Final Fantasy XIV Online (2013)

• Playtime: 3 hours

• Played: 2025

• Expectation: Neutral. I'm not a fan of MMORPGs but this was praised quite a bit.

Intro

This is a MMORPG that seems to deviate very little from the standard template. Big boring spaces, millions of systems, little immersion.

The Good

• The systems come across as being fairly refined.
• Race is just cosmetic.
• You can switch between classes so you need only one character.

The Bad

• It's ugly. Despite being a 2013 re-release it still looks like a 2010 game.
• Empty, featureless environments.
• Bland music.
• Godawful "piratey" dialogue in starting area.
• Teleporting between teleporters isn't free.
• You don't get a mount until level 20.
• Side quests seem to be mostly fetch quests.
• Sprinting is a skill, not a button press.
• You have to type your password every time you log in.
• There seems to be almost no voice acting.
• I tried to make my character a normal woman but i ended up looking like a 15-year-old.
• And they put here in a tiny skirt that let's you see her underwear. Because of course they do, they're Japanese.

The Ugly

• Combat is so dull. My default spell has a cast time, there is a global skill cooldown instead of just a resource cost, i don't think there's a dodge, no weaving, no heavy attacks, no blocking, et cetera.
• You can't just hover the mouse over an enemy to attack it, you have to select it first.
• 75-80% of my time was spent walking.
• You can't resurrect in place. You have to walk all the way back if you die.

Conclusion

I saw this has a free trial on Reddit and people were positive about it here. But it turns out FF14 is just another MMORPG. If it had more in-your-face monetisation it could pass for a Perfect World game. There's just nothing about this that appeals to me.

I decided I would try this game after playing all the offline Final Fantasy games – and it took me a while go get here… it surely did.

A Realm Reborn is basically a revamp of the original Final Fantasy XIV game (sometimes referred as “1.0”), and fixes a lot of the issues the original one had. The funny part is that there are certain story developments that happened between the two games that caused the world to change – and this is basically the excuse they’ve used to completely overhaul the base game.

Anyhow, after more than 50 hours I can say that I fell in love with this game. It has a lot of small references for Final Fantasy fans, and it kind of mixes stuff from different games but still having its own original story.

Worldbuilding builds up mission after mission, dialogue after dialogue. It is really a huge amount of lore contained in small and big details everywhere. I was really into the Main Quest Story, but there are thousands of NPCs, items, and things you can interact with that will further explore the lore.

The gameplay is good – at first it was a little bit overwhelmed with so many buttons and stuff on screen but the game really handholds you into mastering the different skills through different methods such as novice training sessions, and a lot of tutorials (which you can turn off, by the way). I opted to play with a joystick and you could see they adapted controls very well for those who prefer this method.

The music is out of this world, many great songs used in the world map and in battles, and many others used at the right moment. There are a lot of returning tracks from other games too so it might have dropped a tear or two after nostalgia hit me. Definitely a strong point.

If I had a complaint, it would be it looks a graphically dated at some point, and you get to notice this a lot since the cut scenes are basically in-game, almost all with no dialogue, and characters use the in-game emote system as body language. This didn’t make the story less impacting or anything, but I did want to bring it up.

I will pause and take a break before moving into the Heavensward expansion, which I understand is as long as the main base game. Updates to come later.

I really told myself I was gonna try to push through the Post-Stormblood quests quickly so I could jump into Shadowbringers. A couple of hours of gameplay later, I discovered The Diadem and my love for the gathering/crafting system made me kiss that plan goodbye. It ended up being a bit grindier than I expected, but I managed to get the body armor piece I wanted. Now I'm ready to jump back into the MSQ! I'm sure I won't get distracted again. :P

The following is a review for Final Fantasy XIV including all content released up through the end of patch 6.0, Endwalker.

