When I first mentioned I was going to go back through the entirety of FFXIV, now that it was functionally complete with the release of Endwalker, I was given looks of concern. This will be the fourth time I’ve played what amounts as A Realm Reborn, and just that inkling alone is really fair enough for people to give me worry. It’s really only off the honeymoon sentiments that I can just stare at the screen going “Yes I will gladly scrutinize myself to play the bullshit parts again for the sake of being comprehensive.”
That is to say, A Realm Reborn is not good. Awful for most of it even. This return trip, where I plan to overturn every rock to give the whole of Final Fantasy XIV its fair shake with the combined 1000+ hours of experience I have with it now, requires going through this patchwork prologue. To an extent this is relaxing to me now, I’m so attuned to FFXIV’s world that I can just pop a reshade on and get lost in doing countless fetch this and do this quests and feel a sense of affirmation. I also get to experiment trying to find a more affirmative body in the world by messing with my character design. This might sound like a superfluous intro, but really the best thing ARR can offer as it is is a world to get lost in.
The real prologue certainly tries to bring you in, although haphazardly. I have a strong preference to Gridania start over the other two as it’s the only consistent highlight of 2.0’s main quest. It really gets the rags to full adventurer right as you help out with menial but nice lovely worldbuilding quests, even if tree-hugging The Shire clone is the most it amounts to. It feels good though, and it helps that the area is decently pretty. I can no longer stand Limsa’s pirate speak prose which poisons that affair, and Ul’Dah’s intro can simply fuck off for all the good Scheming Monetarists amounts to.
The rest of the main quest pretty much follows suit. I’d scorch earth it, as for all the good it does at creating political spheres and cultures to understand and vibe with, it never really amounts to much bar a few scenes that the patch story content would add. Especially where I stand now, where fundamentally so much of the region’s story becomes inconsequential and at best only leads to a couple pathos moments. I actually had more fun sidequesting, even if that never quite becomes good it at least affirms neat political stuff like Ul’dah’s failure to become anything other than poor business startups across the desert. There’s a quaint scholarly feel to seeing how the corruption of capitalism does not really lead to any wealth, while a dead monster’s remains has wealth of its own. A sidequest story describes how a monster near Camp Drybone saved countless fauna and flowers across its back during the calamity that led to a beautiful conservation monument in its wake. It fits so snugly into the region, this contradiction to how the most wealthy inspirational parts have to do with acts of good in people and ‘monsters’ both rather than any business venture will do. The general puzzle pieces of FFXIV’s world remain this solid, but what I’ve described alone is a needle in the haystack.
It’s most telling that the biggest sigh of relief was when I finally got through the awful Praetorium once again, collected a bunch of optional quests, and felt free. FFXIV’s 2.0 is quite literally stifling, forcing you through all of its areas in painful uninteresting nonstop introductions. Even its strongest moments are retconned or swept away. You do everything in your power to try to prevent region threatening gods from being born, and only succeed at stopping one and said one is so temporary that a few patches later it gets summoned anyway.
I want to talk about probably the most contradictory portion, a part of the main questline I used to say was the best part. The Coerthas story follows ‘the lowest point for the main characters’ and has you getting partially involved in civil warfare between religious zealots and devout heretics. On the surface it’s just far more interesting than what’s come before, because there is such an intrigue in how easily corrupt the theocratic institutions are and what the heretics’ truth could be. However, it’s the most painful area by design. You get one aetheryte to teleport to, and plenty of the quest have you going back and forth across the desert snow area that feels less like Cold Hell and more like overbearing busywork. You have to climb all the way to the top of towers five plus times not even including sidequests just to talk to two people. Alongside the most inefficient use of time and the region, the sidequests themselves work against the narrative being foiled. The heretics you talk to are literally insane, sacrificing to a ‘blood god’ (What?) and painting them as such an unjust evil that I was aghast at the thought that Heavensward really completely overturns this. A Realm Reborn isn’t just patchwork, it's quite literally writing themselves into a hole that they had to gracefully jump straight out of and act like the hole didn’t exist or was not as deep as it looked.
I’ve done a lot of kicking in ARR’s face which frankly it doesn’t completely deserve. Past its failures I ended up somehow enjoying my time, although it’s clear that a lot of that is from retrospection. Not to bring up its disgusting dev crunch, I’d rather push towards what it Does get right. The job quests, for the most part, are all enjoyable times. Bar the Archer’s sickening vibe that amounts to “earn the racist’s respect and force a family that hates each other to continue being with each other”, the vast majority have very earnest and funny stories. I love the Thaumaturge’s cute family, and their themes of facing cowardice and becoming their own mages. I adored the Pugilist story which is just a lighthearted boxer story. I especially gushed over the conjurer story which thankfully side-steps Gridania’s endemic issues in favor of giving a great narrative about listening. You watch a girl come to terms with her buried family and her own mortality as she is forced to understand what it means to have perspective, listening to the world to find beauty in it, while coming to terms with the loss that prevented it.
The patch story is also still a setup and takes a strong amount of the time. I found myself more bored on this playthrough, but I remember how happy I was when ARR was finally taking its characters with, well, character. It weaved threads, set up downfalls and arcs while beginning to critique the structure and ground it. There was finally an intelligence to how characters act and react, instead of say, pre-praetorium’s entire Mor Dhona arc where you simply walk into high-tech Fascist Mordor and everything just works. I’d still say it only really gets good from Hearts of Ice-onward, where things finally start coming together instead of going in such a roundabout fashion. But moments like facing the keeper of the lake hit me as much as the final glass that clinks on the floor with The Fall. Just excellent stuff that really lets the kickoff to Heavensward settle in.
Not to mention, it actually starts being rather fun to play around that time too. I still find it difficult to criticize the early leveling that much, but it’s certainly not fun to ever replay any of those sections. Working with an incomplete rotation where you pretty much hit one to three buttons at best for 10-20 hours is just not interesting, even if the idea is to engrain all of the moves in your head. I’m all for the tutorial making sure that even the people who skip Hall of the Novice have leeway to not ruin the whole party, especially since a lot are playing to care about the story alone. But that doesn’t change that the vast majority of the dungeons need considerable reworking, just so I don’t feel like I’m slowly going insane. They are by design this way since ARR was an experimental phase, but again, we can do better now. FFXIV is certainly not above redoing sections, and I mean, Yoshi-P announced he was going to fix the Cape Westwind trial of all things.
Still, it does get significantly better in the patch content, and ARR’s gameplay still brought me a few of my favorite moments! Coil of Bahamut is laughably poor for most of it, but Turn 9 is such a beautiful dance of mechanics that simply hasn’t been replicated yet. Titan Extreme too, which was my first hardcore content in general, is such an adrenaline rush and showcases exactly what makes FFXIV combat special. Not only having to fulfill your role to react to a profuse amount of mechanics at once, not only weaving your abilities appropriately, but being able to match how your team moves and filling in for their mistakes. 90% of the time, your party is not going to move efficiently and cover everything. But even as a single person, you have the ability to make up for that in most hard instances.
Even on Normal they’re all fun presentation wise, and while gear buffs and changed mechanics have rendered much of these instances at launch painlessly easy, I still enjoy them a great deal. Whenever I get Shiva or even King Moggle Mog I just smile, partly because the music for both is a perfect fit, but also just getting to be a bit attentive and optimize my attacks. Even in the most tedious moments of questing, the general gameplay is strong enough to make me grin when an instance unlocks as a result.
The patch content also does such a workload to fill in for much of ARR’s travesties. Besides the raid and extreme trials it also adds Hildibrand, simply one of the best comedic questlines that calls back to Garry’s mod era in a wonderful way. It's consistently good and lighthearted, where having it on the side while I continued the main quest was a lovely feeling. Also I love the Gold Saucer, and while I suck at mahjong, fucking around with triple triad this time around was weirdly satisfying. Can’t say I spent much time chocobo racing or doing much of the parkour though, that’s not really my thing but I did give it a shot and I moderately understand the appeal. The fashion show deserves so much praise just for simply forcing me to try glamour because I keep pushing that off to “endgame.” The RTS mode isn’t anything I’d put much time into but I love that it’s a thing simply for giving you an excuse to collect minions. The optional dungeons as well as the quests around them are quite neat and cute too, of various quality but still particularly memorable.
Certainly, not everything it adds is a hit. The moogle delivery quests are such a tedious apology, putting character backstories into nameless NPCs that barely had any before. That entire storyline should just be skipped completely. The beast tribe quests all culminate in the same too-serious points with only the Ixal crafting one being something I even moderately enjoyed. The PVP… exists. I don’t simply mean the deathball spiral carteneau stuff which just sucks on the face of it, but the 4v4 stuff too at best gives good looking gear. At worst it feeds into a nasty side of the community that didn’t really need to exist and is just a boring timewaster. Not to say that every player vs player multiplayer needs to have the depth of Destiny 2 crucible or WoW’s utility maximizing tactics, but I’d rather this just be excised at all if it’s not going to amount to much. Even as it is now with expansions later, it’s at best an experience grind.
There’s probably more I could cover that escapes me even after all the notes I wrote down, but I think I’ve added enough to this monstrosity anyway. This will serve as a first part that I hope to tie together as a big review on FFXIV as a whole. I know this in of itself isn’t really ascribing much meaning or giving a thoughtful look at the game. As much as I want to have particularly powerful things to say I’ve decided to myself that this is my current project for who knows how long, and for some bizarre reason beyond mortal understanding I enjoy it. I hope this perspective has at least been interesting to read through.
Oh if you wanted a conclusion, basically ARR sucks lol. No, it's still so hard for me to recommend getting into FFXIV this way. If you seriously want my recommendation and just find A Realm Reborn sooooo unbearing, just buy a Heavensward skip and then go to the waking sands to unlock New Game+. All you really need is the patch content main quest for context, I cannot stress enough how completely trivial and inconsequential the 2.0 story is.
As for job stuff in terms of how they play, I’m saving that for Endwalker. I really can’t find talking about all of the job’s leveling process interesting.
That is to say, A Realm Reborn is not good. Awful for most of it even. This return trip, where I plan to overturn every rock to give the whole of Final Fantasy XIV its fair shake with the combined 1000+ hours of experience I have with it now, requires going through this patchwork prologue. To an extent this is relaxing to me now, I’m so attuned to FFXIV’s world that I can just pop a reshade on and get lost in doing countless fetch this and do this quests and feel a sense of affirmation. I also get to experiment trying to find a more affirmative body in the world by messing with my character design. This might sound like a superfluous intro, but really the best thing ARR can offer as it is is a world to get lost in.
The real prologue certainly tries to bring you in, although haphazardly. I have a strong preference to Gridania start over the other two as it’s the only consistent highlight of 2.0’s main quest. It really gets the rags to full adventurer right as you help out with menial but nice lovely worldbuilding quests, even if tree-hugging The Shire clone is the most it amounts to. It feels good though, and it helps that the area is decently pretty. I can no longer stand Limsa’s pirate speak prose which poisons that affair, and Ul’Dah’s intro can simply fuck off for all the good Scheming Monetarists amounts to.
The rest of the main quest pretty much follows suit. I’d scorch earth it, as for all the good it does at creating political spheres and cultures to understand and vibe with, it never really amounts to much bar a few scenes that the patch story content would add. Especially where I stand now, where fundamentally so much of the region’s story becomes inconsequential and at best only leads to a couple pathos moments. I actually had more fun sidequesting, even if that never quite becomes good it at least affirms neat political stuff like Ul’dah’s failure to become anything other than poor business startups across the desert. There’s a quaint scholarly feel to seeing how the corruption of capitalism does not really lead to any wealth, while a dead monster’s remains has wealth of its own. A sidequest story describes how a monster near Camp Drybone saved countless fauna and flowers across its back during the calamity that led to a beautiful conservation monument in its wake. It fits so snugly into the region, this contradiction to how the most wealthy inspirational parts have to do with acts of good in people and ‘monsters’ both rather than any business venture will do. The general puzzle pieces of FFXIV’s world remain this solid, but what I’ve described alone is a needle in the haystack.
It’s most telling that the biggest sigh of relief was when I finally got through the awful Praetorium once again, collected a bunch of optional quests, and felt free. FFXIV’s 2.0 is quite literally stifling, forcing you through all of its areas in painful uninteresting nonstop introductions. Even its strongest moments are retconned or swept away. You do everything in your power to try to prevent region threatening gods from being born, and only succeed at stopping one and said one is so temporary that a few patches later it gets summoned anyway.
I want to talk about probably the most contradictory portion, a part of the main questline I used to say was the best part. The Coerthas story follows ‘the lowest point for the main characters’ and has you getting partially involved in civil warfare between religious zealots and devout heretics. On the surface it’s just far more interesting than what’s come before, because there is such an intrigue in how easily corrupt the theocratic institutions are and what the heretics’ truth could be. However, it’s the most painful area by design. You get one aetheryte to teleport to, and plenty of the quest have you going back and forth across the desert snow area that feels less like Cold Hell and more like overbearing busywork. You have to climb all the way to the top of towers five plus times not even including sidequests just to talk to two people. Alongside the most inefficient use of time and the region, the sidequests themselves work against the narrative being foiled. The heretics you talk to are literally insane, sacrificing to a ‘blood god’ (What?) and painting them as such an unjust evil that I was aghast at the thought that Heavensward really completely overturns this. A Realm Reborn isn’t just patchwork, it's quite literally writing themselves into a hole that they had to gracefully jump straight out of and act like the hole didn’t exist or was not as deep as it looked.
I’ve done a lot of kicking in ARR’s face which frankly it doesn’t completely deserve. Past its failures I ended up somehow enjoying my time, although it’s clear that a lot of that is from retrospection. Not to bring up its disgusting dev crunch, I’d rather push towards what it Does get right. The job quests, for the most part, are all enjoyable times. Bar the Archer’s sickening vibe that amounts to “earn the racist’s respect and force a family that hates each other to continue being with each other”, the vast majority have very earnest and funny stories. I love the Thaumaturge’s cute family, and their themes of facing cowardice and becoming their own mages. I adored the Pugilist story which is just a lighthearted boxer story. I especially gushed over the conjurer story which thankfully side-steps Gridania’s endemic issues in favor of giving a great narrative about listening. You watch a girl come to terms with her buried family and her own mortality as she is forced to understand what it means to have perspective, listening to the world to find beauty in it, while coming to terms with the loss that prevented it.
The patch story is also still a setup and takes a strong amount of the time. I found myself more bored on this playthrough, but I remember how happy I was when ARR was finally taking its characters with, well, character. It weaved threads, set up downfalls and arcs while beginning to critique the structure and ground it. There was finally an intelligence to how characters act and react, instead of say, pre-praetorium’s entire Mor Dhona arc where you simply walk into high-tech Fascist Mordor and everything just works. I’d still say it only really gets good from Hearts of Ice-onward, where things finally start coming together instead of going in such a roundabout fashion. But moments like facing the keeper of the lake hit me as much as the final glass that clinks on the floor with The Fall. Just excellent stuff that really lets the kickoff to Heavensward settle in.
