending does tease a possible future visit to the real Vana’diel, so who knows what the future holds? Maybe we’re not done with Final Fantasy XI just yet.
Well, we’ve reached the end of this review, but we’re not done with Trail to the Heavens yet. More additions, such as the new Ultimate raid and the conclusions of the Cosmic Exploration and Occult Crescent content, will be coming over the summer, culminating with the final main scenario quests in September. Normally, I wait until that second main story drop to write my review. But because of the longer wait time between patches, I wanted to get something out sooner rather than later. So I’ll be revisiting patch 7.5 later this year once Dawntrail is truly finished. If anything truly significant happens with those last few story quests, I’ll update this review with additional thoughts. If nothing much changes my opinion, though, then let this serve as my sign off from Dawntrail coverage. So long, Tural, and thanks for all the tacos!