Final Fantasy XIV is a massive multiplayer online RPG, and the 14th mainline entry in the Final Fantasy series. It is a triumph in every sense of the word. FF XIV is the first MMO I've played that felt like I was never wasting my time, whose gameplay I genuinely enjoyed, and whose monthly subscription fee. I felt was 100% worth it. It delivers, in my estimation, the most fully realized fantasy setting in video game history with engaging characters, a compelling emotional narrative, and a whimsy that will delight long-time fans of the Final Fantasy series and newcomers alike. I especially liked how the game was extremely compatible with controller play, a hurdle with which MMOs have historically struggled. That being said, there is a lot of game here. I clocked almost 1000 hours to complete the main quest line and all normal difficulty dungeons and raids, most side quests, complete many of the savage raids, level several classes (called jobs in this game), and participate in crafting, gathering, and seasonal events, and there's still so so much more optional content. This game has something for everybody, and only gets better as you keep playing it. Even though unlogged 1000 hours, you definitely don't need to put in that much time to complete the main quest line of the main hand and its expansions, but I enjoyed the game so much I found it hard to resist doing as much as I could handle. I also didn't play the game all at once. I got burned out around halfway through the Stormblood expansion and took a break, and from that point forward I would finish half an expansion and then take another break, which made the game much more reasonable.

Gameplay

There's something about the gameplay of FFXIV that is far more satisfying to me than any other MMO I've played (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic, DC Online, Rune Scape), all of which I lost interest in after less than 10 hours. Perhaps it's the pace at which levelling occurs and at which new gameplay elements are released in A Realm Reborn, the game's first patch, and perhaps it's the way the game was developed with console players and PC players both in mind, but something about it is just engaging and addictive as hell. I found myself having the most fun during boss battles which require dodging of boss AoE attacks, memorizing patterns, and paying attention to something beyond your hotbars

The game has 19 playable classes called jobs, all of which feel unique to play while still managing to fall into the traditional tank/DPS/healer format. These are balanced quite well, with really only the skill of the player having an impact on the efficacy of the classes. I leveled 5 of these jobs to the level cap of 90, but I played many others to various jobs to various other levels. Given that this is an MMO, the game includes a lot of features to facilitate social interactions, but most of the time when you are playing the main quest line, you will be alone. Some story dungeons and raids will require social matchmaking but this is extremely fast and convenient, especially if you are playing a tank or healer job. There were few if any performance or server issues throughout my time with the game.

Narrative

If you do not know, the final fantasy series is an anthology this entry has no narrative relation to other titles in the series. That means you don't need to play any other titles to enjoy this game (though there a lot of final fantasy games I really love). In this title, you become the Warrior of Light, the defender of the continent of Eorzea, and the member of an adventuring society called the Scions of the Seventh Dawn whose goals are to stop the threat of an immortal race of malevolent spirits (called Asians) and fight the gods they trick people into summoning, (called primals). Are we keeping up? Each expansion features a complete story with plot twists that will keep you guessing and that buildbupon long running plot threads and mysteries, all of which lead to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

As I mentioned in the intro, FFXIV has one of the most fully-realized fantasy settings in video games. Throughout the multiple expansion journey from the beginning to end of the story you will travel the world far and wide, experiencing this settings vast array of cultures and races, meeting a diverse supporting cast of characters, confronting compelling villains, and absorbing a story filled with great triumphs, horrific defeats, political intrigue, and themes of celebrating the diverse cultures of the world, the horrors of war and endless fighting, and finding the strength to go on and save the day when no one else can. It's truly uplifting stuff that will bring you to tears of sadness and joy throughout it's runtime. I really felt connected to these characters in a way that only the Final Fantasy series can accomplish. For fans of the series this is one of the best narratives in the entire series and you absolutely must not skip it just because it's an MMO.

That said, I will say that A Realm Reborn, the game's first release patch, does have a tendency to pad it's quest line with some questionably slow pacing choices. If you can make it though this patch without losing interest, I promise it is worth it. The story only improves with each expansion.

Aesthetics

Final Fantasy XIV has a diverse design aesthetic inspired by a wide variety of cultures, time periods, and fantasy tropes: eastern, western, and everything in between, yet it still manages to feel cohesive within the world it presents, in fitting with one of its main themes of celebrating doverse peoples and cultural traditions. One of my favorite parts of any new expansion was discovering new playable areas and exploring the cultural story the designers were trying to tell through the presentation of these areas. Players have a choice between 8 playable races with a very customizable character creator. Rewards for completing game dungeons and raids include a mind boggling variety of armors to make your character look exactly how you want him/her to. I found myself playing certain challenges repeatedly to swag out my character in particular gear. The game has well-designed enemies to fight which range from cute to nightmare-fuel, and combat features flashy animations and effects.

