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The review you can't argue with, cause it's dead on right.
PerfectLife
Member Posts: 54
Final Fantasy XIV
Systems: Consoles & PC
Genre: MMORPG (p2p)
There was a time not too long ago when the idea of a console being able to play an MMO was revolutionary to the point that the majority of the people behind the Dreamcast were sure they could do no wrong. So confident that including a modem built in would change the face of gaming it was considered as a sure thing that all the lost money would easily be returned. 2010 and the world has most certainly changed, at least in regards to technology. These days the thought of a console not having internet connectivity is about as absurd as having it was in 1999.
Now some of you reading this may already have hit reply and begun to type up, what you think, to be scathing replies that will certainly change my ignorant mind. That's fine, you're not doing it right if you're not pissing off someone. The rest of you fully understand where this is going and hopefully I won't disappoint.
Final Fantasy XIV might seem to be selling it's self as a PC MMORPG first and foremost but to think that would be an easy mistake to make. It's hard to argue that it's coming out on PC first, that Square-Enix has stated they want Final Fantasy XIV to take advantage of the PC's offerings, and as of right now I doubt you could find anyone in the PS3 beta. If it wasn't for one small detail this line of reasoning would hold up: Final Fantasy XI.
It's no secret that Final Fantasy XIV is the sequel to Final Fantasy XI and as such it's totally valid to point out that Final Fantasy XIV is a console MMORPG. If you still haven't hit reply so as to explain to me how a noob like me has a mother that is so fat that when she runs she sweats jell-o. Congratulations, you're not a total idiot!
Final Fantasy XIV is without a doubt in a strange place, but now that we have context let me go over the points we all know about and try and give a fair measure to them.
Gameplay: Deep, slow, shallow, unengaging (not even a word), pretty, uninspired, bland, co-dependent.
That's two positive descriptors, four negative ones, and two neutral. So at best Final Fantasy XIV's game play is half bad. What? "But, writer person, this list is totally subjective, has no reasoning, no argument and now I don't know how to reply in a way that explains you use a sock for a toilet!" Well, you know what, if you want reviews spoon fed to you then you should go play WoW.
Graphics: Pretty, copy paste, smart, slightly sexy. (what? doesn't every self-respecting gamer dude love a catgirl? Neko ftw)
Looks like the art team is vastly more competent than the Gameplay team as they got two positives, a neutral, and a negative. In short. For a console game it looks great. If you haven't been spoiled by games like Tera or you think Ironforge is the bee's knees then you'll enjoy the views. Also the cut scenes get a special mention as they actually are really good if not quite Final Fantasy XIII good. Oh, and yes, Dear Reader. I do know that Final Fantasy XIV uses real time rendered graphics for the cut scenes where as Final Fantasy XIII used pre-rendered movies. However, that doesn't change the fact that Final Fantasy XIII has the better looking ones, now does it? No it doesn't, that was rhetorical.
Grip: I played the beta for about 6 hours. I think I've played Minesweeper for the same amount of time in my life.
...
While I did like the "all classes in one" approach and I quite enjoyed the thought of having a character that could learn how to cook, fish, mine, etc; and then later pick up a rifle and have at it with all the benefits of higher stats and more cash to spend on better gear. They've taken an awesome system and hamstrung it for the simple reason of trying to get people to play the game longer. Oh sure, they cleverly say "we want the game to appeal to a casual audience who doesn't have the time to grind all day long." Except what they don't tell you is that you're going to be grinding even more than ever since you'll be swapping classes and running out of quests.
It's lazy design 101, and I quote from The Lazy Book on Lazy game design, "The more of the game you make your players create the less of the game you have to create. Be warned of flying penisi armies and worse. See: Second Life." If you love the game, you're going to play it a lot more than if you are looking for something that starts with a bang and gets better.
So, in conclusion, Final Fantasy XIV is not a bad game if you are either sick to death of every other MMORPG out there (in which case you probably just hate MMORPGs), love Final Fantasy XI warts and all, don't feel like waiting until 2011 (when all these new awesome MMORPGs are coming out), or only have a console on which to play MMORPGs. For everyone else? There's nothing to see here, move along.
