Review of OB thus far by FF MMO n00b

katalysis

 

Since the servers are down, I thought I'd write a review. I've never played FF11, and the only other MMOs I've played are Guild Wars and LOTRO. I have played all the FF single player games sans FF1-5 and FF12-13. I play mostly non-MMO games, some of which I play at an amateur-competitive level, such as COD4:MW, BC2, and SC2, and others I play casually. I own a ton of games, and, being interested in a broad swath of games, I do happen to own a XBOX 360 controller, purely to leverage its analog sticks in such genres as racing, fighting, and console emulation. As much as possible, however, I prefer the superior kb+mouse.

I did my homework and read a ton of these threads before trying the OB, so I was spiritually prepared for decent graphics/music/story wrapped in some utterly abysmal UI and controls. Probably due to my pessimistic expectations of getting into an unplayable yet visually stunning world filled with furry orgies, what I got out of OB so far is actually quite a nice game. Here's my take on the pros and cons so far.

Pros:

1. The graphics, environment, and visual immersion, as everyone stated, are super, and the game runs very well for its visual fidelity, meaning the graphics engine is actually pretty optimized already. I own a fairly high end custom box (moderately overclocked quad-core i7 with a 5870), and I'm playing the game smoothly at max settings @ 1920x1200 sans occlusion. You want to make sure you don't turn on occlusion because it'll drop kick your FPS down by 50%, and this is true for every game on the market that supports occlusion.

 

2. The writing is great, albeit a bit too good, making the pirate talk a bit difficult to read and comprehend quickly.

 

3. Thank god the score is by Nobuo because the great music does help cover (a little bit) for the fact that there is no voice acting in the game.

 

4. Stability: the game has been 100% stable for me thus far as long as I don't try to alt+tab to another window, which instantly crashes the rendering engine. Yes, I play at fullscreen.

 

5. Playing via the XBOX controller, I find the controls to be very intuitive, and depending on how you configure the buttons, completely analogous to all the single player FF games. I haven't had any trouble making my character do what I want her to do. I haven't tried playing with the kb and/or mouse extensively yet, so I can't review that experience.

 

6. Mouse lag severity is entirely dependent on your FPS. If you have smooth, high FPS, mouse lag at this point is completely tolerable. If you have choppy FPS (40s and below), you're going to have a problem with the mouse.

 

7. Obviously not a WoW clone. Kudos for the balls to try more original mechanics, which I think is healthy for the gaming industry as a whole even if games go down in flames.

 

7. No furry orgies.

 

Cons:

1. I find it inexcusable that there is basically no voice acting in a 2010 game release, and this is specifically true for Square, which was among the first game developers to pioneer quality voice acting via FFX almost a decade ago and has included voice acting in every FF title release since (sans FF11). As stated in the pros section, having great music does cover for this a bit, but it's a little annoying having to focus at a text box at the bottom of my monitor while the camera is slow-zooming into a character's face with moving lips.

2. I don't really mind the menu system, but menu-driven emotes? Give me a break. Emotes are spontaneous actions that necessarily requires good timing in order to perform successfully and rewardingly. Having to open a long, unsorted emote list and spend about 10 seconds trying to scroll to that one emote that may or may not actually exist is simply retarded. Often times, the player that I wanted to emote to has already long left the vicinity.

3. The battles I've had so far are significantly slow paced, but not so slow as to be intolerable to me. We'll see how this plays out.

4. No hardware mouse, of course, though I've heard Square is implementing this.

5. Alt+tabbing crashes the renderer, though I think we can all agree they will fix this.

6. No jumping, dammit.

Summary:

Overall I'll give this game a 7/10, where 1 is Paris Hilton bad, 5 is neither good or bad, and 10 is Mass Effect. I'll keep trying it and see whether it bores me. I hope there will be meaningful PvP later, as that really adds to the longevity of a MMO title, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: Some of you are really rude to others on the forum, so please keep your arguments out of my thread k thx.

mrhorrible

Originally posted by katalysis

 

...

 

7. No furry orgies.

 

...

No Furry Orgies...yet.  