This game has one of the best and most diverse soundtracks of any video game to date featuring literally hundreds of tracks. In keeping with the Final Fantasy series tradition, all of them are bangers. They range widely in instrumentation and style from orchestral arrangements, to heavy metal, to techno-inspired, opera, and traditional Chinese, Indian, Persian and Japanese. Since completing the game I've taken to listening to some of this music while I drive or study. It is much better than an MMO soundtrack has any right to be. The game also features voices cutscenes, many of whose actors were replaced after the first expansion and became better directed. While these scenes are well performed, they occur only at the most important parts of the story. Most of the time you will be reading.

It must be said that this game is both an MMO and had its original release on PC and PS3 10 years ago. These two factors mean that the game is not going to blow you away graphically. It must also be said that the game does not in any way feel too dated to play. The game is well optimized for current gen consoles and PC and supports 4k resolution, 60fps, and in the newest expansions has much more detailed textures. Graphical problems/performance issues are non-existent, and the game grants you a huge variety of customizability options to manage spell/skill effects from yourself and other players, HUD elements, and preferred resolution and frame rate.

Score: 5/5

While no game is perfect, a 5/5 game is one that can be recommend to a broad gaming audience, achieves greatness in all areas of gaming design for it's genre, attempts and succeeds at pushing the medium forward, and leaves a lasting impression that is emotional, philosophical, or amusing in nature. Simply put, a 5/5 game is a masterpiece.

Final Fantasy XIV has undoubtedly come a long way since it was initially released in 2010. It went from having one of the disastrous launches in the history of the MMORPG genre & nearly killing the Final Fantasy franchise and Square Enix to being at the top of the MMORPG industry & setting a new bar for similar games to aspire to. Similar to World of Warcraft back in 2004, it takes the MMORPG and makes it accessible to a new audience. One that doesn’t have as much free time as the stereotypical MMO fan, one that values great stories with memorable characters to get attached to, one that likes to have a variety of things to do, some of which don’t even involve combat (ex: Crafting & Gathering jobs like Culinarian & Fisher, a mini-game area called The Gold Saucer, plenty of social features like housing). You don’t even need more than one character (unless you want to for Role-Play reasons or are weird like me) in this game due to all content & all classes/Jobs being playable on a single character!

Final Fantasy XIV has been described as being a Final Fantasy game first and an MMO second. More of an RPGMMO than an MMORPG. I’d say that is very apt (this is coming from someone who could never get into WoW and bounced off it after a couple of hours before & after I started playing FFXIV). You can even play almost the entirety of the Main Scenario Quest (MSQ for short) solo thanks to the addition of the Duty Support system & the MSQ content that hasn’t been updated for this yet (or in the case of 8-man Trials (elaborate boss fights) won’t) is also very solo player friendly too. In those instances where you won’t be able to play alone and bring NPCs with you, the community is very welcoming and accommodating of new players, with the sprout icon being used to identify you as a new player and indicating to the rest of your party that you may not know some things they do. And given how light on serious competition the MMORPG genre is atm (pretty much all the big games are at least nearing a decade old) & with many people trying FFXIV for the first time every day, that community isn’t going to die out anytime soon.

It certainly helps that this game’s story is phenomenal. Whilst the middle portion of A Realm Reborn, the quests between the end of A Realm Reborn & the beginning of Heavensward & certain parts of Stormblood can be a little uneven at times, they are more than made up for by just how great the rest of the story is. Heavensward, Shadowbringers & Endwalker in particular have remarkable stories that moved me to tears on multiple occasions with their explorations of grief, despair, suffering, hope, loss, the cycle of revenge, the impact of the mistakes of past generations on the present & reconciliation with minorities your society has wronged in the past (as a Canadian, that last one hit close to home).

The gameplay, while simplistic at first, reveals and introduces a surprising amount of depth as you make your way to the max level. The encounter design gradually educates you about how you fight these enemies and ensures you know enough by the endgame to play at least at a good enough level. The game uses tab-target combat (wherein you select enemies by clicking on them, pressing the tab key, or the D-Pad if you’re a controller player), which was fairly standard in MMORPGs 10-15 years ago, but is behind the times as the genre has begun moving toward action-combat.

The music of this game is an absolute banger as well! Whilst legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu contributed to this game’s score via reused themes from 1.0 (the aforementioned disastrous initial version of the game that was shut down & replaced with A Realm Reborn) & the end credits themes up to Stormblood (Answers, Dragonsong, & Revolutions) and some other tracks, the bulk of this game is scored by Masayoshi Soken. And this man is a musical GENIUS! With a variety of musical styles ranging from rock (ex: the main themes of Shadowbringers & Endwalker, To The Edge), the more orchestral tracks akin to traditional FF games (ex: Torn From The Heavens, The Maker’s Ruin, Promises to Keep), the emotional tracks that will make you cry (ex: Tomorrow & Tomorrow, Flow, Fragments of Forever), and the more offbeat stuff you don’t expect from a game like this (ex: LAHEE/Civilizations). There are so many more amazing songs, but I don’t want to keep you here all day!

