To call this a slow start would imply that it picks up before the build up to Heavensward. The entirety of ARR felt like a struggle between telling a coherent story and making sure fans got enough fetch quests for their dollar. Most players will likely spend their time questioning whether the current main story quest has anything to do with the main story. Any semblance of momentum, pacing or tonal consistency is absent. Between the narrative pretending your dungeon quests were completed without other players and a questionable story structure, it becomes painfully clear that this story does not want to be an MMO. Were this a concise narrative that focused primarily on contributing to the worldbuilding and storyline, it would be adequate at best . There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about what it accomplishes. Utilizing familiar JRPG tropes, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The scenes themselves range from decently done to what the FUCK is this voice acting.

This isn’t to say I hated absolutely every minute of the game. The towns offered enough variety to keep you interested in seeing what else the game had in store. Narrative aside, some of the dungeons toward ARR's climax were solid. Beyond that, it’s hard to praise anything about ARR that can’t be attributed to the systems that are present for the service as a whole. While I don’t hate FFXIV as a whole, I'd hardly call this a compelling introduction to Eorzea.

My Run through FFXIV a realm reborn was full of ups and downs. The games looks beautiful on PS5 and the soundtrack stands tall among final fantasy legendary soundtracks. The locations in FF14 are enjoyable to explore with even the more genereic areas becoming great through world building and things you do in them
realm reborn is chock full with quests, events and minigames to play providing many hours of gameplay and fun activities to do with friends and members of community. The game has many classes to play around with and all the ones I toyed around with I enjoyed, with the dragoon being the class I used for majority of my game time.
The story of a realm reborn is full of fantastic world building establishing the world fantastically the story itself is one note and predictable but enjoyable. A tale necessary to set up the world perhaps for greater stories to come. Even the epilogue a realm awoken had a really interesting plot thread that gets me excited for the future.
The number of quests and the lack of variety in the campaign quests is the games weakest aspect and unfortunately make a realm reborn a chore to play at times The campaign certainly has great moments but they only encompass about 10% of the main quest the other 90% involved fetching wine cheese or fighting a certain number of enemies. Not very inspiring
The game shines in its dungeons and raids as the welcoming community of ff14 and its enjoyable combat leads to a match made in heaven as you battle iconic monsters from the ff series the highlight of my FF 14 experience for sure.
Overall I really enjoyed my time with FF14 the fantastic community makes you feel welcome at every turn and even its short comings can't bring it down. I can't wait to play heavensward in 2022 !!

Final Fantasy XIV is a game that increases exponentially in quality, but that unfortunately does require starting at the bottom of the curve. A Realm Reborn is a typical, I would even say uninspired, JRPG story to which I was only paying half attention to the majority of my playtime. However, the gameplay itself is very fun and satisfying in classic MMO fashion, and packed together with some legitimately interesting worldbuilding the game managed to hold my attention long enough to get to the 'good stuff' - and thank goodness for that, because it's only going up from here.

Minus a half star for being an MMO. Endwalker could massage my balls and id still give it a 4.5 max
My character was a WHM hyur with a mullet and a big mustache wearing a wifebeater and shorts named Michael Rackpipe. Every cutscene with me was very silly, i cant wait until i get the jorts glamour pants.
I did every single (non class) side quest and there is 0 differences between them and 99% of the main quests. I skimmed maybe 75% of the dialogue, and still fail to recall most characters names because the story was so boring until the level 46 quests.
Dungeons were barely dungeons, most of them were just straight lines. The only one i can say I actually liked was the haunted mansion one that i dont even remember the story purpose of. I heard a buncha horror stories about the end dungeon but that shit only took 30 min lol. I used NPCs for everything except the final boss.
The highlight of the entire campaign was rhitahtyn, who apparently got entirely redesigned bc he was too easy and the queues were longer than the fight LMAO.
Ill play the rest of the 2.X MSQs after i escape the pixel remaster mines, i was just home for a week and finished the battlepass earlier than i thought i would, so i decided to check out this cause it’s technically free.

