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[Review] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: The Original Release Reviewed
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
It's been a long time coming, but MMORPG.com's Lori May has been spending a lot of time inside of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV. In the official MMORPG.com review, find out if Lori May's expectations for the successor to FFXI are met or if the game falls short of its namesake.
Odds are that if you’re a gamer, you’ve heard of the epic Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) is the latest chapter in the series to be made as a massively multiplayer online (MMO) title, following in the footsteps of Final Fantasy XI. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XIV doesn’t offer much for either the hardcore fans of the Final Fantasy world, or MMO gamers looking for a quality title.
Read all of Lori May's Final Fantasy XIV Review.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
Firstnerd here. o/
So you're saying, if I get a chance to miss it, miss it? I've been watching this one closely to see if the new team has made any outstanding improvements, looks like its going to take more work. Thanks for the review.
Beta'ed and before i got in, i thought "man this is going be better than FFXI", when infact, it's way worse. Played FFXI for roughly half a year and man o man was it tedious... but FFXIV sets a new bar for the word TEDIOUS!
Its true sadly , and the game was quite overpriced when it did go live. The interface is just horrid
Played the game at launch, despite the fact that the environments looked pretty darn good, it didn't change the fact that it also seemed to repeat over and over again in the awful maze like newbie zone for the forest starting area. Or that I was fighting mushrooms of various levels that looked exactly the same. Or that they somehow made kill 10 X quests more boring than WoW versions. At least WoW had the common decency to give you some story pretending you did something. This game was like, welp here yer 1k money, come back tommorow to do it all over again. To be honest I think a 5/10 is generous, for the reasons I gave added onto what you already said.
While the review completely reflects my own experience with the title, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Next week will see the release of the 1.18 patch, with massive changes to several core systems of the game. I don't really expect the game to be "good" after that, but at least "significantly better than now".
It's a bit of a waste of the reviewers time to write a review that's only valid for a week.
Wow. I'm just surprised this game is almost a year old and yet this review would have remained mostly the same, if it was written within a month of the game's release. I mean, people may hate on a company like Trion but you have to give them credit for fixing a ton of issues and adding tangible content in the 4 months their game has been out.
I don't think the reviewer went into this game with an open mind. I've played since release, and the game has changed, dramatically changed, since it's release. The UI is WAY smoother, combat and growth is much better, new content/fixes are being implemented continously, and hell, there is another patch in 5-6 days. I am a final fantasy fan, I've played through all of them, this one is defintiely the worst, but I don't think the reviewer was fair.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
iv played every final fantasy to date and completed the majority and the one thing i can say is that since final fantasy x-2 the games have just turned into test subjects and have gotten worse and worse, especially the mmorpgs (XI, XIV) which have the loss of feeling of a final fantasy franchise, where the story line was entrapping and left you wanting the next game, as soon as XI and XII turned up i sighed, as that was the start of the downfall of final fantasy, and as an original final fantasy player i prayed for a final fantasy mmorpg, but the result was terrible and expensive.
I found out that personally, play this game with a mouse and keyboard is impossible for me. Instead, I decided to try playing with a PS3-style controller. Using that and the in-game macro system, I'm actually rather enjoying this game. I know it's bad, but it seems much more bearable if you use a controller in my opinion.
I was amazed that they could make a game worse then FF13.
the main issue i had with ff14 was the lag.like the servers were in asia when they know full well the ocean pipe is limited to 5 mb/s
the control were smooth when there was no lag
if you loved the conplexity of everquest you ll feel right at home here,but like i say lag was the killer for me it wasnt smooth when the server was empty(people working)and was way worst when people where playing.
this is a game made for asia it isnt made for english market at all.
Agreed, I saw this review and had to keep checking the date, because it didn't make any since to do a review when they are completely changing the game in a week.
Anyways, I am still holding out hope that this game survives and does well. They did so many things I like and would love to see developers start paying attention to that I want it to work out for them.
