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finalfantasyquest-blog · 12 years ago

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The Giant FFXIV: A Realm Reborn Review

It's been about two months since Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has been officially released, and I've been playing it steadily since then– both on the PC and PS3. As promised, here is my in depth review. The review contains spoilers! Just a heads up!

Overall Rating: 10/10

I'm not sure if I've given any of the main Final Fantasy titles such a high rating. I want to be clear though: the game has some flaws, however the things that are positive outweigh those I feel it's deserving of a solid 10/10 rating.

Story

Being an MMO it's tempting to delve right into the mechanics of this game, but it's a Main Final Fantasy title after all, so the fact that it's multiplayer is just a detail in my opinion.

Unlike many Final Fantasy games which often start off leading the player to believe the world they're walking into is relatively small, and later revealed to be much larger– XIV ARR opens with an epic cinematic sequence recapping the Calamity, which was the giant event at the end of the games troubled original release. The Garlean Empire uses meteor to bring the Dalmud moon to Eorzea and Bahamut is revealed to be trapped inside and bursts out trying to destroy everything. Louisoix attempts to banish the Wyrm God but fails, and in a last ditch effort, teleports the Warriors of Light (adventurers from 1.0) to safety, and sacrifices himself in the process. Five years pass and A Realm Reborn finally begins.

There are some similarities here to how FFXI starts, but with XIV ARR, the events aren't that far in the past, the Garlean Empire still very much exists, and reports of the Primals (Espers, Avatars, Summons etc) re-awakening give everything an un-easy sense of urgency right away.

Unlike most FF titles (but similar to XI) the main character isn't necessarily the one that the player controls. Your custom character, while important to the plot, acts more as a supporting character to the main group of heros known as the Scions. Imagine playing a Batman game as Robin for example. This somewhat changes towards the end however as your character is charged with leading the most important strike in a coordinated military effort to overthrow the Garlean Empire, and in a really REALLY cool way, the party of other players you group up with for the final dungeon appears in all of the cut-scenes as a group.

Being an MMO, FFXI ARR most definitely does not follow a rigid linear progression. While the sequence of events in the main scenario certainly follows an order– and prevents you from entering areas or battles that wouldn't make storyline sense, you are free to wander off that path as much as you like and pursue your own path as a Disciple of War or Magic or even as a Disciple of the Hand or Land. The questlines for the classes and jobs in FFXI ARR are very well thought out, and often cinematic at times. There are hundreds of sidequests, and a lot to discover about the realm of Eorzea, and it's interesting history.

Classes and Jobs

I won't go into all of them here, but I will explain the four main types as well as how jobs work.

Disciples of War and Magic

These are your main battle classes, unique to FFXIV are previously unfamiliar base classes to the FF series. Pugilist, Conjurer, Gladiator, Arcanist to name a few. You begin as one of these learning the fundamental skills that will eventually lead you towards a particular (and more familiar) job. For example, Pugilist is the martial arts class. You learn the basic hand-to-hand martial arts techniques for combat, and at level 30 gain the ability to become a Monk. Before that however, you must get Lancer to level 15. The Monk questline explains more of the spiritual side of the traditional Monk job in other Final Fantasy games. There you learn about chakras, meditation, and really what makes Monk different from just a Pugilist. You can still play as Pugilist if you like, but Monk is more focused on a straight damage dealer role. All classes (as opposed to jobs) are less specialized, and one of the benefits to playing on a class is the ability to set many more actions you've learned from other classes. You can have a Pugilist that can cast cure for example, but not a Monk. At level 50, and in most party situations, it will be rare to play a class and not a job, but pre-level 50, and for rare solo situations, you might find yourself switching to a class for various reasons.

Disciples of the Hand and Land

XIV places an emphasis on crafting and gathering and treats these as first class citizens, forcing you to actually change classes entirely for these activities (unlike FFXI). Crafters and gathers actually equip tools in their main hand slot instead of weapons, and similarly have questlines. While it's technically possible to battle on these classes, it's not very effective, and you won't gain experience points from it. But if you're a miner out in some treacherous area, you may occasionally encounter some unfriendly locals, and be forced to turn your pickaxe on them (although it's rare).

