Final Fantasy XIV: Living In The Past
Please, keep in mind while you read this that Final Fantasy XIV it’s still in the Beta Phase. Trust me, this game needs a lot of great beta testers. My experience downloading and patching the game was horrendous. During multiple times the connection was lost and critical errors prevented the installation of the game. After two days, I was able to enter the character creation screen.
Did the problems stopped there? Nope, more than 15 times (yes I counted) the game crashed before I could play. To keep some order in this post I will continue ranting about the negative things first. Once inside I found the same horrible interface from Final Fantasy XI. Insert a “WTF” here.
It seems as if SquareEnix lives in an Alternate Universe that hates UIs. I was surprised and annoyed at how crappy their downloder, patcher, and UI are. This is probably because this game is a console port; It’s the only logical explanation!
Now to end this on a positive note. While the UI is laggy and the cursor sucks, I must admit it adds to the “Final Fantasy flavor”. The music also adds to that “flavor”. It’s so amazing how I never get tired of that intro theme. I love it!
The animations in this game are gorgeous. They are fluid and look real. The character creator is nothing new and you end up with a pretty generic character but that does not steal the fact that they look cool and in some cases cute (like the character I made). The cut scenes are very interesting and I appreciated the voice acting and humor. The scene after the tree is just hilarious. I must say, cut scenes make for a nice break and helps the story progression. If only all the cut scenes had voice acting.
There is a lot of things to review. Classes, quests, crafting, etc, but this is not a released game. For that reason I will not indulge the nerd-rager in me and keep exploring ( I mean, beta testing). One very important thing. Chris from Game by Night explained how he felt about the game. He suggests the use of a gamepad to truly enjoy the game. I suggest you follow his sage advice. Oh, I know I will.
It might be a beta, but the flaws are so severe that they won’t be fixed by release… especially since open beta testers aren’t allowed to go to the beta site and post feedback.
It crashes like crazy, and when it does you fail the guildleve you’re doing. Having failed it, you can’t try again for two days. How bloody stupid is that?
And as you mentioned it has the worst UI in a MMO, ever. You can’t even use the mouse to move the map around or drag skills into action bars FFS. Whisper messages are limited to be so short that they make twitter messages look like indepth discussion. You can’t party with someone unless they’re in trade range, and the spell casting mechanics are horrendus with how you hit the hotkey to cast a spell, then need to click the damn monster again to actually cast it. Who came up with this nonsense?
This game is all around terrible.
There are so many things that I don’t understand about the development of Final Fantasy 14. I will see it for what it is right now a BETA but this needs a lot of work. Hopefully I will rant on another more in-depth post about my dislikes and vice-versa.
Damn, and this was one MMO I was actually looking forward too.
I guess I’ll come back and look at it in a year.
The game is not bad Project, the problem is the lack of user friendly options. In truth it is a good Final Fantasy Online Console game. If you decide to play it just use a gamepad to avoid mad frustration. For some reason you also need a “buffed” PC to truly enjoy all its visuals.
If you have time you should help with the beta ;p
Thanks! You should check out the new changes and share your thoughts.
Project already made a post about his experience as a new player to the MMO scene while playing Final Fantasy 14. You should check it out: http://kalibreonline.com/2011/08/29/final-fantasy-14-online/