We battled Asura at Final Fantasy 14 FanFest 2023 – that’s how it went

Bee FinalFantasy 14 FanFest 2023 North America gave attendees the chance to challenge Asura, the upcoming Primal Trial that will be released via a new content patch. I took this opportunity and fought my way through FanFest’s online queue (which required attendees to uninstall and reinstall the app for it to work properly) to mark my place in line with other would-be Warriors of Light to get this new Trial tackle.

For those unfamiliar with Trials, they are basically 8 person boss battles. These instances are perhaps my favorite part of it FinalFantasy 14so I was super excited to fight Asura and see what she would bring to the table compared to previous Trials like Skyward‘s Nidhogg, Runner‘s Golbez, or Stormbloodis Susano. While waiting in line, I pulled together a group consisting of RPGSite’s James Galizio and the following Warriors of Light: Thallan Gildeford, King Ma, Ishtar Valentine, Worstluck NA, and Kini Solis. The final four in that lineup are quintuple Legends, meaning they’ve beaten all of the currently available Ultimate battles – some of the hardest bits of content in the game.

As we lined up, we discussed which Job Classes to play; I gave myself the part of White Mage, because that was what I felt most comfortable with and had the most experience with. While I enjoy playing Tank as Gunbreaker and DPS as Summoner, I jumped in as White Mage as I did for previous Battle Challenges (most notably Thordan and Susano at Gamescom when those battles appeared respectively). After setting up our hotbars, making sure we had the right skills in the right places, and talking to each other, we were ready to do battle and take down Asura.

However, once we got into the fight, it was the same song and dance as previous trials. Asura was hardly a challenge, and despite going down for over three months, I had no issues co-healing alongside our Sage. Maybe it was because he was extremely good at the game, or because White Mage comes back into the game easily, or maybe this even speaks to how to quickly get back into the rhythm of things. FinalFantasy 14, but Asura was easy. Extremely easy.

She had all the features of a standard FinalFantasy 14 combat: Telegraphic attacks, Tankbusters (extremely hard attacks reserved only for the Tanks), and orange ground AoEs that sometimes manifested in large circles or rings. There was also a mechanic where she would channel a larger version of herself to then spawn orange rings on the ground that we would have to run out of before they would get hit and take a negligible amount of damage and a vulnerability stack. (I can’t speak to any of the music, because for some reason the audio didn’t work for my setup.) And before we knew it, the fight was over.

Asura was felled and we emerged victorious. We were all silent, almost surprised that it had ended as quickly as it had begun, but then we began congratulating each other. I wished my team well on their next Ultimate off and told James I’d go back to my hotel room to cool off.

Part of me wonders if Asura was easy because of the group I was in, or if Asura is a demonstration of Creative Business Unit 3’s commitment to making content more accessible to all players. If the latter, they’ve nailed it. Unlike when Nidhogg let loose at the end of the release Skyward, I can’t see people getting stuck and having to use Party Finder to end the fight. In any case, I’m interested to see what her Extreme fight will be and what other mechanics will be layered on. In the end, it was a fun experience and a great way to bond with other players, even if it was only five minutes of their time.