Not to mention, it actually starts being rather fun to play around that time too. I still find it difficult to criticize the early leveling that much, but it’s certainly not fun to ever replay any of those sections. Working with an incomplete rotation where you pretty much hit one to three buttons at best for 10-20 hours is just not interesting, even if the idea is to engrain all of the moves in your head. I’m all for the tutorial making sure that even the people who skip Hall of the Novice have leeway to not ruin the whole party, especially since a lot are playing to care about the story alone. But that doesn’t change that the vast majority of the dungeons need considerable reworking, just so I don’t feel like I’m slowly going insane. They are by design this way since ARR was an experimental phase, but again, we can do better now. FFXIV is certainly not above redoing sections, and I mean, Yoshi-P announced he was going to fix the Cape Westwind trial of all things.
Still, it does get significantly better in the patch content, and ARR’s gameplay still brought me a few of my favorite moments! Coil of Bahamut is laughably poor for most of it, but Turn 9 is such a beautiful dance of mechanics that simply hasn’t been replicated yet. Titan Extreme too, which was my first hardcore content in general, is such an adrenaline rush and showcases exactly what makes FFXIV combat special. Not only having to fulfill your role to react to a profuse amount of mechanics at once, not only weaving your abilities appropriately, but being able to match how your team moves and filling in for their mistakes. 90% of the time, your party is not going to move efficiently and cover everything. But even as a single person, you have the ability to make up for that in most hard instances.
Even on Normal they’re all fun presentation wise, and while gear buffs and changed mechanics have rendered much of these instances at launch painlessly easy, I still enjoy them a great deal. Whenever I get Shiva or even King Moggle Mog I just smile, partly because the music for both is a perfect fit, but also just getting to be a bit attentive and optimize my attacks. Even in the most tedious moments of questing, the general gameplay is strong enough to make me grin when an instance unlocks as a result.
The patch content also does such a workload to fill in for much of ARR’s travesties. Besides the raid and extreme trials it also adds Hildibrand, simply one of the best comedic questlines that calls back to Garry’s mod era in a wonderful way. It's consistently good and lighthearted, where having it on the side while I continued the main quest was a lovely feeling. Also I love the Gold Saucer, and while I suck at mahjong, fucking around with triple triad this time around was weirdly satisfying. Can’t say I spent much time chocobo racing or doing much of the parkour though, that’s not really my thing but I did give it a shot and I moderately understand the appeal. The fashion show deserves so much praise just for simply forcing me to try glamour because I keep pushing that off to “endgame.” The RTS mode isn’t anything I’d put much time into but I love that it’s a thing simply for giving you an excuse to collect minions. The optional dungeons as well as the quests around them are quite neat and cute too, of various quality but still particularly memorable.
Certainly, not everything it adds is a hit. The moogle delivery quests are such a tedious apology, putting character backstories into nameless NPCs that barely had any before. That entire storyline should just be skipped completely. The beast tribe quests all culminate in the same too-serious points with only the Ixal crafting one being something I even moderately enjoyed. The PVP… exists. I don’t simply mean the deathball spiral carteneau stuff which just sucks on the face of it, but the 4v4 stuff too at best gives good looking gear. At worst it feeds into a nasty side of the community that didn’t really need to exist and is just a boring timewaster. Not to say that every player vs player multiplayer needs to have the depth of Destiny 2 crucible or WoW’s utility maximizing tactics, but I’d rather this just be excised at all if it’s not going to amount to much. Even as it is now with expansions later, it’s at best an experience grind.
There’s probably more I could cover that escapes me even after all the notes I wrote down, but I think I’ve added enough to this monstrosity anyway. This will serve as a first part that I hope to tie together as a big review on FFXIV as a whole. I know this in of itself isn’t really ascribing much meaning or giving a thoughtful look at the game. As much as I want to have particularly powerful things to say I’ve decided to myself that this is my current project for who knows how long, and for some bizarre reason beyond mortal understanding I enjoy it. I hope this perspective has at least been interesting to read through.
Oh if you wanted a conclusion, basically ARR sucks lol. No, it's still so hard for me to recommend getting into FFXIV this way. If you seriously want my recommendation and just find A Realm Reborn sooooo unbearing, just buy a Heavensward skip and then go to the waking sands to unlock New Game+. All you really need is the patch content main quest for context, I cannot stress enough how completely trivial and inconsequential the 2.0 story is.
As for job stuff in terms of how they play, I’m saving that for Endwalker. I really can’t find talking about all of the job’s leveling process interesting.
People talking about this game sound like they're fondly reminiscing about clocking in at the steel mill so I guess I now understand that look people give me when they ask what Victoria 3 is
a bad story, badly told, experienced through the re-animated corpse of a video game that no longer exists. 2.0 doesn't have the dramatic and mythological death of 1.0, but as you run through silent zones all alone talking to absolutely no one, playing with skill trees balanced for an endgame four expansions away, you realise it is equally dead and gone.
mmos are social moments as much as they are video games, and the moment of time that was a realm reborn has long gone. to play it now is to simultaneously understand how a game that was heralded as the greatest redemption story in history is now seen as an albatross around ff14's neck. the half measures put in place to 'solve' this only highlight the problem more than solve it, as now it's quicker to get through, but the rhythm of the zones is absolutely killed as side quests are less than useless, the sense of space is obliterated, and the ratio of time spent watching awful cutscenes as opposed to playing the video game slides drastically in the wrong direction.
that said, the video game? is good! the world is beautiful and delightful to explore, the simplified rotations are still enjoyable and the faster levelling means you aren't taking too long between getting new skills. the lack of cross-class skills is a huge shame however and does feel like a piece of the game's soul is ripped out, the core identity of a job system streamlined away in the (probably justified) cause of endgame social convenience. but there is a joy to exploring eorzea and running dungeons that all the streamlining in the world can't kill.
the same cannot be said for the story, which is a car crash of multiple decisions made due to the reality of this game's nightmare development, that nonetheless conspire to ruin my life. cutscenes are stock animations and textboxes, so everything takes ten times too long and i can't button through fast enough. but the dialog itself has been localised by satan, so you have to slow down to read the most overwrought purple prose without tripping over it. the story is meant to be a tragic tale of struggle after a world ending calamity, but they're reusing all the assets from the last game so bahamut's casualty list is reduced to one old guy and every unnamed town NPC's entire family. it simultaneously wants to be a serious political study of navigating deep rooted conflict between nations and people, but it's also a cartoon for five year olds where the solution to every problem is "believing in hope" and you're the most special boy ever who has solved every problem look the president is here to throw you a party.
it does not work lmao. there are a few bright spots. i enjoyed a few job quests, specifically marauder and bard. rogue had a great little ending where it turned into lupin the third. the villains in gaius' tokusatsu squadron, inexplicably, all get more character work than any of the heroes despite having about two scenes each. this leads to hilarious situations where the most sympathetic characters in the game pour their heart out and make their tragic case while your guy doesn't react and silently murders them in the name of peace, because he is an mmo protagonist.
but aside from that i truly was dreading every cutscene. simply i am here to ride around on cloud's motorbike and do some damn tab targeting. and on that front it still delivers. there's even a few standout dungeons like aurum vale that has actual mechanics in the environment or the final bombastic praetorium assault. genuinely delightful moments, windows into oh right i fucking love final fantasy when the music is going off and there's an airship and also organization xiii is there for some reason.
so it is what it is. three stars. it's a video game. however mad and/or bored i got i was compelled to keep playing, because it is fun to hit a boss with DOTs. it is fun to pull like twenty guys into AOE range and feel immortal. please lower the teleport costs by the time i get to 7.0
mmos are social moments as much as they are video games, and the moment of time that was a realm reborn has long gone. to play it now is to simultaneously understand how a game that was heralded as the greatest redemption story in history is now seen as an albatross around ff14's neck. the half measures put in place to 'solve' this only highlight the problem more than solve it, as now it's quicker to get through, but the rhythm of the zones is absolutely killed as side quests are less than useless, the sense of space is obliterated, and the ratio of time spent watching awful cutscenes as opposed to playing the video game slides drastically in the wrong direction.
that said, the video game? is good! the world is beautiful and delightful to explore, the simplified rotations are still enjoyable and the faster levelling means you aren't taking too long between getting new skills. the lack of cross-class skills is a huge shame however and does feel like a piece of the game's soul is ripped out, the core identity of a job system streamlined away in the (probably justified) cause of endgame social convenience. but there is a joy to exploring eorzea and running dungeons that all the streamlining in the world can't kill.
the same cannot be said for the story, which is a car crash of multiple decisions made due to the reality of this game's nightmare development, that nonetheless conspire to ruin my life. cutscenes are stock animations and textboxes, so everything takes ten times too long and i can't button through fast enough. but the dialog itself has been localised by satan, so you have to slow down to read the most overwrought purple prose without tripping over it. the story is meant to be a tragic tale of struggle after a world ending calamity, but they're reusing all the assets from the last game so bahamut's casualty list is reduced to one old guy and every unnamed town NPC's entire family. it simultaneously wants to be a serious political study of navigating deep rooted conflict between nations and people, but it's also a cartoon for five year olds where the solution to every problem is "believing in hope" and you're the most special boy ever who has solved every problem look the president is here to throw you a party.
it does not work lmao. there are a few bright spots. i enjoyed a few job quests, specifically marauder and bard. rogue had a great little ending where it turned into lupin the third. the villains in gaius' tokusatsu squadron, inexplicably, all get more character work than any of the heroes despite having about two scenes each. this leads to hilarious situations where the most sympathetic characters in the game pour their heart out and make their tragic case while your guy doesn't react and silently murders them in the name of peace, because he is an mmo protagonist.
but aside from that i truly was dreading every cutscene. simply i am here to ride around on cloud's motorbike and do some damn tab targeting. and on that front it still delivers. there's even a few standout dungeons like aurum vale that has actual mechanics in the environment or the final bombastic praetorium assault. genuinely delightful moments, windows into oh right i fucking love final fantasy when the music is going off and there's an airship and also organization xiii is there for some reason.
so it is what it is. three stars. it's a video game. however mad and/or bored i got i was compelled to keep playing, because it is fun to hit a boss with DOTs. it is fun to pull like twenty guys into AOE range and feel immortal. please lower the teleport costs by the time i get to 7.0
(Updated as of Patch 5.2. Spoiler-free. Covering A Realm Reborn to 2.x content only)
A Realm Reborn is one part a really boring standard mmo, and another a great joyous ride. The base game is very much in a messy situation, granted it's probably a better one than 1.0, there's really no way of telling anymore. In short, it's a cautious recommendation, one that I greatly enjoyed somehow, because in easy retrospect a lot of the stuff covered here is incredibly boneless. I still think it's good though, it's hard for me to say that I didn't enjoy every single hour, even if a lot of that was coasting off really basic things.
To start, A Realm Reborn as it stands right now is split in twain. You have the Level 1-50 base game, known as 2.0, and you have the full array of patch content and prologue-to-expansion story content added, known as 2.x. These are bastardized terms, 2.x has official terms like A Realm Awoken and Before the Fall, but for the sake of simplicity I'll be using those. This split is also how I'll be describing the game, or most of it, because there is an incredible quality shift between the two.
The base game's story, for lack of better word, is total shit. Actual trash. I played this game nonstop for a few weeks and there's so little meat on the bone of it that I can barely remember scenes from it. It's devoid of much character, or thematic text. It strictly follows a crystal gathering story that ultimately ends in a call against fascism, but none of it is engaging or interesting. There's so little drive to every plot point that it really feels like a rudimentary checklist, watching beats happen as your eyes roll back into your skull, waiting for it all to end. There are of course, little tiny diamonds of writing on display, that kind of paint a picture of this being an incredibly rushed affair. But in the end it's not a effort I feel is worth salvaging. In short, you could save yourself time and literally skip every cutscene, and read up a paragraph or two about what happened and who everyone is.
2.x is where the story really just sets off. It's such a massive leap in quality, with interesting setup building on themes of multiculturalism, corruption of a class-built society 'stabilized' on capitalism, and a great arc setting up the issues of missing perspective while attempting to forcifully unify. It's really great, even incredible at times with its nice added characterization and legitimately interesting cast. It does hold awful pacing issues that dragged down 2.0 as well, but ultimately it feels like the story on offer here is actually something that is maybe worth the grind.
In tandem with this, A Realm Reborn offers a pretty spectacular aesthetic and world to explore. It was really the thing that helped me coast through the entirety of 2.0, just the relaxing nature of going through each location with well produced music behind it captivated me in the mood. It probably helped too that I'm still stuck in quarantine by the time of writing. It doesn't match the aesthetic + music combo of something like FF7R, but it's great in its own immersive way and it never really faltered. Hell, 2.x especially adds some amazing tracks and locales for fights.
Speaking of that, there's actually combat to talk about here. The gameplay follows standard hotbar combat, with a lot of the depth and interesting gameplay coming from learning bosses and mechanics. For those who haven't played an mmo before, and this is actually my first, you're basically playing hardcore simon says. At its peak, you have to continuously be attentive to every single mechanic the game asks you to do lest get wiped, positioning in response and changing up your flowchart as things progress in the fight, while also playing a rhythm game with your hands so as to optimize dps or healing depending on your role. And there is a peak like this, the endgame last alliance raid had spectacular fights in which all of this was actually involved. However... I can not say this about the majority of the combat here.
There's nothing wrong with a lot of the story combat having bleh instanced combat, and putting the backload of actual involved combat into dungeons and raids, but that part actually doesn't matter. Because due to level creep and a bunch of mechanical changes done from further expansions, most of the mechanics that are in the ARR content are effectively null. I cannot stress enough that looking through guides seeing all of this really great content on paper that you barely do 30% of the mechanics on AVERAGE. The Bahamut raids especially are the worst culprit, in that they're figuratively impossible to play now, because you can't queue up to find people to do them with synced levels. You have to do them unsynced to see the cutscenes and finish the quests, which means they're pretty much gone from the realm honestly. I still personally think, from looking over all the footage that I can and hazarding how I feel, that the content here on paper is really good, and all there is now is a hope that it gets reworked for current. Granted, pretty much all of the trials and raid content are such excellent spectacles of their own still that I didn't mind how piss easy they are. There's a specific instance i can easily recall, where a trial has you fighting a powerful ice queen set to orchestral music while ice fires in every direction while you do a dance to miss aoes, and then halfway through she snaps her fingers, everything is encased in ice as an emo rock song just kicks into high gear. It's wonderful. The dungeons also stop being bad at right before 2.x, and even though they’re still a tad easy, are rather involved mechanically.
