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.