For the sake of moving forward, I will dedicate this one paragraph to Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, the version launched in 2010, to say that compared to its predecessor, A Realm Reborn is normal. Those of you who played the earlier version will have an idea as to what I’m talking about, but for those who haven’t I will go over some missing “features.” Gone are the long and convoluted systems of menus which often had the player throwing their keyboard at the wall in frustration, because the simple process of checking your inventory was a five minute affair. Menus that inexplicably suffered from copious amounts of input lag. Your only option to level up was grinding mass numbers of creatures, as story quests were few and far in between and you could only take on eight guildleves (side quests) every thirty six hours. Final Fantasy XIV required a browser on hand because the game had a ridiculous tendency to not explain to you a majority of what would otherwise be basic and required information, and even if you managed to suffer through the long grind on battlefields that copied and pasted the same twenty square feet over and over again, you were rewarded with fatigue! Yes, what better way to entice your hardcore power-levelers than to punish them with lower experience rates?
I’d suggest that everyone associated with Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 be fired, but they already were. When FFXIV 1.0 bombed in every market, including some that do not exist on any plane of reality that we know of, Square Enix pretty much cleaned house. So that is the end of any comparison to FFXIV 1.0 in terms of quality, because this is a review on A Realm Reborn standing on its own merits, not on the simple matter of being better than 1.0. So without further ado, let’s dive in to the good, the bad, and the Square Enix.
First let’s start with the good, because this is not only how I fill my paycheck from Corporate McBribeski but because no amount of praise I could ever give a game will ever appease the fans once I actually start criticizing it. A Realm Reborn offers a multiclass system to remove the need for multiple characters, and the system works quite well. Classes are unlocked once you reach level 10 in your starting class and join the appropriate guild (realistically this will be 15 as that is when you unlock airship access and can easily travel between cities). I prefer this system because it not only forces the player to get acquainted with their first class on some level before they can branch out, but it also distinguishes each class as almost a character of its own. Even classes like fisherman and chef, which would normally be relegated to a single window in most other MMOs, feels like something you could conceivably play by itself.
It also means that you can ease into each class on a rather smooth level, as fishing uses a different set of abilities than alchemy, for instance. You start out with the bare minimum of abilities, generally just one or two, and gain more as you level up. Classes can be swapped on the fly just about anywhere, providing you aren’t in combat, with the simple switching of your weapon. Since your class is tied to your weapon, role players probably won’t appreciate that you must have something equipped in your weapon slot at all times, no exceptions, but most of them when put away become rather unnoticeable.
Questing in FFXIV hasn’t changed a whole lot from the norm: Each class has a series of quests that unlock every few levels, and the story quests are where the game really shines. The game picks up where 1.0 left off, with the world being mostly destroyed by Bahamut and civilization picking itself up with the threat of invasion from the Garlean Empire. The story is told through said story quests with rich dialogue, brilliantly executed cutscenes, and an insane amount of lore. If you aren’t paying attention, it is very easy to get lost in exactly what is going on. In usual Final Fantasy fashion, there are plenty of characters that toe the line between totally serious and hilariously exaggerated, and the Garlean Empire sports people who range from bumbling stupidity to menacingly terrifying.
Next I want to talk about the gathering and crafting skills, which have changed a bit while remaining the same at their core. While gathering, the player activates a triangulating skill which reveals otherwise invisible nodes in the area. You click on the node, and you are presented with a list of items that may be obtained from the node, and their individual percentage chance of success. You pick an item from the list and hit, and each hit takes away from the node’s overall health. Once the node drops to zero, you have to find a new node. Fishing, on the other hand, is entirely random. Each area has a set list of fish which is nicely recorded in a fishing log, and involves picking the right bait, throwing your line in, and clicking to reel in when you get a bite.
Crafting skills, on the other hand, are once again a tug of war between finishing the item and boosting its chance of turning out as a “high quality” product. Since each action extracts a certain amount of durability from the process, the goal is to use your other abilities to boost the chances that the item will turn out “high quality” and thus more valuable, while at the same time ensuring you have enough durability left to actually create the item. For instance, you might be cooking a fish and see that you have 20 durability left and 9 points to cook. You can choose to synthesize it and finish the recipe safely with two chances to cook, or you can spend one of those chances on giving the dish an extra 3% chance of being high quality. Ultimately the trade crafts are a game of chance, one that you will likely lose at once or twice before you get the feeling down, but they are enjoyable if heavy on the grind.
I also enjoyed the fact that the game rewards the player for exploring new grounds. Players are rewarded for filling their log books with monsters killed, recipes completed, setting fish records, and more. The tradecraft and guild vendors sell a lot of the materials needed for low level tradescraft recipes, which is good because your tradescraft and fieldcraft products do not match in many areas. Rye, for instance, is required for a very low level culinarian recipe, but is harvested from a level 15 botanist node, according to the wiki. I would also recommend focusing on just one or two classes at a time, otherwise you’ll find yourself stretched very thin and likely sabotage your interest in the game via information overload.
One thing you will never do in Final Fantasy XIV is loot a creature, and I couldn’t be happier. This isn’t to say you don’t receive loot, it’s just fairly rare that you do and it is often just crafting materials. You’re going to get your equipment via questing, levequests, crafting, dungeons, and purchasing from other players. In that respect, Square Enix is going for a more realistic drop system. I don’t know where a Marmot would carry a pointy spear, and since it will never drop one I guess I will never know. I will say that the whole idea of players crafting the equipment comes to a dead stop when you realize that the items gained via dungeons are more powerful.
MMO Fallout 