Crafting and gathering classes also get their own abilities, and offer a really fun and more relaxing alternative to battle classes. Crafts offer a puzzle like interface to where you can try to create higher quality items, sacrificing durability and gathering (mining, botany, fishing) is more of a scavenger hunt. All have been balanced to not only be fun, but as viable means to make gil in the game.

Battle System

There are several variations, but the basic one (in the field) works similarly to FFXI and FFXII. Monsters freely roam around, some are passive, some are aggressive, and when you engage in combat, your character begins to auto-attack (this goes for Archer as well). The combat in FFXIV is much faster paced than XI (sorry I haven't played other MMOs to compare to). Instead of using the more traditional "open menu>select submenu>select command" interface which would be extremely clunky in this faster paced style, you get a hotbar of actions that you can access either using the mouse, a key command, or by holding a trigger on the gamepad and pressing a button. In FFXI, job abilities or weaponskills generally had very lengthy cooldown timers, in XIV ARR, cooldowns are generally a couple of seconds. The other main difference between XI's combat system is how TP is used. In FFXI your HP and MP began as full and gradually depleted, while TP was built up over time and allowed you to use a weaponskill when it hit 100%. In XIV ARR, TP is treated just like HP and MP– as long as you have it, you can use actions that consume it. Additionally, to go along with the faster style, there is no /heal command. If you're not engaged in combat you will automatically regain HP MP and TP at a fairly fast rate. Replacing the 1-hour abilities from XI are Limit Breaks which work very similar to those in FFVII and IX. The main difference in XIV is that they are available to the party, when one person uses them the entire group looses the ability to use them.

FATES

For the most part any enemy in the field can be attacked by any player at any time. Generally speaking if you claim the enemy first, you'll always get XP if you're eligible, and items if they happen to drop. If another player contributes enough they may also be eligible for those rewards. FATES are events that happen sporadically in all field areas, and usually have some backstory to them. There are different kinds, some involve clearing waves of enemies, some involve gathering items both found in the area and off monsters, and some like the image above, involve slaying a Notorious Monster. They're popular for XP, and there are two right now that are like XI's old HNMs. Odin and Behemoth spawn roughly every 48 hours and are much more difficult than the other FATEs.

Duty Finder

Dungeons (both optional and storyline) use a system called Duty Finder. Dungeons are progressed through linearly and usually have at least 3 objectives which involve either clearing an area, or fighting bosses. When you gain access to a dungeon, you can use the system to flag up, and the server will actually scan across multiple servers to find other people looking to accomplish the same content. If you're alone or without a full party it will look for pre-assigned roles (2 Damage Dealers, 1 Tank, 1 Healer for a 4 person dungeon for example), and will generally take some time to start. More experienced players may wish to make their own formation on their local server, and so long as they have a full group, they can enter with any setup they want (usually with no wait time). Up until level 50 content I found this system to work really really well. At level 50 it's a grab bag of newer players and more experienced ones, nice people and total douche bags. I recommend trying to party up with friends for end game content, but before that Duty Finder works pretty well generally.

Leves

Leves are another type of system, designed to be taken on solo, although you can party up with others if you want. They're mini-quests that can be initiated in particular areas, with adjustable difficulty settings (and rewards based on that). This is the one exception where monsters cannot be attacked by those not in your group. They are also available to crafting and gathering classes with different objectives.

Summary

FFXIV ARR is a solid, extremely well made game that I would recommend to all fans of the Final Fantasy series, regardless of if you've ever played an MMO or not. The main scenario can be completed well within the 30-day no subscription window if you'd like to play it for that experience alone, but it also offers so much content, it's worth staying if you enjoy the end game and side quest content it has. The game is fairly easy (by comparison to FFXI) and die hard FFXI players will probably enjoy the beautiful graphics but may quickly get bored upon reaching end game content as it relies more on quick reactions instead of long strategic planning. I'm still having a blast with this title, and very much enjoy the quick incremental progression style. It's possible to login for 45 minutes and feel like you've accomplished something or made progress towards something.

#Final Fantasy #FFXIV

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finalfantasyquest-blog · 12 years ago

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Sooooo

Been playin FFXIV since rerelease. Finished main story, made a relic weapon, and have a craft (cooking of course) nearly to level 50. Enormous in depth review coming, and gigantic photo album of screenshots from this masterpiece of a Final Fantasy title. The short summary: Should you play this game? YES. If you're not into MMOs, you can finish the main scenario within the 30 day trial window. If you are into MMOs there is enough content to keep you entertained for a long time. More to come.