Lastly, I want to cover the numerous side content and class/job quests you can do, at least the ones with effort (there's a ton of skippable fluff quests for middling xp). While I can't speak for all the classes past a certain point, Rogue, Dragoon and Thaumaturge have pretty good writing and a somewhat interesting story to tell. The rest of them kind of average between middling and straight up boring, especially the crafting classes which are glorified jobs. However, the real star of non-main story content is Hildibrand, comedy quests added in 2.x that are simultaneously hilarious as well as a joy to play through. It's so charming too, the animations they use for the cutscenes are like machinima/garry's mod and it's an absolute treat, and I fear that just saying that might be spoiling too much.
Some miscellaneous stuff I want to cover, grinding is pretty shit outside roulettes and if you want to do more than one class it can become an absolute chore. It's kind of 'expected' with mmos but it's still not great, and far from ideal. There's also some literal unavoidable grind in 2.0, with certain level gates requiring you to fuck around doing either hunting log or roulettes at certain levels, adding on to the already existing frustration that is 2.0.
Overall though, I found it largely worth the tedium, still somehow mystified in the worst moments and definitely enjoying myself in the actual good parts. The best tl;dr I can say is, if you're not engaged in the first few hours, best to wait till patch 5.3 where they help the pacing of the 2.x content, or suffer through the grind in the promise of supposedly great expansion content and legit good 2.x.
(Further disclaimer: I did all optional dungeons, raids unsynced, and alliance raids synced. I did all jobs/classes up to their level 10 quests, other than Lancer/Dragoon which is my primary role, and Thaumaturge of which i did to level 15. I plan to update this review as patches come out that change things, as well as flesh out the job content side when I get to them.)
A Realm Reborn is one part a really boring standard mmo, and another a great joyous ride. The base game is very much in a messy situation, granted it's probably a better one than 1.0, there's really no way of telling anymore. In short, it's a cautious recommendation, one that I greatly enjoyed somehow, because in easy retrospect a lot of the stuff covered here is incredibly boneless. I still think it's good though, it's hard for me to say that I didn't enjoy every single hour, even if a lot of that was coasting off really basic things.
To start, A Realm Reborn as it stands right now is split in twain. You have the Level 1-50 base game, known as 2.0, and you have the full array of patch content and prologue-to-expansion story content added, known as 2.x. These are bastardized terms, 2.x has official terms like A Realm Awoken and Before the Fall, but for the sake of simplicity I'll be using those. This split is also how I'll be describing the game, or most of it, because there is an incredible quality shift between the two.
The base game's story, for lack of better word, is total shit. Actual trash. I played this game nonstop for a few weeks and there's so little meat on the bone of it that I can barely remember scenes from it. It's devoid of much character, or thematic text. It strictly follows a crystal gathering story that ultimately ends in a call against fascism, but none of it is engaging or interesting. There's so little drive to every plot point that it really feels like a rudimentary checklist, watching beats happen as your eyes roll back into your skull, waiting for it all to end. There are of course, little tiny diamonds of writing on display, that kind of paint a picture of this being an incredibly rushed affair. But in the end it's not a effort I feel is worth salvaging. In short, you could save yourself time and literally skip every cutscene, and read up a paragraph or two about what happened and who everyone is.
2.x is where the story really just sets off. It's such a massive leap in quality, with interesting setup building on themes of multiculturalism, corruption of a class-built society 'stabilized' on capitalism, and a great arc setting up the issues of missing perspective while attempting to forcifully unify. It's really great, even incredible at times with its nice added characterization and legitimately interesting cast. It does hold awful pacing issues that dragged down 2.0 as well, but ultimately it feels like the story on offer here is actually something that is maybe worth the grind.
In tandem with this, A Realm Reborn offers a pretty spectacular aesthetic and world to explore. It was really the thing that helped me coast through the entirety of 2.0, just the relaxing nature of going through each location with well produced music behind it captivated me in the mood. It probably helped too that I'm still stuck in quarantine by the time of writing. It doesn't match the aesthetic + music combo of something like FF7R, but it's great in its own immersive way and it never really faltered. Hell, 2.x especially adds some amazing tracks and locales for fights.
Speaking of that, there's actually combat to talk about here. The gameplay follows standard hotbar combat, with a lot of the depth and interesting gameplay coming from learning bosses and mechanics. For those who haven't played an mmo before, and this is actually my first, you're basically playing hardcore simon says. At its peak, you have to continuously be attentive to every single mechanic the game asks you to do lest get wiped, positioning in response and changing up your flowchart as things progress in the fight, while also playing a rhythm game with your hands so as to optimize dps or healing depending on your role. And there is a peak like this, the endgame last alliance raid had spectacular fights in which all of this was actually involved. However... I can not say this about the majority of the combat here.
There's nothing wrong with a lot of the story combat having bleh instanced combat, and putting the backload of actual involved combat into dungeons and raids, but that part actually doesn't matter. Because due to level creep and a bunch of mechanical changes done from further expansions, most of the mechanics that are in the ARR content are effectively null. I cannot stress enough that looking through guides seeing all of this really great content on paper that you barely do 30% of the mechanics on AVERAGE. The Bahamut raids especially are the worst culprit, in that they're figuratively impossible to play now, because you can't queue up to find people to do them with synced levels. You have to do them unsynced to see the cutscenes and finish the quests, which means they're pretty much gone from the realm honestly. I still personally think, from looking over all the footage that I can and hazarding how I feel, that the content here on paper is really good, and all there is now is a hope that it gets reworked for current. Granted, pretty much all of the trials and raid content are such excellent spectacles of their own still that I didn't mind how piss easy they are. There's a specific instance i can easily recall, where a trial has you fighting a powerful ice queen set to orchestral music while ice fires in every direction while you do a dance to miss aoes, and then halfway through she snaps her fingers, everything is encased in ice as an emo rock song just kicks into high gear. It's wonderful. The dungeons also stop being bad at right before 2.x, and even though they’re still a tad easy, are rather involved mechanically.
Lastly, I want to cover the numerous side content and class/job quests you can do, at least the ones with effort (there's a ton of skippable fluff quests for middling xp). While I can't speak for all the classes past a certain point, Rogue, Dragoon and Thaumaturge have pretty good writing and a somewhat interesting story to tell. The rest of them kind of average between middling and straight up boring, especially the crafting classes which are glorified jobs. However, the real star of non-main story content is Hildibrand, comedy quests added in 2.x that are simultaneously hilarious as well as a joy to play through. It's so charming too, the animations they use for the cutscenes are like machinima/garry's mod and it's an absolute treat, and I fear that just saying that might be spoiling too much.
Some miscellaneous stuff I want to cover, grinding is pretty shit outside roulettes and if you want to do more than one class it can become an absolute chore. It's kind of 'expected' with mmos but it's still not great, and far from ideal. There's also some literal unavoidable grind in 2.0, with certain level gates requiring you to fuck around doing either hunting log or roulettes at certain levels, adding on to the already existing frustration that is 2.0.
Overall though, I found it largely worth the tedium, still somehow mystified in the worst moments and definitely enjoying myself in the actual good parts. The best tl;dr I can say is, if you're not engaged in the first few hours, best to wait till patch 5.3 where they help the pacing of the 2.x content, or suffer through the grind in the promise of supposedly great expansion content and legit good 2.x.
(Further disclaimer: I did all optional dungeons, raids unsynced, and alliance raids synced. I did all jobs/classes up to their level 10 quests, other than Lancer/Dragoon which is my primary role, and Thaumaturge of which i did to level 15. I plan to update this review as patches come out that change things, as well as flesh out the job content side when I get to them.)
worst game I've ever played hands down
rated based on my experience after playing for a few hours; very boring even by mmo standards. don't see why anyone would want to play this - let alone spend 50-100 fucking hours on it just for it to get better jfc
Disclaimer: I got the game for the social aspect and was extremely disappointed by the lack of it. No one in this game ever interacts with others. The world feels empty and dead despite hundreds of players romping about.
It's essentially a single-player game masquerading as a multiplayer experience. It looks great, I'll give it that, but if you don't have friends who play ffxiv, steer clear.
Everyone probably talks in linkshells or discord. Because why would you ever interact with someone outside your circle of friends in a multiplayer game right?
Total garbage (I guess this applies to all MMO's now).
It's essentially a single-player game masquerading as a multiplayer experience. It looks great, I'll give it that, but if you don't have friends who play ffxiv, steer clear.
Everyone probably talks in linkshells or discord. Because why would you ever interact with someone outside your circle of friends in a multiplayer game right?
Total garbage (I guess this applies to all MMO's now).
Nothing makes you feel more like the Warrior of Light than delivering cups of tea to Thanalan soldiers.
Lalafells need to be fucking destroyed
if this game saved xiv, id hate to see what 1.0 actually looked like.
espancamento games
A psyop.
To start off this monetization style was designed by Hitler. Not sure what kind of game deserves the unholy trio of money siphoning that is price for game + subscription + microtransaction store, but it ain't this one. The often applauded mentality of FFXIV's creator that one should play other games; that this one doesn't intend to jam its claws in you like many live service titles do, that the world will always be there waiting for its heroes to come back - is at odds with the aforementioned subscription model and comes across as a bit cynical. Yeah the game will be waiting for you as long as you pay up motherfucker, your monthly just renewed and you're burned out? May as well play the month out, don't wanna waste that hard earned coin do we? No pressure though! This of course isn't enough, The Heart of the Party that is Blizzard deserves yet another commendation for inspiring its competitors to stoop to the same level with the addition of a microtransaction shop, except the majority seems okay with this implementation because... it's not in-game? A 5headed loophole perhaps and I've seen claims that it's not as bad as others but I'm sorry, 7 fucking USD for a tea drinking emote? We've gone way past micro ladies and gents, I better get a stat boost every time I take a sip or you're taking the fucking piss. Sure I'm not so much of a dreamer to think that a live service game can continue servicing on LOVE™ alone like those 5 people still playing Guild Wars 2 (please no one tell them that it also has a shop with gold buying), with it needing server maintenance, events, updates, usual speak. But for the 3 or so months that I've been playing, every event has been an almost complete joke, crappy series of whocares cutscenes with a small reward attached, maybe a cosmetic item or 2 that fail to serve as anything other than a thing to flex on new players a year from now as a "look what you can't get ;)" before they promptly ignore you for looking like a goddamn clown. The event going on as of time of writing is admittedly the best one because you can get the funny chubby pokeymans, but... this is their 10th anniversary, an outlier and something that should've arguably been grander, and yet all they did was make you grind through old content for event currency. Maybe it would be unfair to compare it to gacha games considering their immense revenue, though I'm left wondering still what all this asking money is for; a hope that Dawntrail won't be Dawnfail, or maybe the slightly touched up visuals that were recently announced? You guys all have mods right?
Since ranting about shitthatdoesntmatter inevitably calls for the "just get more money" rebuttal, how's the game itself? Yet another modern MMO where the leveling experience is a slightly annoying rash that hopefully will go away one day if ignored enough, with only actual challenge awaiting in lategame trials and raids? Don't answer that of course, and for anyone remotely initiated that's not a flex of gamercred; it feels like a more casual, multitask-encouraging experience by design and that's not always the worst thing. Here and there I'd come across praises how XIV allegedly revolutionized the genre for people, and some of that speak I'd echo even; while maybe not a pioneer in this regard, it does feel better not running all the way back to the dungeon or a boss after a wipe ("social experience" as WoW players would call it) or having your goldbag guillotined just for wanting to respec. Eyebrow raising though is that those same people will complain about the "gather 10 bear asses" type of quest design so infamous for the genre, which I'd agree is largely basic and sucks, so how does XIV solve it? By making you gather only 3, brilliant. I jest a bit, story context makes it better but not everyone gives a damn about the story. Thinking about how many missions boil down to going to a purple circle or interacting with a marker which makes a couple of hostiles spawn (usually 3) brings forth depression, there's very little variety. On top of that playing this thing like a usual MMO, grabbing every sidequest one comes across, is the biggest mistake you could make as they give fuck all rewards and it's just infinitely wiser to push the main scenario along or at least do almost any of the other side activities like the random blue circles on the map which still give more experience for less time and effort. The main stuff alone will overboost your primary job, so I wondered what the situation is like on one of the preferred servers that give a significant +exp, made a char after which the first guild quest granted me about 5 levels on completion which genuinely reminded me of playing some private server or a game at its death door. Can see how this would make leveling side jobs much less of a hassle later on but it fucks up any shred of balance and fun. And naturally since everything's so easy it deemphasizes working with other players most of the time so they only ever get /pets if one likes the shape of their rabbit ears and not because they actually helped.
A lot of the lauded main story is very snooze inducing, there's so much backtracking working as a de facto fantasy world postman in a setting where telepathic cellphones exist (or something like that). It also reaches some genuinely embarrassing lows, like throwing away macguffins of unlimited power off the side of the cliff (surely the dimension hopping dementors following our every move won't dig them up?). The weird kicker here being that... I kinda like it? Stockholm syndrome sadly kicked in and maybe all this can be taken with a couple of salt masses. Admitting to your mistakes is one thing but also canonizing them in a successful way is another; the 1.0 version was such a shitshow that it had to be burned down, with a meteor very literally. What's left is a new beginning, a chosen one story that appears like a seemingly thankless job, in its downtime you're left listening to constant whimpers of your companions; and honestly why? Why would elf grandpa give his life away for the thousands of face 1 hime cut lizards and fair-haired not-Y'shtollas spamming the bee gees dance in Limsa, while calling me basic for picking a midlander in a world with felines and bunnoids? Why give away everything so this ungrateful scum can still complain about CBU3 not adding more than 4 faces; that they still can't separate facial hair or horns or ears from mug types, tech-illiterate peasants unable to comprehend how hard it is to master this otherworldly technology. How many more cries about not being able to change eye color without paying real $$$ must we listen to, this asshole, entitled community really believes that a world with mechs and spaceships should also have colored contact lenses? Never expected the Postman of Light's job to give me an existential crisis; it's thankless and at times unbearable but somebody has to do it, a lightbulb moment that finally helped me realize how Death Stranding fans can enjoy such a horrible looking game.
The combat lacks punchiness of some others in the genre and is known to give eye crust in its snailish starts, but feels more like an elaborate dance later on as you're constantly cycling through skills, weaving them between one another without even looking at their cooldowns; I missed that feel when you finally memorize all 30 keybinds for your abilities and slam them so methodically like you're piloting a spaceship. With Linkin Park in my veins and an unending will to compensate I stuck with the dark knight for the most part because casting abilities with names like EDGE OF DARKNESS and THE BLACKEST NIGHT is in my M.O; tanks in this game would make Warthunder jealous, their mere presence making enemies mald in furious anger as they mumble AM's hate monologue while being unable to target anyone but your flesh carapace of mithril steel; the drawback to insane sustain and option to aggro everything with a press of a button being of course the ability to also do a lot of damage, carefully balanced. And as the combat gets more involved so does the narrative, maybe insisting far too much at times at fishing for soyface YT thumbnails with fairly constant references to the rest of the franchise, but some of it does work (an encounter with a certain wandering ronin and an order of knights were highlights). Like habitually stated the postman's journey DOES get more interesting in the expansions and this rating is more so for their starting experience, but it's not a wholly "it gets better after x hours" scenario since many of my complaints still ring true and I'm not sure how long I'll keep going at it. Currently running through Stormblood and it kinda fucks but the burnout is real (Takedown to be specific as the bi-yearly replay started).