This game is not perfect though. The housing market in this game is almost as horrific as it is in real life. It’s so bad that they moved the purchasing of a house to a lottery system, and it was an improvement! The English voice acting in A Realm Reborn (the base game) isn’t all that great, but it does get a lot better when you reach Heavensward (note that this brings with it a recasting of almost all the ARR era English voice actors though, which can be jarring at first) and only gets better with time. Be forewarned that the English localization does diverge quite far from the letter of what the Japanese script & voice actors say & do (with some characters even having entirely different personalities in English than they do in the other languages) and that the French & German localizations tend to hew closer to the letter of what the JP version does. So mixing & matching English with other languages in this game can yield some dissonance between what the text is saying and what the voice actors are saying and how they’re emoting as a result if you do this.

The English localization is pretty good at sticking to the spirit of what’s happening & the intended tone (there are also no major plot alterations whatsoever). It just takes more liberties in translating that for a Western audience. I should also mention while I’m on the topic of localization that the English localization team (especially team head Michael-Christopher Koji Fox) does have a more direct hand in crafting the lore & narrative of the game. So it’s not a conventional localization in that sense. But I’m sure this won’t stop “subs over dubs” die-hards from playing the game with JP audio throughout anyway. The MSQ pacing can be slowed down by filler quests at times (especially in A Realm Reborn), but this becomes less of an issue over time.

On the technical & visual side of things, whilst the art direction in this game is pretty solid, the engine does show its age in areas like the noticeable amount of aliasing (taking the form of lines on parts of the scenery that shimmer as you move around the environment). CBUIII is working on updating the graphics & the engine for the next expansion (seemingly building off the work done on the engine for Final Fantasy XVI), with a Dynamic Resolution scaler added in patch 6.2, but it’s worth mentioning as that is true right now.

As for how this game plays on PlayStation & PC, it’s an MMORPG, so it works as well on PC with a mouse & keyboard as you’d expect. The real surprise is just how solid the game is on PlayStation & with a controller. While there are some areas where the game feels held back when playing on a controller (ex: text chat can be pretty clunky on a controller without accessories or a separate keyboard on hand), it nevertheless works so well that even on PC many players (myself included) choose to play this game on a controller (whether it be an Xbox controller, a DualShock 4, or the PS5’s DualSense (my personal preference ever since the PC version added support for the DualSense’s features)). The PS4 Pro does struggle at times during intense combat scenarios, but the Dynamic Resolution feature should smooth them over. The same goes for PS5, but I personally can verify that. This is great because all versions of Final Fantasy XIV play together & a single service account can be accessed on all of those versions (provided you’re a paying subscriber, have purchased the game on the platforms you want to play on & own the same expansions on all those platforms).

Conclusion:

Regardless of its faults, with a booming community, a development team at the top of their game, a design philosophy of respecting your time & not making you log in every single day, hundreds of hours of great stories to sink your teeth into, and a wide variety of content to experience once you are all caught up to the current endgame, Final Fantasy XIV can easily keep you busy for months upon months. And with a new storyline underway that will possibly last the next ten years, it’s safe to say that CBUIII isn’t going to wind down FFXIV’s content pipeline any time soon. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for FFXIV, and I’m hyped to see what this studio can do with a single-player game when Final Fantasy XVI releases at some point in the near future. I just hope that Square Enix doesn’t shove NFTs into either game (or any of their games for that matter) somehow, although given they’re putting them into their action figures, I’m not exactly optimistic about this…

Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9.0 out of 10 (points subtracted for the poor English voice acting in the ARR era content & some pacing issues in the MSQ)

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5 out of 10 (carried to this score by the art direction & sound despite the dated graphics & performance issues in areas like Limsa Lominsa)

Business Practices score: 8.0 out of 10 (Some great consumer-friendly business practices on the whole, but the game still does have a monthly subscription that you can’t play the game without if you aren’t on the Free Trial & microtransactions (although the store for them isn’t even accessible in-game in any capacity & the revenue from them is entirely reinvested back into the game and paying for improvements to it). This score could go down if Square Enix adds NFTs to the game though.)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9.5 out of 10

I’m honestly surprised it took me so long to get to this game.