We'll see next week if they are headed in the right direction.
www.90and9.net
www.prophecymma.com
Made for asia? Could you explain further?
I didn't know someones ethnicity affects how they play a game.
No mention of the horrible game engine and server coding that makes updates and fixes they do just as tedious as everything you mentioned? The game is poorly built from the ground up but we all saw that in beta. The irony is, the new team is probably just as annoyed trying to fix this mess as we are trying to play it.
I find this review rather pointless. Yes the game sucks right now, The game has sucked for almost a year but they're working on it and they have a huge amount of game changing patches planned this summer so I really don't get why you'd need to release this review now and give it another kick in the crotch. If you waited this long with writing a review you could have waited a few weeks more.
Did they ever add more quests or leves to do? or just more mobs in general to grind on? looking everywhere for a marmot got old quickly.
All die, so die well.
i might be wrong here but asian like it when say the get an achievement it actually feel like an acheivement,that it is so long and so hard that if you see 10 player get it it will be a miracle.in wow an achievement on average everybody gets them lol!
see the diff.
I'd like to correct this because it isn't true. The game was built for the Japanese. Much of the asian market prefers Aion/Lineage 2 style pvp fests. Of course most Japanese bashed the game just as much as the rest of the world.
The review is pretty much spot on. The upcoming patch isn't a Jesus patch. They're adding auto-attack, renaming the disciplines, and adding two instances. You can't patch in fun, and that is something the game is lacking. While it's a step in the right direction, this review will still be true.
It is somewhat odd to see a review this late. Why bother?
Even if they do somehow manage to get SOMETHINGS right. I still cannot see people coming back to this instead of going over to the new titles comming.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
I tried FF14 .
The reviewer was over kind with the score. No auction house should bring it down another point 4.1 .. now add in a horrible crafting system and down another point. 3.1 . The original reviewer only touched on the Limited Quest amounts per REAL day you can complete..
That is RIGHT .. You only get to do a LIMITED amount of quests and your CUT OFF from doing any more for REAL LIFE TIME .. and it is not a few hours but Days. Down another Point. 2.1 ..
There that is a more realisitic score.
I did read notes on the new upcoming Patch and as always more is done then the notes say. saddly MAJOR problems that keep players away are NOT being Fixed with this patch .. only a few of the annoyances of the past YEAR are supposedly addressed ... YES I say supposedly because HOW THEY FIX these is yet to be seen .. hell with this company IT COULD BE WORSE and in their own minds they have fixed it.
Where was the Internal Testing all those years this game was in the making ? HOW on earth did the testers NOT have problems with testing this game, as did the MILLIONS of players at release >?
I rate this game a 2.1 based on my own findings in the game and concure with all the OP has to say about this title ...
To the 100 FF fanboys and gals More power to you .. You got more patience then I ever will if your happy in this game.
The best time for me in this game was when I was Logging out .. I would always Feel a Great flood of peace once again as the game was closing down .. and I noticed how stressed I was while trying to navigate inside that game, looking for the Niche I could find enjoyable ... Maybe it was Fishing, but then, MAYBE NOT ..
Look to the stars to know HE is with us. HE hung them as markers, of times and of seasons.
I have a hard time giving credibility to a review of a game where the developers believe they've screwed up so much that they've made it entirely FREE while the build up the game to a point where they believe to be "acceptable", after which they'd bring back the P2P model. It's like a BETA, so reviewing a BETA is a bit....eh.
Although in all honesty, if I were to review the current state of FFXIV, I'd score the game around 5 or 6 on 10 too. But I'd definitively have put more emphasis on the current state of FFXIV, being like a free Beta while developers figure out what works and doesn't work (Massive patch coming next week for exemple).
SE launched the game, sold the CE and standard edition, and had there not been a complete shitstorm, would have had no problems charging a monthly fee for it. SE did what they had to do to save a game that would have otherwise completely failed if they started charging a sub fee.
They officially had closed alpha testing, multiple closed beta phases, and an open beta. The game is not in beta anymore.