I questioned if I would turn into that annoying type of Steam reviewer with this kind of rambling. More than 300 hours in and a lot about the game bothers me, will there be enough good to mention even? Suppose I'll turn to the saying of a wise man who once noted that "playing an MMORPG these days really just boils down to what kind of dick you want to suck". Other than the monetization, nothing in this is offensively bad but the highs aren't that high either. So what else are you gonna play if you need the fix? World of Peacecraft is a dead horse so used to beating it developed M tendencies, while Classic is a shadow of not only vanilla but also its 2019-20 self. Old School Runescape is fine enough but if the wi-fi in your retirement home goes out you're fucked. No other MMO is being played and if you see anyone saying otherwise they're probably a federal agent so watch yourself.
Since ranting about shitthatdoesntmatter inevitably calls for the "just get more money" rebuttal, how's the game itself? Yet another modern MMO where the leveling experience is a slightly annoying rash that hopefully will go away one day if ignored enough, with only actual challenge awaiting in lategame trials and raids? Don't answer that of course, and for anyone remotely initiated that's not a flex of gamercred; it feels like a more casual, multitask-encouraging experience by design and that's not always the worst thing. Here and there I'd come across praises how XIV allegedly revolutionized the genre for people, and some of that speak I'd echo even; while maybe not a pioneer in this regard, it does feel better not running all the way back to the dungeon or a boss after a wipe ("social experience" as WoW players would call it) or having your goldbag guillotined just for wanting to respec. Eyebrow raising though is that those same people will complain about the "gather 10 bear asses" type of quest design so infamous for the genre, which I'd agree is largely basic and sucks, so how does XIV solve it? By making you gather only 3, brilliant. I jest a bit, story context makes it better but not everyone gives a damn about the story. Thinking about how many missions boil down to going to a purple circle or interacting with a marker which makes a couple of hostiles spawn (usually 3) brings forth depression, there's very little variety. On top of that playing this thing like a usual MMO, grabbing every sidequest one comes across, is the biggest mistake you could make as they give fuck all rewards and it's just infinitely wiser to push the main scenario along or at least do almost any of the other side activities like the random blue circles on the map which still give more experience for less time and effort. The main stuff alone will overboost your primary job, so I wondered what the situation is like on one of the preferred servers that give a significant +exp, made a char after which the first guild quest granted me about 5 levels on completion which genuinely reminded me of playing some private server or a game at its death door. Can see how this would make leveling side jobs much less of a hassle later on but it fucks up any shred of balance and fun. And naturally since everything's so easy it deemphasizes working with other players most of the time so they only ever get /pets if one likes the shape of their rabbit ears and not because they actually helped.
A lot of the lauded main story is very snooze inducing, there's so much backtracking working as a de facto fantasy world postman in a setting where telepathic cellphones exist (or something like that). It also reaches some genuinely embarrassing lows, like throwing away macguffins of unlimited power off the side of the cliff (surely the dimension hopping dementors following our every move won't dig them up?). The weird kicker here being that... I kinda like it? Stockholm syndrome sadly kicked in and maybe all this can be taken with a couple of salt masses. Admitting to your mistakes is one thing but also canonizing them in a successful way is another; the 1.0 version was such a shitshow that it had to be burned down, with a meteor very literally. What's left is a new beginning, a chosen one story that appears like a seemingly thankless job, in its downtime you're left listening to constant whimpers of your companions; and honestly why? Why would elf grandpa give his life away for the thousands of face 1 hime cut lizards and fair-haired not-Y'shtollas spamming the bee gees dance in Limsa, while calling me basic for picking a midlander in a world with felines and bunnoids? Why give away everything so this ungrateful scum can still complain about CBU3 not adding more than 4 faces; that they still can't separate facial hair or horns or ears from mug types, tech-illiterate peasants unable to comprehend how hard it is to master this otherworldly technology. How many more cries about not being able to change eye color without paying real $$$ must we listen to, this asshole, entitled community really believes that a world with mechs and spaceships should also have colored contact lenses? Never expected the Postman of Light's job to give me an existential crisis; it's thankless and at times unbearable but somebody has to do it, a lightbulb moment that finally helped me realize how Death Stranding fans can enjoy such a horrible looking game.
The combat lacks punchiness of some others in the genre and is known to give eye crust in its snailish starts, but feels more like an elaborate dance later on as you're constantly cycling through skills, weaving them between one another without even looking at their cooldowns; I missed that feel when you finally memorize all 30 keybinds for your abilities and slam them so methodically like you're piloting a spaceship. With Linkin Park in my veins and an unending will to compensate I stuck with the dark knight for the most part because casting abilities with names like EDGE OF DARKNESS and THE BLACKEST NIGHT is in my M.O; tanks in this game would make Warthunder jealous, their mere presence making enemies mald in furious anger as they mumble AM's hate monologue while being unable to target anyone but your flesh carapace of mithril steel; the drawback to insane sustain and option to aggro everything with a press of a button being of course the ability to also do a lot of damage, carefully balanced. And as the combat gets more involved so does the narrative, maybe insisting far too much at times at fishing for soyface YT thumbnails with fairly constant references to the rest of the franchise, but some of it does work (an encounter with a certain wandering ronin and an order of knights were highlights). Like habitually stated the postman's journey DOES get more interesting in the expansions and this rating is more so for their starting experience, but it's not a wholly "it gets better after x hours" scenario since many of my complaints still ring true and I'm not sure how long I'll keep going at it. Currently running through Stormblood and it kinda fucks but the burnout is real (Takedown to be specific as the bi-yearly replay started).
I questioned if I would turn into that annoying type of Steam reviewer with this kind of rambling. More than 300 hours in and a lot about the game bothers me, will there be enough good to mention even? Suppose I'll turn to the saying of a wise man who once noted that "playing an MMORPG these days really just boils down to what kind of dick you want to suck". Other than the monetization, nothing in this is offensively bad but the highs aren't that high either. So what else are you gonna play if you need the fix? World of Peacecraft is a dead horse so used to beating it developed M tendencies, while Classic is a shadow of not only vanilla but also its 2019-20 self. Old School Runescape is fine enough but if the wi-fi in your retirement home goes out you're fucked. No other MMO is being played and if you see anyone saying otherwise they're probably a federal agent so watch yourself.
FFXIV is a phenomenal game, but only if you go into it with the right expectations. There are other MMOs that may have better gameplay, but FF14 has the greatest storyline of any MMORPG I've seen. The game is more akin to a single-player JRPG with MMO components. While there are dungeons, raids, and boss battles, most of your time with this game will be spent traveling to locations, talking to NPCs, and watching cutscenes. It's not your standard MMO experience, and if you don't enjoy slow burn stories and reading, this probably isn't the game for you.
With that being said, this is absolutely the type of game for me. The world is incredibly immersive, the gameplay is satisfying, and the overarching narrative is enthralling. It's easily my favorite MMORPG, and one of the best games I've ever played.
With that being said, this is absolutely the type of game for me. The world is incredibly immersive, the gameplay is satisfying, and the overarching narrative is enthralling. It's easily my favorite MMORPG, and one of the best games I've ever played.
Beaten: Jan 10 2021
Time: 42 Hours
Platform: Mac
I’m not new to MMOs. My first one was Star Wars: The Old Republic, back in 2010, during one of the Beta tests. I was (er, am) a huge huge fan of KOTOR, and I didn’t really conceptualize this much differently. What I didn’t realize at the time is how much of that game’s design is sorta copy-pasted from WoW. Now, that’s not a knock against SWTOR for following genre convention, just that it wasn’t a thought that entered my mind when I played it. I had nothing to compare it to.
Now it’s twelve years later. During breaks in SWTOR, I tried out many, many different MMOs, more than I can really remember (there’s one that I think about sometimes called Firefall?? I’ve literally never heard anyone mention it in years though), but one thing I’ve never really gotten into is the social side of them. I’ve always been a bit shy online, and these games were no exception. As a boon, SWTOR was one of the more single-player oriented ones on the market when it came out, and even though the endgame has been massively expanded, it really still is. Even still, I’ve never been in a guild, and I’ve never been obsessed with an MMO, putting all my time into it to a detrimental degree.
All that to say, when I started FFXIV, I didn’t know what to expect. I was coming at it on the heels of like 4 early FF games, plus a replay of 12, and all I’ve heard was that it was an experience up to the standards of those games. But that’s really all I knew, aside from the fact that it’d been closed down and relaunched at some point in the 2010s. What I got kinda bucked all my expectations, at first in disappointing ways, but later on in fantastic ways.
FFXIV has that same style of combat as WoW and SWTOR, Hotbar combat. That was the first thing I noticed when I got into the game, and it’s still probably my biggest confusion with it. It’s not that it’s bad or lazy or anything, it’s just, idk, not the first thing I think of when I think Final Fantasy? It makes sense that it’s here though, along with lots of other staples from that genre of WoW-esque MMOs. What this game has in common with these games is what interests me the least about it, and what put me off the most when I started out.
Now, at the end of the main story, I’m still not sold on it. It feels kinda bare for a system like this, with the amount of skills you get and the rate which you get them being very slow and steady for most of the game. SWTOR in particular affords skills much quicker. Now, that’s not an inherently bad thing. SWTOR makes you upgrade the same skills to keep them strong, while FF scales it’s skills to your level always. It makes for a simpler rotation at the endgame, and a less cluttered UI, but I still feel a bit less fond of it. Like there’s exactly one way to play each job.
That’s actually a big difference between FF and others of its ilk: FF allows you to change class at any time. You can reroll as a healer by just changing your weapon. It’s novel, and makes for a staggering variety of play per character, while also resulting in a diminished variety per class. It’s an interesting trade, and one that would bias towards solo play, you’d think, which makes my next point all the more confusing?
Many of the climactic story moments are contained within “Duties”, multiplayer dungeons that are basically mini raids. Now, you can play with randos, and the group finder is nice and quick, but there are points where the style of play associated with these dungeons, needing to kinda know what’s going to happen in each bossfight before it happens, whether by being told by your group mates or finding out beforehand, kneecaps any real drama that could come of the gameplay. You’ll never feel like the real main character during these sections, only in the more isolated parts of the story.
Is this bad? Narratively, sure, but it’s also gotten me much more into the idea of raids than any other MMO has. As I play through the expansions, I’ll no longer dread these, and actively look to them as something I want to do.
So where does this game really shine then? If the narrative feels impersonal and the gameplay feels fine if a bit been there done that, what’s left? Well, the setting for one. Eorzea is wonderful. It feels more like a living, breathing world than most settings can muster, and it’s filled with loads of interesting textural details. The art design is splendid, and just every corner of every world feels like it has cultural significance, like someone cares about it, somewhere. It’s the most important part of an MMO like this, and I’m glad it seems like the place most of the effort went.
I know that’s a lot of negatives to a short positive, but you have to understand how much that positive counts for. Nothing else is outright bad, at worst it’s just kinda fine, more a mechanism to allow for organically probing into the city-states of Ishgard, and Gardenia, and Mor Dhona (aka the prettiest one) and really getting to know this world. I think that was their main objective when relaunching the game, and it definitely paid off. I have loads of good feelings here, and I’m not gonna be leaving until I see the expansions through.
Time: 42 Hours
Platform: Mac
I’m not new to MMOs. My first one was Star Wars: The Old Republic, back in 2010, during one of the Beta tests. I was (er, am) a huge huge fan of KOTOR, and I didn’t really conceptualize this much differently. What I didn’t realize at the time is how much of that game’s design is sorta copy-pasted from WoW. Now, that’s not a knock against SWTOR for following genre convention, just that it wasn’t a thought that entered my mind when I played it. I had nothing to compare it to.
Now it’s twelve years later. During breaks in SWTOR, I tried out many, many different MMOs, more than I can really remember (there’s one that I think about sometimes called Firefall?? I’ve literally never heard anyone mention it in years though), but one thing I’ve never really gotten into is the social side of them. I’ve always been a bit shy online, and these games were no exception. As a boon, SWTOR was one of the more single-player oriented ones on the market when it came out, and even though the endgame has been massively expanded, it really still is. Even still, I’ve never been in a guild, and I’ve never been obsessed with an MMO, putting all my time into it to a detrimental degree.
All that to say, when I started FFXIV, I didn’t know what to expect. I was coming at it on the heels of like 4 early FF games, plus a replay of 12, and all I’ve heard was that it was an experience up to the standards of those games. But that’s really all I knew, aside from the fact that it’d been closed down and relaunched at some point in the 2010s. What I got kinda bucked all my expectations, at first in disappointing ways, but later on in fantastic ways.
FFXIV has that same style of combat as WoW and SWTOR, Hotbar combat. That was the first thing I noticed when I got into the game, and it’s still probably my biggest confusion with it. It’s not that it’s bad or lazy or anything, it’s just, idk, not the first thing I think of when I think Final Fantasy? It makes sense that it’s here though, along with lots of other staples from that genre of WoW-esque MMOs. What this game has in common with these games is what interests me the least about it, and what put me off the most when I started out.
Now, at the end of the main story, I’m still not sold on it. It feels kinda bare for a system like this, with the amount of skills you get and the rate which you get them being very slow and steady for most of the game. SWTOR in particular affords skills much quicker. Now, that’s not an inherently bad thing. SWTOR makes you upgrade the same skills to keep them strong, while FF scales it’s skills to your level always. It makes for a simpler rotation at the endgame, and a less cluttered UI, but I still feel a bit less fond of it. Like there’s exactly one way to play each job.
That’s actually a big difference between FF and others of its ilk: FF allows you to change class at any time. You can reroll as a healer by just changing your weapon. It’s novel, and makes for a staggering variety of play per character, while also resulting in a diminished variety per class. It’s an interesting trade, and one that would bias towards solo play, you’d think, which makes my next point all the more confusing?
Many of the climactic story moments are contained within “Duties”, multiplayer dungeons that are basically mini raids. Now, you can play with randos, and the group finder is nice and quick, but there are points where the style of play associated with these dungeons, needing to kinda know what’s going to happen in each bossfight before it happens, whether by being told by your group mates or finding out beforehand, kneecaps any real drama that could come of the gameplay. You’ll never feel like the real main character during these sections, only in the more isolated parts of the story.
Is this bad? Narratively, sure, but it’s also gotten me much more into the idea of raids than any other MMO has. As I play through the expansions, I’ll no longer dread these, and actively look to them as something I want to do.
So where does this game really shine then? If the narrative feels impersonal and the gameplay feels fine if a bit been there done that, what’s left? Well, the setting for one. Eorzea is wonderful. It feels more like a living, breathing world than most settings can muster, and it’s filled with loads of interesting textural details. The art design is splendid, and just every corner of every world feels like it has cultural significance, like someone cares about it, somewhere. It’s the most important part of an MMO like this, and I’m glad it seems like the place most of the effort went.