I’m somewhat of a Square fanboy, having played FF 7, FF 10, Kingdom Hearts trilogy, and Chrono Trigger. Plus, I am no stranger to MMOs, having previously played WoW and City of Heroes. Turns out nothing is stronger than the lure of the free trial.

This is the best-looking MMO I’ve ever played! So far, the gameplay is fun, addicting, and very similar to Wow. The battle animations are noticeable better than those in Wow. I’m a lowly level 15 conjurer but looking forward to the level grind.

Well it took me a really long time but I think I've almost finished every raid and quest and dungeon in the A Realm Reborn portion of FFXIV. I only just have the final coil of bahamut to do (I think) which I believe is considered part of ARR.

The challenging raids and more difficult dungeon settings are great. A lot of the regular quest content is very easy, but relaxing to play through and enjoy the writing and story.

Graphics are pretty good, with a bit of a muted but consistent style. Spell effects can be a bit too flashy, often overwhelming the combat. Sometimes you can't even see the boss because of all the spell effects hitting them. You get used to this though.

The story is pretty good, and seems like its picking up from ARR. Everyone says to just plow through the base game, but I took my time and I enjoyed getting to know the world at a slow pace.

There is always something to do or see! I can see it will take me a long long time to ever "finish" this game. Still, I seem to be sticking with it. Other MMORPGs I might have quit long before.

This seems awfully dull and clunky as a game from the new player perspective. Sounds like from others' comments that it's one of those that you have to invest a lot into to get to the good part. I don't think I'll be willing to do so, as I'm playing alone, and the slow combat and lack of a traditional Final Fantasy party of characters to get attached to is not helping.

That being said, the game has a sort of nice atmosphere, particularly in the social/sanctuary areas, and mildly satisfying loop of frequent quest completions and level ups that makes it a good relaxation game. I could see myself fiddling with it a bit in the future if I am tired and want a time waster, but I don't think I'm an MMO person.

General Thoughts

• Plenty of nostalgia here - reminds me a lot of FFXI, from the intro song to the styling and even little things like what the goblins look like. I’ve always liked Final Fantasy’s take on MMORPGs - the races, jobs and the story always were interesting and fun. I really like with FFXIV that you could keep one character but level up any job you want - allows you to keep everything with one character which is cool. I chose Thurmauturge and Lancer as starting characters, didn’t end up getting all the way to Black Mage or Dragoon however.
• Picked this game up again after briefly picking it up twice before…I never really gave it a chance in either case and gave up rather quick. This time, I was looking for something that I could play solo (not having to group up for dungeons all the time a la WOW) but that was also engaging enough that I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time
  • I also tried ESO, another game I’ve picked up a couple of times to try, but I just couldn’t get into it. Way too much to do…overwhelmed by options, abilities, crafting, etc.
• One huge win for me in this game is the ability to play all classes on one character. I like the idea of alts conceptually, but it’s nice not to have to do it to experience different play styles. Plus, without huge racial differences it makes no sense to require alts
• Inventory management. So happy that you don’t have to juggle bags or selling...it’s one of those tropes that most RPGs have but rarely have any reason for enforcing it. FF does away with the pretense and gives you a gigantic inventory right away AND an armory for collecting and holding onto gear for alternate classes
  • For WOW, it sort of made sense since inventory was fluid and semi-easy to upgrade. For ESO, this was one of my main complaints that led me to quit - I’m not doing micro transactions to buy more bag space and I can’t stand a game that gives you so much to loot but nowhere to put it
• Ended up shelving it again...I know people have said it picks up later but through level 20 it feels like a grind - fetch quests and lots of running around. I was excited about multiple jobs on one character but not sure that I’d actually want to start over again.

Story

• So far, I like how there’s an actual main story line - WOW didn’t have that, at least not up until the end game that I never got to. It reminds me a lot of FFXI, which I played for a while back when that first came out. Excited to see where the main story goes

Combat / Gameplay

• Combat is a bit slow at first, at least for a Thaumaturgist. I can see where it may be drawing from FFXI links with combos / chains for combat order. However, the combat here is markedly better than 11 and much more fast paced.
• Will be interested to see how melee classes are

I should preface this with the fact that this is the first MMO I've really gotten into, and as such my standards are more aligned to single-player RPG standards.