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finalfantasyquest-blog · 12 years ago

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Don't judge me!!!!!!!

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finalfantasyquest-blog · 12 years ago

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FFXIV: A Realm Reborn initial reaction

I'll separate this post into two parts: what I think about the relaunch WHEN I can login, and what I think about the server issues.

The Game itself (login issues aside): INCREDIBLE. I won't even begin to compare it to 1.0 because it's an entirely new game that happens to be set in the same world as the original. I have a PC with below the required hardware, and while it's certainly playable I have some lag issues. I also have the PS3 version, which they've done a remarkable job of optimizing. You can absolutely tell where corners had to be cut though. The frame rate of pretty much anyone but yourself is something like 10 fps, however oddly enough lighting, textures, environmental effects are all present and look really good. Cutscenes are beautiful on the PS3.

The way quests are designed make it such that I haven't had to look anything up on a wiki yet. The new user interface is a little intimidating at first, but after a couple hours, is very comfortable and easy to use with a controller. I haven't gotten too far into the main storyline yet, so I can't comment on that. Unlike FFXI which is not very solo friendly, XIV (so far) feels more like a single player Final Fantasy title that other people happen to be playing in the same world as you. It's not better or worse in that regard, just different.

Now, the server issues: For all of the fantastic work the XIV team has done remaking this game into a masterpiece, they sorely underestimated how successful it would be on day #1- to the point where I believe they have a VERY small window to make things work or they will face an even greater backlash than 1.0's release. If you haven't tried the game and are thinking about it, here is what's happening right now: in short- all of the servers are at capacity, all of the time. They have mostly stopped allowing the creation of new characters, and trying to login can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of manually spamming the X button on the controller, and that is if you are lucky enough to not get dropped from the lobby server, in which case you have to enter your username and password all over again. The data center will apparently be upgraded next week, and hopefully all of this will be resolved. The only shred of good news about all of this is that it's nearly 100% due to the overwhelming popularity of the title since official launch. The closed beta tests ran very smooth and didn't have these issues. I'm hopeful next week more people will be able to login and play this otherwise excellent addition to the Final Fantasy series :)

#FFXIV

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finalfantasyquest-blog · 12 years ago

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Seekers of Adoulin Review!

So as I sit here and download FFXIV 2.0 client, I figured I would do my long overdue review of the latest XI expansion.

Overall: 8/10 (subject to change as more is released)

Synopsis: The Ulbuka continent to the far west decides to open up its ports to the middlelands' adventurers to join in the pioneering effort of colonizing the harsh terrain outside of the walls of the city of Adoulin. The city, separated from the middle lands by great distance is barely discussed prior to the release of the expansion, and as such much is unkown about it.

New Jobs: GEOMANCER: An interesting spin on a classic Final Fantasy job. In previous games this job harnessed the power of their environment to cast spells accordingly. In XI, it takes a different approach although the lore is rooted in the classic definition of the job which is a nice touch. In reality, GEO is a new support job with an emphasis on what I like to call "broad stroke" buffs or debuffs. If you compare it to bard, bard casts spells on individuals, groups, or enemies. GEO works a bit differently. GEO can have 1 spell cast on themselves that works with a sphere aura, which is generally some sort of party buff but can also work as an aura debuff, something previously only available to enemies. You can have a regen aura that affects the caster's party, and stacks with other regen spells, songs, rolls, and uniquely cannot be dispelled. Geomancer can also have 1 spell that is manifested as a luopan which is initially cast on a party member or enemy, but is then stationary, and has an HP guage, and behaves sort of like a pet. Luopans can take damage, but can also be strengthened through various job abilities. Aside from the geomancy spells, GEO gains access to most black magic, and some AOE black magic spells unique to GEO. Upon its release, GEO found its way into most situations rather well as an additional support job.

