bom, meus 30 dias grátis tão acabando e não pretendo renovar a assinatura. realmente uma pena esse jogo só começar a ter uma história boa e cativante depois de, sei lá, 100 horas? 2 expansões?

mas mesmo desconsiderando isso (que é o principal motivo das pessoas jogarem, lol), esse foi de LONGE o MMO que eu mais me diverti e fiquei imerso jogando. o combate desse jogo é muito divertido e as dinâmicas de classe também, com você podendo upar qualquer classe em um só personagem; a navegação de mundo é uma delícia (mesmo que só fique boa mesmo depois de 30h, que é quando vc pega o chocobo); o design dos inimigos sempre muito refrescante; a trilha sonora IMPECÁVEL MEU DEUS DO CÉU NOBUO UEMATSU É NOSSO SENHOR; e puts, a comunidade.

uma parte considerável das minhas quase 80 horas nesse jogo, foi sentado em algum HUB, dando /dance e /cheer enquanto assistia algum bardo se apresentar. no Behemoth (o server que eu tô), tem muito brasileiro, e especialmente muito bardo brasileiro. sabe o que isso significa? TORAR mamonas assassinas em Gridania. passava horas trocando ideia com os players, conversando de um monte de coisa, trocando cultura, rindo do brasil enquanto víamos algum bardo se apresentar. tocavam as clássicas: change the world, robocop gay, go!! de naruto, borboletas de jorge e mateus, aí misturavam um linkin park, alguns clássicos da bossa nova, às vezes tinha uns que tocavam música trance...

pra mim o que faz MMO ser um gênero tão querido por todos nós, é a interação com seres humanos. quando WoW explodiu e a mídia começou a demonizá-lo, esqueceram de entender que essa era uma alternativa incrível pras pessoas introvertidas, sozinhas, que ficavam em casa, de interagir com outras pessoas. nós nerdolas sempre nos entenderemos. a magia dos jogos online sempre foi e sempre vai ser essa. mas no caso de jogos assim, MMOs, a imersão do mundo que você entra, as histórias que você vive, e a possibilidade de compartilhar essas sensações com outras pessoas é o que faz ser algo especial. e esse jogo faz isso com maestria.

A Realm Reborn (ARR) is the building block for every expansion afterwards, it is beginning of the 10 year story arc that ends in Endwalker. While slow in story beats, the world-building and characters that you meet will eventually pay off down the road, immensely.

(Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which has an expanded free trial that you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning HEAVENSWARD and STORMBLOOD expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime? Now available on XBOX series X & S! Sign up and enjoy Eorzea today!)* *[From October 2023 Onwards]

Let this be a warning to people who persist because the fans of this game keep telling you "it gets better, just stick with it".

It does not. If you don't like the game in the first 20 hours, you're not going to like the rest of it. I wanted to test this for myself and I stuck with it until the end of "An End to the Song" quest in Heavensward 3.3 since a lot of people told me that's the peak of the story. Here is how the game's main quest story is structured, and even though the Heavensward writing was definitely better than ARR's writing, this structure persisted.

-You get a quest
-The quest is talking to a political figure in a room for half an hour explaining to you what's happening in the world.
-you run to go talk to another person
-every single character has to explain to you how they feel about what just happened, in detail
-you repeat this for 10 quests
-finally you see something interesting happens
-there are another 10 quests where you have to hear every character plan out their next move and explain how they feel about what just happened to each other
-you queue up for a dungeon/trial and see a resolution
-the next 10 quests are characters talking about how they feel
-repeat

The story has high moments but they are drawn out and the rest of the story is poorly paced filler that detracts from the good parts. This game has no idea of the concept of "show, don't tell". I don't WANT to hear how characters feel about something, I would much rather try to insinuate it through their expressions, mood, tone, and personality. I took a break from the game after completing Heavensward and I forgot nearly the entire story in that time because it offers you nothing to think about at all, nothing is up to interpretation, it just spends an excruciating amount of time sitting you down in a room telling you how you should think and feel about everything rather than just letting you experience it.

