posted by: Ron Keith Fri 24th Sep 2010
Final Fantasy XIV Preview: What You'll Like and What You Won't
by Ron Keith
Final Fantasy XIV officially releases this week. If you spent $75 on the collector's edition you had a week's head start and you've probably already started forming your opinions of this newest MMO. But maybe you wanted to save a little cash cause you're the frugal type. Or maybe you just wanted to wait for the word on the street before you bought the game. You want to know what's what before you fork over your hard-earned dough. You're the prudent type. You want to know what you're going to like and what you're not.
Every MMO has something going for it. If you can't find something to like in an MMO, you're either not looking hard enough or the MMO really sucks. As with most MMOs, there are things you'll like about FFXIV and there are things you probably won't like.
What You'll Like – The Graphics
Just as Aion did about a year ago, Final Fantasy XIV raises the graphics bar. The designers focused on enhancing every player's visual experience. From strands of flowing hair on your character to detailed lacing on your belt pack and leather patterning on your pants; from the deep skies interlaced with fluffy white clouds to the swaying, green grass and leaves drifting through the air. It all comes together to created a visually beautiful world.
What You Won't Like – It's Lagalicious
Every new MMO is a little laggy because all the new players playing the new game at once put a strain on the servers. In that case, the lag comes in fits and starts. But in FFXIV everything lags. Every single command. Simple stuff like bring up your inventory to complicated stuff like combat. It all lags and it lags all the time.
Oddly enough, it's a lag you might be able to live with. There's no rubberbanding – the lag where you'll run forward and sudden find yourself being pulled back; and there's no warping – the lag where you lose contact with the server or it drops your data, and you find yourself miraculously “teleported” to the location you were running to. In FFXIV, your commands don't seem to get lost – it just takes a while for the system to catch up.
What You'll Like – It's A Vast World
FFXIV is a vast explorable game world with 3 very different starting regions: Ul'Dah, a desert region, Limasa-Lominsa, a sea port, and Gridania, a woodland. All large, explorable regions different towns and camps within each region, and each region has its own storyline quests. A lot of work was put into building the FFXIV world and it shows.
What You Won't Like – Invisible Walls
You have a quest to kill a mole. You see him just below you on a ledge. You'll just jump down and kill him, you think. You run forward and – Boom! Smack into an invisible wall. You can't go any farther. You hit invisible walls so often in this MMO, you'll feel like Marcel Marceau.
There are so many places in the game where it seems you should be able to just go straight to get to where you need to go, but you're blocked by invisible walls. Usually, these are areas where it would seem safe to just jump down – from a dias to the floor; from a ledge slightly higher than another ledge – but the walls block you. You have to take the long way around A LOT and that get's tedious.
What You'll Like – It's a Little Cheaper Than Most MMOs
The monthly fee for one character is $12.99.
What You Won't Like – The Bait and Switch
“For one character...” Remember that. For one character the monthly fee will be $12.99. And you can have up to 8 characters. That's great, isn't it?
Not so much. Each additional character costs another $3. If you want to add 7 more characters, FFXIV will cost another $21, plus the base fee of $12.99 (Square Enix says the base fee is $9.99, but that doesn't include a game character. It's kind of hard to play without a character.). If you use all 8 of your character slots it's going to cost you $33.99 a month. That's not much of a bargain and it's more expensive than most MMOs.
What You'll Like – The Storyline Quests
The main quests are fantastic. FFXIV immerses you in the FFXIV lore by giving you storyline quests to follow. Do them! They're a lot of fun and one of the best things about the game. There are wonderful cut scenes that make you feel like you're part of an adventure story. For the most part you're just observing what the other characters are doing, but they're still great fun and you'll still feel like you're part of the adventure.
What You Won't Like – The Repetition
The other quests need a lot of work. There's nothing new, here. It's the same-ole, same-ole you've seen since the dawn of MMOs. Go kill 4 rats. Go kill 6 bats. Go make 4 pairs of shoes (Crafting quest.).
What You'll Like – The Crafting
If you're a crafting freakazoid, FFXIV is the game for you. The game is more about crafting than it is about anything else. Really. All that going out and killing stuff is secondary to the crafting.
Almost all the world drops are crafting materials. You need to start crafting for new armor, but you also need to start crafting to level. Crafting gives you experience and doing a few different crafts helps you level faster.
The crafting is also fun and slightly addictive. The crafting process is dependent on mats, some of which are only available through other crafts. So you find yourself running around doing other crafts to create stuff you need to make the item you're trying to craft. It sounds tedious, but it's actually enjoyable – at least, initially. Maybe it will get more tiresome over time.
What You Won't Like – No Auction House and No Recipe Book
FFXIV allows players to create their own private stores. That's always a nice option. What's not nice is there's no auction house! The game is highly dependent on mats from other crafts, but there's no central auction house for finding those mats. Get ready to spend a lot of time browsing through other players' private stores.
And there's no recipe book for your crafting recipes. As you complete crafting quests, you'll be given recipes for new items you can craft. That's great, right? You're all set to craft those new gloves. Was it one piece of leather or two? You forget. You'll just look it up, right? Wrong. There's no in-game recipe book! And that's symptomatic of one of the biggest annoyance of the game: Someone at Square Enix forgot this is the computer age. You'll spend half your time tabbed out, scrolling through wikis, trying to find recipes or what this trait does or where this NPC is; all things that should be handled by the game.
There are lots of things to like about FFXIV. The crafting is fun and well thought out. It might be the most detailed and interesting in all MMOs. The storyline quests are a lot of fun and it's great to see an adventure integrated into the game.
Unfortunately, there are more than a few things to dislike, too. Most of these things are annoyances and time sinks. There's lag and invisible terrain walls, the game costs more than Square Enix leads you to believe, and you have to use out-of-game wikis to look up crafting recipes or locate many NPCs.
Your first impression of FFXIV will probably be that it's just an updated version of FFXI, and, unfortunately, not that updated. The game is still very old-school: lots of tasks take much more time than they should and many quests are repetitious. There are some fun things, though, and if you're a crafting fan or a Final Fantasy fan, you'll probably enjoy this game. If you're looking for serious action, you probably won't.
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