PC: 6/10*
PS3: 8/10*
*if you really loved Final Fantasy Xi then it's a 10/10
Comments
Regardless of the fact PS3 beta isn't even out yet and some other things that I would normally point out it is actually a pretty solid review score, and I think pretty close to the actual scores it will end up receiving.
I think they could have made this a PS3 exclusive and left out PC altogether and had a pretty successful MMORPG on their hands.
The key thing that is missing from this that I look at when considering/rating MMO's is the potential. SE has a very solid core game that they can build on constantly like they did with FFXI, and judging by the way they grew that game I see a ton of potential here. Compared to a game like AoC which had so many bugged features from the start the potential there I saw very little of.
Hey look it's another review for a game that hasn't been released yet!
FFS
"Do you like coffee? "
"No I like tea."
"Owe so people like different things then? "
"yes, they do."
I think anyone playing a beta MMORPG and only played for 6 hours thinks they can give a reasonable review of game, is (putting it nicely) fairly ignorant of the genre. Secondly some has an unused account to review a game, I think another agenda is on view here.
Your review fails on the face of it. First, to claim that it cannot be argued with right from the title suggests that even its author is not confident in its contents. Not a good start. Then it turns out to be painfully long so tl;dr, but skipping to the end I find that you have given a score for the PS3 version which wont be released for months. This is all but confirmation that you are making brash assumptions making the review not even worth the time of the read. I could be wrong on the contents, perhaps you approach things in a fair and logical manner but your title and final sentence to suggest that to not be the case.
All die, so die well.
shouldnt this be called a preview? And wouldnt 99.999999999% of betas be considered incomplete ? Who paid you to write this? We only have 2000 MMOs out there that had ugly betas that paid you to write this.
To sum up so far:
The scores are fair, trolls are trolls, and I should get paied to write.
Awesomecakes!
Even as a "preview" it still fails. The OP wrote some pretty ridiculous stuff, or more accurately just made a long text along the lines to say "This game sucks" doesn't bother explaining why it sucks (Gameplay for exemple) and instead would rather talk about lesser important features. At the end, tries to make the typical "FFXIV isn't a bad game" despite the article saying the opposite around, just to say "I'm fair and unbiased" but that's just bullshit.
Oh and look, a PS3 score when the game hasn't even been released yet (and same goes for PC version....quite amazing don't you think? I bet he has insider views!).
And with OP's latest post (right above this message), I'm likely to believe his post was only intended to flame.
I don't get it ...
Why do people spend so much time writing something on a forum purely to piss people off? I'm all for trolling for an arguement, which by-the-way is what trolling used to be. I won't however go out of my way to produce a post designed to piss off anyone who reads it, wasting both our time .... so I can bounce in my chair with joy when I "Trolled" someone?
Anyone care to explain it to me? =/
this is rather true, iv played the game for over 200h in CB and now in OB and i have yet to be truly impressed or engaged in the game.
nice gfx.
meh gameplay.
but the game is fixable just needs a lot of work.
Redemp short version is there are four kinds of people in this world:
Helplsess: those that take an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to someone else.
Bandits: Those that make a gain at the expense of someone else's lose.
Inteligent: those that take an action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to someone else.
And the last in wich our dear reviewer fits perfectly posting in this forum:
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Because its something to do
You know, PerfectLife, you probably think that you're very smart but hey, at least your review is not. Example: The series of
" Gameplay: Deep, slow, shallow, unengaging, pretty, uninspired, bland, co-dependant."
makes no sense, i mean, at all. "Deep" and "shallow" are opposites, you really have to make up your mind here before posting. Same with "pretty" and "bland".
Review? lol, kids...go figure.
Now my question is this. Are all of the people trying, for some reason, to tell the guy who, I think, makes it rather clear he is poking fun at his own review while writing it that he is failing to write a good review seriously?
I mean, does anyone unintentionally put conflicting words in a summary and then rate the summary by the word count? Can anyone be stupid enough to think that? Is this effort against him some form of counter trolling that just looks and definitely is [in my objective opinion (see what I did there?)] stupid?
For sure.
Edited for readability.
Thanks for all the constructive criticism, everyone. It's very educational and rewarding. I will use this knowledge to put extra points into my "sex appeal" stat which I may not even have since I just wrote "extra points into my 'sex appeal' stat." Whatever the case may be, I can still t-bag your loved ones in Halo.
