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Oh Gods not another review...hopefully fair and unbiased
terrant
Member Posts: 1,683
I know there's a lot of questions about this game on player's minds right now. There's people who love FFXI who want to know if they will like it's more-or-less replacement. There's people who hated FFXI who want to know if this game improves on what they disliked. And there's other MMO players that want to know if this is the next new game for them. So let me tell you a little about my experience, and maybe it will help you make your decision.
First off, Tech specs for my PC (And yes, my drivers are to date).
CPU: Intel i5 750 2.67 ghz quadcorre (currently overclocked to 3.60ghz)
GPU: ATI Radeon 5770 1gb. Currently overclocked to 900mhz core clock 1250mhz GRAM clock
RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR3 4096 MB
Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black
OS: WIn7 64 bit
TL;DR for those of you not tech savvy: Pretty strong machine, capable of playing most any MMO out there right now at max graphics and still have a fantastic framerate.
So, now onto my mini-review:
Graphics: 9/10
This is one location the game shined for me. parts of it are VERY pretty, and a strong upgrade to FFXI's, which I often found bland. The three starting areas are diverse, character models are very nice, and decently varied (Highland Hyur Males need more hairstyles though). Ohter next-gen MMOs coming out in the near future like GW2 will give it a run for its money though.
Sound: 8/10
Look, it's a Uematsu soundtrack. It can't lose for music. And the voice acting in the beginning is stellar. I was rather disappointed when that was all there was though. As for effects, they're OK. Nothing to write home about, but they sound decent. And most will be familiar to FFXI players, good or bad.
Performance: 6/10
OK, lemme preface this by saying it IS beta, and it IS essentially a stress test. it also IS less than a month from release. The above computer can run AoC (a generally better looking game) at max settings and be fine; so why am I stuttering unless I start dropping sliders down? And let's not even talk about the DX errors that crash you on alt-tabbing. Also, the game is HEAVILY mouse-driven, and even with my sensitivity on my Razer Diamondback set to max, it moves sluggishly within the game.
UI: 4/10
This is one of the areas I'm most disappointed in. The one place I thought FFXI was really weak in was its clunky UI. And if anything, this one has gotten worse! If there's a hotkey to acess to main menu I haven't found it yet, and I checked the keybind settings. I'm forced to use the mouse for a lot of things; and the mouse is clunky. Raiding like this would feel suicidal.
Gameplay Innovation: 8/10
I like the "new" job system. Wanna change jobs? buy a new weapon and equip it. That's it. Pure and simple. Guildleves are a nice way to make quests quickly acessible, and they seem to scale well to any party size/makesup. Spamming attacks on the action bar seems a bit boring; I miss Renkei. That was something I thought FFXI did rather well. If you had competent players. Being able to level crafting and gathering jobs via quests is kinda cool.
New Player Experience: 3/10
Clunky, unintuitive menus and a lack of ANY new player tooltips make the game frustrating. I'm not asking for a ! and ? system..good god I'd pay to get rid of that staple! But having to slowly move my mouse to the main menu, pick journal, slowly move my mouse to the quest, pick the quest....etc all just to find where to go next is aggravating. The NPC linkshell idea is good, but notifications need to be in a popup somewhere. the chat menu gets flooded too easily. You wanna pick up a crafter class? Good luck finding recipes. I got told by 16 people to go to a wiki page. I should not be forced to go to a 3rd party site just to find out what I could potentially make and/or what's needed. Also, you have little way of knowing when you got new abilties as your job levels up. I found mine by accident clicking on menus to see what happened. And death...death is IRRITATING. It took me tab-crashing out and doing a search to find out "return" from the menu is how you rez. There's no warning or popup anywhere. If that was documented ANYWHERE I'd love to know. Many NPC's have massive typos in their dialogue or random bits of kanji, though these are rarely gamebreaking.