From this lens, I cannot comprehend how A Ream Reborn didn't destroy Square Enix's stock and reputation outside of the ingrained knowledge that 1.0 was just that bad. The narrative is plodding and relies heavily on uninteresting fetch quests, the characters are cardboard until the later stages of the 2.x patch content, which is its own nightmarish can of worms and filler, and the music, while good, is extremely repetitious come the final act - there's scant few dungeon themes with minor variation, and even if you only do each one once, which you won't, you'll have gotten tired by the end if you're anything like me.

The gameplay is uninteresting and bland until you hit level 50, at which point class mechanics and rotations reach a point that feels satisfying (some classes do not get this luxury until even later). This is a criticism that only applies to playing the ARR content as a new player in 5.0 content, with skills being reshuffled and placed throughout expansion content, but that means that ARR's already-lacklustre dungeon offerings are rendered even more tiresome when you're going to be pressing 1 and 2 ad nauseam for hours and hours. Bosses don't get interesting or meaningful mechanics outside of "don't stand in the puddle" until level 50 as well.

The patch content is an immediate step up, retaining the same amount of filler but replacing the bland, uninteresting plot with something that learned setup and payoff, giving an insane amount of dungeons and trials that're interesting, and the ending to 2.55 is a bombshell that then retains that momentum going into Heavensward.

Later parts of this MMO get really good, but ARR is a miserable, tedious slog that make it incredibly hard to recommend knowing that they have to spend a good month or two of tedium before they get a whiff of what the developers are really capable of.

I'm up to level 25 and about to choose a Grand Company.

I'm not an MMO guy at all and I'm even less of a fan of games that explicitly take post-Wrath of the Lich King World of Warcraft as their main source of inspiration. So, compared to the kinds of games I usually play, the combat and the movement mechanics are about as interesting as listening to paint dry. At its best, there are some good mechanical ideas and some small moments where a well-timed decision can turn the tide of an encounter. At its worst, the game just kinda plays itself. I've heard that the combat gets better later on in the game, but as of now, there's not much to it.

However, bolted onto this super traditional WoW-like is one of the best-written, most genuine, and most interesting JRPG stories I've seen in years. It does suffer from the typical MMO problem of "YOU are the super special unique savior of the world. ONLY YOU. Pay no mind to the thousands of people standing outside this door who are exactly like you.", but once you get beyond that you have a bunch of memorable characters and some great themes about unity, altruism, overcoming tragedy, and combating hate and prejudice. From what I know and have experienced, the stuff that takes place in Ul'dah is by far the most fleshed out and complex exploration of these ideas. Released in 2013 and therefore mercifully untouched by the current bullshit gamer trend of crying profusely every time a big mean developer puts a politic in a video games, the sequences in Ul'dah center entirely around the massive income inequality, greed, government corruption, and poor treatment of refugees that plague the city. This is all handled shockingly well. All of three of these things are portrayed as unforgivable obstacles to the final goal of unity against a larger evil, and they cause a majority of the problems that a player who starts in Ul'dah will face. You beat the hell out of people who harass refugees, run afoul of government corruption and only barely escape its clutches while a comrade of yours is thrown into exile, and fight against a version of Ifrit whose summoning was facilitated by a slimy merchant who was only out for money. It never makes excuses for Ul'dah's problems or accidentally tries to justify them like a lot of other media that tackles these issues. It also does a great job of showing that the player character, while powerful and more than capable of writing various small wrongs, is powerless to enact large-scale change due to how deep the corruption and prejudice goes. The effective use of these social issues that very directly mirrored that of the real world even in 2013 takes the narrative well beyond your typical "FIGHT THE EVIL EMPIRE AND ALSO SOME MONSTERS" story. You're not just stabbing bad guys. You're stabbing bad guys in hopes that your kingdom will live to see some positive social change. Good stuff.

tl;dr gameplay meh but story good and it do politics good too

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is the sequel/reboot of 2010’s Final Fantasy XIV which sought to fix the errors made with the original release. I didn’t play the original release though I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent playing FFXIV: ARR, and it was the only MMO since World of Warcraft to catch my attention and interest. The story and world is reminiscent of other Final Fantasy games which is great. The game features standard MMO combat but an interesting class mechanic. Presentation is great in all aspects particularly the graphics.