*review is of the base game A Realm Reborn, up to the completion of Main Scenario quest "The Ultimate Weapon" (completed 2nd May 2022)

with patch 6.1 introducing major changes to A Realm Reborn's main scenario dungeons, including duty support with NPCs and overall quality of life changes, i felt it was worth revisiting A Realm Reborn to see how it shapes up, especially after Endwalker concluded the story that begins in. i'm going to be discussing the story, the gameplay of quests, and the dungeons.

so how is the story? well. it's not great. A Realm Reborn is in a strange place where it's both a sequel and prologue and also neither, and doesn't quite fit any mould. it's a sequel to Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, the longdead game that nearly wiped out the Final Fantasy franchise. it's a prologue to Heavensward, where the REAL story begins (or at least gets good), and is neither because it is telling a "whole" story, that of the Garlean Empire's third attempted conquest of Eorzea, while the Eorzeans themselves and the Warrior of Light (you!) contend with "Primals", the summoned gods of myriad tribes who have a corrupting aura about them, that turns any mortal into their slave forever. so whats wrong with it, why is A Realm Reborn's story bad per se? the problem is in its characters i think. we spend the majority of our time with the scions of the seventh dawn, including Minfillia and Alphinaud as the two main characters. Minfillia is a true mary sue, i dont really like the phrase because it has a ring of mysoginy to it but Minfillia is truly without personality, she is just a nice lady with a magical gift who gives us quests to do. She is boring! Alphinaud is better at least, he is characterised as the snobbish grandson of the legendary wizard Louisoix, with delusions of grandeur in saving the world. he means well, but his background of extreme wealth is clear. Even though the WoL is the one to being slaying primals left right and centre, Alphinaud still has the audacity to refer to us as his manservant. and that's at least good characterisation. in the second half of the game we spend a lot of time with Cid nan Garlond, the defected amnesiac master engineer from the empire of Garlemald. Cid is supposed to be a bit cheeky, a bit cocky, and a genius, who has a complicated relationship with the game's facist villains, Gaius van Baelsar. Cid is wholey uninteresting, and the latter half of the story becomes frustrating in the Praetorium dungeon when so much time is spent having villains tell us how much Cid pisses them off while the WoL is just standing there gawping like an idiot. there are more characters, other scions, but they do not really have a personal relationship with the WoL, and are essentially only important in the story in certain "arcs". Thancred only matters in the Ifrit arc, and right at the end (and even then hardly at all), Yda and Papilymo only matter during the (boring) sylph arc, and Y'shtola only matters during the Titan arc. we dont really get to develop meaningful relationships with these characters, who are otherwise pretty one dimensional and not interesting anyway. how's the plot then? well the WoL starts from humble beginnings as an adventurer, and works their way through myriad dungeons and adventures, much to the amazement of the three governments of Eorzea and the scions, and to the ire of the evil wizards who are the puppetmasters of it all, the Ascians. none of what the WoL does in the early parts of the game particularly matter, they are of fleeting importance and excitement. we fight pirates in La Noscea, ancient entombed giants in Thanalan, and cultists in the Black Shroud. if it sounds like these things bore me, its because they do. they are not inherently boring topics, but they just arent done any justice at all. the moment to moment plotting feels tedious and without interest. the actual important story moments come when the Empire kidnap our scion accomplices, and we wake Cid up from his amnesiac state. when the story IS important it's margianally better, it's at least engaging, but when the characters involved are as flat as they are, it leaves you wanting for a lot more. if I have to give the story and momentary plot beats any credit though, its that they do serve a purpose, one that you at least have to buy into. they do a lot of world building about how Eorzea is handling itself 5 years from the calamity, and about the politics within each of Eorzea's nations. we learn about the wealth discrepancy of Ul'dah, its horrid treatment of Ala Mhigan refugees. We learn about the xenophobic andd racist Gridanians, and their obsitance in following the will of the Twelveswood spirits, and we learn about the strange coalition of pirates that form Limsa Lominsa's government, and their hypocrisy in dealing with the kobolds. Eorzea is fleshed out, and it is interesting, but sometimes its delivery of these facts is not good, and that dampens the worldbuilding itself.

how is the quest to quest gameplay? in a word, mixed, i suppose? I've played ARR three times now. my first playthrough was back in January of 2020. back then, there was more busywork than anything else. there were SO many quests where the story paused to have characters go "can you right click this pot to add onions to it, right click it again to stir it, right click it again to dish it out, then right click 5 NPCs to give them soup?" i am particualy fond of the quest wherein I had to right click a bucket in a stream three times in a row (with a cast bar for each one!) to fill it up, so i could pour it on some guy's head. this had literally nothing to do with the rest of the plot lmao. in August of 2020, patch 5.3 came out, which included a major revamp to ARR's questline, removing 31 quests in total, as well as a myriad of quest objectives, and simplifying others. this was a WELCOME change, and streamlined the entire process. it's not perfect by any means, there is still pointless busywork involved that only serves to elongate the experience, but it is so much better than it was. sometimes, as the quests go on, you will have to take part in an "Instance", which is essentially where you are put into an arena within the story to fight a specific combat encounter. it's more than just a monster on the overworld. you might be fighting a specific named enemy, or having named NPCs like Thancred fighting by your side. at their best, Instances can be some of the most fun, exciting, and interesting parts of this game. at their worst, they are dogshit boring, tedious, and lame. with patch 6.1's ARR improvements we saw two previous boss fights (Cape Westwind and Lahabrea) go from trials to Instances. these Instances were brand new, made in the way that the game is designed in 2022. as a result they feel fresh and are engaging, as they've been designed by devs who know what FF14 at its best looks like. as a result, ARR now is filled with a bizarre mixture of ancient, terrible instances where you have to run around looking for tiny shield barriers while an invincible robot chases you, as well as the excellent ones like Cape Westwind, that is now both engaging, fun, and even emotional! ARR's questline could do with being made up from the beginning again and i would suspect it would be way better.