PS: In all fairness this is a very intricate form of comedy which makes it hard to understand unless one is aware of the subtleties of language and culture. It's also easy to face plant a troll grind backslide.
I think its more likely that the posters who are taking the OP literally are all from a particular country (or selection of countries) that just generally dont pick up on that kind of humour. So in answer to your question, yes people can indeed by that stupid
I think what all the previews should read is:
If you don't like:
Cutscenes
Poorly designed clumsy UI
Shoddy console port games
Quests that require reading to figure them out
PC Requirements that don't exist (or are at least not within an average consumer price range) to run on max settings
Slow, kind of boring combat (FFXI is guilty of this as well)
Slow moving games in general
MMO's with mobs that are scarce and scattered making finding something to kill a pain
FFXI
(anything else you don't like)
Then this game is not for you. Nothing to see. Move along.
EDIT: Actually I think the best way to sum it up... if you didn't like FFXI, you won't like this either.. in my opinion (that's my disclaimer)
I'll do you one better and say that time the dust settles SE will wish they didn't even release this game on pc and made it console exclusive, the mmo crowd is one of the hardest to please I have ever known of and many would have been roasting them for the cross platform decision anyway. Add to that the fact that it seems as if many are decrying alot of the design decisions as being things done to appease a console crowd and I think they have put together a recipe for disaster.
I'm starting to wonder if SE is suffering the same problem suffered by TSR and that's basically every since those companies merge they have been seriously out of touch with what their customers want to see or how to deliver it to them. Wizards of the Coast made it a habit to do things with the D&D IP that made most fans scratch their heads and SE seems to do the same lately.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
(Originally posted by madonvibes) Actually I think the best way to sum it up... if you didn't like FFXI, you won't like this either.. in my opinion (that's my disclaimer)
I think you're being overly harsh, a sign of over exposure to the internet if there ever was one. Yes, that is a real psychological condition and it's not healthy. But I must agree, because your correct, that FFXIV is a niche game that will mostly appeal to those who only own a console on which to play an MMO, those who loved FFXI, true die-never fans of FF, and people who collect urinal cakes. Not that I'm suggesting the people in the former categories collect urinal cakes, it's just people who do collect urinal cakes are crazy and you never know what they will do, so it's better safe than sorry. Not that I mean any disrespect to people who collect urinal cakes as a hobby except to say they are crazy.
Also, as this was mentioned and is valid, the future potential for an MMO is important and should weigh in on the score, however, considering how tight lipped and secretive S-E is over their future plans. It would be reckless and irresponsable for me to conjecture on what they may do in the future. Unless you can think of a decently humorous way for me to do it...
Moogle mounts?
Hardware Cursor?
UI redesign for the PC port that actually works like a PC UI?
Game engine that runs efficiently and doesn't waste massive processing power?
Bathing suits?
I just don't know.
Awesome! Thx for the laugh, PerfectLife
i played the beta and i agree on everything the OP said. First and foremost you can tell right off the bat after logging in that this game is made for consoles, not PC. In order to really play it on a PC you really NEED to have a controller plugged in. On thing you didn't seem to mention tho is the complete lack of any tutorials of any kind and the fact that you have to bring up the main menu just to release when you die lolz
You made visiting this forum a treat PerfectLife.
But all in all, I agree with most of what you said and I think the preview was quite fair.
Thanks for making me chuckle at the post and the fanbois
^ This pretty much sums up FFXIV
Which is pretty close to what the OP posted he just went about it the long way.
I also forsee the PS3 version being much better than the PC version, as some of the issues that plague players like horrible console lag (aka: Little pointer thingy) should not be present on the console.
Anyway, I have decided to play this game, but only on the PS3.
No offens ebut reviewing a game still in beta is not really a good review, considering the game could change alot from now till release
"An MMORPG could be completely diffirent from WoW. Just look at games like Dofus, Wizard101 or EVE. But as it is, most of the Western MMOs are trying to succeed by out-WoWing WoW. It's like an army of 10 sports games made about same sports, and barely none about other sports. WoW clone is an accurate description of those games, it manages to convey much information with only two words."
-Poster on mmorpg.com
Rift: World of Warcraft clone #9321 Nothing special to see here move along.