I will point out one quest in particular though- the "learn the emotes" dance quest in Gridania. Each NPC you talk to is supposed to do a diff emote, and each is supposed to tell you which one to do. But they all just clap, and the dialogue is almost universally wrong. The one that's supposed to be "joy" for instance was something completely diff, and the guy that wanted me to wave three times really wanted "lookout". Yeah, that was intuitive. And worse, I felt bad because once I did the last emopte right it teleported me out before I could tell the 12 or so other people similarly stuck whatt the right emote was. And since the quests are HEAVILY instanved communication to non-partied people can be a pain.
Storyline: 9/10
Bugs aside, the new storyline quests are fun and engaging. The characters are great (I'm rather fond of Yda and her Lalafell friend's constant bickering). Although the constant Liverpudlian/Cockney accent is a little off-putting. The small segment where there is voice, everyone sounds like they stepped out of Mary Poppins.
All in all the game is an improvement to FFXI, but has some serious flaws. I can't personally justify buying it until these improve. And no, I didn't get high level on any character. I didn't want to. If I have to fight the game to figure out what's going on, it's already lost me. Yes that's a horrible attitude...and any marketer will tell you it's also one of the biggest challenges every MMO faces. Most MMOs lose players before they barely get started, which means your starting experience HAS to be perfect. If you can't have me at hello, you can't have me.
Comments
Pretty much my exact experience, one would assume that performance will get better after launch but for me its a game breaker. The unintuitive nature of the UI its hard to overcome aside from that the graphics are amazing and im sure the story is great
Good review except this game is not heavily mouse driven. It is infact the exact opposite, the game is really not meant to use the mouse at all. I started with the mouse but and found it like you said, very difficutl and annoying. After some research I found that while the game is meant really for a controller, using two hand on the computer actually works well too. One hand on the WSAD keys and the other on JIKL I believe. The JIKL moves the camera while WSAD obviously moves the character. The Menu can be accessed by hitting the - key on the Num Pad.
I really think one hand on the mouse is superior to the IJKL keys.
I love the music, except I think the Lev victory music needs to be toned down a couple levels.
the keybind is -
the ui doesnt bother me that much to be honest
i lol'ed at the part where you said AoC has better graphics.
Heh, in FFXI, I never used the mouse for anything. I actually liked the UI in FFXI.....at first it was hard, but you get used to it after awhile. As for FFXIV, the UI needs work (which I'm sure S-E realizes by now). In time, I am certain it will be fine. The game has great potential....S-E just needs to get a step on it with the UI.
Yeah I think this a very fair and accurate review of the game but just fyi there is a hotkey to the menu it's the " -" key on the number pad. Weird place I know but that's where it was in ffxi. In all honest though I actually think you're being very nice with you're rating on the UI but this IS beta like you said and hopefully they'll learn about mouse drivers and how they work soon.
Most games today use the drivers from your rig for your mouse so there is no lag but if it's built in the game your mouse lags at the same pace your game is lagging. This can be very frustrating when trying to navigate through menus and stuff in populated areas.
Also as far as your pc goes I'm guessing you're doing fine but anything less then that and it's pretty rough. I have a 9800 gtx with 2G ram and core 2 duo overclocked to 3.2 and I have a very very rough time with this game even with everything turned down. With that said you're going to need a pretty strong rig to play this game with any sort of performance. So the question I'm asking myself is, is this game worth spending the money to upgrade so I'm not pulling my hair out of my head every night? I've yet to come up with an answer but unless they fix the UI greatly my answer might be no.
Really, maybe it was just the fact that the mouse is currently so slow that I found IJKL better. At the moment it becomes very easy to do most taks with the menu, moving, or interactions without ever touching the mouse. Hopefully some of the mouse lag problems will be cleaned up by launch and a real comparison can be made.
This game works really well with a controller. I personally use an Xbox 360 control and you can tell the game has been designed to work well with said controller.
No signature, I don't have a pen
i agree with you 100%. i firmly believe all these things will be fixed though.
@ the OP
Excellent synopsis. Thank you for keeping the blowtorch away from your keyboard. This is highly refreshing especially on these forums. :P Thanks for being fair and level headed and not going on a tirade like sooooo many other posters this week.