I know that’s a lot of negatives to a short positive, but you have to understand how much that positive counts for. Nothing else is outright bad, at worst it’s just kinda fine, more a mechanism to allow for organically probing into the city-states of Ishgard, and Gardenia, and Mor Dhona (aka the prettiest one) and really getting to know this world. I think that was their main objective when relaunching the game, and it definitely paid off. I have loads of good feelings here, and I’m not gonna be leaving until I see the expansions through.
I had never played an MMO before this one, and I had always felt bad about my lack of exposure to the genre, since I’m someone who’s tried to experience the breadth of what gaming has to offer. The MMO experience is one that has drawn in millions and millions of people over the course of decades, with the most popular games becoming cultural landmarks, so it was a pretty glaring omission, and I was waiting for a perfect opportunity to jump in. Luckily, I had a friend who was one of the “XIV free trial up to the award-winning expansion Heavensward” cultists, and having seen the amazing positive reception of Shadowbringers, I began under his tutelage. This review is just a rough journal of my time in each major release of the game, which at the time of writing, excludes Endwalker. If I end up playing that, I’ll write a review on its own page.
I warn you right now, though: this is the most pointless review I’ll ever write.
A Realm Reborn
I had always heard that the FFXIV community was friendly to newcomers, but to my surprise, there was hardly a community at all. Not in the sense that no one was on the server, but in that I didn’t see anyone speaking to each other. The vision of an MMO hub that I had in my head was that of a bustling marketplace, people trying to get you to buy stuff, join their organization, scam you, any number of things. Instead, I was greeted by a giant cluster of Organization Thirteen lookalikes and catgirls silently standing in a circle around a giant crystal. I did my little starter quests in silence, occasionally intersecting with another newcomer who was doing the same thing, never speaking, just getting through the content as fast as possible. I attempted to follow the story of these quests, but so many were the sort of fetching and “prove yourself by killing a monster” quests that I tuned out of the story entirely. The friend who was serving as my guide agreed that this was the best way to play, at least until you started reaching the back end of the 2.0 content. So, for about forty hours, all I did was mindlessly run from one point to the next, not talking, no story to enjoy, and not enough abilities to have interesting gameplay in the dungeons along the way. It wasn’t exactly painful, the novelty of seeing all the different areas was nice, but these first forty hours were pretty evenly bland for me. However, committed to the task at hand, I pushed forward to Heavensward.
Heavensward
In terms of story and characters, this expansion ended up being my favorite, but it was also when I began to have problems with the learning curve. Specifically, the fact that the game doesn’t provide you with one, in a manner of speaking. You’re put through filler quests for a hundred hours, then into a dungeon with unique boss mechanics you’ve never been exposed to. If players are forced through the main story before they can queue for these dungeons, why do the quests not take the opportunity to teach mechanics? Veteran players swap memes about how terrible sprouts are for not understanding these things, but how in the world could they? Is the best path really to ask players to go look up a guide before even starting the dungeon, ruining any excitement for themselves? As you can probably guess, the raids and high level dungeons of Heavensward were the first time I received player communication of any type, which was usually of the “learn to play” variety. The problem with such statements is that the implication is that I should have already learned to play, not that I should continue the active process of doing so. As I shirked aggro to these players to provide them some downtime with which to consider this paradox, I thought about how there really isn’t a perfect solution to the problem. Some bosses are so intricate that loading up dungeons with simplified versions of individual mechanics isn’t a tenable solution, since the content is designed to work well in repetition. Having to replay a tutorial even once when playing a game in NG+ can be a drag, so redoing mini-tutorials hundreds of times could be terrible unless executed flawlessly. Even so, there are a lot more fundamentals that could have been included in the normal questline that would have helped immensely. Later expansions would go on to have enemies that use gaze effects and rotating zones of damage in the same way bosses do, but it was too little too late. The only reason I was able to make it through all the early content was because I had someone to explain all this stuff to me directly, and I can’t imagine the flaming I would have received otherwise. I may have even stopped playing the game altogether, which leads into...
Stormblood
This is where people thought I would stop playing the game altogether. The story of this expansion is pretty bad, with the focus falling on characters who are fairly uninteresting, namely Lyse, Fordola, Yotsuyu, and Zenos. The graphics engine may give these characters three dimensions, but the writing certainly doesn’t, and they stay stagnant and boring throughout the entire expansion. Splitting the action between two hubs was also a questionable move, with Ala Mhigo feeling boring and underdeveloped compared to the obvious love that went into Kugane. I wish there was more I had to say about this expansion or its gameplay, but it just felt like A Realm Reborn 2. Bland story content, running from place to place doing stuff I didn’t care much about, a drawn-out introduction to the much more interesting followup.
Shadowbringers
The way this expansion had been praised, you would think it was the best Final Fantasy game to release in the last decade, and I’ve seen it literally described as such fairly often. Some parts were pretty enchanting, and the characters received a notable improvement in their writing. I’m not sure how much I’ll remember of this expansion’s plot in the future, but my crush on Urianger will last forever, and I think that speaks to the quality of the characterization compared to Stormblood. The start of the DLC in particular grips you with one horrific moment that comes out of left field, so from that moment onward, I was totally invested in the story. The problem is, as good as the story is for an MMO, stretching it out over so many hours, over so many basic and mindless quests, the pace flows like a river of bricks. It was like watching a great movie for fifteen minutes, leaving to mow the lawn, watching another fifteen, then getting up and doing the dishes, over and over until the movie was over. It’s not that it makes the story itself bad, but the format is so clunky that it’s hard to stay involved.
Postgame
...otherwise known as “the game”. This is when I started doing the raids and trials I had missed during my run through the main quest. Even though it’s something that should have dawned on me earlier in this process, the same way it’s already dawned on everyone reading, this is when I started to realize that I might be closed off from MMO experience. Even though I was doing these raids, getting better stuff, and chatting with my friend while doing so, I just… didn’t care. I didn’t care about getting better so the parser-users would think I’m the best, I didn’t care about gear when it would be inevitably obsoleted by a future expansion, the appeal of the story was over, there wasn’t any content left for me. Even with thousands of hours of things to do, raid tiers and trials as far as the eye can see, I just did not care. The bosses weren’t as fun as the ones in my single-player action games, there wasn’t the expressiveness of a traditional RPG, I was always left thinking “I could be having more fun right now”. It’s emblematic of the way I approach games, where I’m looking for something focused and direct, not a game that I can get lost in, not a forum for enjoying time with a community or working with a team to get to the top. My goal may have been to get a taste of what it’s like to be into an MMO, but after hundreds of hours spent in the game, the only realization to be had was that there’s a lot more to that experience than just playing the game. You have to find people you like, you have to enjoy the lengthy journey, you have to find some heart in the game that lets you call it home. Even though I had decided to commit my time and energy, I couldn’t just decide to love it.
Post game
After spending all that time with XIV, focusing on it exclusively for a couple months, I was expecting it to heavily occupy my thoughts after stopping. I expected to sit down at my computer and think of something to do, only to feel the pang of wanting to go back to Eorzea. However, this ended up not being the case, and it slipped out of my mind to a degree where I had to google that name just now because I had forgotten it. Honestly, had I not developed such a crush on Urianger, I doubt I would have thought about the game afterwards at all. When the Endwalker trailer dropped, I was expecting another rush of wanting to go back to that world, but… nothing. I’m vaguely interested in it because I dumped so much time into this story already, but I could just as easily read a summary and be happy with it. To tell the truth, I’m a bit sad about how this whole MMO experiment went. I was hoping to open my eyes to a whole new style of game, to maybe find a nice, escapist home I could always go back to, but instead all I got was a reminder of how limiting taste and preference can be.
So, that’s what brings me back to the pointlessness. I played a game for hundreds of hours, and all I can say is “I didn’t like it because I don’t like MMO’s, and that’s fine because everyone has different taste”. At least I warned you, but thanks for reading all of this. I had to get it off my chest after wasting so much of my friend’s time, who explained things to me so patiently. Cherish your friends, everyone.
I warn you right now, though: this is the most pointless review I’ll ever write.
A Realm Reborn
I had always heard that the FFXIV community was friendly to newcomers, but to my surprise, there was hardly a community at all. Not in the sense that no one was on the server, but in that I didn’t see anyone speaking to each other. The vision of an MMO hub that I had in my head was that of a bustling marketplace, people trying to get you to buy stuff, join their organization, scam you, any number of things. Instead, I was greeted by a giant cluster of Organization Thirteen lookalikes and catgirls silently standing in a circle around a giant crystal. I did my little starter quests in silence, occasionally intersecting with another newcomer who was doing the same thing, never speaking, just getting through the content as fast as possible. I attempted to follow the story of these quests, but so many were the sort of fetching and “prove yourself by killing a monster” quests that I tuned out of the story entirely. The friend who was serving as my guide agreed that this was the best way to play, at least until you started reaching the back end of the 2.0 content. So, for about forty hours, all I did was mindlessly run from one point to the next, not talking, no story to enjoy, and not enough abilities to have interesting gameplay in the dungeons along the way. It wasn’t exactly painful, the novelty of seeing all the different areas was nice, but these first forty hours were pretty evenly bland for me. However, committed to the task at hand, I pushed forward to Heavensward.
Heavensward
In terms of story and characters, this expansion ended up being my favorite, but it was also when I began to have problems with the learning curve. Specifically, the fact that the game doesn’t provide you with one, in a manner of speaking. You’re put through filler quests for a hundred hours, then into a dungeon with unique boss mechanics you’ve never been exposed to. If players are forced through the main story before they can queue for these dungeons, why do the quests not take the opportunity to teach mechanics? Veteran players swap memes about how terrible sprouts are for not understanding these things, but how in the world could they? Is the best path really to ask players to go look up a guide before even starting the dungeon, ruining any excitement for themselves? As you can probably guess, the raids and high level dungeons of Heavensward were the first time I received player communication of any type, which was usually of the “learn to play” variety. The problem with such statements is that the implication is that I should have already learned to play, not that I should continue the active process of doing so. As I shirked aggro to these players to provide them some downtime with which to consider this paradox, I thought about how there really isn’t a perfect solution to the problem. Some bosses are so intricate that loading up dungeons with simplified versions of individual mechanics isn’t a tenable solution, since the content is designed to work well in repetition. Having to replay a tutorial even once when playing a game in NG+ can be a drag, so redoing mini-tutorials hundreds of times could be terrible unless executed flawlessly. Even so, there are a lot more fundamentals that could have been included in the normal questline that would have helped immensely. Later expansions would go on to have enemies that use gaze effects and rotating zones of damage in the same way bosses do, but it was too little too late. The only reason I was able to make it through all the early content was because I had someone to explain all this stuff to me directly, and I can’t imagine the flaming I would have received otherwise. I may have even stopped playing the game altogether, which leads into...
Stormblood
This is where people thought I would stop playing the game altogether. The story of this expansion is pretty bad, with the focus falling on characters who are fairly uninteresting, namely Lyse, Fordola, Yotsuyu, and Zenos. The graphics engine may give these characters three dimensions, but the writing certainly doesn’t, and they stay stagnant and boring throughout the entire expansion. Splitting the action between two hubs was also a questionable move, with Ala Mhigo feeling boring and underdeveloped compared to the obvious love that went into Kugane. I wish there was more I had to say about this expansion or its gameplay, but it just felt like A Realm Reborn 2. Bland story content, running from place to place doing stuff I didn’t care much about, a drawn-out introduction to the much more interesting followup.
Shadowbringers
The way this expansion had been praised, you would think it was the best Final Fantasy game to release in the last decade, and I’ve seen it literally described as such fairly often. Some parts were pretty enchanting, and the characters received a notable improvement in their writing. I’m not sure how much I’ll remember of this expansion’s plot in the future, but my crush on Urianger will last forever, and I think that speaks to the quality of the characterization compared to Stormblood. The start of the DLC in particular grips you with one horrific moment that comes out of left field, so from that moment onward, I was totally invested in the story. The problem is, as good as the story is for an MMO, stretching it out over so many hours, over so many basic and mindless quests, the pace flows like a river of bricks. It was like watching a great movie for fifteen minutes, leaving to mow the lawn, watching another fifteen, then getting up and doing the dishes, over and over until the movie was over. It’s not that it makes the story itself bad, but the format is so clunky that it’s hard to stay involved.
Postgame
...otherwise known as “the game”. This is when I started doing the raids and trials I had missed during my run through the main quest. Even though it’s something that should have dawned on me earlier in this process, the same way it’s already dawned on everyone reading, this is when I started to realize that I might be closed off from MMO experience. Even though I was doing these raids, getting better stuff, and chatting with my friend while doing so, I just… didn’t care. I didn’t care about getting better so the parser-users would think I’m the best, I didn’t care about gear when it would be inevitably obsoleted by a future expansion, the appeal of the story was over, there wasn’t any content left for me. Even with thousands of hours of things to do, raid tiers and trials as far as the eye can see, I just did not care. The bosses weren’t as fun as the ones in my single-player action games, there wasn’t the expressiveness of a traditional RPG, I was always left thinking “I could be having more fun right now”. It’s emblematic of the way I approach games, where I’m looking for something focused and direct, not a game that I can get lost in, not a forum for enjoying time with a community or working with a team to get to the top. My goal may have been to get a taste of what it’s like to be into an MMO, but after hundreds of hours spent in the game, the only realization to be had was that there’s a lot more to that experience than just playing the game. You have to find people you like, you have to enjoy the lengthy journey, you have to find some heart in the game that lets you call it home. Even though I had decided to commit my time and energy, I couldn’t just decide to love it.
Post game
After spending all that time with XIV, focusing on it exclusively for a couple months, I was expecting it to heavily occupy my thoughts after stopping. I expected to sit down at my computer and think of something to do, only to feel the pang of wanting to go back to Eorzea. However, this ended up not being the case, and it slipped out of my mind to a degree where I had to google that name just now because I had forgotten it. Honestly, had I not developed such a crush on Urianger, I doubt I would have thought about the game afterwards at all. When the Endwalker trailer dropped, I was expecting another rush of wanting to go back to that world, but… nothing. I’m vaguely interested in it because I dumped so much time into this story already, but I could just as easily read a summary and be happy with it. To tell the truth, I’m a bit sad about how this whole MMO experiment went. I was hoping to open my eyes to a whole new style of game, to maybe find a nice, escapist home I could always go back to, but instead all I got was a reminder of how limiting taste and preference can be.
So, that’s what brings me back to the pointlessness. I played a game for hundreds of hours, and all I can say is “I didn’t like it because I don’t like MMO’s, and that’s fine because everyone has different taste”. At least I warned you, but thanks for reading all of this. I had to get it off my chest after wasting so much of my friend’s time, who explained things to me so patiently. Cherish your friends, everyone.
you could be playing 5 good games in 50 hours
"it's different from other mmos!"
