Bozja Southern Front is an on-going arena involving warfare with the resistance fighting the empire and before I go onto writing how much I enjoyed it and compare it to Eureka I will first say this content actually felt MORE Stormblood like then the expansion itself. Seriously it feels more like we are fighting for something compared to the endless – TO DOMA – we did in Stormblood.
Story & Environment
So the idea behind the Southern Front is simple in that we have a resistance group fighting a legion of the empire who are looking to deflect and make their own nation and this is causing the war in this area to be prolonged.
With the story in mind, the overall location is designed with the fact it is a warzone but one thing I am disappointed about is it is far too … brown then it has to be. The battlefield itself is split into three different areas where you need to get a certain amount of mettle which will push the story on – that the resistance is slowly pushing the legion back.
I am not going to discuss the overall story as it is something for you to experience yourself but it is enjoyable but it seems the relic story itself is just kinda “there” and seems to be a secondary thing overall and I honestly can’t tell you how to get the relic items in there as nothing seems to suggest how to do so.
FATEs / Skirmish
The real question with any content is how fun it is so its time to discuss how the content works. There are in essence three parts of it. The first is what is pretty much just a normal FATE where people turn up and murder everything which then can spawn an “engagement” which is limited to a certain amount of people.
Assuming you are given permission to enter the engagement (which only once I never got to join) you are then treated to what is a fight that is standard to a normal trial fight. From the ones I have done and I think it is most of them they were interesting and involved having to think a bit and not just spam a single button.
The third part is a solo engagement that sadly I have been unable to experience but people say it is a tough solo fight that you just need to have manaward for and you are okay.
So is it fun? It is much like Eureka where you have to spam FATEs to level up but they appear far more often and the engagements typically need people to help and there is some difficultly to it. I enjoyed it and while I personally prefer Eureka myself (the exploring and working things out), I do feel this is the far better way to take the content forward.
With that said I would love to see a few changes. The first is the stuff that makes it feel much more like a warzone. Even stuff such as random NPCs fighting each other would go so far. Another thing I would like to see is more role-based stuff to do. For what is a warzone we could have FATEs where healers have to keep the resistance alive, tanks have to transit prisoners or deflectors and the likes. There is so much more that can be done to make it feel like a warzone with an actual stack in things.
Raid
Just like Eureka before it, there is a raid (although it is far easier and focuses on the story with a harder one coming and I have to say I pretty much enjoyed it even if it is mostly just extreme trial and dungeon mechs that deal with a lot more damage.
The raid once you get in (which is an issue in itself as we seem to wait around for an hour in some instances) splits into two groups where one group is protecting equipment to break in while the other is fighting the defenders off.
After this, it is time to fight more defenders and then rescue prisoners and to do this its time to spill into different parties and quickly safe all six of them. In doing so just like in older MMOs you are awarded more stuff which ranges from coins to buy new gear, lost actions, music sheets and a bit more.
Once you keep alive as many as you can you then fight someone who seemingly becomes a primal and then afterwards fight the person you are expecting to do and this fight again carries on the idea of splitting up and doing different things as needed.
Overall I enjoyed this raid but I honestly hoped it would be queuable outside of the instance (or even inside at will) as waiting for around for it to pop ruins the experience and in a way that sums up the whole thing – it’s fun but once you are levelled up there is little to do beyond waiting for a timer to pop while you farm clusters and even after that you are just waiting for something to happen.
Overall Opinion
Overall I found this content to be enjoyable when you are doing things but there is a lot of waiting around to actually do the enjoyable stuff. The raid appears roughly every hour and even then you may not get enough people to do the raid.
The solo fight may take a while to even get into IF you can even get into it and to get the gear it takes forever unless you are lucky enough to get a lot of coins.
So is it fun? Yes it is WHEN you are doing something.
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