RUNE FENCER: An interesting choice, new to the FF series, Rune Fencer is a light armor job that oddly has A+ Great Sword skill, and can harness the power of elemental runes to add en-spell effects of that particular element, while adding resistance to the opposite element. It has many similarities to Paladin in terms of the spells it gets access to, but has no natural curing spells. Instead it gets access to up to Regen 4, and all of the bar-spells that Red Mage has. When it was released, Rune Fencers had a difficult time finding their way into content, since it's not exactly a heavy damage dealer, and is too frail to be the kind of tank that Paladin is. After some version updates, and the addition of artifact equipment, it still struggles to have a place in end game content, but is uniquely capable of resisting a lot of enfeebles, and taking or absorbing magic damage. Personally, I love the job, and have been able to solo Abyssea avatars, and even some voidwatch NMs with it, and see it eventually being used as a Paladin assistant- helping to hold enmity (which it's surprisingly good at), and complimenting Paladin with refresh and regen4, while Paladin can toss the ocassional cure over to the Rune Fencer.

New Battle Systems: Rieves- These work similar to campaign battle, but are joined instantly when walking into the area of battle. Periodic evaluations grant boons, XP, and bayld (the currency of adoulin). Completion of colonization rieves create temporary holes in the terrain to make it easier to navigate through, and the overall colonization rate has other effects like weakening the zone boss if the area has one (wildskeeper rieves).

Skirmish- Part old-school dynamis, part garrison, part meeble borrows, part maze mongers, these instanced events designed for single parties can be entered by assembling a combination of items which determine the spoils, length, and buffs available. Initially they were too obscure to obtain the parts for most people to participate in, and by the time that was adjusted the initial rewards were eclipsed by the introduction of Delve. However with the introduction of the Yorcia Weald skirmish, new armor and the ability to upgrade the original skirmish weapons, I think it's been made relevant again, and is overall a pretty fun event, and not too challenging.

Delve- Currently the "end game" content. Monsters can be spawned in normal zones with a trigger item similar to abyssea NMs, and generally require an alliance to defeat (with some exceptions). Unlike the random procing systems of abyssea, each NM has some exploitable weakness or "trick" to defeating them. Defeating one in the field grants the alliance some plasm credits which can be used to exchange for rewards available after obtaining particular key items, and they may drop some gear directly, and airlixirs which are used to upgrade delve equipment.

In addition to fighting NMs in the field, players can enter a "fracture" which is an instanced dungeon with a 45 minute time limit. All 5 of the NMs from that zone will be present without having to be triggered, and if all are defeated, the group will gain access to the Mega Boss which is an alternate version of the Wildskeeper reive boss from that area. Defeating the mega boss will grant the alliance 60K plasm (typically 10x the amount from just defeating the previous 5 NMs), and drop equipment that is currently the best in class in the game.

Other new systems: Mog Gardens! A personal island each adventurer can visit, similar to their mog house where they can grow crops, fish, and harvest local renewable resources. It's a relaxing environment and you have a BABY CRAB THAT WANDERS AROUND. Awesome.

Coalitions: There are various coalitions in adoulin responsible for pioneering, entertaining, keeping the peace, etc. You can do assignments for them, similar to assaults. As the server progresses together they unlock buffs, purchasable equipment, key items and more.

Summary: Seeker's of Adoulin is a HUGE expansion. I never thought we would see this amount of new content for the game honestly. Zones are incredibly enormous, unprecedentedly so. There is literally so much to do I cannot even write about it all here. The storyline (what's been released so far) is pretty fascinating, and reveals some more about the frozen continent to the north (are they actually alluding to yet another expansion????), and the rune fencer AF quests tie back to the strange apperateus devices found in the middle lands. Various side quests also hint at ties to Aht Urhgan and Tavnazia, so from a lore perspective, this really fun to play though. In the post-99 era, SoA introduces an item level concept, that effectively pushes your stats and combat skills into level 119 without actually breaking the 99 cap. An odd, but reasonable direction to go.

I have to give it an 8/10 because while there is so much to do, and so much great things about it, it's not without some devastating problems. The new equipment, as powerful as it is, has caused some friction in the community for those who have spent months to make Empyrean/Relic/Mythic weapons which are now rendered inferior. They are supposedly going to update these, but as of yet, haven't. Additionally, some of the content like Wildskeeper reives have brought back memories of the 18-hour Pandemonium Warden battles. Yumcax in particular, has been battled for 13, 18, even 27 hours straight. The details around those are a topic for another post, but regardless I have to knock a few points off this expansion because of these severe issues. By and large though, it's an amazing addition to the game, and unexpected as 14 rolls out for rerelease.

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