"the story is actually really good!"
fuck no it ain't
"the story is actually really good!"
fuck no it ain't
I just sampled this as part of the Xbox beta test, since I've always been curious how a game like this works on console and just generally how a Final Fantasy MMO was implemented.
My first impression was how flawless and smooth everything ran. I don't know why I expected bugginess or sub-optimal performance, maybe because it's a beta test but everything looks fantastic with tons of frames and I didn't experience any kinds of bugs or roughness.
My second impression was how totally they just lifted basically everything in this game directly out of World of Warcraft. WoW did more or less the same thing with Everquest, but at least made major improvements with elements like maps, quests and NPC interaction. In the opening hours at least this feels much less like an evolution of the formula and more like a reskin.
Speaking of skins, the UI is really bad. I had heard a lot of good things about how they managed to make this PC game playable on a controller. I can confidently report those things were wrong; this is a terrible experience. You can really tell this UI was designed with a mouse in mind; everything on the screen -- which is A LOT OF THINGS -- is "clickable" which is an unnatural and counterintuitive interaction on a controller. It seems like they haven't done anything to simplify the UI or cut down on the superfluous interactable elements. I was very disappointed with this aspect but I'm sure that with enough practice one could git gud enough with it to move around the world confidently. I can't imagine it's a ever particularly fluid experience, though, everything just takes way too many steps.
Years of EQ and WoW completely depleted my love for MMORPGs so I was never going to start an FFXIV account and really dive in, but I'm super glad I got the chance to try it out finally. It's awesome they're finally bringing this to Xbox and that the dozens of Final Fantasy fans that don't own a Playstation will finally be able to join their friends.
My first impression was how flawless and smooth everything ran. I don't know why I expected bugginess or sub-optimal performance, maybe because it's a beta test but everything looks fantastic with tons of frames and I didn't experience any kinds of bugs or roughness.
My second impression was how totally they just lifted basically everything in this game directly out of World of Warcraft. WoW did more or less the same thing with Everquest, but at least made major improvements with elements like maps, quests and NPC interaction. In the opening hours at least this feels much less like an evolution of the formula and more like a reskin.
Speaking of skins, the UI is really bad. I had heard a lot of good things about how they managed to make this PC game playable on a controller. I can confidently report those things were wrong; this is a terrible experience. You can really tell this UI was designed with a mouse in mind; everything on the screen -- which is A LOT OF THINGS -- is "clickable" which is an unnatural and counterintuitive interaction on a controller. It seems like they haven't done anything to simplify the UI or cut down on the superfluous interactable elements. I was very disappointed with this aspect but I'm sure that with enough practice one could git gud enough with it to move around the world confidently. I can't imagine it's a ever particularly fluid experience, though, everything just takes way too many steps.
Years of EQ and WoW completely depleted my love for MMORPGs so I was never going to start an FFXIV account and really dive in, but I'm super glad I got the chance to try it out finally. It's awesome they're finally bringing this to Xbox and that the dozens of Final Fantasy fans that don't own a Playstation will finally be able to join their friends.
From what I've seen, it seems that the ARR campaign of FFXIV is considered as basically an extended tutorial/prologue that puts a lot of pieces in place for the later, far better parts of the game, which has me excited because what is here is already pretty solid stuff! I was particularly fond of the way it was so easy to just mess around with the different classes in the game without much in the way of a penalty beyond the time taken to level that class up, with a lot of systems in place to make that experimentation relatively painless. The story content had its ups and downs here for sure however, lots of very slow, aimless content near the start where nothing feels as if it's happening and while some of that is remedied by how pretty the scenery is, it's still dull, especially since a lot of it takes place before you actually get enough combat abilities for things to feel interesting.
Fortunately, things do get interesting towards the end once the pieces are in place and things actually start moving, with everything that takes place after the Coerthas storyline being full of cool setpieces and a steady sense of progression that culminates in the final hour and a half being especially great in this regard. The dungeons do an especially great job at keeping things interesting, with the way they quickly morph into a frenetic dash through waves upon waves of enemies being fun to deal with, especially with a group of friends all working together to make their way through these cooperative dungeon crawls. By the end of the campaign, I can safely say that I'm incredibly interested to see where stuff goes from here.
Also, I get to run around as a catboy in a dress so it's just inherently a good game.
Fortunately, things do get interesting towards the end once the pieces are in place and things actually start moving, with everything that takes place after the Coerthas storyline being full of cool setpieces and a steady sense of progression that culminates in the final hour and a half being especially great in this regard. The dungeons do an especially great job at keeping things interesting, with the way they quickly morph into a frenetic dash through waves upon waves of enemies being fun to deal with, especially with a group of friends all working together to make their way through these cooperative dungeon crawls. By the end of the campaign, I can safely say that I'm incredibly interested to see where stuff goes from here.
Also, I get to run around as a catboy in a dress so it's just inherently a good game.
This review will be mostly partial to the Level 50 (2.X) content that existed before the first Heavensward expansion dropped.
I completed Shadowbringers on release, and went into FFXIV hibernation until the Endwalker trailer got a few friends interested in giving the game a whirl. Eagerly jumped at the opportunity to make a new character on a preferred server, if only to see what impact the long-coming quality of life alterations had on the base game content.
As long as they pick the 'preferred server', newcomers receive a hefty exp bonus that I'd say nearly destroys any need even to do an unimportant sidequest or levelling duty finder. By the time the credits rolled, I already had two classes at level 50, which slaps hard. Considerable alterations were more recently made to the overall length of the 2.X quests - removing something like 18% of main story quests, and heavily abbreviating the ones that remain and adding the ability to use flying mounts in the old zones.
This all sounds really boring and granular, but honestly, it goes a long way into shortening what I'd essentially call the absolute worst content the game has to offer.
In general, it's not until you hit level 50 for your class' toolset will finally feel something close to 'fullness', allowing the player nigh-constant engagement with skill rotations and cooldowns.
It's also not until the post-credits content where the story gets promoted above... boilerplate? Characters become more clearly defined, and the story takes a turn into a fairly convincing political drama. That isn't to say admirable themes of growing into a legend while bringing the world together to heal the wounds caused by the calamity aren't present from the start, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The base game is A Realm Unseasoned, but I find it all worth the effort. Not only is the writing fun in a quaint enough way, but the foundation for great things to come has been made a whole lot more painless to trudge through. I don't envy the FFXIV team's task of adding ever more floors to the monolithic retrofitted nightmareskyscraper that is the game's life structure. The first content you see is the oldest and most naive, and you just have to be patient enough to watch the game grow into something spectacular as you progress through the MSQ. One thing I find particularly impressive is how well the game eases players in with evenly spaced tutorials and tools you have to play to unlock. Far too many live-service games in rotation nowadays do a terrible job at teaching the player anything in a way that isn't intensely overwhelming.
I completed Shadowbringers on release, and went into FFXIV hibernation until the Endwalker trailer got a few friends interested in giving the game a whirl. Eagerly jumped at the opportunity to make a new character on a preferred server, if only to see what impact the long-coming quality of life alterations had on the base game content.
As long as they pick the 'preferred server', newcomers receive a hefty exp bonus that I'd say nearly destroys any need even to do an unimportant sidequest or levelling duty finder. By the time the credits rolled, I already had two classes at level 50, which slaps hard. Considerable alterations were more recently made to the overall length of the 2.X quests - removing something like 18% of main story quests, and heavily abbreviating the ones that remain and adding the ability to use flying mounts in the old zones.
This all sounds really boring and granular, but honestly, it goes a long way into shortening what I'd essentially call the absolute worst content the game has to offer.
In general, it's not until you hit level 50 for your class' toolset will finally feel something close to 'fullness', allowing the player nigh-constant engagement with skill rotations and cooldowns.
It's also not until the post-credits content where the story gets promoted above... boilerplate? Characters become more clearly defined, and the story takes a turn into a fairly convincing political drama. That isn't to say admirable themes of growing into a legend while bringing the world together to heal the wounds caused by the calamity aren't present from the start, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The base game is A Realm Unseasoned, but I find it all worth the effort. Not only is the writing fun in a quaint enough way, but the foundation for great things to come has been made a whole lot more painless to trudge through. I don't envy the FFXIV team's task of adding ever more floors to the monolithic retrofitted nightmareskyscraper that is the game's life structure. The first content you see is the oldest and most naive, and you just have to be patient enough to watch the game grow into something spectacular as you progress through the MSQ. One thing I find particularly impressive is how well the game eases players in with evenly spaced tutorials and tools you have to play to unlock. Far too many live-service games in rotation nowadays do a terrible job at teaching the player anything in a way that isn't intensely overwhelming.
I would normally call anyone who spends 100 hours on a game they hate an idiot, but i did on this game because everyone and their mother goes "it gets good on heavensward bro trust me". I want to love this game so bad, but i just can't. Every quest is boring, every character is flat and has no personality barring a few, the dialogue is slam my head on a wall tier, the zones are bland and unmemorable and i just havent been able to get invested no matter how hard i try.
Well im about to finish the ARR patch quests soon so we'll see if i wasted 100 excruciatingly boring hours of my life spread out over the course of the past 5 years that i've played this on-and-off or if its actually good, but i dont think "it gets good after 100 hours" can be justified no matter how kino heavensward and shadowbringers may or may not be. I'll rate those seperately once I play them tho
I dont want to report to alphinaud or speak to minfilia at the rising stones anymore i just want to be happy
Well im about to finish the ARR patch quests soon so we'll see if i wasted 100 excruciatingly boring hours of my life spread out over the course of the past 5 years that i've played this on-and-off or if its actually good, but i dont think "it gets good after 100 hours" can be justified no matter how kino heavensward and shadowbringers may or may not be. I'll rate those seperately once I play them tho
I dont want to report to alphinaud or speak to minfilia at the rising stones anymore i just want to be happy
Fetch Quest. Return to the Waking Sands. Fetch Quest. Return to the Waking Sands. Fetch Quest. Return to the Waking Sands. Fetch Quest. Return to the Waking Sands. That is 80% of ARR. The story is totally unremarkable and the cutscenes are painfully dull especially with only a small handful having voice acting. The gameplay (as a monk at least) was mind-numbing and I just had to press my 3 attack skills in order over and over again and occasionally move out of orange squares. The game looks good and runs well and the dungeons were pretty decent thanks to the multiplayer component and slight increase in complexity for the fights. I genuinely think it would vastly improve the game if they straight up removed everything that isn't a dungeon. It is pretty awful design though to require queuing for story trials that no other player has any reason to replay. I guess next I'll see if it truly does get better 100 hours in.
(Actually beat on 6/20/23)
Finally getting around to this. It only took me several years, a new pc setup and matching with someone over Hinge to convince me to get back into this mess.
Playing as a femroe monk as that was the character I had made 4(? I really dont wanna think that I started and made this character that long ago...) years ago, I decided to swallow the pill that is FF14.
Generally just bee-lining the main quests is fine, although it was always hard to gauge EXACTLY when things would start to pick up story or gameplay wise so let me try to boil when exactly certain gameplay mechanics or ideas popped up that fired at least a few neurons because it does take a long while before you get to the meat of the story (arguably even in this expansion you don't really get but so much).
Before that lemme sum up my previous experience of just: Start main quest -> look around for main quest -> find other quest -> just do whatever basic quests were around -> loop -> 2 years pass -> try to play some stuff with friends -> walk across the entirety of a continent and a server to reach my friends in Gridania. I didn't really beeline like I had thought I was gonna do and just got mired in what I 'thought' I would have needed to do to understand FF14.
Firstly, all of this is from the experience of a Pugilist starting out in Thanalan/Ul'Dah so the experience will differ if you start in Gridania or Limsa Lominsa, my first dungeon was around level 15. This doesn't sound too bad but you have to do quite a bit in the surrounding area, some local politics-type beats, and you have to jump continent to La Noscea. Doing the main quest and job stuff this isnt too hard- however it will be a lot of back and forth from one place to another and trying to remember the map layouts surrounding the city. Admittedly, trying to remember the layout of Western and Northern Thanalan took much longer than I would like to admit. Doing mainline stuff primarily, the first and second dungeons are nearly back to back so its not as sparse feeling as the beginning grind might lead you to believe- you dont start out being able to do dungeons but once you get to your first the duty finder, they become a bit more prevalent. Story wise a bit more starts to progress as soon after you complete your first few dungeons, and you're able to meet the Scion of the Seven Stars- a group of people relevant to the end of the origin FF14 and that old guy I keep seeing disintegrated. I can say with certainty I've heard of at least half of these characters prior and have seen the spread cheeks of at least three, so I started to pay a bit more attention to what was happening around this time.
Around level 20 I finally realized there were symbols above the 'hunting log' creatures. DO THE HUNTING LOGS. There was so much exp nabbing these I couldn't believe. Also, more games need creature logs! Look forward to when I finish XB3: Future Redeemed (in a few weeks, hopefully). Finally it was around this time that I kinda got used to the cycle of things- those long trips between places didn't feel too bad. Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome. However, it also dawned on me I really didn't need gil for too much at the moment, so I felt fine just teleporting or taking the chocoboporter whenever I needed to. Previously I was pretty conscious on sparing as much Gil as possible until I knew I needed something good but it really doesn't matter. By the way! Check all the Chocoboporters and Crystals you can!
Around level 25 was when things seemed to have slowed down mission wise but my moveset seemed a little more robust, and a few levels later, I was given the chance (as part of the MSQ) to join a free company. I haven't done too much regarding this and I don't entirely understand the point but once joining I was given a quest to redeem my chocobo! Finally a free mode of transportation! But more importantly, I found the achievement trading guy in Gridania and was able to get my first companion- A tiny Gilgamesh.
...i didn't know this existed but I really needed it.
Finally once I hit level 30 things started to click in a bit better- my actual job as a Monk unlocked and I could use a few more moves as I leveled up. The overall idea of how quests were structured started to kick in, and I had a much easier time getting around thanks to my new chocobo, a much greater mass of wealth and just a better understanding as to where to go.
Unfortunate for me, starting to understand what the quest structure meant realizing the next 10 levels or so were just clearing out a backlog of Minfillia's chore list across the three starting regions of the game. At the very least this cut down on the cross-regional travel but goddamn are a lot of these back and forth. There are some intriguing stories and lines interspersed throughout these mini arc such as the Ala Mhigo, but as part of the main quest it just feels very bloated. At least there's a dungeon or a primal fight every few levels to spice things up, and I do have to commend the community- I've yet to had a bad experience thus far. Granted these are just main story dungeons I'm going through for one time but its been pleasant seeing others enthusiastic to just get through a dungeon, they're super pleasant to go through. Hell, we even had a bungle midway through Stone Vigil but the game's generous in its respawn mechanic so it was just a matter of retrying a mob or boss that went awry.
