FA+
Shop
Thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV
11 years ago
I'd been on a wow kick lately when some friends of mine told me that pretty much all of them had bought into FF XIV (hereafter known as FF because fckin' Roman numerals)
When I was a kid, I LIVED FF I II and III (Here in the states, I'm not interested in the Japanese numbering system, I didn't and don't live in Japan.)
I picked up X^2 when I was in the military and regretted it immediately. It was essentially Anime Barbie Dress-up, and I never finished it and swore off the FF series. Xeno Saga was by then much more compelling and it wasn't more than a year or two later that I pretty much quit console gaming entirely.
Then lo' there stood XIV. There stood my friends and family playing it... and here stood I with a recurring wow obsession. How prone am I to obsession when it comes to WoW? This latest time I farmed up the Recipe for the Vial of the Sands. I made two. THAT is how obsessed. The first time I played I got to Field Marshal under the old vanilla ranking system and was only moved to quit the game because they took said ranking system away the week I was to become Grand Marshal.
So I get pretty into it.
I figured it was time for a change, so I cancelled my battle.net account and bought FF. I've played it for a few days, and here are my observations:
After WoW, FF seems to take itself seriously. VERY seriously. Ludicrously, are you fcking kidding me? seriously. That takes some getting used to. You are not one of a horde of players in FF. You are a gawd damn hero. YOU. HERO. Can't handle it? NEED the tongue in cheek sarcasm to get through your questing? You won't like FF. Some of the quest lines are punny in name and they put Biggs and Wedge in as not quite pilots, but that's pretty much it. Other than the occasional Easter egg reference to this game or that movie, you're on your own for humor.
Now having just said that, I have to say this: Clothing.
If you aren't laughing, you haven't played FF within the last oh... since the days of 16 bit. Armor and clothing in FF ranges from the really cool to the outstandingly stupid. And guys I know what you're thinking: Chain mail bikinis? I'm in!
Well yeah, chain mail bikinis... but FF is equal opportunity. YOU, my hulking, burly, icon of maleness, will at one time in your adventuring career have to wear said bikini yourself. This brings us to the next point. If you are an American Male, you are going to have to enter the closet to play FF. In Japan where this game was made, apparently men and women run the same playbook and this includes things like standing, running, and pretty much anything involving movement. The animators used females for ALL of the motion capture. This is a certainty of mine based entirely on the results, not research. I made (for instance) a male dark elf with the grizzled features of an old man, a veteran of many wars so to speak. When I stand to speak or be spoken to, my feet are at 9 and 12 and my hands are held out from my sides like I've got some kind of invisible dress on. It's humiliating.
Well okay Ceb, given all this you're still playing the game?
Yes. Because aside from that the game is pretty good. The dungeons are accessible through the main storyline quests and you can't get into said dungeons unless or until you progress that questline. Remember what I said about being a hero? Treat this like your average MMO sandbox and you won't get very far. As well, I've not had to grind YET. The quests in the areas the main storyline takes me are enough to keep me current with the storyline level requirements. So while this is an MMO and there are other players, I remain the focus of the story and it moves as I move. That's pretty cool and is something WoW didn't do until fairly recently.
The mechanics are familiar and yet different enough that they keep me interested. I will say the global cooldown is slower and I'm not sure if that's deliberate to keep something of a turn-based feel or what, but it does give one ample time to actually think about what ability to use next. The battle isn't as fluid as it might otherwise be but positioning is more important and even trash mobs have avoidable attacks which are costly if not avoided or interrupted. The dungeons are well-laid out and more to the point the quest givers actually have solid reasons for giving you what quests you get. Some of them go to great lengths to apologize for or justify said quests, which range from the consequential to the silly. Want to make friends with the sylphs? Guess what... you'll be dancing. That's right. DANCE, MONKEY! 'Hi, how are you?' isn't good enough for sylphs.
If you can take yourself seriously, you can really get into this game. While the quests do have much the same flavor that they've had in all other games, go here kill x of these for y bits and pieces, etc... I've yet to have the feeling I often got in WoW of, "If I kill yet ANOTHER one of these fckin' things and somehow it doesn't drop a 'head' I will put MY head through the fcking screen." Doesn't happen.
Another thing I like about this game? NO LOOT!
Wait, WHAT?!