Story

The story and world building of FFXIV is probably the area that I was most impressed by. Almost immediately the game feels very similar to other FF games in terms of the tone and character of the world. My expectations were that this would be an MMO with a FF theme tacked on, however the game treats both aspects very seriously which is a very nice touch.

Quests in FFXIV follow a single main story chain that leads through the entire game, in a Guild Wars 2 style. I’m happy to say that this main quest also is very reminiscent of other FF games in terms of content and theme. You are a special chosen warrior who fights to defend the world from several different threats including Primals (Ifrit, Bahamut, Shiva etc.). The main quest also has some very interesting political aspects, such as the importance of projecting strength even if you do not have it. Overall the main story chain was very enjoyable and it’s a good way to guide the player through the game.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about other content in the game. Most side quests are completely forgettable with not redeeming factors, and for the most part can be ignored completely. Dungeons and raids are alright, certainly better than the side quests with each dungeon/raid feeling unique especially the dungeons. Other content including world events which are repetitive and boring and a system of endless quests which are also repetitive and boring reserved mostly for grinding.

Gameplay

Combat in FFXIV is surprisingly standard. I expected something different here but it’s incredibly similar to most other MMOs. The game starts slow with only one ability, though eventually you will pick up enough skills to have some interesting rotations with buffs, debuffs and DOTs to keep up. I played a dragoon which is a spear wielding class and it was a lot of fun it had some great mobility and utility including some ranged abilities. The only other interesting aspect of the combat in FFXIV is the combo mechanic which gives certain abilities additional effects if they are used after other abilities, so my dragoon had two 3-chain abilities and one two chain ability which I used in my rotation.

Classes/jobs is a unique aspect of FFXIV that isn’t found in any other MMO (except maybe FFXI?). When you begin the game you pick one of the many starting classes which are divided into disciples of war (tank, physical DPS) or disciples of magic (healers, magic DPS). There is a lot of variety here and there should be a class to suit everyone. The interesting part of this mechanic is the job system which allows players to unlock a new class specialisation which unlocks new abilities, and advances your class quest. So for example I started the game as a lancer before advancing to a dragoon. Players can change their class whenever they wish, simply by swapping what weapon they have equipped, this allows a single character to reach max level on every class which is a great idea in my opinion.

The other systems in the game are kind of overwhelming to being with and take a long time to understand what is actually going on, I still don’t know what everything was for. I suppose this is a good thing however, whilst it might sacrifice some accessibility it gives players a continued sense of progression and something to do. Some mechanics I’m talking about are training/feeding/levelling chocobos, some of the party-based content, the achievement system, special events and probably a lot more that I have no idea about.

Presentation

The graphics and music in FFXIV are very impressive, rivalling World of Warcraft in both departments leading in graphics but behind in music. The design of the world is very traditional FF style with the realistic looking environments and less realistic characters or creatures. One problem I have with the design is the disorienting spell effects, as a melee character in groups larger than 5 I can barely see my character or anything else on my screen. As you might expect this can cause some problems for awareness, World of Warcraft solved this problem by lessening the effects of other player’s abilities which helped a lot. The music is good as you would expect from a FF game, however it does eventually get repetitive. Overall I was very impressed with the presentation of FFXIV.

ARR manages to remove most bad MMO tendencies, leaving a game with fun combat and worthwhile places to use said combat.

EXP: There's no dull grinding, you can hit level cap [at least in ARR, I haven't played Heavensward] by just completing story missions and other quests. Now, the quest variety isn't great (go out and kill a few X, or go out and use item to kill the X that spawn) but it's not killing the same mob over and over. If you need EXP, there's dungeons to partake in which give loot and are filled with bosses which keep the gameplay different. The best thing about the dungeons is that there's a robust matchmaking system which will automatically build the proper party for you while you go out and adventure (the game will teleport you to the dungeon and then back to where you were afterwards). The people playing ARR all seem to be actually nice, which is different from other MMOs which seem to have a stigma against newbies like me when I played.

Items don't have random stats, and the best-in-slot items are all untradeable, obtainable by quests or some untradeable in-game currency. This is preferable to everything being tradeable for gil (the major currency).

I've only played for 30 days (the subscription you get when you buy the game), as Thaumaturge/BlackMage which seems like a very popular class, and is pretty fun to play since the PvE DPS seems among the best and the optimization requires attention.

Quests: There's some interesting developments with the main story, as well as much-apppreciated FF references (there's a sidequest line that involves both Gilgamesh AND Ultros, I mean c'mon)