I agree with many of the things you said. Otherwise, I am enjoying this game immensely I have gotten used to the UI and such, but I still completely understand why the UI is a major deterrent for some. After playing FFXI for years, I think i've just gotten used to Square's odd UI setups.
But again...nicely done!
lefty
Sorry but way too many facts and not enough baseless opinions.
good lolz.
That's a hard one to judge but overall I would say AOC is indeed a better looking game.
I am not into grafics, heck I would play with stickmen if the gameplay was good. Like the review and decided to have the kid check for the game on another platfrom to use a controller. I just am not into the pc/controller thing but understand FF players wlho are. I got to check out the Gameplay Innovations that are mentioned but not on pc until the mouse/keyboard thing goes up.
Yeah I definitely don't use the mouse very much at all. You can use 'Tab targetting' press enter to target the nearest npc to you. I use the 'Home' button for the main menu then the arrow keys (up, down, left, left,) to navigate the menu. It's really easy to get used to playing this way.
While I have not played the game, it sounds like it is best played with a "Controller" setup. I.E, it's not impossible to play with keyboard and mouse, but better experienced with a Controller.
I'm hoping some better customization hits the PC users soon.
Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
I remember when SE's 'tutorial' at the start told me to enter action mode to start combat. Everything was well explained until that part. Then.. what? How? Tell me a button. It didn't. Oh well, figured it out.
From then on I was on my own.. with everything...
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
Nice review. I over all agree with your review. Mind you I've actually gotten used to the UI. The game plays really well with a controller too, which I've been using. Although not everyone will have one.
Maybe I'm being optimistic. Although, I'll still be buying it on launch. The problems I have with the game excluding the time limits are technical issues which should be fixed over time.
I just got a beta invite and am downloading now. As I will not be wasting anymore web-space or peoples time with another "player review" on it. I will use it to find out for myself what all the hub-bub is about. And to decide on my own if I like it or not.
On a side note, if I can get around Darkfalls UI and eventually master it, I think I can handle this one.
I would have to totally disagree with the OP. I find besides the occasional lag while trying to talk to a vendor, the game feels extremely well designed and not sluggish at all.
I enjoy the menu style UI. Its clean, doesn't clutter your screen with a bunch of useless crap, and you only see your hotbars when you need to. My mouse has not lagged once, and im running the game at 1920x1080 4xMSAA multisampling with standard shadow textures, with high texture quality and highest texture filtering. I have not dropped below 35 fps even in town. I do not see the issue with the keyboard controls or the mouse lag at all. Im pretty sure those that are noticing an issue with mouse lag are probably running the game on settings their comp can't handle.
The game explains pretty much everything if you actually read the quest. The story directs you where you need to go, and if you just bother to open your eyes up when checking things, especially the aetheryte node, you'll find all the answers you'll need. The story directs you where to go and gives you tips. I have not once had an issue with figuring anything out.
I use the mouse and keyboard. I had my ps3 controller out just in case because of everything i read here, but when i fired it up i found it more than adequate. Im more than pleased with this game.
The only major complaint i have is with the automatic failure of a guildleve if your game crashes, and the 48 hour cooldown that ensues afterwards. But im fairly confident that something like that will be fixed, allowing you to continue doing a guildleve if you fail it.
I do agree with the OP on the voice acting. I wish they would have continued with the voice acting in the cut scenes, even the in game graphic cut scenes. But it is what it is, and i've still enjoyed it none the less.
Btw my PC specs are:
Core i7-870 @ 3.6ghz stock cooled
EVGA Geforce GTX 460 @ 850/1700/2100 stock cooled
500gb 64mb cache 7200rpm WD Black HD
4gb Gskill ripjaw series PC 1333 gddr3 ram
Nice review, my rig is exactly like yours, minus the RAM (i use a generic one instead of Hi-perf).
I agree and the crafting part, i was totally lost lol.