Rare_Thunder's Full Review: Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan (Add on)...
I have been playing ffxi since it's north american pc launch about 2 years ago. Let me state once and for all that i am not a final fantasy fangirl. I don't go goo-goo-ga-ga each time a new final fantasy game is released. I'm an avid gamer and avid rpg fan. My mmmorpg (massively multiplayer online rpg) experience includes many titles such as the original everquest, everquest 2, darkages, ragnarok, simsonline, redmoon, phantasy star, and more. But none of those games has held my interest as long as final fantasy xi. While not a perfect RPG it does well to try to correct the errors made by previous titles in this genre.
Let's start at the meat and bones of the game... and that is the gameplay. What do you do in the world of vanadiel? Well like most mmorpg's you find yourself thrust into a town. Stumbling to learn the controlls, bumping into people, maybe making a few friends. Then you eventually set foot outside the town gates. Here you find monsters. You can attack these monsters by yourself or group up with as many as 17 other people and fight them together. If you're bored with fighting monsters you can return to the town to do some quests or missions. quests offer items and gil (the game's currency) as rewards while missions further the storyline.
So that brings us to topic 2. The storyline. what is the storyline like in ffxi? Well if you have never played an mmorpg before you will be disapointed. The story is slow and lose as with any mmorpg on today's market. But if you have experience in this genre i think you will find the story fascinating. Also if you're a final fantasy fan you will see allusions to many of the older ff games (im thinking namely 1, 4, and 5) with the whole crystal warriors thing at the heart of the drama.
Ok so that breaks it down for you mmorpg virigins. Now let's take a bit of a deeper look shall we?
Ffxi costs 12.95 a month for 1 character. I personally have 3 characters so i'm paying 14.95 a month because each character is 1 dollar additional.
The game has several races to choose from: The cute and cuddly tarutaru, the sexy cat-like mithra, the noble elvaan, the giant galka, or the good ole all around hume. Each race has it's strengths and weakness. For example taru are great at magic but have poorer physical defense and attack. You can still play a tarutaru warrior or paladin or a galka mage. It just takes someone up for a challenge.
The game has many jobs and you can stop 1 job and change to another and resume the old jobs at any time back where you left off. In addition to haveing many jobs the game also has a subjob feature. That is, you can "dual class" similar to those familar to dnd. This allows you to have say for example a black mage / white mage. If you black mage is say level 40 then your white mage will be no higher than level 20 and only have access to spells and skills at that lvl. Your subjob will not gain experience when you level only your main job will.
The combat in ffxi is real time. It is controlled through macros (shortcuts that you assign to controllers and keyboards) and also through the menu interface. An interesting and worthy of mention feature of combat in ffxi is that once you hit a monster no one outside of your party can try to take that monster from you. A tactic known in the mmorpg community as "steal-killing" or "kill-stealing". What used to happen in other rpgs was that you would fight a monster, have it almost dead, and someone would come deliver the final blow, and get all of your experience points and then loot it's corpse and take all it's gold and items. That does not happen in ffxi.
The community is not perfect however. Due to websites like IGE where people spend real life money on in game currency, prices have sky rocketed. Example: I have an item i paid 350,000 for in august 2004. Today it goes for 1.5 million. And prices just keep going up. It's getting ridiculous. The economy is out of control. There's no other way to put it.
There are also japanese, english, europeans all co-exsisting together in the gamne. I like this feature but many do not. I have no problem playing with people of other ethnicities. The game comes with an easy to learn translator to handle all commands you'll need for battle and questing with non-english speaking players.
People can be rude as in any mmorpg. There is drama. loads of drama. It can be quite tiresome and frustrateing. I was kicked from one of my favorite linkshells (similar to a chatroom) for something minor a few months ago. Ive since moved on and found new linkshells but the pain of being betrayed by my friends still stings deep down.
Finding help for quests and missions or getting a party to go level up can be hard. You can spend hours and hours and hours sitting around town because after lvl ten the game is very very anti soloable.
There is no customization in this game. Very limited customization in appearance and no customization of stats as you level up. This is ffxi's true downfall in my opinion. It makes the game boreing as hell sometimes. I'm a fan of "character builds" where the user can make his fighter different from all other fighters or his mage into a melee/mage or whatever he wants it to be.
The world is large and new zones are added every few months. It's amazing ive played for 2 years and still have not visited all areas. Easily the largest game ive played. But the zones are rehashed and recycled. Example: Dunes... lvl 10... later... valley of sorrow lvl 50... look exactly the same and you fight the same damn blue crabs from lvl 10 onward lol.
There is also no room for experimentation. want to play monk/blackmage? That's too bad. it'll suck and you'll be stuck never being invited to a party. Want to play warrior/dark knight? That's too bad too. Or how about want to go out with a group of 3 white mages, 2 monks, and a thief? well that's too bad too because you'll die.
My party setup as thief ALWAYS looks like (thief, tank (paladin or ninja), whitemage (summoner if i have to), redmage or bard, melee partner, and blackmage, ranger, or summoner for the last spot.
Mages and rangers have a bit more room for "experimentation" as they can join what are known as manaburn and arrowburn parties after level 50. this is 5 blackmages or 5 rangers and they make awesome experience points. All other classes will never get to experience anything like this.
Crafting in ffxi is fun but to be honest, not all that profitable. takes about 1-2 million investment to get high enough level to make good cash and even then you need to level 2-3 additional crafts to REALLY start making money as many recipees call for multiple skills. Also its a little bit boreing. You just basically talk to an npc or print a guide online, figure out what to cook then point click and done. I prefer Everquest 2's almost.... combat like.... crafting method over sitting in town clicking menus for hours on end.
The learning curve is very very sharp. im level 70 and still learning things i never knew. And each time you play a new job even if you have other jobs maxed out you're learning to play in an entirely new way. it's a great challenge but also very rewarding when you become confident in your skills.
There is no pvp (player versus player) so to speak except in one exceptional case. And that case is a completely voluntary/optional game known as ballista. You compete on teams and try to score points by putting a ball in the opponents goal. Kinda harry-potter-esque.. You can kill and be killed but do not lose experience points. the winning team gets some money, items, and experience point bonuses.
The servers are... fair... i have seen far worse in terms of lag and downtime. but as of the past month or so there have been attacks on the servers which have caused random server crashes and certain features to be offline for extended ammounts of time or have even made logging into the game difficult. As soon as this issue is resolved though i am sure the servers will return to normal. so all and all i think SE's servers are very stable and reliable. They only come down about once a month for the new patch to be released.
I think that about covers anything and everything you could want to know about this game. I reccomend this game. I dont see myself quiting anytime soon.
If you want a game you can solo this game is not for you. Go out and buy world of warcraft instead.
If you want a game that will give you goals to strive for for the next 3-5 years and force you to work co-operatively with other people then this game is for you.
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