News
Final Fantasy XIV PS5 Beta First Impressions
Square Enix takes advantage of the PS5 hardware
April.13.2021
After some maintenance Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) players finally got to see Patch 5.5 which will lead into the story of Endwalker. But along with the patch came a welcome update for those of us who have been playing on the PS5, the open beta. Easily enough if you currently play the PS4 version on the PS5 you just need to download the new PS5 version. I will say, you should probably use FFXIV's server backup to backup your character and all of your settings as it will make things a lot easier when you switch over.
As for the PS5 version it's a welcome update to help bring FFXIV up-to-speed with the new consoles. The first thing I did when I booted up was start adjusting the resolution and what I could with the visuals. I cranked it up to 4k and admired the crispness of what I was seeing. To be honest the menus and icons are what I noticed the most and it was like seeing them for the first time. Everything felt neater and smoother which is what you expect on the newer consoles. After I did my admiring I turned the resolution down to WQHD (1440p). The framerate dropped when using 4k when things started to get busy, but even at WQHD it's a noticable improvement.
One of the things often touted with the PS5 are the load times and according to Square Enix those are improved here as well. For me personally I didn't notice a huge bump in comparison to playing the PS4 version on the PS5, but I'm also not timing the load times to tell the difference. Regardless the load times are fairly quick and they get you to where you want to go.
Another area that saw improvements was the audio. If you have a headset that supports 3D audio, this where you'll notice a difference. Audio is one of the things to me that is the most immersing, so it's good to see Square Enix take full advantage of the PS5's 3D audio capabilities. In a game like FFXIV where there are a lot of things to see and hear having the audio draw you further into the experience is all the better. Battles are especially where I noticed the upgrade, being able to clearly hear everything going on around me.
The final point I'll cover is the haptic feedback in the controller and I want to shake whoever's hand worked on this portion. The haptic feedback is an incredibly small piece of the puzzle when it comes to the full game but it's attention to details like that that I truly enjoy. Faint feedback when you call up a mount, the differences in vibration when you ride a mount on two legs versus four; these are things that again immerse you into the game and the world.
This will be an ongoing beta and Square Enix will be updating the PS5 version as time goes on, so when they update it I'll write about those as well. But from what I can see so far it's already a great improvement to a great game and I'm excited to see what's in store for the future.