Final Fantasy 14 Patch 2.5 Released

There are some big changes coming to the world of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, and the road to all of that new content begins with the recently launched Patch 2.5, perhaps better known as “Before the Fall.”

You can view the complete patch notes over on FF14 official site, but there’s quite a bit of content for you to weed through, including new playable content, battle system tweaks, new items, bug fixes and the like. And when I say “quite a bit,” I mean you’re going to be scrolling down that list for a long, long time.

So, to save you some of the effort, here’s a rundown of what you can expect out of Before the Fall, which is available now for PC and console versions of the game. New main story missions, as well as side story quests, have been added to various regions. New Grand Company items are also up for grabs, as well as new equipment and furniture for housing. A handful of new hairstyles are also up for grabs, along with a new dungeon, “Keeper of the Lake,” and a pair of hard upgrades for older dungeons.

For those of you who enjoy the Trials, a pair of new ones have been added, as well as the next raid in the Crystal Tower arc. There’s also a boatload of new items to purchase, as well as small (and awesome) additions like Teleporters to make getting around even easier than before.

And really, that’s just scraping the surface, as even A Realm Reborn’s “small” updates typically turn out to be massive in scale.

Even crazier is the fact that this is just the first half of the Before the Fall patch, with 2.51 due out sometime in February. It’ll add in another dose of fresh content, including the Manderville Gold Saucer, where players can take part in controllable chocobo racing and an in-game version of Triple Triad, the hugely popular side game from Final Fantasy VIII.

This is, of course, all leading toward the Heavensward expansion, due out later this year.

With Elder Scrolls Online shifting to a subscription-free model later this year, part of me wonders if FF14 would ever follow suit. Then again, with this much content coming out on the regular, I’m not sure that you can really argue against a subscription plan.

This is just the beginning of what looks to be a big year for Final Fantasy. Theatrhythm still has fantastic DLC coming out, Final Fantasy Explorers might see a US release, Final Fantasy Type-0 is just around the corner and, later this year, we’re supposed to get FFXV. Yeah, Square Enix is swinging for the fences in 2015.