finally, the dungeons. As previously mentioned ARR has seen multiple improvements since I first played in January of 2020. I suspect that even when I played it was better than it was a few years ago, let alone at launch. ARR's worst dungeons in the day were Copperbell Mines, The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, Castrum Meridianum, and the Praetorium. in the original Copperbell Mines, enemies would tether to a spot so you couldn't tank them wall to wall, the first miniboss was one to three incredibly weak adds at a time, the second one being a slime that was impervious to damage except for a mechanic which only the tank needed to handle, and so on. Totorak made you explore its labrynth looking for frustrating Magitek Photocells that would dismiss a barrier, as well as having a sludgy floor that slowed the player when they walked on it... which was impossible to avoid. Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium were incredibly long and tedious, both with meandering objectives in them that required teamwork to be done that wasnt fun to complete, but annoying to not complete. On top of this the bossfights were pitiful, and they were both riddled with unskippable cutscenes. Praetorium by itself would last an entire 45 minutes! the improvements we got in 6.1 fixed the bosses in Copperbell Mines, making them actual bosses for everyone to fight. the enemies still tether for some reason, so you can't win them all. Totorak is totally streamlined, no longer a maze, with no sludgy floor. And the vast majority of cutscenes were removed from Meridianum and Praetorium, with only the "necessary" ones still in place. Furthermore, the bosses were made far more engaging with actual mechanics that felt worth acknowledging. again, nothing is perfect, but it feels bizarre to say, these days, that Castrum Meridianum is actually fun now, whereas it used to be a slog. When it came up in roulettes you'd roll your eyes and groan because it was so bad. Not anymore. one of the problems with talking about ARR's dungeons is that hindsight doesnt do them any favours. The first time you play them, especially if you're new the MMOs, they're not so bad because you don't have anything to compare them to. you're also still getting used to your miniscule moveset, so the 3 buttons you press in Totorak wont dismay you your first time. When you're level 90 and have just completed the final trial that Endwalker introduced, then you pop levelling roulette and get Sastasha, and can suddenly press only 2 of your 20 buttons, it doesnt MATTER how good the dungeon is now, because you're left with the worlds most boring, easy, mind numbingly unengaging gameplay. it's good that old content still gets played, but it puts a negative spin on any old dungeon. Even the good Heavensward and Stormblood dungeons suffer from this at this point, and it's a shame.

so what's my conclusion? It's okay. It's better than it was, and will presumably only get better as they continue to make improvements to it. In 6.2 we're expecting improvements to the ARR patches, which are overdue. I wholeheartedly believe that if you can tolerate or even enjoy ARR, you will have an absolute blast with everything that comes after. Literally everything is improved after A Realm Reborn; the story becomes very good, the voice acting is significantly better, the quests are fun and have way less busywork (but not none, unfortunately) and the dungeons/trials are exciting, tense, memorable mini-stories that you are excited to see when you come back to them again. A Realm Reborn is where we started, and it's not perfect, but at least it let us get to the good stuff.

WELP! now that all the individual patches are available to be reviewed on their own! 2.0 is going down A LOT.

2.0 is a uninteresting story about a very basic fantasy world but I think it's mostly carried by elements outside of the story like friends, FC's and aesthetics. I was on the copium of hoping that it gets gud later, I didn't really connect with the gameplay because I couldn't understand dragoon. So playing through it gets good later for the first time was a genuine struggle, But I've been able to power through these games before.

Having 3500+ I definitely have high regard for the cities and the areas. there isn't a zone I don't like.

