After years of being resistant to MMOs, trying World of Warcraft and EVE Online only to quit, in the last few months I have just had an inexplicable urge to play them. Something about the sense of progression mixed with fantastical settings has really captured my attention. I have resubscribed to World of Warcraft and am enjoying that, but I also wanted to try something from the other side of the MMO East/West divide. Being a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series (sans the MMOs), Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was the natural choice.
The first thing that struck me about Final Fantasy XIV was the really polished graphics. Compared to other MMOs that due to the amount of content that is produced do not quite meet the standards of modern games, it is simply beautiful. The landscape has an incredible view distance and in the couple of starting zones I played, I saw vibrant forests and breathtaking vistas overlooking the sea. As Square Enix is wont to do, they have impressed me with their graphics, especially considering the game is an MMO with just as much content as most other games in the genre.
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| Dialogue is actually dialogue, rather than a block of skippable text. |
Unlike other MMO entries into long-running single player IPs, Final Fantasy XIV actually does a splendid job of recreating the feel of a single player Final Fantasy game. Unlike the Elder Scrolls Online, which I felt was first and foremost an MMO, Final Fantasy XIV tries to balance the two competing design philosophies from which it was birthed much more evenly. The game has many cut scenes, some of which are voiced and full motion video. In addition, dialogue is presented in the traditional Final Fantasy manner, with a box full of text where you click to advance to the next few sentences, rather than the MMO standard of a large box of text that you can just skip and say “Accept Quest” a la World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn really is a Final Fantasy title despite being totally different from the series’ traditional genre.
In fact, the designers’ tendency to stick with some of the mainstay mechanics of the series became somewhat frustrating at times. I was playing the game as an MMO with a certain set of assumptions about the genre and how it works. Unlike single player RPGs, my goal in playing is not necessarily to progress a “story” but rather to progress a “character.” Because of this perspective, Final Fantasy XIV’s insistence on a “main story quest line” was kind of annoying when I simply wanted to progress my character. One particularly frustrating mechanic was that when I reached level 10 (which the website told me was the level I needed to reach to learn a crafting profession), the game told me, no you need to do the level 10 quest in your starting class’s guild before you can change to a crafting class. This was pretty frustrating because I had not yet done the level 5 quest for the guild and was, instead, following quests in the free-form organic way I had come to expect of MMOs. I reluctantly followed through with these quests, which by the way had a considerable amount of unskippable dialogue cut-scenes, which I had little interest in watching.
Therein lies the main issue with Final Fantasy XIV for me; it is pulled in too many directions to be a cohesive experience. Even the game’s somewhat innovative system of changing classes based on your equipment seems rough in the MMO genre that is concerned, above all else, with the specialization of characters so that you can balance a party in a dungeon/raid. With so many classes on one character, how do you decide what sorts of quest rewards you want? And if you have to level all these classes on one character, do quests respawn for you to build experience in a second, third, or fourth class? These are questions that this system brought to my mind. Not to mention the fact that there is really no reason to ever level an alt, which for me is a big draw of the MMO genre.
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| Crafting actually takes a little thought beyond the thought it takes to get the materials! |
I will say that the crafting system in Final Fantasy XIV is the best I have ever seen in an MMO. Rather than simply collecting the ingredients and then watching a progress bar fill up to create an object, you need to play a little mini-game that is different based on which profession you are using. For example, you actually have to watch for your fishing pole to pull down and then pull in the reel at the right time, and you have to decide how if you have enough durability in your materials to craft an item in other professions. This adds a lot of fun to leveling the professions.
Overall, I would say this game is definitely good. I can sense the potential and would have loved to have had time to try dungeons and PvP; however, as is usually the case with MMOs, they inevitably lead me back to World of Warcraft. I just can’t justify spending money on two subscription MMOs at a time, so unfortunately I will have to let Final Fantasy XIV go, but if you are tired of WoW and more traditional MMOs, this might be just the thing for you to get back into the genre.
I’m not posting a score because it is not fair with the limited time I had with the game. Hopefully you can decide for yourself if this is worth buying for you; know thyself and you will always play great games. I think that’s a Socrates quote.
Anyway, please support me in Extra Life 2014! I’ll be doing a 25 hour game marathon on October 25th to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals! Check out the video below to find out more!