FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn

It's honestly kinda hard to give an honest full recommendation to the base of FF14, having just finished it and its patches finally I think I can safely say the experience definitely gets better near the end and more-so into the patches themselves especially when it comes to dungeons but the first like 15-20 hours of the game are honestly such a slog that it's hard for me to give an honest and full recommendation unless it's like you're playing and leveling with a group of friends or something to get through the much more boring introductory content of the game. I had like nothing to latch onto gameplay-wise, character-wise, even story-wise there really was just nothing for me to work with. 

Then when the end of the game/patches came in the entire experience just really goes up in quality, likeable characters come in, characters who were alright before become way way more interesting. The plot itself even becomes more intriguing and kinda morally dubious even if there is still kind of a mustache twirling villain, it's a little more politically involved and I enjoy it.

I just hate that ARR wastes your time getting to that point honestly and if I wasn't playing through with friends and my partner and I wasn't be pushed through essentially to hang on I would've dropped this game honestly for the 5th time.

I'm excited now to get to Heavensward however so we'll see how things go.

I wanted to enjoy this game. I played over 100 hours before I called it quits. In the end, this is just another WoW clone with some good dungeon and boss design. Everything else is a slog. 

Story

This story is an insult to Square Enix's past storytelling ability. Never have I experienced a more bland, drawn out story. To give you reference, there are 300+ Main Story Quests, maybe 20 of which actually have any sort of voice or mocap work done. After a certain point, I just skipped every cutscene and all dialogue, and it still took me 100 hours to complete.

Gameplay
 
Bland. You will have several hotbars full of skills. Once you know your rotation, you've mastered the gameplay. You character will play identically to any other of the same class, to the point that having two of you in the same party is a detriment. The only redeeming value is dungeons and boss fights, but good luck finding a good group for anything other than the most up to date content (which I never even reached in my time playing). Groups for older content are often jaded about getting queued into them, and half the time people would leave.
 
The loot system is all based on ilvl, with no unique modifiers.
 
World
 
You would expect Square Enix's fantastic world building and world design, right? Nope. World falls flat, and that's to say nothing of the fact that it's entirely too big and disconnected. You will walk (or ride a mount) for the vast majority of your playtime. The idea of playing in an MMO world that was devastated by a massive meteor strike was kinda cool at first, but that's kind of their entire premise. 

Pay Model, other Meta qualities
 
The pay model sucks. End of story. It's an archaic relic from the WoW era where you pay for the game, then pay monthly to play it, then pay an additional $40 a year to play the DLC. There's exp boosts, Main Story Quest skips, and cosmetics available on the shop as well for near the full price of the game ($30-$40). The game is separated into servers. If you're not on the same server as your bud, tough luck. You can't play with them. The game is also so underpopulated that it can take 30-40 minutes to complete a queue that searches across ~15 different servers.

Closing Thoughts

The common "praise" of this game says "Oh, base game is shit, just keep playing until you get to the new content." I was constantly told by those who recommended this to me to just push forward. Well, 100 hours later I'm done pushing forward, which is a shame because the dungeons and trials really are pretty great. The game doesn't get better. If you hated WoW for the grind, you're going to hate this. It's a WoW clone, short and sweet.

Is kind of hard to rate an MMO because my experience can be significantly different from everyone so I'm going to focus more in the "Single player aspect" and not the social aspect. As you may expect, ARR is a massive game with a ton of quests and jobs to do, the first hours may be overwhelming with all the menus and options and skills, etc, but once you get the gist of it its more or less easy, the control scheme its very good or at least to me felt nice, so instead of buying a keyboard and mouse for my ps4, I stuck with the controller.

