Even on official previews and articles, everything you see in the screenshot galeries is stuff created by Square, but not a single screenshot or video created by players or reviewers. Nothing. If I wanted to write a magazine preview about the FF14 re-release, I'd have to send my screenshots to Japan, have them approved by Square and if I'm lucky, they might allow me to use them.
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
Now, let me show you a Square-approved screenshot or two:
Right.
I don't wanna break any rules here, I don't wanna risk my account by posting any actual screenshots, so let me just say that I'm still waiting for my game to look as amazing as that shit above.
Don't get me wrong. The new engine doesn't look bad. In fact, the game looks pretty fucking decent, the landscapes are beautiful and the expression of fear, anger or joy on the faces of your character and the NPCs you interact with are more believable and realistic than anything I have ever seen in an RPG before. But those amazing spell effects up there? That realistic lighting? I dunno where that's from, but I sure as fuck haven't seen it in the beta. And while the new engine performs at a stable 60FPS even on my lower mid-range machine, the game also features its fair share of ugly, muddy textures and the most hideous, pixellated hair-textures you can possibly imagine. And in a Japanese game full of spiky, gravity-defying haircuts, that's a pretty huge deal.
Instead of the breath-taking special FX my battles are full of ugly particle-effects, which fill the whole damn screen and make it impossible to see what the hell is going on most of the time. But they're nice and rainbow-coloured. Purple particles, blue particles, lots of red particles and sometimes yellow particles. Whee! I'm sure there's a monster hiding somewhere beneath all of that crap.
Still. All nit-picking and pointing out of shameless bullshots aside, this is still going to be one of the most visually appealing MMOs to date. Provided, you're not put off by the angrogynous character design, cat-girls (and cat boys now, too, apparently... ugh!) and midgets, who resemble six year olds - with facial hair!
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| AAAARGH! It's like Mr. Spock fucked Asterix! |
In case you're not familiar with the original, awful Final Fantasy XIV, which failed so hard that the entire dev team got fired, the servers were shut down and they came up with this 'new and improved' version, allow me to summarize some of the original's most gaping flaws:
- Nothing to do: Quests were limited to a small amount per 48 hours, grinding was punished with experience penalties up to 100%, some small amount of story quests, which were impossible to follow and made no sense
- Boring, repetitive game world: The world was split into three different starting zones and two high level zones. Each zone was incredibly huge, but offered no unique, distinct landmarks. One zone was simply a forest, another zone was a desert and so forth. A bit like the planets of the Star Wars universe.
- No tutorials: Most features of FFXIV weren't explained, even veterans had a hard time figuring out how to play the game, even the most simple and basic functions like maps, trading with other players or figuring out where to go for a quest usually involved lots of trial & error or a google search
- Zero user-friendliness and comfort: Shitty UI and menu system, no proper LFG tool, no auction house, overpriced item repairs... the list goes on.
Now, if you're familiar with my blog, then you know that I have still played the original and raised a paladin all the way to the level cap. That's because I loved FFXI, which was the previous Final Fantasy MMORPG, and I really, seriously wanted to love FXIV. I managed to like it for a while, despite all of its gaping flaws and problems, but that's as far as I'll go.
Now Square was nice enough to grant veterans access to their powerful characters from the previous version, allowing them to explore the new game with their old avatars. And I gave it a go.
Good news first - the game does start with some quick and easy tutorial-style quests. This is how you interact with NPCs, this is how you use the brand new quest tracker and find your way on the map, here's your inventory, you get the idea. The one thing FFXIV has not done in the roughly 20 levels of main storyline I've played so far, was explain to me how crafting works now. I'll admit I always hated the crafting in the original version, I didn't care to get into it in the new version, but while the game taught me about guild leves, resting, fighting and just about everything else, it has never even touched the subject of crafting. I guess that's still work in progress or I'm completely retarded and just missing something.
Another problem of the original, the almost complete lack of quests and things to do, has been dealt with. I've run into quest NPCs left, right and center, on top of the main storyline, which continues every couple of levels or so. Unfortunately, most of these quests are so unbelievably dull, stupid and boring, I quickly gave up on accepting them and only followed the main storyline (I'm level 50, I can skip all the filler crap). Let me give you an example: I bumped into a noblewoman (at least her wall of text suggested that I did), causing her to drop some coins on the floor, so I had to collect the coins by right-clicking them and give them back to her. Other quests had me deliver a letter from one NPC to another (who was standing IN THE SAME FUCKING ROOM!), deliver a pumpkin, deliver a ring, fetch an earring... for fuck's sake, I'm not a god damn errand boy!
Holy shit, about a half hour later I even recieved a quest to collect some blood, pelts and other random bodily shit from the level 1 critters right outside the city gates. Can you believe I was actually glad to receive a simple kill-quest, because those were at least a little less boring than all that FedEx shit?
Okay, sure, there's a whole story questline, which is fun and tells and exciting story and everything, right? Well....
I won't lie to you. I have no idea what the fuck the story is supposed to be about. My character passes out at random, then she literally flies through space with a bunch of random strangers and talks to floating crystals. I'm not making this up. Some girlish-looking "male" NPCs show up and babble random nonsense like: "I believe we have... oh, nevermind!" and walk off again. Then my character faints and gets random flashbacks involving some of the NPCs, but it's impossible to make heads or tails of any of this crap. The storytelling is abysmal, I have zero clue wtf is going on, I don't know, understand or even care for any of the characters. What's worse, the story-quests thus far aren't fun, they aren't challenging and they're 75% errands.
