It's as solid as Titan's thighs.
For starters, I began my MMO life in the dark recesses of the Ragnarok Online beta, I wasted most of my teenage years away in FFXI, I played a month of World of Warcraft for some strange reason, and finally I played a month of FFXIV 1.0 before I was crushed under the resounding weight of “meh”.
Now I am now several months deep into (Realm Reborn/Classic Coke) FFXIV 2.0 with Scholar, Summoner, Alchemy, Carpenter, and Botany up to max level (50). I have completed the main storyline and have delved somewhat deeply into the burning hells of endgame territory.
After all is said and done, I can safely say that Square-Enix has successfully revived this game to where it should have been from the very start. It’s definitely not a far cry from the typical fantasy MMO staple we all know and love/hate, but it’s polished all of those ideals into a fine paste.
Combat is your standard hot-bar and cool-down timer affair, but that’s selling it severely short. Every dungeon and every boss fight is meticulously designed to demand strategy and cooperation out of your teammates (you'll always encounter dunce-caps along the way, but most will be weeded out over time). You can never run into any one boss fight expecting it to go like any other you’ve encountered; you have to observe, learn, and be quick to react to a constantly changing scenario as every boss will have their own sort of odd-ball quirk or gimmick to throw you off your flow (or you could just watch tutorial videos online, you coward).
The challenge ramps up in a fairly steady curve as you level up, easing you into the game until you get the chance to be crushed between the glorious thighs of Titan in endgame territory. Yep, it gets hard, and you will have to put out your best efforts to survive endgame events, and that’s a beautiful thing in my book.
Crafting is surprisingly not absolutely dreadful. At the end of the day, you’re still hitting buttons to make materials into stuff, but they’ve added a sort of strategy to the process by creating a huge level of risk-reward with every craft as you make decisions on which skills to use at just the right times to try and make the best quality items. There’s an element of gambling to it all that’s appropriately addictive, but it keeps the process from becoming a painful slog as you level up.
Visually, you can definitely tell that the FFXII team had a large role in the aesthetics of FFXIV (complete with silly laser beams shooting out of your body to indicate acquired aggression with monsters), but it’s all taken up a significant notch in tech. The character models have surprising levels of fidelity, there are tons of subtle visual effects that help accentuate the world (mage coats will blow in the wind, your character’s mouth will animate when you chat, etc), and the animations are absolutely top notch. There’s nothing quite like seeing an arcanist scribble nonsense into their books before slamming down, punching the air, and summoning in an adorable creature from the netherworld.
One of FFXIV's strongest points is its music though; easily some of the best in the entire franchise, and that’s saying quite a lot. Sometimes I’ll feel motivated to participate in battles I’ve already completed just to hear the arena’s tune again. I’m also contractually obligated to mention the jazzy FF2 combat music remix that plays a couple times throughout the story; it’s goddamn transcendent.
The sound design itself also deserves some recognition, as the weapon and spell sound effects all have a very satisfying “punch” to them, and I can’t think of any other MMO that simulates dynamic background chatter when a great number of player characters are gathered in one spot.
As for the main storyline itself, it’s pretty darn commendable for an MMO at launch; it has a number of powerful moments that you would hope a Final Fantasy would have. My only problem with it is that it delves into fan-service a little too hard for my liking (you can’t call just any airship the “Tiny Bronco”!), and it sometimes feels like it’s re-treading too much classic Final Fantasy ground, but in some ways it can be kind of refreshing to see those old tropes again (for where the rest of the franchise has been going over the last decade). If you view the game as a love letter to classic Final Fantasy, it does that pretty well in parts (like FF9, but a bit more overt).
Now enough with the greasing; as someone who holds FFXI dear to his heart, I do have some personal problems and worries about where FFXIV is heading. What I feel was compromised most from the transition of FFXI to FFXIV is the atmosphere. Too many times I am asked to gather or kill a specific number of things for no good narrative reason (a trope mostly absent for most of FFXI’s life). Every quest starts and ends with an excessively punctuated fanfare of music and screen-filling text (even if the quest happened to involve something heavily morose). There’s very little mystery or exploration, as everything is given clear and elaborate quest markers to tell you exactly where to go at all times. Boat and Airship travel is merely a fast-travel cutscene, rather than a proper voyage from area to area. The vast majority of the game is instanced. You can teleport just about anywhere on a whim for a small fee, making the world feel a little small at times.
There’s definitely a priority put on gameplay functionality, approachability, and ease of use above all else in FFXIV. For most people, that’s fantastic, but for those like myself, it can be a little disappointing to see after playing FFXI, the Dark Souls of MMOs (sorry).
Also, inventory management kinda sucks right now, but they’re fixing that pretty soon (reviews of MMOs make so much sense!).
Despite all that though, It should be noted that the development team has been exceptionally communicative with the player base, and they’ve been very transparent about how they plan to bring the game forward from here on through patches and future expansions (as of this writing, the first major patch is due out very soon, and it looks pretty substantial). This is clearly a humbled team that’s been working hard to win our hearts over, and that’s a good thing for everyone.
In summary, if you like traditional MMOs, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is a pretty good one of those, and it seems like it might actually have some legs this time around (the servers are still more populated than the developers intended/expected I would bet). I don’t see myself stepping away from it anytime soon.
There might actually be a bright future for this MMO that was once Square-Enix’s biggest embarrassment, and that’s kind of crazy/cool.
- Draxyle Jyx, from the Midgardsormr server
