(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.)

These opinions are from the point of view of ARR as leveling content ONLY, not level 50 endgame content like raiding
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The gameplay is obviously there and is the entiretly of the 3.5 star rating, utilizing patches and patches of content since the original ARR but oh my god the actual ARR content is mind numbingly boring. The dungeons are all piss easy, the quest design is lazy, the story is pretty bad (greatly increases in quality in the following expansion) and the whole experience is topped off with a 90 minute series of unskippable cutscenes in a shitty 24 man dungeon you just zerg anyways. Tough it out just to get to the vastly superior Heavensward or pay extra to skip this.

Also apparently they are revamping this stuff to make it better/faster next patch.

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