A fun enthralling MMO held down by server woes.
Final Fantasy games take you to universes that you want to explore, level up in and become the most bad ass character with a giant sword that anyone has ever seen. While Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn is a remake from the other installment in the series (Final Fantasy XIV) which drastically improves the leveling system and also adds the job system from FF3, this MMO becomes a fun enthralling edition to the series which only gets bogged down sometimes by Square Enix's websites and the lack of server and login infastructure which of course plauges almost every large MMO to date but still gives no excuse to the way that they have handled the community as of to date.
Let's talk about the game before I get into the woes of what the Square Enix has given to the community, this game is absolutely stunning especially if you are coming from a World of Warcraft or Rift back ground the vibrant colours of Limsa Lominsa to the shifting sands Ul'dah the game just looks beautiful and on the PC you get the full effect of the area's while on the PS3 the same could be said but some textures don't show correctly but still looks reasonably good for the end of a generation. Dungeon's offer some of the most impressive backgrounds ranging from jungle area's to abandoned cave's even to a haunted mansion mid way through the game, these all look impressive while being able to fit into the adventure that you embark on.
Visual's aside it is your standard MMO in terms of combat with a few minor tweeks, the job system is implimented here giving each of the classes unique jobs that become end game staples. Ranging from Gladiator's too conjurer's each with it's own job once you've gotten the main class (your starting class in which story missions and quests are completed) and the secondary class (The second class in which is needed to complete the quest to get the certain job) you can becoming powerful Black Mage's or the Dragoon a fan favourite being able to jump in the air for long periods of time, each job is very unique but of course makes them fall into the Tank,Healer and DPS categories , you won't find your task bars as cluttered as you would in World of Warcraft giving new players a much better sense at what you need to do in combat situations, in dungeon's they don't do very much hand holding still as they expect most people to know by now what a Healer or Tank should be doing in an any type of instance even if multiple games of this genre have been doing the same things over the years a tutorial would still be helpful for those new and not knowing what to do in these 4 player instances. Outdoor fates can range from small mini-bosses to large ones, from gathering quests and just the plain old run of your mill "Kill this many enemies to complete the fate" in which anyone of the same level and 6 higher that can synch their level to the appropriate level as well as lower levels who can still do the fates with others but are judged a bit lower based on their level. These are good ways to gain experience as their are plenty of them in the various zones in which you don't have to do a single quest you could just grind fates and monsters with a group to hit the level cap of 50, of course that is not for most people and to actually see the story you will have to go through the story quests which are broken up every level.
The story is pretty simple for about the first 35 levels you expect every story beat and come pretty simple to those who are fans of the FF series, the story comes out at such a rate it might not enthrall those are coming for the story and it only really gets good at about level 40 and onwards in which more serious problems are talked about and the fate of the world is at stake. When is it not at stake? The story revolves around the ending of the previous installments demise in which the adventures fought a heroic and valliant battle only for the moon to blow up (literally) and come crashing down on their heads releasing the elder primal Bahamut who of course is not very happy being in prison for such a long time, after 5 years an "Age of Calm" has come in which all the city states start to increase their defences and millitary power and you are the mysterious adventurer who just happens to show up at the right time. Plot twists are few and far between but when they came I was definitely surprised to see them for the most part, more surprised to think that an MMO was able to actually able to get a leg up on me by this point. It's really refreshing to see after many hours of building towards the climax but a little to late in which a general fan would want to play through to reach.
It's actually quite unbelievable that after the disastrous results of FFXIV that Square Enix was able to make a rich and enjoyable experience for players this of course is thinking that some of you were able to get on an actually play the game. Yes this is a launch MMO it had multiple beta weekends in which Square should have gotten a good enough sense in how many players might be entering the game but to their disarray during their opening week and head start for those who pre-ordered the game everyone found that the Duty system which allows players to enter solo instances used for mostly story and class quests was broken due to the many players at low levels trying to enter, multiple errors would come on screen the most profound being error 1017 with the quote that has been used in multiple meems " This world is currently full. Please wait until an opening available and try again" if this was just one world having problems it wouldn't be such a big deal it would only mean that the world was full, now if every world you tried to log into came up with that error you would start questioning Square's reasoning behind such a silly error message among the others (90000, 2002, 3102) not to mention the websites in which you you are entering multiple codes and creating multiple accounts for is absolutely ridiculous you would think that a company would not realise these things through their beta phases? The anwser is simple that Square did not think this remake would gain this much traction with the public and of course are happy by this however the community seems less enthusiastic with the way Square has treated this and only now as of the writing of this review more world's are being added and better que times are being created to help with server congestion this does not however help with the fact that standing AFK does not boot you from the game, another point in which Square has pointed out but has said that no changes are in the works and that they are only focusing on getting new worlds and Duty que's to work properly.
Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn is a surprisingly well made MMO with yes definitely a few server and launch hiccups all and all though if you can ever get on and try it out it comes in with a reasonable price at $29.99 with a free 30 day subscription in which after if you want to continue playing it costs $14.99 a month which for some in the age of free-to-play video games is an insane number to ask but for those of you who can cut through the woes of the launch and are looking for something to occupy your time until the next big game comes out and own a PC or a PS3 or you might just enjoy Final Fantasy that grinding is something you are accustomed to then look no further then Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. No its not doing anything very new right now but the things it does are addicting enough to get into and fun enough to keep you hooked for at least the 30 days.
(As of this review I am currently level 48 with over 80+ hours of this game since the head start of 23/08/2013)
