Final Fantasy 14’s next major update finally has a release date

After a number of delays, Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy 14’s 5.3 patch will finally launch in August across all platforms. 

Update 5.3 was originally scheduled to release in June, but circumstances relating to Covid-19 led to a number of unexpected delays. Given the current situation, it’s hard to really blame Square Enix for things. 

“I would like to apologize again to all of our players for the delay of Patch 5.3–Reflections in Crystal, which was originally scheduled to release on June 16th,” game producer and director Naoki Yoshida wrote on the official forums. 

“Although our development and operations teams, as well as QA testing, have experienced a number of setbacks due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), I am pleased to inform you that development production is back on course, and we’ve settled on a new patch release schedule.”

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Yoshida goes on to confirm that the patch will be available from August 11, elaborating upon why things have taken longer than expected.”We did everything we could to try and release this update at some point in mid-July, but in the end, we determined more time was needed to thoroughly test and debug the next alliance raid of YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse and the new large-scale encounters of the resistance weapons content.”

If you’re keen for an inside look at the upcoming patch, Square Enix will be holding a Letter from the Producer live broadcast on July 22, which will likely provide a bunch of new information on the raid, quests, and more. Fans have been waiting a long time for this patch, since you can only grind experience and run old dungeons for so long.

We caught up with game director Naoki Yoshida back in 2019 to talk about Shadowbringers, rebuilding A Realm Reborn and how the game itself has evolved since it first released back in 2013. Oh, and we asked him about Fortnite, too.