During one particular (main!) quest I had to enter a restaurant of sorts and talk to an NPC. But the quest NPC was too busy and asked me to take fucking FOOD ORDERS from the god damn guests around the place! I literally had to walk from one patron to another and ask them what they wanted to eat, then hand the orders to the NPC before he'd allow me to continue on a quest. And shit like that happens all the time! Survey some ore nodes. Hand cookies to children. Kill five ants and take their mandibles to some random dude. Who the fuck enjoys that kind of shit anymore?
Okay, let's not forget to mention the little boss fights and story-based battles you get on some rare occasions. When you're done with your crappy FedEx and handing out cookies and delivering pumpkins, the game will send some nasty gargoyle, a golem or some other shit you way. Most of that stuff looks really threatening until some asshole NPCs appear and do all the work for you. Which, so far, has happened in every single "boss" event. An NPC shows up and takes the aggro right off me. I'm a level 50 paladin. The very definition of a tank in this game. I can taunt those monsters all the way I want, they won't attack me. They attack the NPC. And if I do get hit by harmless minions or random AoE, the NPC companion heals me. I cannot fail. It is impossible to fail story quests. There is no challenge here, no excitement and no sense of achievement when you win yet another completely meaningless battle you were never meant to lose to begin with.
The one new type of quest I have actually enjoyed involved the new 'FATE'-system. Fate meaning 'Full Active Time Event, which is really just a fancy expression from "random event copied straight from Rift and Guild Wars 2". A bunch of powerful monsters appears somewhere, you can jump right in and fight them and depending on your acontribution you get rewarded with some money (gil) and experience. That's nice, it's fun, it's level-scaled and you get random players to join and help on the fly. And that's about all the fun I had with the quests in this game.
As for the zones, I have only explored what I believe to be a small fraction of the game's world, but there's a ton of variety right there, beautiful landscapes, no complaints here. And since we're already talking aesthetics, let me move right on to the new UI and menu system. Good news is, it's a lot better, nicer to look at and hell of a lot easier to use than the original crap. The bad news is, it's still not great and far from 'on par' with any modern MMO out there. Realigning and moving my action bars was a chore, making them appear in the first place was anything but intuitive and I can't resize them or make unused slots invisible. You know, shit that WoW has been doing for more than a half decade.
In fact, the whole damn game is still in the stone age when it comes to comfort and user-friendliness. My sprint is a god damn skill, which needs to be hotkeyed, because simply pressing shift like in any other game is too easy, apparently. Want to mount up in town? FUCK YOU! Want to interact with NPCs whilst mounted up? FUCK YOU TWICE! Want to attack an enemy without having to hit the dismount button? Ffffff... well, you know. YOU CAN'T DO SHIT WHILE YOU'RE RIDING!
Yes, this may not be a big deal to some of you, but it pisses me off, because the whole damn game is like that! I have to use fucking "retainers" instead of just putting my shit on an auction house. I have to wait 12 hours in between 3 killquests. I don't see the exact location of a quest marker on my map if the quest leads me to a different area. Dungeons come with a fucking time limit, which kicks me out if my group takes too long to beat it. And so on.
It feels like it was made by a bunch of guys who have never even touched a modern MMO. I mean, if you're already ripping off Rift with your FATE stuff (which is a good thing), why don't you folks at Square spend a day or two playing WoW or any successful online game out there and then look back at your own game and see how awkward, how unneccessarily complicated, how downright annoying it is in places?
And that doesn't even include Final Fantasy's outdated combat-system. Oh wow, you made it faster, you added more hotkeys to click, well fuck, have you checked out Guild Wars 2 or Neverwinter? Stand around and click hotkeys, that shit got boring in 2005! What's worse, there are NO skilltrees, there is NO class customization, NOTHING! Even ancient Final Fantasy XI allowed you to at least "multiclass" your characters to some extent, i.e. combine paladin and ninja and become an agile, dual-wielding tank. A Realm Reborn (ARR) lets you choose up to 5 abilities from any of your unlocked classes you're not currently using and that's it for customization.
Sure, ARR is better than what Square now refers to as "version 1.0". Well, duh. It's better because it has actual quests, a UI which isn't complete garbage (but still far from good) and visual variety in its game world. And so does every other MMORPG out there. But guess what? Every other MMORPG out there is F2P or B2P. With the exception of WoW (yet). FFXIV used to cost monthly fees. So far, there have been no news on a F2P transition. Players expect them to start charging fees again. Who the hell is gonna pay to play this stuff? Every month? Die-hard fans? Yeah sure, maybe those who like the freaky races and the winks at the older FF-titles ('Warriors of Light', Bahamut, the Crystal Tower). But guess what? Star Wars has fans. Warhammer has fans. That didn't really help the mediocre MMORPGs, which used these licenses. And somehow I doubt it's gonna help ARR.
Don't get me wrong. This isn't a bad game. It's awkward, complicated, derivative and completely lacks innovation, but it's an okay game. But what MMO out there isn't? What, aside from the unique setting, do I get in Final Fantasy that I can't get in WoW, Rift, Aion, Tera, SWTOR and god knows how many other games out there? Are nice visuals and a popular name really enough to make this game stand out? I highly doubt it. What's worse - who is even going to play it after the disastrous original launch? Other games failed at launch and got fixed over time (Age of Conan comes to mind), but never managed to appeal to the amounts of players their creators had once hoped for.
If you're just looking for some new MMO to play, the new Final Fantasy is not going to be it. If you're a die-hard fan and seriously hoping to get into ARR after the initial version put you off, you may get some fun out of this one, but even then, this is likely going to be some quick, short-lived fun, until you'll realise this is not the virtual home you have been looking for. This isn't Vana'Diel. It's still Eorzea. And it's simply not a very exciting place.
-Cat
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