 

Thanks for the information though, I think your post is probably among the most balanced.  Neither fanboyish or trollish.

gkb3469

Originally posted by katalysis

 

Since the servers are down, I thought I'd write a review. I've never played FF11, and the only other MMOs I've played are Guild Wars and LOTRO. I have played all the FF single player games sans FF1-5 and FF12-13. I play mostly non-MMO games, some of which I play at an amateur-competitive level, such as COD4:MW, BC2, and SC2, and others I play casually. I own a ton of games, and, being interested in a broad swath of games, I do happen to own a XBOX 360 controller, purely to leverage its analog sticks in such genres as racing, fighting, and console emulation. As much as possible, however, I prefer the superior kb+mouse.

I did my homework and read a ton of these threads before trying the OB, so I was spiritually prepared for decent graphics/music/story wrapped in some utterly abysmal UI and controls. Probably due to my pessimistic expectations of getting into an unplayable yet visually stunning world filled with furry orgies, what I got out of OB so far is actually quite a nice game. Here's my take on the pros and cons so far.

Pros:

1. The graphics, environment, and visual immersion, as everyone stated, are super, and the game runs very well for its visual fidelity, meaning the graphics engine is actually pretty optimized already. I own a fairly high end custom box (moderately overclocked quad-core i7 with a 5870), and I'm playing the game smoothly at max settings @ 1920x1200 sans occlusion. You want to make sure you don't turn on occlusion because it'll drop kick your FPS down by 50%, and this is true for every game on the market that supports occlusion.

 

2. The writing is great, albeit a bit too good, making the pirate talk a bit difficult to read and comprehend quickly.

 

3. Thank god the score is by Nobuo because the great music does help cover (a little bit) for the fact that there is no voice acting in the game.

 

4. Stability: the game has been 100% stable for me thus far as long as I don't try to alt+tab to another window, which instantly crashes the rendering engine. Yes, I play at fullscreen.

 

5. Playing via the XBOX controller, I find the controls to be very intuitive, and depending on how you configure the buttons, completely analogous to all the single player FF games. I haven't had any trouble making my character do what I want her to do. I haven't tried playing with the kb and/or mouse extensively yet, so I can't review that experience.

 

6. Mouse lag severity is entirely dependent on your FPS. If you have smooth, high FPS, mouse lag at this point is completely tolerable. If you have choppy FPS (40s and below), you're going to have a problem with the mouse.

 

7. Obviously not a WoW clone. Kudos for the balls to try more original mechanics, which I think is healthy for the gaming industry as a whole even if games go down in flames.

 

7. No furry orgies.

 

Cons:

1. I find it inexcusable that there is basically no voice acting in a 2010 game release, and this is specifically true for Square, which was among the first game developers to pioneer quality voice acting via FFX almost a decade ago and has included voice acting in every FF title release since (sans FF11). As stated in the pros section, having great music does cover for this a bit, but it's a little annoying having to focus at a text box at the bottom of my monitor while the camera is slow-zooming into a character's face with moving lips.

2. I don't really mind the menu system, but menu-driven emotes? Give me a break. Emotes are spontaneous actions that necessarily requires good timing in order to perform successfully and rewardingly. Having to open a long, unsorted emote list and spend about 10 seconds trying to scroll to that one emote that may or may not actually exist is simply retarded. Often times, the player that I wanted to emote to has already long left the vicinity.

3. The battles I've had so far are significantly slow paced, but not so slow as to be intolerable to me. We'll see how this plays out.

4. No hardware mouse, of course, though I've heard Square is implementing this.

5. Alt+tabbing crashes the renderer, though I think we can all agree they will fix this.

6. No jumping, dammit.

Summary:

Overall I'll give this game a 7/10, where 1 is Paris Hilton bad, 5 is neither good or bad, and 10 is Mass Effect. I'll keep trying it and see whether it bores me. I hope there will be meaningful PvP later, as that really adds to the longevity of a MMO title, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: Some of you are really rude to others on the forum, so please keep your arguments out of my thread k thx.

 Im 99% sure the voice acting is there they just havent put it in yet. In the cut scenes u can see the characters mouth move. Aion did the same thing for their beta.

The battles are really boring imo.

I downloaded a different version of the game. Some one made a window mode script for it and so i can just click off screen whenever i want.

An fuckin Aye, no jumping?

And u can just type / whatever for the emotes. theyre all basic mmo emotes clap, dance, stretch, cheer, etc