Coils is genuinely very good and the Crystal tower series was really great too.

despite what most people have told me about it, I liked a lot of it, but there was a lot of pacing in between the great moments, the story was very vanilla but I personally liked it and I really loved the main cast
the transition from ARR to HW was really really great

a lot of the side content really saved it for me
-Coil of Bahamut
-Crystal tower
-all MSQ trials on extreme
the first two especially were really great, and completely outclassed 90% of the story for me, true spectacles and really interesting lore drops
honestly, most of ARR was just unmemorable fetch questing with unimportant small plots and imo extremely bad quest design, the only thing keeping me interested was the excitement for the next trial and my love for seeing how the characters/story develop

A Realm Reborn, what was originally a reboot of Final Fantasy XIV, sets the groundwork for what's seen as one of the best games in the franchise...but my GOD, is it a slog. It feels like a string of side quests that have next to no connection, and what actually happens in said side quests has next to no substance either. Up until you reach level 40, you're stuck going around the world, doing meaningless tasks for various settlement and crawling through dungeons that don't really lead to anything story-wise. The final stretch is fairly good, and the gameplay is fun enough to get through it, but as what is many's first impression to the game, this was not handled well at all.

This review is mostly only regarding the main scenario quests of the base game. Starting this game is an awesome experience, when you’re running around a huge beautiful world for the first time it’s jaw dropping. The gameplay feels pretty tight, but it’s also very simple until you’re nearing the end. The overall art direction, UI design, and sound design carry everything for a really long time, and I mean like 80 hours or so. The story starts out sorta okay, then gets incredibly boring for hours and hours before it finally hits a point where things start getting interesting. The last 20 hours or so of the story are legit awesome, with fun dungeons and an actually challenging boss fight or two, and by this point you’re starting to actually care about the characters. The final battles and cutscenes are great, and while it feels more like the setup for a bigger story, it’s a pretty satisfying conclusion to the main conflict. It’s weird to review an MMO like it’s any other Final Fantasy game, but you can now play the entire base game (and I believe some of the expansions?) as basically a single player RPG so it sorta works. It was a long, mostly dull road but by the end I only felt excitement to get further into it. Is it worth it? I don’t fully know yet, but just experiencing the world for the first time is enough of a reason to give it a shot.

post endwalker review:

its still pretty mid, but after beating endwalker and knowing details that were previously unknown enhanced the experience
arr does have its moments, one that stuck out to me in particular was the final battle against lahabrea and the little undertale-esque moment that happens (i know this game was pre undertale but idk how else to describe it)
the dilly-dallying is still ridiculous though and really dampens the urgency that the game is trying to convey
all in all its alright but ffxiv gets soooo much better with later expansions and does a lot of tropes used in arr better with future expansions as well

-Des efforts sur l'ergonomie manette avec la ps5 mais ça reste compliqué : jouer healer et tank est quasi impossible. Mais dans la navigation globale on s'y habitue (sauf pour le pavé tactile !!!)

-L'ecran est saturé d'informations : "l'interface dévore la surface". Mais on s'y fait. Par contre il y a plein d'infos, plein de menus, de sous-menus etc. C'est un peu le bordel et il doit y avoir plein de mécaniques, d'options ou de contenus dont je ne soupconne pas l'existence

-Gameplay des combats sympathique mais répétitif (avec pugiliste/moine). Il y a possibilité de changer de classe/job sans recréer un perso, c'est cool pour varier le gameplay mais on retourne niveau 1 (c'est moins cool, mais on a un boost d'xp !)

-Toutes les quêtes de classe/job (afin de développer des nouvelles compétences ou équipements) sont scenarisées avec une petite mise en scène. De manière générale il y a un effort de scenarisarion pour toutes les quetes. C'est sympa !

-La progression des niveaux est rapide. Pas besoin de farm comme un débile, il suffit de suivre le scénario et c'est bon ! Et pour ne pas casser le jeu, notre niveau baisse lors de certaines instances ou alea afin d'éviter de tout defoncer (synchronisation). On respecte les patterns des boss ici !!!

-Combats de boss plutôt stylés avec des effets de zones, il y a des notions d'esquive, de patterns, des idées parfois original, de la mise en scene etc. Point fort du jeu (meme si des fois c'est le bordel et on n'y comprend rien) !

-Le concept d'aléa (des combats aleatoires qui pop dans le jeu et que n'importe quel joueur peut faire) est sympa : avec samy on a vécu un grand moment avec d'autres joueurs inconnus sur un mob d'alea bien retors

-Comme les quetes sont souvent courtes avec pas mal de recompenses (argent, xp, équipement) le sentiment de progression est constant (jusqu'au endgame en tout cas). On devient addicte et on ne lâche plus la manette ("allez une dernière quete")

-Possibilité lors des donjons instanciés d'invoquer des pnj plutôt que d'attendre d'autres joueurs. Très bonne idée mais lors des instances en hard (parfois nécessaire pour le scenar) on n'a plus cette possibilité... et il faut attendre 30min (voir 1h pour les raids) afin de remplir une team !!! #mercisamy

-Système pour les "veterans" de lancer des instances déjà faites avec un très gros boost d'xp. Pratique si on change de classe/job. Cela incite à refaire les instances pour aider les novices et leur éviter les attentes trop longues.

