Fainaru fantajî XIV: Shinsei eoruzea

If you don't like the Trial / "Realm Reborn" take my word, you won't like any of it...

New players hope you are ready for 200+ hours of MSQ which is mainly reading text.

I fell for the recent hype. To all the people who says "it gets better" seriously, what is wrong with you? This constant insincerity is what kept me going. IT DOESN'T GET BETTER (a least to the point it serves as a valid argument).

I just finished Shadowbringers 5.5 MSQ, and let me tell you, this is an "interactive Novel" more than it is a video game.

Sure with each expansion the game (novel) gets a little better, in terms of graphics, animations, storytelling, but the CORE of the game doesn't change, it is still this outdated mmorpg tab targeting, with its main FOCUS on MSQ, which is basically walls of text.

Your quests in order of occurrences is: talk, travel, click objects, kill NPCs, do dungeons/trials/story instances.

They added one different mechanic in Stormblood lol, which is to "click stuff in FPS mode".

I can count the EPIC moments of the story in one hand! 3 of them were in Havensward and 2 in Shadowbringers (forget RR and SB).

The main focus of this game is the MSQ, but the problem is; the MSQ is 90% fluff pointless writing and storytelling, you could cut out 80% of this writing and still get a concise accurate description of the story, albeit just more on point.

What Square Enix is doing is inflating game time content with more and more text and sloppy animation screens, which I'm not kidding stretches the MSQ than it really needs to be. I'm not even talking about important background build up, I'm talking about content you won't even remember because it served no purpose in the grand scheme of things. (Anything you wont remember a month from now isn't worth reading about).

Because the MSQ is mainly storytelling, and single player orientated, why not just play better solo video games that are much, much better technically advanced in gameplay, like GTA 5, Witcher 3, red redemption 2, and hundreds of others titles?

There were times I was so desperate to just "play" the game, because there is so few dungeons/trials and killing quests in-between all the walls of text.

One could always pay a story skip potion, but the fact is MSQ is the focus of this game, the endgame is extra stuff. Players and Square have both said that MSQ is the focus of the game, and the more casual player base.

WoW = focuses on repeatable endgame content after a short introductory (and often crap) storyline.

FF14 = 200 hours of MSQ (at minimum) at which point you can cycle through some endgame content and get max ilvl gear fairly easily. But levelling others job/crafts, which has its own questlines seems be one of the most popular things to do.

I won't be buying Endwalker. People who enjoy reading fluff for hundreds of hours to see one good cutscene here and there, you do that, enjoy! I'll watch it in a recap YouTube video and do more productive things with my life than read FLUFF MSQ content, which is intentionally used to extend game play time.

"You can always make more money, but you can't make more time" think about if you're really enjoying that 200 hours or if you're only enjoy small amounts of it. Whilst the epic moments were epic, the pain of going through so much unfun content to see it was not worth it. The balance is definitely not there.

Even most fans think the post RR quests are so bad, yet square hasnt fixed it by just removing it for new players by using a short narration cutscene to bring players up to date for havensward. (And i heard it was even worse, oh dear God).

At first I thought this game was really boring since it's allot slower starting then other games. While first campaign "A realm Reborn" (ARR) was put together quickly since the original XIV (1.0) had issues and was eventually thrown away. The way they done this thou was clever. The original game being scrapped was the world ending and ARR is the new world. So it's part of the lore.

But the rushed development of ARR really shows. The quests are more basic and there is so much filler. But the demo version gives you the first expansion for free. This is obviously to show people that that when you finally get the core game over and done with that it does get better. The combat finally gets better rather than just mashing the same few abilities. You also finally get some more challenging dungeons. If you want a real challenge then I recommend going healer since it's the hardest class. How ever you have the hole team relying on you so I would say choose this once you max out another class so you understand the game.

The community in this game are the most positive I've seen in an MMO. When I was learning a new dungeon, I kept dying repeatedly. And being a healer, everyone else soon fell. Everyone was encouraging and showing me what to do. Other MMOs I've played after the first death you wait for the first person to leave, followed by everyone else. Its refreshing to play a game where people are actually having fun and not just playing cos they don't know what else to do to pass the time.

Another great part with this game is switching classes. Other games normally a character is the class. In XIV the weapon is the class. So if you wanna switch from Black Mage to Warrior, just swap the weapon. Each class has its own level and story line. So there is tons of fun to have working with each class and maxing them all out. Plus the storylines are an added bonus and give you extra abilities throughout them.

Overall the game is well worth pushing past the early content. The higher budget content is amazing. You can guarantee you'll have the best experience an MMO can offer. The game isn't made to be addictive and there is 0 pay to win. Its slightly more expensive then other games thou. You buy the expansions all together so you don't buy them individually. When a new expansion comes out you buy the expansion pack again to gain access. It also comes with 60 day membership. Then ontop of that you gotta buy membership. How ever I don't mind paying more for a game if it means they don't have to add pay to win micro-transactions. If you want thou, there is cosmetic store items (Which don't expire so no fear of missing out). These aren't really pushed that hard. I didn't even know they were a thing for months. And more there if you want. But you can get loads of cool cosmetics from playing the game and earning as rewards.

I finished every FF game (even the Lightning nonsense) and canon spin-off but never touched the 2 online one's as that isn't my genre. PS Plus offers members a 2 week trial period (free enough for me) so i started with the "sequel". The controls are clearly meant for a keyboard but they work fine enough and the graphics and map size are clearly build with the PS3 in mind. The infrequent use of voice-overs dates the game further but the style and music are well done regardless and i had the feeling that i was playing a real FF game despite it being indistinguishable from WoW or The Old Republic. The game is actually a bit better than Star Wars which surprised me. You can feel that Yoshida's team looked at what the west did in the MMO genre and they did well all things considered when they remade the dead or arrival game. I only got me toes wet when i was done as the story is an alibi only but i can recommend the experience in the end. Check it out if you have a PS4 and all MMO's should have a free trail period. 7,5/10 (?)