That's right loot whores, no loot. Or rather, no looTING Of course you get rewarded for kills and quests, but you don't have to stoop and loot the bodies. They've pretty much completely done away with any kind of looting mechanic outside of click this chest, it opens. Once it opens, you get whatever was in it, or whoever in your group is assigned that treasure gets it. EVERYTHING you get in game is either crafting material or useful; there is no vendor trash. Big whoop you say? Yeah, reading it now I would have said the same thing but having played the game I can say that it has saved quite a bit of time in both stooping to loot and vendoring garbage. Kind of like how no game ever puts in a mechanic whereby you have to stop adventuring periodically to drop the duece and I haven't seen food and sleep as necessary since the original Everquest.
I also love the monster designs, the world, and the music. The music in WoW has made great strides and is now awesome, but FF music has ALWAYS been awesome and lives up to it's reputation here. There are the familiar riffs for the crystals and the chocobo that everyone is familiar with as well as tunes that fit the locales quite well. I've not been tempted yet to turn off the music.
Backing up a bit, character creation is quite customizable. Within the scope of the various races, you're free to play. I did not spend much time with this but saw the potential there readily enough. The last time I spent time really thinking on a character concept was when I was playing Champions... and MAN do I miss THAT game. In it's heyday it was nirvana for a four color comic book geek such as myself.
But I digress. Final Fantasy XIV has kept me hooked for the last week and I'm quite happy with it overall. As with most Japanese products, the laughs you get out of it will largely be those the designers didn't intend, like gravity defying shorts and the auto-nekkid feature inherent in switching classes, which I didn't even mention but which is very cool. Want to play a different class? No need to make a new character, just run a quest and pick up a new primary weapon, but be careful! If you aren't eligible to wear the same type of armor/clothing as the class you're leaving, the game strips you down to your skivvies... so do your changing in private for Gawd's sake. I sold all my game start clothes so when I switched to a new class I wound up questing naked for the better part of two hours until I got a decent set of quest reward clothing because vendors do not SELL level 1 clothes... I mean that's silly, who would buy level 1 clothes right?
So yeah, grizzled dark-elf running around with a curly ass conjurer's twig in skivvies solving people's problems. Nothing wrong or laughable about that right?
(you should have seen my wife giggling over my shoulder....) =^_^;=
When I was a kid, I LIVED FF I II and III (Here in the states, I'm not interested in the Japanese numbering system, I didn't and don't live in Japan.)
I picked up X^2 when I was in the military and regretted it immediately. It was essentially Anime Barbie Dress-up, and I never finished it and swore off the FF series. Xeno Saga was by then much more compelling and it wasn't more than a year or two later that I pretty much quit console gaming entirely.
Then lo' there stood XIV. There stood my friends and family playing it... and here stood I with a recurring wow obsession. How prone am I to obsession when it comes to WoW? This latest time I farmed up the Recipe for the Vial of the Sands. I made two. THAT is how obsessed. The first time I played I got to Field Marshal under the old vanilla ranking system and was only moved to quit the game because they took said ranking system away the week I was to become Grand Marshal.
So I get pretty into it.
I figured it was time for a change, so I cancelled my battle.net account and bought FF. I've played it for a few days, and here are my observations:
After WoW, FF seems to take itself seriously. VERY seriously. Ludicrously, are you fcking kidding me? seriously. That takes some getting used to. You are not one of a horde of players in FF. You are a gawd damn hero. YOU. HERO. Can't handle it? NEED the tongue in cheek sarcasm to get through your questing? You won't like FF. Some of the quest lines are punny in name and they put Biggs and Wedge in as not quite pilots, but that's pretty much it. Other than the occasional Easter egg reference to this game or that movie, you're on your own for humor.
Now having just said that, I have to say this: Clothing.
If you aren't laughing, you haven't played FF within the last oh... since the days of 16 bit. Armor and clothing in FF ranges from the really cool to the outstandingly stupid. And guys I know what you're thinking: Chain mail bikinis? I'm in!
Well yeah, chain mail bikinis... but FF is equal opportunity. YOU, my hulking, burly, icon of maleness, will at one time in your adventuring career have to wear said bikini yourself. This brings us to the next point. If you are an American Male, you are going to have to enter the closet to play FF. In Japan where this game was made, apparently men and women run the same playbook and this includes things like standing, running, and pretty much anything involving movement. The animators used females for ALL of the motion capture. This is a certainty of mine based entirely on the results, not research. I made (for instance) a male dark elf with the grizzled features of an old man, a veteran of many wars so to speak. When I stand to speak or be spoken to, my feet are at 9 and 12 and my hands are held out from my sides like I've got some kind of invisible dress on. It's humiliating.
