Completion date and rating just for A Realm Reborn, since the three major expansions have their own pages here. Now...did I like base game FFXIV? Hard to say. I focused pretty hard on one class (starting levelling a couple others but didn't get that far on any; I did do a fair amount of fishing, though), around level 25 or so I began focusing only on MSQ and class/job quests because I was doing some side content before and found myself pretty grotesquely over-leveled for the MSQ. So after a while I pretty much was just jumping from story quest to story quest, so I didn't touch a lot of the side and optional content. It took me about 50 hours to complete ARR, which is longer than I've spent on other games (even ones that are supposed to be 50ish hours) that I liked, so surely I must kind of like it?
That said, I'm not sure if I would have played it to the "end" (again, of 2.0) if I a. wasn't kind of wanting to get into an MMO and deciding I liked this more than ESO after about 30 hours with both (or rather, that I was more likely to spend a lot of time with this; ESO might be more immediately fun, with more active combat and greater freedom and what feels like more active zone chats, but after about 30 hours I felt I had seen enough) and b. hadn't consistently heard that this game gets pretty dramatically better (or at least the story more interesting) in the expansions. It also hooked me pretty early. I've seen a lot of people complain about the slow opening, and it is slow: a bunch of fetch quests and combat that has you pressing 1 or 2 on your keyboard repeatedly for literal hours. But, honestly, the early hours in an RPG where you're not a "hero" yet and you're just kind of...doing stuff are often my favorite, or at least I like their quiet simplicity, and I always feel cheated when a game unveils that you're the "chosen one" or whatever less than three hours after you've started playing. For a fairly long time in FFXIV, you're going to be doing pretty unimportant stuff, and I liked it a lot! When people recognize you later on as some hero, it felt somewhat more earned, like, yeah, I did do a bunch of chores for you, it took me like literally an hour, you should remember it. Anyway.
I didn't mind the ARR story, but I also just didn't care about it. I liked exploring the world enough that I played it for 50 hours but I absorbed very little of the who, the what, the why...I think I got the where, though. Let's hope the expansions don't rely too much on the 2.0 story! Because I was very frequently going "And who is that again?" or "And why am I doing this?" It seemed like a mostly typical JRPG war-rebellion type story with some typical JRPG magic multi-colored light collection so I was never really that into it.
I think I did like it, if I can only choose between did and did not like, but I'd never recommend it to anyone, at least now, having not played the expansions. Maybe they'll be so good that I think the at-least-50-hours barrier to entry was completely worth it, but as of now I think I liked the game kind of passively, and only really got to the end because I was bored and stubborn and curious. If ARR was a single player game with no expansions, I probably would have called it quits after 20 or so hours, which is...still longer than I've played a lot of games that I like a lot! So who knows. There's some pull here that kept/keeps me playing even if I feel it's not an entire cohesive experience.
Despite somewhat negative review I am really looking forward to Heavensward. Trying to keep somewhat low expectations because a lot of the JRPGs people praise for their stories (Xenoblade Chronicles 2) bore me to tears (I mean, Dragon Quest 11 is probably my favorite JRPG and its story is literally the "collect multi-colored light balls" thing I mentioned earlier, so "story" isn't exactly the important thing for me, I think more so I need to be grabbed by the characters, and there are too many characters in ARR that have too few dimensions). But I invested enough energy in this and I enjoy the progression and, now that I've actually unlocked a fair number of abilities, the combat enough that I think all I need is a more immediate, engrossing, and specifically interesting setting (by which I don't necessarily mean physical place) to become truly obsessed. We'll see!
That said, I'm not sure if I would have played it to the "end" (again, of 2.0) if I a. wasn't kind of wanting to get into an MMO and deciding I liked this more than ESO after about 30 hours with both (or rather, that I was more likely to spend a lot of time with this; ESO might be more immediately fun, with more active combat and greater freedom and what feels like more active zone chats, but after about 30 hours I felt I had seen enough) and b. hadn't consistently heard that this game gets pretty dramatically better (or at least the story more interesting) in the expansions. It also hooked me pretty early. I've seen a lot of people complain about the slow opening, and it is slow: a bunch of fetch quests and combat that has you pressing 1 or 2 on your keyboard repeatedly for literal hours. But, honestly, the early hours in an RPG where you're not a "hero" yet and you're just kind of...doing stuff are often my favorite, or at least I like their quiet simplicity, and I always feel cheated when a game unveils that you're the "chosen one" or whatever less than three hours after you've started playing. For a fairly long time in FFXIV, you're going to be doing pretty unimportant stuff, and I liked it a lot! When people recognize you later on as some hero, it felt somewhat more earned, like, yeah, I did do a bunch of chores for you, it took me like literally an hour, you should remember it. Anyway.
I didn't mind the ARR story, but I also just didn't care about it. I liked exploring the world enough that I played it for 50 hours but I absorbed very little of the who, the what, the why...I think I got the where, though. Let's hope the expansions don't rely too much on the 2.0 story! Because I was very frequently going "And who is that again?" or "And why am I doing this?" It seemed like a mostly typical JRPG war-rebellion type story with some typical JRPG magic multi-colored light collection so I was never really that into it.
I think I did like it, if I can only choose between did and did not like, but I'd never recommend it to anyone, at least now, having not played the expansions. Maybe they'll be so good that I think the at-least-50-hours barrier to entry was completely worth it, but as of now I think I liked the game kind of passively, and only really got to the end because I was bored and stubborn and curious. If ARR was a single player game with no expansions, I probably would have called it quits after 20 or so hours, which is...still longer than I've played a lot of games that I like a lot! So who knows. There's some pull here that kept/keeps me playing even if I feel it's not an entire cohesive experience.
Despite somewhat negative review I am really looking forward to Heavensward. Trying to keep somewhat low expectations because a lot of the JRPGs people praise for their stories (Xenoblade Chronicles 2) bore me to tears (I mean, Dragon Quest 11 is probably my favorite JRPG and its story is literally the "collect multi-colored light balls" thing I mentioned earlier, so "story" isn't exactly the important thing for me, I think more so I need to be grabbed by the characters, and there are too many characters in ARR that have too few dimensions). But I invested enough energy in this and I enjoy the progression and, now that I've actually unlocked a fair number of abilities, the combat enough that I think all I need is a more immediate, engrossing, and specifically interesting setting (by which I don't necessarily mean physical place) to become truly obsessed. We'll see!
3 Comments
lol, I feel like I've heard a lot of people talk about it "getting really good".......I had about the opposite experience of seemingly everyone where I loved the first 15 to 20 hours and then slowly grew more and more resentful of it as it grew longer and its systems grew heavier. (I also didn't really like the parts of the first Xenoblade Chronicle I played but I didn't come anywhere near to finishing it so I figured I'd pick on its slightly more controversial sibling)
I can't really talk about them admittedly, just that I've never been all that fond of XC2's plot. It's definitely a popular game and I'm not some supreme arbiter of quality, but I do think the game tends to appeal to people who don't like RPG plots as much or haven't played many of them, if that makes sense. It's a veeeery standard plot. Hopefully you can find some more stuff ya like!
FrozenRoy
3 years ago