-Le jeu est très scenarisé dans sa quete principale, sûrement le mmo le plus scenarisé qui existe ! Sans être incroyable le scenar est vraiment cool et sert surtout d'intro à l'univers de ff14 qui va sûrement se déployer dans les extensions. Il y a pas mal de mystères et d'interrogations, et la narration sous forme de flashback fonctionne plutôt bien. Et le fait de voir souvent le point de vue des antagonistes rajoute du mystère !

-L'univers est donc intéressant, riche et cohérent. La dimension politique et géopolitique est présente (et de plus en plus avec le endgame qui fait la transition avec l'extension). Les thématiques sont matures et durs : massacre de notre camp de base, obligation de tuer les innocents delivrés qui ont été subjugués, problematique des refugiés et des migrants, remise en question de la politique humaine envers les autres races que l'on combat (ils invoquent des primordiaux mais c'est parce que les humains rompent leur pacte, les dominent, les enferment, prennent leur territoire etc.), le discours de Gaius à la fin sur le fait que les dieux d'eorza sont tels des primordiaux, pourquoi ne pas s'en débarrasser ? (Dommage que cela soit noyé par toute une idéologie proto fashiste)

-Le concept de primordial, déité que l'on invoqué par des cristaux et sa foi, est intéressant (plus la foi est forte plus le primordial est puissant). Cela va même jusqu'à l'invocation de créature totalement imaginaire comme le roi des mogs. Intéressant et cela va sûrement être creusé dans la suite.

- Les protagonistes sont globalement peu intéressants pour l'instant (meme si ca commence à s'etoffer dans le endgame). Les antagonistes un peu plus mais ce n'est pas incroyable.

-Effort de mise en scène pour un mmo mais cela reste cheap (beaucoup de plan fixe, champ/contre champ etc.). La technique vieillissante, l'absence de doublage de la quasi totalité des dialogues, l'avatar qui ne parle pas et les animations bas de gamme rajoutent au côté cheap (pour un mmo ça reste ce qui se fait de mieux). Par contre les quelques cinematique en image de synthèse sont sublimes (notamment l'intro)

-La DA des environnement est plutôt cool, et le chara design des antagonistes est mega stylé (celui des alliés est un peu quelconque par contre)

-La musique fait le taff mais n'est vraiment pas marquante (sauf celles des combats de primordiaux ou de boss). En plus parfois elles arrêtent de boucler, ce qui fait qu'on se balade sans musique.

-L'exploration est peu présente car les zones ne sont pas très intéressantes à parcourir, donc on speed en monture, on regarde la mini map ou on se teleporte. Et il y a quelques murs invisibles. Par contre dans le endgame on débloque la monture volante et là c'est génial, on erre et on explore plus (avec la musique de ff6 quand on prend l'armure magitek). Et de manière generale on peut se balader sans se faire attaquer par tous les monstres du coin, c'est agréable.

- Gros défaut : quete FedEx omniprésente mais ce n'est pas forcément le plus relou (quand ça s'inscrit dans des moment du scénario intéressant ça va sans problème). Le nombre de quetes artificielles est bien trop nombreux !! On nous promet un combat de primordial ou une avancée dans le scenar et là il faut aider des pnj à la con pour récupérer des trucs pendant des heures (au secours !!!). Sur le long terme ça créé une certaine lassitude. Le jeu troll parfois ou fait des twists, et surtout cela nous force à voir toute la map du jeu sans avoir à faire les annexe (et cela sert à maintenir le jeu en contenu, pour que les gens continuent de s'abonner). Mais cela créé un gros problème de rythme (beaucoup moins présent quand arrive au scenario de transition du endgame, qui va beaucoup plus à l'essentiel et est plus interessant en terme de scenar).

-Beaucoup trop d'aller retour inutile !!

-En revanche les dernières heures (avant le endgame) sont très prenantes, très rythmées, cela laisse une très bonne impression finale.

-La fin du endgame est genial, avec une longue série de cinématiques en mode film qui fait avancer le scénario. Hâte de voir la suite !


Conclusion : quelques défauts, notamment de rythme mais l'expérience est agréable, addictive et on veut toujours savoir la suite. Un bonne porte d'entrée (trop longue certes) dans ff14. Ce n'est pas encore exceptionnel mais le potentiel est là (en espérant que les extensions réalisent effectivement ce potentiel).