Additionally this structure creates a gigantic disjoint between the story and gameplay. The NPCs you are experiencing the story with are not the people who you are running the dungeons/trials with, those are other players who are also supposedly extremely special powerful chosen ones just like you. When characters died I didn't feel sad because even though the game TOLD me they were traveling and fighting with me, when I actually was playing the game that is not what was happening, I was running around alone and fighting with random people in a matchmaking system. This game's story could be a visual novel with static JPGs and it would functionally be the same. None of the quests have any worthwhile objectives, most of them are literally running and teleporting back and forth between the same extremely small areas of the map and talking to people. There is almost no non-instanced content to do, there is very little reason to have a giant world to explore with other players. You read the massive exposition dumps, you use the duty finder to queue up for group content, you actually get to play a video game for a small amount of time, and you repeat. Every expansion takes about 40 hours and I am extremely burnt out already so I can't really see myself catching up to the current one.

It is a shame because I really like a lot about this game. I loved the first alliance raid with its FF3 references, I love the idea of an open-world Final Fantasy MMO since I grew up playing the older games. I love the world and music, I like the raids and dungeons. It's just that the bits of content that make the game worth it isn't worth enduring the grueling slog that is the MSQ. Unfortunately everything I have read online indicates the MSQ is the main draw of playing the game.

However, if you are enjoying the MSQ and you do like this game's writing, as I'm sure many people will given its popularity, then absolutely stick with it. Just don't let the game become a sunk cost fallacy if you aren't having fun. I spent 130 hours playing this but I could have realized it wasn't for me about 30 hours in.

This review represents the entirety of FFXIV, not just a realm reborn. Same goes for log hours.

The pinnacle of “it gets good after 40 hours”

FFXIV is the only MMO I can consistently play and enjoy. It’s amazing to see the dedication a team has put into this after all these years and the game is just constantly getting better. The job system and character creation is great, and it’s an awesome single player experience too because of the games focus on story. That story focus though means that if you really want to enjoy the weight of the later expansions you need to start from the beginning with a realm reborn because the story continues all the way through. A realm reborn isn’t horrible, but it’s nowhere near as good as the later expansions. I respect it for what it is, and I wouldn’t tell anyone to skip it. They’ve also trimmed a lot of fat from the expansion with patches and updates.

The longer you play the game, the more you will appreciate it. It’s easily the most time I’ve ever put into a game solo and with friends.

He intentado meterme en este juego más de 4 veces en la última década y al final termino abandonándolo máximo a las 15 horas... Lo siento, pero no voy a tragarme una expansión entera para que la historia se ponga "decente", prefiero usar ese tiempo en jugar un jrpg que sé que me entretendrá de inicio a fin como cualquiera de la saga Kiseki.

Y no, mi relación y opinión con SquareEnix no afecta en nada a mi opinión de XIV. Admito que no toco ni con un palo el 98% de los juegos de square, pero si un juego de esta desarrolladora es bueno entonces lo admito como sucedió en su momento con WOFF, pero lo siento, pero XIV no conecto conmigo como para obligarme a desperdiciar decenas de horas para empezar a disfrutarlo.

I like how you can just play on one character, and do all the classes without switching to a different one. It sort of reminded me of runescape.

I didn't mind what parts of the main questline I played storywise, it was tolerable, but I didn't enjoy how the dungeons were tied to the quests. I don't really like the dungeons in MMOs, so I don't want to play them. I've done like... one before this game, in World of Warcraft, and wasn't a fan.

Doing them with NPCs is dull, but doing them from the queue, with other players was something I wasn't too big into either.

I think I did the first three dungeons, and it was kind of boring.

With NPCs you have to play as the tank and go zoom to collect every guy from every room, otherwise the NPCs go room by room and it is terrible. Online is the same way, I think, because it went fine when I went zoom there also. (Sometimes it didn't but I could not tell you why.)

Just not the MMO for me. I signed up for fashion, but I guess that's an endgame thing. I didn't like the game enough to get that far.

Review in progress:
The quest design is incredibly dull. The gear system is bad. Everyone ends up having the same gear. Combat is repetitive and boring. I may just hate MMO combat.

There's basically no exploration, which I found especially dissapointing. Zones are all pretty small. Dunegons feature nonstop combat and all feel the same outside of the different window dressing. I was hoping for puzzles and exploration you'd find in single player RPG dungeons.

The poor production values hurt the immersion. There's very little voice acting and the graphics are unimpressive for 2013 standards. Background objects lack detail (like the grapes meme but unpatched). The way hair reacts to the wind is hilariously bad.

The story only gets good once you start Heavensward. You have to slog through a lot of crap to reach that point.

