Final Fantasy 14's funky new roguelike mode has me hyped for Evercold's combat revamp, which'll be a winner if it's even half as weird

Terminally Online

This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer's very own MMO column. Every other week, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we've all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.

I've had a little time to muck around with Final Fantasy 14's new Beastmaster limited job—for the uninitiated, a limited job is sort of like a minigame. Not an actual class you can take into current raids or dungeons, but a side-activity that uses the game's combat system to create something new.

The Beastmaster can tame and use creatures in combat. And for the first 30 levels, I was mostly just filling out my little book of monsters in a pleasant haze. I like the job's core combat mechanics, which involve pairing up axe strikes with specific monster abilities to form combos, but grinding in the overworld doesn't do much to show that off.

Where the Beastmaster really shines is in the Crucible of the Unbroken, the limited job's roguelike mode.

I was mostly expecting a straightforward list of bosses to push over via FF14 fun, but played-out combat mechanics, and there is some of that demand. But it's mixed with an overarching minigame of strategy and ability usage that has me watering at the mouth for whatever strange, eldritch things Evercold is cooking up.

For context, Evercold will be introducing "Evolved" jobs—a means to escape the game's rote, two-minute cooldown homogenization that's plagued it for years. During the look we've gotten at these, it seems Square Enix wants to reintroduce job identity to each of the existing jobs by giving them something weird.

For example, the Paladin gets defensive abilities they can essentially "parry" with, unlocking huge punishes if they time them moments before a powerful blow lands. The Dragoon will get an ultimate jump ability and, while it is still being deliberated, the developers have teased the idea of giving the Dragoon a 90% damage resistance buff while they're up in the air. The Dragoon is a DPS job. This'd be unprecedented.

But it's hard to tell, with any development studio, where the hype ends and the overpromising begins. Will Square Enix be brave enough to commit? The Crucible of the Unbroken tells me they very much might.

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Granted, this is an isolated bit of content off the beaten path, but it's clear that Square's been using it to experiment with job design that's more reactive to the encounter at hand, rather than just hitting the same buttons every two minutes.

You get given 10 of your collected pets to bring with you into your run—while you can bring three into a battle at a time. Each of these critters have a "Trick" ability, which hits a certain elemental damage type (and enables your Axe combos), a "Tempered Release" ability, which is unique to that creature, and a "Borrow" ability, which is unique to that creature's type.

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Doing well in crucible battles isn't about memorising your rotation by rote—or even by memorising mechanics, really, although the Crucible is punishing if you mess anything up, as any good roguelike should be. It's about bringing specific beasties to specific encounters and using them in specific phases.

For example, one boss I fought had a mid-fight phase in which four flames steadily advanced to the centre, slapping me with a debuff if I didn't kill them in time. They're weak to water, so I brought out my favourite crab bro, borrowed his "you can spam water attacks now" ability, and melted them down.

This extends to a lot of other mechanics, too. If you want to interrupt a cast, you need a specific critter for that. If you want to endure a massive tankbuster, you'll need to borrow a defensive ability from one of your animal friends.

You aren't just deciding which scissor, paper, or rock to use—the crucible forces you to be deliberate in a few ways. Firstly, these bosses constantly output damage. You can choose to have the boss either attack you or your pet, but health loss is permanent and can only be restored by items or campfires.

You don't want to die, because then you fail the run, but you also might want your pet to live for a future battle—or conversely, you might have a (literal) sacrificial lamb. Furthermore, swapping between pets has a long cooldown, so you're going to have a beastie out for a while. It's a little like the game's already-existing Bard job, wherein you have three songs that last for 45 minutes a pop.

It's extremely compelling, and I've legitimately felt like I'm putting together custom strategies for each fight—all the while juggling my own rotation and dancing between AoE danger zones. And it gives me hope that Evercold's new evolved jobs will be super weird, too.

Maybe not just as weird. Obviously, Beastmaster's occupancy as a limited job gives it a lot more room to experiment—but the Crucible does feel like a testing ground for concepts in future raids and fights. I can easily see a world in which a specific set of jobs are able to simply skip entire mechanics because of their unique abilities.

I don't want a puzzle for every old casual dungeon boss, mind—but I do want those same eureka moments where you realise you've got the perfect answer to a mechanic on your action bar, rather than just memorised as 'this particle effect means we stack up, this one means we spread'. If "evolved" combat design is half as experimental as Beastmaster, then Final Fantasy 14 will have finally shaked off the dust.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.