Around level 40 a fourth region unlocks, the Coerthas! Around this time the quests start to get a bit more interesting, despite some back and forth still. I'd heard the name Haurchefant quite a few times but don't have much context for what he does so his presence/dialogue here juxtaposed against some of these other hoity-toity Elezen which made him stand out- talking with my guide about him made me interested in seeing whatever he ends up doing.
From here it was basically a snowball through the rest of the msq, chugging through to the final major region of Version 2.0, Mor Dhona. Shoutouts to both FF14 and Xenoblade 2 for having a mountainous, industrial region wrought with imperial forces using Mor in its name.
Unfortunately around level 48 despite all best efforts we hit it. The plateau. Only a handful of quests until the end, but sadly I'm just too low leveled! Despite there being quite a lot of exp to go around I did think it was a bit bullshit the exp yield didn't just mainline you to the end of MSQ- I was thinking the endgame stuff for main story stuff would require you to be about level 45 rather than 50.
After a bit of grinding I was able to reach level 49 and do some of the last few quests only to get to- another quest with a level requirement. This time regarding the 'item' level of your character. I'm hoping this makes way more sense later in game but for right now it really doesn't sound like it makes any sense. I guess it's to make sure your armor is up to date? I've got no idea how to quickly get these up to a reasonable level, especially in the free trial that keeps me locked out of trading and accessing the market? It's a weird system and I do have a lot of hang ups with what you can and can't access with the free trial. I get its free but like would it kill Square to allow you to create a party? Or to at least have limited access to the market board?
FINALLY, we reach level 50 AND get a strong enough item level to begin the last chunk, after some last minute hunting log shenanigans. These last few bits are pretty cool- although I feel like they have functions and requirements that are introduced way too late and just impede progress. Usually whenever you want to introduce new requirements for big set pieces you'd want to introduce them early or midway through a campaign and ease players into getting used to them but stuff like the exp curve slowing down and the item levels just feels really bad when I was really gunning to get the last few missions done. Maybe adding in all the job class quests helped with leveling early on and definitely the hunting log helps fill in exp but I was really confused as to why these last quests just jumped up in requirements so fast. At the very least these last few bits were pretty fun, running through the corridors of The Praetorium and the outside rim on Magitek is pretty neat and the two last bosses are neat enough.
I think the most I can say about ARR is that its neat enough that I can understand why people latched onto it when it dropped and why it kept those users attracted enough to continue into expansions to the extent that the FF14 team could actually make the game they wanted to in Heavensward onward. Even in these later chunks it felt like the team was getting more ambitious and comfortable with where they were taking the cast and world. It's just a long opener muddled with walking back and forth to quest markers. Still, I thought it was fun to see how my character was progressing and seeing all the characters that I only heard offhand altogether here was cool. Looking forward to (well, firstly the preshow quests of) Heavensward!
Finally getting around to this. It only took me several years, a new pc setup and matching with someone over Hinge to convince me to get back into this mess.
Playing as a femroe monk as that was the character I had made 4(? I really dont wanna think that I started and made this character that long ago...) years ago, I decided to swallow the pill that is FF14.
Generally just bee-lining the main quests is fine, although it was always hard to gauge EXACTLY when things would start to pick up story or gameplay wise so let me try to boil when exactly certain gameplay mechanics or ideas popped up that fired at least a few neurons because it does take a long while before you get to the meat of the story (arguably even in this expansion you don't really get but so much).
Before that lemme sum up my previous experience of just: Start main quest -> look around for main quest -> find other quest -> just do whatever basic quests were around -> loop -> 2 years pass -> try to play some stuff with friends -> walk across the entirety of a continent and a server to reach my friends in Gridania. I didn't really beeline like I had thought I was gonna do and just got mired in what I 'thought' I would have needed to do to understand FF14.
Firstly, all of this is from the experience of a Pugilist starting out in Thanalan/Ul'Dah so the experience will differ if you start in Gridania or Limsa Lominsa, my first dungeon was around level 15. This doesn't sound too bad but you have to do quite a bit in the surrounding area, some local politics-type beats, and you have to jump continent to La Noscea. Doing the main quest and job stuff this isnt too hard- however it will be a lot of back and forth from one place to another and trying to remember the map layouts surrounding the city. Admittedly, trying to remember the layout of Western and Northern Thanalan took much longer than I would like to admit. Doing mainline stuff primarily, the first and second dungeons are nearly back to back so its not as sparse feeling as the beginning grind might lead you to believe- you dont start out being able to do dungeons but once you get to your first the duty finder, they become a bit more prevalent. Story wise a bit more starts to progress as soon after you complete your first few dungeons, and you're able to meet the Scion of the Seven Stars- a group of people relevant to the end of the origin FF14 and that old guy I keep seeing disintegrated. I can say with certainty I've heard of at least half of these characters prior and have seen the spread cheeks of at least three, so I started to pay a bit more attention to what was happening around this time.
Around level 20 I finally realized there were symbols above the 'hunting log' creatures. DO THE HUNTING LOGS. There was so much exp nabbing these I couldn't believe. Also, more games need creature logs! Look forward to when I finish XB3: Future Redeemed (in a few weeks, hopefully). Finally it was around this time that I kinda got used to the cycle of things- those long trips between places didn't feel too bad. Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome. However, it also dawned on me I really didn't need gil for too much at the moment, so I felt fine just teleporting or taking the chocoboporter whenever I needed to. Previously I was pretty conscious on sparing as much Gil as possible until I knew I needed something good but it really doesn't matter. By the way! Check all the Chocoboporters and Crystals you can!
Around level 25 was when things seemed to have slowed down mission wise but my moveset seemed a little more robust, and a few levels later, I was given the chance (as part of the MSQ) to join a free company. I haven't done too much regarding this and I don't entirely understand the point but once joining I was given a quest to redeem my chocobo! Finally a free mode of transportation! But more importantly, I found the achievement trading guy in Gridania and was able to get my first companion- A tiny Gilgamesh.
...i didn't know this existed but I really needed it.
Finally once I hit level 30 things started to click in a bit better- my actual job as a Monk unlocked and I could use a few more moves as I leveled up. The overall idea of how quests were structured started to kick in, and I had a much easier time getting around thanks to my new chocobo, a much greater mass of wealth and just a better understanding as to where to go.
Unfortunate for me, starting to understand what the quest structure meant realizing the next 10 levels or so were just clearing out a backlog of Minfillia's chore list across the three starting regions of the game. At the very least this cut down on the cross-regional travel but goddamn are a lot of these back and forth. There are some intriguing stories and lines interspersed throughout these mini arc such as the Ala Mhigo, but as part of the main quest it just feels very bloated. At least there's a dungeon or a primal fight every few levels to spice things up, and I do have to commend the community- I've yet to had a bad experience thus far. Granted these are just main story dungeons I'm going through for one time but its been pleasant seeing others enthusiastic to just get through a dungeon, they're super pleasant to go through. Hell, we even had a bungle midway through Stone Vigil but the game's generous in its respawn mechanic so it was just a matter of retrying a mob or boss that went awry.
Around level 40 a fourth region unlocks, the Coerthas! Around this time the quests start to get a bit more interesting, despite some back and forth still. I'd heard the name Haurchefant quite a few times but don't have much context for what he does so his presence/dialogue here juxtaposed against some of these other hoity-toity Elezen which made him stand out- talking with my guide about him made me interested in seeing whatever he ends up doing.
From here it was basically a snowball through the rest of the msq, chugging through to the final major region of Version 2.0, Mor Dhona. Shoutouts to both FF14 and Xenoblade 2 for having a mountainous, industrial region wrought with imperial forces using Mor in its name.
Unfortunately around level 48 despite all best efforts we hit it. The plateau. Only a handful of quests until the end, but sadly I'm just too low leveled! Despite there being quite a lot of exp to go around I did think it was a bit bullshit the exp yield didn't just mainline you to the end of MSQ- I was thinking the endgame stuff for main story stuff would require you to be about level 45 rather than 50.
After a bit of grinding I was able to reach level 49 and do some of the last few quests only to get to- another quest with a level requirement. This time regarding the 'item' level of your character. I'm hoping this makes way more sense later in game but for right now it really doesn't sound like it makes any sense. I guess it's to make sure your armor is up to date? I've got no idea how to quickly get these up to a reasonable level, especially in the free trial that keeps me locked out of trading and accessing the market? It's a weird system and I do have a lot of hang ups with what you can and can't access with the free trial. I get its free but like would it kill Square to allow you to create a party? Or to at least have limited access to the market board?
FINALLY, we reach level 50 AND get a strong enough item level to begin the last chunk, after some last minute hunting log shenanigans. These last few bits are pretty cool- although I feel like they have functions and requirements that are introduced way too late and just impede progress. Usually whenever you want to introduce new requirements for big set pieces you'd want to introduce them early or midway through a campaign and ease players into getting used to them but stuff like the exp curve slowing down and the item levels just feels really bad when I was really gunning to get the last few missions done. Maybe adding in all the job class quests helped with leveling early on and definitely the hunting log helps fill in exp but I was really confused as to why these last quests just jumped up in requirements so fast. At the very least these last few bits were pretty fun, running through the corridors of The Praetorium and the outside rim on Magitek is pretty neat and the two last bosses are neat enough.
I think the most I can say about ARR is that its neat enough that I can understand why people latched onto it when it dropped and why it kept those users attracted enough to continue into expansions to the extent that the FF14 team could actually make the game they wanted to in Heavensward onward. Even in these later chunks it felt like the team was getting more ambitious and comfortable with where they were taking the cast and world. It's just a long opener muddled with walking back and forth to quest markers. Still, I thought it was fun to see how my character was progressing and seeing all the characters that I only heard offhand altogether here was cool. Looking forward to (well, firstly the preshow quests of) Heavensward!
My opinion about this game hasn't really changed much, it's after all one of my favorite games ever. But I cleared an Ultimate yesterday and there's still a spring in my step about it
One day I'll give it the review it deserves
One day I'll give it the review it deserves
I really love FFXIV as a game. I just wish I didn't have to play it with arsehole strangers.
Please, I'm begging you. Yes, you have 8000 hours in this game. We get it, you know literally everything there is to know. Unfortunately some of us have other things going on in our lives, and want to play this game with our partners of an evening. As soon as you start yelling that everyone except you is garbage, then you're just antagonising the party and ruining it for everyone. Queuing into an instance is a roughly 50/50 chance of having a good time - a lot of the experiences I've had with xiv have been great, a lot of the players are fun and understanding and will explain mechanics to me, a moron.
But there are also a lot of people like I've described above and they need to shoved into a locker.
Please, I'm begging you. Yes, you have 8000 hours in this game. We get it, you know literally everything there is to know. Unfortunately some of us have other things going on in our lives, and want to play this game with our partners of an evening. As soon as you start yelling that everyone except you is garbage, then you're just antagonising the party and ruining it for everyone. Queuing into an instance is a roughly 50/50 chance of having a good time - a lot of the experiences I've had with xiv have been great, a lot of the players are fun and understanding and will explain mechanics to me, a moron.
But there are also a lot of people like I've described above and they need to shoved into a locker.
+combat is overall very solid, with good rotations to work with in the later dungeons (aka the lvl 40-50 set during 2.0). I was playing summoner/scholar after starting as arcanist and I really appreciated that I could switch between dps and healer at will without having to worry about separate leveling for each.
+I like the way it weaves in concepts from other final fantasy games, such as getting to fight in magitek armor. lots of cute references that work well in an mmo environment
+once I started unlocking dungeons the fun opened up in a big way; I like this style of cooperative questing. a couple of the dungeons even approach something like a tabletop rpg when you queue with a group of friends.
+some of the bosses are really good too: shout out to the aurum vale ones, the final boss of qarn (i think?), and the second-to-final boss of the game. a lot of fights that keep me on my toes and awaiting the upcoming hard mode dungeons and raids
+controller play is honestly very solid in fights. traversing the interface and menus was initially difficult to do but combat was set up very nicely overall, even when I had to add double-trigger taps to my hotbar line-up
-the story isn't really bad at all but there are definitely questlines during the MSQ that drag, which i'm pretty sure it a problem many people have with this campaign. the goal is definitely to flesh out the world more than to deilver a compelling story which totally makes sense to set up the expansions, but it's a little dry going through it now. I got a preferred world exp bonus however, so at the very least I got a big leg up than people starting as of right now.
-a lot of dungeon mechanics for 2.0 have been nerfed and/or rendered obsolete by how good everyone playing is. level sync is a smartly done mechanic, but there are still plenty of fights that require no thought and end in <45 seconds, especially in the final two dungeons.
my girlfriend got back into this game with the free trial after having not played it since 2.0 launched, and she ended up bringing me along for the ride. without a question this was my preferred way to experience the game; I would not have enjoyed this anywhere near as much if I hadn't had friends to play it with. once I settled into it as a nice game to pair with a podcast, I was able to move through the MSQ a bit quicker and finally reach the end as of today. I'm really looking forward to later duties with more complicated mechanics, and I'm hoping to at least hit heavensward before my subscription runs out at the end of the month.
+I like the way it weaves in concepts from other final fantasy games, such as getting to fight in magitek armor. lots of cute references that work well in an mmo environment
+once I started unlocking dungeons the fun opened up in a big way; I like this style of cooperative questing. a couple of the dungeons even approach something like a tabletop rpg when you queue with a group of friends.
+some of the bosses are really good too: shout out to the aurum vale ones, the final boss of qarn (i think?), and the second-to-final boss of the game. a lot of fights that keep me on my toes and awaiting the upcoming hard mode dungeons and raids
+controller play is honestly very solid in fights. traversing the interface and menus was initially difficult to do but combat was set up very nicely overall, even when I had to add double-trigger taps to my hotbar line-up
-the story isn't really bad at all but there are definitely questlines during the MSQ that drag, which i'm pretty sure it a problem many people have with this campaign. the goal is definitely to flesh out the world more than to deilver a compelling story which totally makes sense to set up the expansions, but it's a little dry going through it now. I got a preferred world exp bonus however, so at the very least I got a big leg up than people starting as of right now.
-a lot of dungeon mechanics for 2.0 have been nerfed and/or rendered obsolete by how good everyone playing is. level sync is a smartly done mechanic, but there are still plenty of fights that require no thought and end in <45 seconds, especially in the final two dungeons.
my girlfriend got back into this game with the free trial after having not played it since 2.0 launched, and she ended up bringing me along for the ride. without a question this was my preferred way to experience the game; I would not have enjoyed this anywhere near as much if I hadn't had friends to play it with. once I settled into it as a nice game to pair with a podcast, I was able to move through the MSQ a bit quicker and finally reach the end as of today. I'm really looking forward to later duties with more complicated mechanics, and I'm hoping to at least hit heavensward before my subscription runs out at the end of the month.
This review will mainly be concerning A Realm Reborn, and not Final Fantasy XIV as a whole; just want to get that out of the way off the bat.