Well okay Ceb, given all this you're still playing the game?
Yes. Because aside from that the game is pretty good. The dungeons are accessible through the main storyline quests and you can't get into said dungeons unless or until you progress that questline. Remember what I said about being a hero? Treat this like your average MMO sandbox and you won't get very far. As well, I've not had to grind YET. The quests in the areas the main storyline takes me are enough to keep me current with the storyline level requirements. So while this is an MMO and there are other players, I remain the focus of the story and it moves as I move. That's pretty cool and is something WoW didn't do until fairly recently.
The mechanics are familiar and yet different enough that they keep me interested. I will say the global cooldown is slower and I'm not sure if that's deliberate to keep something of a turn-based feel or what, but it does give one ample time to actually think about what ability to use next. The battle isn't as fluid as it might otherwise be but positioning is more important and even trash mobs have avoidable attacks which are costly if not avoided or interrupted. The dungeons are well-laid out and more to the point the quest givers actually have solid reasons for giving you what quests you get. Some of them go to great lengths to apologize for or justify said quests, which range from the consequential to the silly. Want to make friends with the sylphs? Guess what... you'll be dancing. That's right. DANCE, MONKEY! 'Hi, how are you?' isn't good enough for sylphs.
If you can take yourself seriously, you can really get into this game. While the quests do have much the same flavor that they've had in all other games, go here kill x of these for y bits and pieces, etc... I've yet to have the feeling I often got in WoW of, "If I kill yet ANOTHER one of these fckin' things and somehow it doesn't drop a 'head' I will put MY head through the fcking screen." Doesn't happen.
Another thing I like about this game? NO LOOT!
Wait, WHAT?!
That's right loot whores, no loot. Or rather, no looTING Of course you get rewarded for kills and quests, but you don't have to stoop and loot the bodies. They've pretty much completely done away with any kind of looting mechanic outside of click this chest, it opens. Once it opens, you get whatever was in it, or whoever in your group is assigned that treasure gets it. EVERYTHING you get in game is either crafting material or useful; there is no vendor trash. Big whoop you say? Yeah, reading it now I would have said the same thing but having played the game I can say that it has saved quite a bit of time in both stooping to loot and vendoring garbage. Kind of like how no game ever puts in a mechanic whereby you have to stop adventuring periodically to drop the duece and I haven't seen food and sleep as necessary since the original Everquest.
I also love the monster designs, the world, and the music. The music in WoW has made great strides and is now awesome, but FF music has ALWAYS been awesome and lives up to it's reputation here. There are the familiar riffs for the crystals and the chocobo that everyone is familiar with as well as tunes that fit the locales quite well. I've not been tempted yet to turn off the music.
Backing up a bit, character creation is quite customizable. Within the scope of the various races, you're free to play. I did not spend much time with this but saw the potential there readily enough. The last time I spent time really thinking on a character concept was when I was playing Champions... and MAN do I miss THAT game. In it's heyday it was nirvana for a four color comic book geek such as myself.
But I digress. Final Fantasy XIV has kept me hooked for the last week and I'm quite happy with it overall. As with most Japanese products, the laughs you get out of it will largely be those the designers didn't intend, like gravity defying shorts and the auto-nekkid feature inherent in switching classes, which I didn't even mention but which is very cool. Want to play a different class? No need to make a new character, just run a quest and pick up a new primary weapon, but be careful! If you aren't eligible to wear the same type of armor/clothing as the class you're leaving, the game strips you down to your skivvies... so do your changing in private for Gawd's sake. I sold all my game start clothes so when I switched to a new class I wound up questing naked for the better part of two hours until I got a decent set of quest reward clothing because vendors do not SELL level 1 clothes... I mean that's silly, who would buy level 1 clothes right?
So yeah, grizzled dark-elf running around with a curly ass conjurer's twig in skivvies solving people's problems. Nothing wrong or laughable about that right?
(you should have seen my wife giggling over my shoulder....) =^_^;=
;)
Giggle...god phone...pay attention.
As for XIV itself, be glad you didn't play the original version. Or did you? I can't remember. Either way, it was HORRIBIBBLE. The new version is much, muuuuuuuuuuuch better. The animations...probably need some work, yeah. I'm not really sure they actually mo-capped half the things in there honestly. Some of them look hand animated, which might explain the stiffness of several things.