This game means so much to me words cannot describe... But I'll be damned if I don't try!
FFXIV is very easy to get into even if you have never played another MMORPG. There's no manual stat allocation or choosing abilities or anything like that, which also means that there's no fear of messing up your build or anything. Most of the progression is through Main Scenario Quests(MSQ), leveling, and gear. The best part of it is that you can FREELY SWITCH to ANY job you have unlocked. No need to make like 20 alts to try different jobs.

The gameplay is more focused on MSQ content as well as linear 4 person dungeons and 8 person Trials. Trials are like a big boss fight with interesting mechanics that get more complicated the newer the content, and usually has a banger OST. Each trial has a harder version too, called an EX Trial, and they're usually much harder than the regular version, as well as at level cap for that expansion.

FFXIV has always been described as an RPG first and an MMO second. The story is very very good, but you need to get through the entirety of A Realm Reborn(the base game) and like half of Heavensward(the first expansion). That's like 100 hours... BUT if you can put in that 100 hours, the next 500+ will be well worth it. I think making friends in-game really helped me with not dropping off during those first few hours. The last thing is each duty, like a dungeon or trial, has a maximum level that you sync down to. It may seem odd at first, but this way not only can new players enjoy the content as intended, but so can those who are already well past the level of the duty. It wouldn't be any fun going into the climactic final trial of like Shadowbringers, a very good and emotionally heavy expansion, for the first time just to have the party kill it in like 5 seconds flat. Trust me, It's great.

As for the community, while it does have some stand out bad eggs, the overwhelming majority of the community are kind and caring folk that are especially welcome to new players, so you can always ask other people for help and most of the time you can get a straight answer. The community is probably the second shining star of the game next to MSQ. I have made many good friends in this game and really feel like I'm part of the community. I even used to be more introverted but FFXIV has made me come out of my shell.

FFXIV feels like home to me, and I implore you to try it if you are even remotely interested in what I just spewed over this review. Maybe you'll find yourself a second home as well. <3

I have both loved and hated this game at multiple moments. I've felt indifferent, had deep opinions, and grown tired of having opinions altogether. Yet, with each expansion, I find myself loving it again.
Final Fantasy XIV is probably the game about which I could write the most, whether about its positive or negative aspects. It will always be something extremely ambivalent for me. At times, it masterfully utilizes nostalgia, creating intricately connected storylines with the game's history. However, at other times, it feels like the development team is devoid of creativity. The online structure has brought me wonderful and memorable moments with friends, but simultaneously, it maintains the game's existence as something ephemeral and non-permanent, challenging to preserve. The gameplay, which I adore, is difficult to optimize when playing with a ping over 200ms, as Square Enix refuses to establish more servers in other continents, despite a large player base from those regions.
XIV has always been this challenging battle, but in one way or another, I've always chosen to participate. At some point, it might have been second favorite game, anyway. At least considering the journey from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker, I can say that the predominant feeling is happiness for the memorable conclusion of the story arc, something we don't always find in this complex medium that is video games.

ARR - 96 heure de Uber Eats
Heavensward - La vraie fantaisie
StormBlood - Zenos...
Shadowbringer - ONE BRINGS SHADOWS ONE BRING LIGHT TWO TONED ECHOES
EndWalker - ZENOS J'AI JAMAIS EUT UN AMIS PAREIL

Conclusion : je préfère FF7 a la con tiens

(I'm not reviewing every expac separately fuck that, this review is for the overall package)
Quite possibly my favourite story in any game ever made, be warned that it takes a looooong time to get to that point though. Especially the first expansion being the massive slog that it is. Kind of falls flat as an MMO in my opinion though since there's nothing really worth working towards unless you're a hardcore raider (And even then all you really get is stat increases), but definitely consider if you want a massive world and a massive storyline to get invested in, although keep in mind that story isn't very consistent in quality since it swaps around writers multiple times. Also has some fantastic boss fights and a soundtrack that is like if Toby Fox had a AAA budget.

I've given it enough of a go. 50+ hours of walking between boring quest after boring quest. I try to pay attention to the story but drab writing makes it so easy to tune out.
Supposedly the community is great? But most people I saw were just idling in the hub, not a single person chatting. No real reason, at this level, to actually play with others - dungeons drop you in with 3 others, but once that's done you part ways.
Tab target combat was serviceable but has no weight. Which is pretty standard for such a system but still I'm not a fan. No sense of build freedom, pick a class and that's it. Equipment is all slight number increments of meaningless stats.
Idk, I might be playing it wrong. But after 50 hours I seriously found nothing of value :(