So let's do the bad first, the main story its at times and mostly in the first and mid half really slow, its no surprise tho' because Square needs you to take things slowly and take you at least 2 months of subscription but it can be very punishing, the thing goes more or less like this: you accept a quest in some town, you need to take care of some enemies or search for something or someone in another town, then you go to another specified point and then you go back to the requester, this procedure is going to be your best friend for at least the next 30 hours so you better like it or accept it, the main cast is serviceable at first but it develops nicely by the end (more of that later), the dungeons have interesting mechanics but are easy and slow to take, so sometimes it can be boring to do grinding. Speaking of gameplay, there is a lot of positioning and role mechanics that are very fun and interesting, also if you already have friends in XIV or want to invite new ones, the dungeon system has a syncing mechanic, so everyone can join the fight and be rewarded, so that's a good feat, obviously the thing is more fun if you have friends, but if you're a lone wolf like me you can also have some fun, because you don't need to know or speak to any other player in order to advance, it can be played as a single player.

For the main quest, the boss battles are interesting and sometimes kind of challenging but never too much, so you need to wait a little to get the good of ARR, which takes to Pros of this game, the music is really good and different from one another, some boss battles are your epic fantasy stuff and others are more like rock or electronic, and everything works very well. The story goes to good with the first ending to really really good in the endgame ARR patch, which I won't spoil but serves as founding ground for the next (or after?) expansion, that ending was like a solid punch to the gut. As for the endgame, is when things get really good, you unlock new and totally cool gear, raids and hard and extreme boss battles of the bosses, the extreme battles were the ones I enjoyed the most, you need to be in full sync to your party to get things done, like a synced dance where if one fucks it up, there is a big chance that you'll be killed, it maintain the stakes in the sky and gives you goosebumps when you fnally make it.

It's kind of hard to sell this game to anyone since you need to invest a lot of time and money, but I think if you look for a good FF challenging experience, please look no further, this game contains one of my favorite fights and characters of the entire franchise, it can be that good.

I've been feeling all The MMORPGs tried in the last Few years. From Aion, Tera, Teso, Archeage to Allods and Runescape. None of these could somehow captivate me. As a Final Fantasy Fan, I have now decided to try Final Fantasy XIV, despite Subscription Fees. The Following shows what I find so special and fascinating about the Game:-You only need one Character to be able to play all Classes and Professions. If you realize after 20 Levels that you prefer to play a Healer, you can do it and start with Level 1 again but can always switch back to your previous Class. -Contant! I was fascinated by the Possibilities in the Game, because FF14 offers numerous level and Employment Opportunities. I can just play the Storyquest to reach the maximum Level or I'm accustomed to all The side Quests of NPCs, play Group content in the Content Search (Dungeons), go hunting for Monsters via the Bestarium, and so on. There's the Golden Sourcer where you can play Mini-games like a Collectible card game or Choco racing. It's actually for everyone. In the end game, you can of course let off steam in THE PVP. -Graphic & Atmosphere! Since everyone should make their own Image of but Animations and Effects are terrific. But what makes the Game so special are the Little Things: If you Go to a Village with only a few NPCs and maybe 2 Players, it's very quiet. If this Village fills up but with Players the Soundscape gets louder and louder (talking People, laughs, etc.). Standing next to a Person and writing with her, your Character's Lips move. Things like That make a Game Amkind. -Story! Those who like the Final Fantasy Games will also like the Story of FF14. She's really exciting compared to other MMORPGs. -Classes! There are of course the standard classes in FF14 such as Archer, Warrior or even the Magician but each Class can be combined with other Classes to create unique "Jobs." For example, I took my Forest Ranger to Level 30 and the Fist Fighter to 15-so I got a Quests to draw a Bard out of these two Classes. -When I started the Game, I fell straight into Nostalgia! Because even the Theme Music was familiar. The Music in the Towns and Villages when you ride on the Chocobo or in the Dungeons are terrific. Sometimes they're so epic that you don't want to get out of the Dungeon at all. There are certainly many more Good things to report, such as the helpful and adult Community, but in conclusion there is only one thing left for me to say: Try it out and enjoy it! (You can try it for free for 14 Days)