It cannot be understated what an absolute success story that Final Fantasy XIV has been for Square Enix. It is at once, an underdog story into an absolute titan of the modern gaming landscape, essentially one of a select few, and dwindling crowd of MMORPGs, and of them, it is barely a competition of which one is on top. And all of this came after one of the worst conceivable launches of a game in history. I think in many ways, we forget how devastating the initial launch of Final Fantasy’s second go at the genre truly was. A boring, poorly controlling slog of a grindfest that alongside an ongoing disdain of the franchise at the time through games like XIII and general internet reactionary thought of “weird japanese games” this once historic franchise was at its arguable lowest point.
A Realm Reborn, in many regards, is a miracle game. While indeed, reusing what they could salvage from the original release, this was a from the ground up start from scratch. A game that is essentially putting together a last ditch effort to make something worthwhile from some truly rotten ingredients. All in a very strict schedule of just a couple of years, including the ending of the original game that becomes the basis for the entirety of the rest of XIV. And miraculously, it succeeded, and would only continue to succeed more and more. A new expansion is on the horizon this year, and after its wildly popular conclusion to its decade long story, it feels like a celebration to truly appreciate how far it has come.
All of this is well and good. And with that context, it becomes a lot easier to appreciate what A Realm Reborn is. That being said, as anyone can attest to who has played it; it is a tough pill to swallow. While XIV is an incredibly fun game when you’re going through dungeons, testing out job classes, and fighting bosses; this game is about as rough as it can get. Much of the meat of the game’s main campaign is about as basic as it can get, following mostly boring fetch quests that even now the team is still weeding out, a decade after the fact. Dialogue that you at some point realize you can just skip and understand what is going on just fine, and a distinct lack of polish, and many points where it feels like you aren’t doing much of anything, it certainly lacks a lot of the luster that the future expansions have seemingly been able to boast.
That said, when you do get the opportunity to actually participate in this game, by golly is it a lot of fun. I’m not particularly familiar with the genre, but XIV is such a social game, and trying out the different classes and running the many dungeons the game has to offer is a treat. Even this early on, Masayoshi Soken, the game’s composer is already a highlight of the game. Making some of the best compositions in a series that might just be the crown jewel of video game soundtracks, with not just beautiful fantastical pieces, but a wide variety of musical styles, genres, and tones. This matches well with the game’s gorgeous art direction which, while at times feeling bland, are laboured over with such attention to detail and weird little quirks that make them instantly recognizable. And the game does get to end on an incredible note, with a final confrontation that feels as epic as something like this could be leading up to. After doing shit like having to search for wine ingredients, having a satisfying final confrontation with a big ass weapon is satisfying, and well earned.
But that is not the end of A Realm Reborn, oh no, there is an entire post game, about the length of the regular campaign waiting for you. Somehow the post game suffers almost the exact same cycle that the base game does, with a particularly grueling first half being a section of game that even with my understanding of the game’s creation, I still cannot defend, even with some fun trials. But after a while, you can tell the reigns are in control. Literally the instant you fight one of the game’s bosses, the game is in full swing, and it starts to get going, and it is really good, ending yet again, on another fantastic climax. Leading up to the next expansion, and where XIV truly becomes what it is today. While I have only just barely started Heavensward yet at the time of writing this, you can notice the difference in quality almost immediately, and it has me jazzed. But this is not that story, at least not yet.
A Realm Reborn, is a mess, the best part of the game I experienced was a reworked solo boss fight that only got put in as of late 2021; nearly an entire decade after its initial launch. It is boring, clunky, very bloated and was even more so on its release, and yet in spite of all of that, it does work, it is compelling. While I have pretty close to no desire to return to it, as I’m sure many of XIV’s playbase would agree with, it needs to be celebrated for what it is. A momentous turn around of a true failure of a game. There is an argument to be had that XIV might be on the same level of success as VII is at, and that simply would not be possible if A Realm Reborn was truly the sum of its worst parts. I think it helps that this, along with two other expansions that are essentially full games, just are free to play, with almost little to no strings attached to the offer as well, making that initial tough sell, a lot easier to swallow when you aren’t paying a dime for it. And there is a reason they even can do that, it's because the team behind the game isn’t just confident, but they very obviously love what this game has become. This is the definitive modern gaming underdog story, and while not perfect, playing this with a friend and dicking about MSQ is something I wouldn’t trade for the world. Heavensward is almost certainly going to blow my socks off, but for now. Yeah. I guess I do like XIV, you weird little game you.
It cannot be understated what an absolute success story that Final Fantasy XIV has been for Square Enix. It is at once, an underdog story into an absolute titan of the modern gaming landscape, essentially one of a select few, and dwindling crowd of MMORPGs, and of them, it is barely a competition of which one is on top. And all of this came after one of the worst conceivable launches of a game in history. I think in many ways, we forget how devastating the initial launch of Final Fantasy’s second go at the genre truly was. A boring, poorly controlling slog of a grindfest that alongside an ongoing disdain of the franchise at the time through games like XIII and general internet reactionary thought of “weird japanese games” this once historic franchise was at its arguable lowest point.
A Realm Reborn, in many regards, is a miracle game. While indeed, reusing what they could salvage from the original release, this was a from the ground up start from scratch. A game that is essentially putting together a last ditch effort to make something worthwhile from some truly rotten ingredients. All in a very strict schedule of just a couple of years, including the ending of the original game that becomes the basis for the entirety of the rest of XIV. And miraculously, it succeeded, and would only continue to succeed more and more. A new expansion is on the horizon this year, and after its wildly popular conclusion to its decade long story, it feels like a celebration to truly appreciate how far it has come.
All of this is well and good. And with that context, it becomes a lot easier to appreciate what A Realm Reborn is. That being said, as anyone can attest to who has played it; it is a tough pill to swallow. While XIV is an incredibly fun game when you’re going through dungeons, testing out job classes, and fighting bosses; this game is about as rough as it can get. Much of the meat of the game’s main campaign is about as basic as it can get, following mostly boring fetch quests that even now the team is still weeding out, a decade after the fact. Dialogue that you at some point realize you can just skip and understand what is going on just fine, and a distinct lack of polish, and many points where it feels like you aren’t doing much of anything, it certainly lacks a lot of the luster that the future expansions have seemingly been able to boast.
That said, when you do get the opportunity to actually participate in this game, by golly is it a lot of fun. I’m not particularly familiar with the genre, but XIV is such a social game, and trying out the different classes and running the many dungeons the game has to offer is a treat. Even this early on, Masayoshi Soken, the game’s composer is already a highlight of the game. Making some of the best compositions in a series that might just be the crown jewel of video game soundtracks, with not just beautiful fantastical pieces, but a wide variety of musical styles, genres, and tones. This matches well with the game’s gorgeous art direction which, while at times feeling bland, are laboured over with such attention to detail and weird little quirks that make them instantly recognizable. And the game does get to end on an incredible note, with a final confrontation that feels as epic as something like this could be leading up to. After doing shit like having to search for wine ingredients, having a satisfying final confrontation with a big ass weapon is satisfying, and well earned.
But that is not the end of A Realm Reborn, oh no, there is an entire post game, about the length of the regular campaign waiting for you. Somehow the post game suffers almost the exact same cycle that the base game does, with a particularly grueling first half being a section of game that even with my understanding of the game’s creation, I still cannot defend, even with some fun trials. But after a while, you can tell the reigns are in control. Literally the instant you fight one of the game’s bosses, the game is in full swing, and it starts to get going, and it is really good, ending yet again, on another fantastic climax. Leading up to the next expansion, and where XIV truly becomes what it is today. While I have only just barely started Heavensward yet at the time of writing this, you can notice the difference in quality almost immediately, and it has me jazzed. But this is not that story, at least not yet.
A Realm Reborn, is a mess, the best part of the game I experienced was a reworked solo boss fight that only got put in as of late 2021; nearly an entire decade after its initial launch. It is boring, clunky, very bloated and was even more so on its release, and yet in spite of all of that, it does work, it is compelling. While I have pretty close to no desire to return to it, as I’m sure many of XIV’s playbase would agree with, it needs to be celebrated for what it is. A momentous turn around of a true failure of a game. There is an argument to be had that XIV might be on the same level of success as VII is at, and that simply would not be possible if A Realm Reborn was truly the sum of its worst parts. I think it helps that this, along with two other expansions that are essentially full games, just are free to play, with almost little to no strings attached to the offer as well, making that initial tough sell, a lot easier to swallow when you aren’t paying a dime for it. And there is a reason they even can do that, it's because the team behind the game isn’t just confident, but they very obviously love what this game has become. This is the definitive modern gaming underdog story, and while not perfect, playing this with a friend and dicking about MSQ is something I wouldn’t trade for the world. Heavensward is almost certainly going to blow my socks off, but for now. Yeah. I guess I do like XIV, you weird little game you.
And so the journey begins...
What makes a good MMO? That was a rhetorical question. Quite frankly, I have no clue. When it comes to these things, my only real experience prior to FFXIV was Toontown and Club Penguin, with only the former having RPG elements. It was a simple game, and I sank hundreds of hours into it as a kid. Since then, the concept of MMORPGs fascinated me, but rarely did I ever feel the motivation to actually get into one because I knew the time investment would be great, and I lacked the proper motivation to try.
FFXIV has become bigger than anyone could have really imagined back in 2010. A game that was plagued with technical issues, terrible UI, and just plain boring gameplay. I wasn't there for it, but I've heard the horror stories and watched analysis videos. Those were dark times. It amazes me how Yoshi P quickly turned things around. A Realm Reborn was, as the name suggests, a new beginning for this game; a rebirth that kickstarted one of the most interesting and successful comeback stories in gaming. Despite the hype, what ultimately convinced me to try it is my love for the franchise, and, as a new player who jumped on the free trial bandwagon, I have some thoughts so share.
First of all, it took me a long time to finish A Realm Reborn. Not because the story is actually that long, but because I kept taking really long breaks. As someone who's pretty much a MMORPG noob, a lot of XIV's systems and its UI felt very overwhelming from the start. I had to consult Google on multiple occasions just to figure out menial things like how to change my hotbar size. It admittedly turned me off, initially, but as I kept trudging through the main story quests and started getting used to things, I found myself getting into a cathartic rhythm. I was genuinely enjoying my somewhat relaxing newbie experience at first, but, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it... it's true what veteran players say: ARR is a slog. This is something that I didn't really come to terms with until I got about halfway through the MSQs, and this is where those multiple long breaks come in. I would be playing this game for an hour or two at a time and then just forget about it for a few months.
ARR focuses on worldbuilding, and this is what it excels at. You're definitely not going to get a top-tier FF story here (at least, not yet, as I have been told). It all feels like set-up for bigger things to come, and this is definitely exemplified with some pretty foreboding foreshadowing in its ending. By that point, I was fully on board. I would say that in terms of story, ARR took a solid 35-40 hours to "get interesting," and even then, it's still not as balls to the wall as one would expect or would probably hope for. But the small taste I got of Eorzea's vibrant world and its political struggles was enough to satisfy my curiosity for what's to come.
You know, I really didn't think that I'd ever get invested in another MMO quite like I did with Toontown. While these are two very big contrasts, there were times while I was playing this game that I felt that same sense of childlike wonder and intrigue I experienced with TT. There's just something that hits quite different with these massive online worlds that you just don't feel with other games. It's this sense of community; a sense of belonging. You feel like you're there and like you're a part of this world; moreover, you feel appreciated, especially with how welcoming this community is. I'm still not sure what makes a great MMO, but perhaps this is a start. I truly look forward to where this journey through Eorzea's bustling world will take me next and beyond.
My thoughts on the post-game patches:
Patch 2.1 - A Realm Awoken
Patch 2.2 - Through the Maelstrom
Patch 2.3 - Defenders of Eorzea
Patch 2.4 - Dreams of Ice
Patch 2.5 - Before the Fall
Without Post-Game Patches: Light 7/10
With Post-Game Patches: Decent 7/10
What makes a good MMO? That was a rhetorical question. Quite frankly, I have no clue. When it comes to these things, my only real experience prior to FFXIV was Toontown and Club Penguin, with only the former having RPG elements. It was a simple game, and I sank hundreds of hours into it as a kid. Since then, the concept of MMORPGs fascinated me, but rarely did I ever feel the motivation to actually get into one because I knew the time investment would be great, and I lacked the proper motivation to try.
FFXIV has become bigger than anyone could have really imagined back in 2010. A game that was plagued with technical issues, terrible UI, and just plain boring gameplay. I wasn't there for it, but I've heard the horror stories and watched analysis videos. Those were dark times. It amazes me how Yoshi P quickly turned things around. A Realm Reborn was, as the name suggests, a new beginning for this game; a rebirth that kickstarted one of the most interesting and successful comeback stories in gaming. Despite the hype, what ultimately convinced me to try it is my love for the franchise, and, as a new player who jumped on the free trial bandwagon, I have some thoughts so share.
First of all, it took me a long time to finish A Realm Reborn. Not because the story is actually that long, but because I kept taking really long breaks. As someone who's pretty much a MMORPG noob, a lot of XIV's systems and its UI felt very overwhelming from the start. I had to consult Google on multiple occasions just to figure out menial things like how to change my hotbar size. It admittedly turned me off, initially, but as I kept trudging through the main story quests and started getting used to things, I found myself getting into a cathartic rhythm. I was genuinely enjoying my somewhat relaxing newbie experience at first, but, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it... it's true what veteran players say: ARR is a slog. This is something that I didn't really come to terms with until I got about halfway through the MSQs, and this is where those multiple long breaks come in. I would be playing this game for an hour or two at a time and then just forget about it for a few months.
ARR focuses on worldbuilding, and this is what it excels at. You're definitely not going to get a top-tier FF story here (at least, not yet, as I have been told). It all feels like set-up for bigger things to come, and this is definitely exemplified with some pretty foreboding foreshadowing in its ending. By that point, I was fully on board. I would say that in terms of story, ARR took a solid 35-40 hours to "get interesting," and even then, it's still not as balls to the wall as one would expect or would probably hope for. But the small taste I got of Eorzea's vibrant world and its political struggles was enough to satisfy my curiosity for what's to come.
You know, I really didn't think that I'd ever get invested in another MMO quite like I did with Toontown. While these are two very big contrasts, there were times while I was playing this game that I felt that same sense of childlike wonder and intrigue I experienced with TT. There's just something that hits quite different with these massive online worlds that you just don't feel with other games. It's this sense of community; a sense of belonging. You feel like you're there and like you're a part of this world; moreover, you feel appreciated, especially with how welcoming this community is. I'm still not sure what makes a great MMO, but perhaps this is a start. I truly look forward to where this journey through Eorzea's bustling world will take me next and beyond.
My thoughts on the post-game patches:
Patch 2.1 - A Realm Awoken
Patch 2.2 - Through the Maelstrom
Patch 2.3 - Defenders of Eorzea
Patch 2.4 - Dreams of Ice
Patch 2.5 - Before the Fall
Without Post-Game Patches: Light 7/10
With Post-Game Patches: Decent 7/10
I just sat there and made friends with two cute lalafell and it blew my mind