Note on all expansions: Every part of FFXI takes an enormous hit in my ratings for existing within the god awful, unconscionable interface, code base, and general design philosophies of FFXI. These things are the foundations of the whole game, and thus no expansion can fully escape these sins. Despite this I have chosen to log them all separately because they are each different beasts.
ToAU, like much of FFXI, feels like it has a few really cool ideas for its plot but not enough to build out into a roughly 40 hour expansion storyline. Its climax is good, its premise is good, and most of the memories players will take from it will be good too, but in the moment to moment playing, it feels even more like drudgery than that which preceded it. The base game, RoZ, and to a slightly lesser extent CoP all frequently presented players with strange new dungeons at regular intervals that carried just a hint of Castle Ravenloft. This, of course, made them very stupid and mean, but also memorable, funny, and in some sense, "epic." Just as World of Warcraft was about to do, FFXI seemingly casts this aside with ToAU. The actual gameplay of the expansion mostly consists of running back and forth a great many times between three or four key locations and watching the cutscenes that ensue, with semi-frequent breaks that demand the farming of various items.
As a result, in a perhaps shocking twist, I consider ToAU a step backward for gameplay... though it is a small step forward for story. Unlike CoP, ToAU is comprehensible and has sensible structure, though it leans excruciatingly hard on comic relief from a character who's more likely to give abuse victims PTSD than to elicit any laughs.
Is it worth playing FFXI for? No. It is considerably more tame than CoP in just about all ways, and thus its relative refinement has rendered it the less interesting. It has its moments and its concepts, but I can't say its worth the effort.
ToAU, like much of FFXI, feels like it has a few really cool ideas for its plot but not enough to build out into a roughly 40 hour expansion storyline. Its climax is good, its premise is good, and most of the memories players will take from it will be good too, but in the moment to moment playing, it feels even more like drudgery than that which preceded it. The base game, RoZ, and to a slightly lesser extent CoP all frequently presented players with strange new dungeons at regular intervals that carried just a hint of Castle Ravenloft. This, of course, made them very stupid and mean, but also memorable, funny, and in some sense, "epic." Just as World of Warcraft was about to do, FFXI seemingly casts this aside with ToAU. The actual gameplay of the expansion mostly consists of running back and forth a great many times between three or four key locations and watching the cutscenes that ensue, with semi-frequent breaks that demand the farming of various items.
As a result, in a perhaps shocking twist, I consider ToAU a step backward for gameplay... though it is a small step forward for story. Unlike CoP, ToAU is comprehensible and has sensible structure, though it leans excruciatingly hard on comic relief from a character who's more likely to give abuse victims PTSD than to elicit any laughs.
Is it worth playing FFXI for? No. It is considerably more tame than CoP in just about all ways, and thus its relative refinement has rendered it the less interesting. It has its moments and its concepts, but I can't say its worth the effort.