Review: Final Fantasy XI
by Findar

Almost a year after its US release we are finally reviewing Final Fantasy XI for the PC. Over the years I have played almost all the games in the Final Fantasy series, up to and including FFVII on the original Playstation & the PC, which for me was a disappointing game. When I was asked to review this game the first thought that crossed my jaded MMORPG mind was, why the heck would Square-Enix take a very very popular RPG and take it online and onto the PC where the FF series hasn't had much success? Can over 500,000 active subscribers be wrong? Well folks I am about to answer my own questions, or at least I hope to.

It took me all of 5 minutes for me to open the box and start the install of the game after the mail arrived in the middle of the week, and usually while installing a game I will go over the box and checkout the art and browse through the manual. I did this for about 45 minuets and the game was not quite halfway through the install, so it goes without saying this is a big install for a MMORPG with just one expansion, which by the way comes with the retail release. Finally the install finished and I started what turned out to be an overnight journey into the downloading of all the patched files from the last year or so of updates, and this with a cable modem.

Once the game was updated the next morning I wasted no time in getting logged into the game. The account creation process is a bit lengthy because you need to create a few different accounts put in all your payment info and link it all together but it will only take about 15 or 20 minuets of your time to get through all of this and onto creating your first character. There are a few things I want to point out, one is during this whole process you get a mail account that you attach to your handle/login ID so you can have friends ingame just mail you there instead of giving out your regular email address, also all billing notes go to this mail address that is created. For those of you who like mules or second characters to tryout other classes, it will cost you and extra .95 cents a month per extra character slot on top of the 12.95 a month charge, but in the game you can just change jobs on a whim with no penalty.

Ok now that I went through the 20 minuets of setting my account up I started on my character, I knew I wanted to eventually be a Ranger and the best race for that are the catlike Mithra who have the best agility and dexterity of all the races and make very good Rangers because of it, the downside is I could only play a female character, no biggie it is a roleplaying game isn’t it? During this creation process your stats are set by race & job choice and certain stats will go up every level or so, the stats the rise are dependent on job choice. If you have friends in game you want to play with them you will need to do one of two things because you do not pick what server you want to play on. You can make , delete and remake your character till you get the server you want or one of your friends can get you a worldpass and give you the number so when you create your character you can enter the worldpass number and start on that server. This sounds like a pain in the ass, but it is an attempt to keep all servers with a relatively stable population so over crowding doesn't become an issue. There aren't a lot of choices when it comes to creating your character, each race has 8 face choices, 2 alternate hair choices and 3 body sizes. Once you have created the look of your character you choose one of 6 starting jobs Warrior, Monk, Thief, White Mage, Red Mage or Black Mage, and then your nation of choice, Bastok which is the Industrial nation, San d 'Oria which is the Militant nation, and Windurst which is the more rural of the three nations or Kingdoms.

Ok before I get into the gameplay, questing system and combat let me touch on the graphics and sound in the game, the things that make it immersive. One thing I am not a graphics whore but I was surprised to see such good graphics for a game originally developed for the PS2. Everything that is organic by nature (characters, terrain, etc.) looks like it should, round and smooth no really noticeable polygons or flat edges, I was rather impressed. The textures are all very well done, but I wouldn't call them realistic, things look like stone, metal, grass but they aren't as realistic as you may find in some games, but well done none the less. One other thing that I think developers need to look at in this genre is forcing people with older machines to upgrade to play, Square Enix did a wonderful job of keeping even the recommended machine specs down so people with a machine up to a few years old can run this game with almost all settings on high. I think the music in the game is wonderful, as it is with most Final Fantasy games, the music for each city and kingdom fits the overall theme and look of the area. Bastok has music with a lot of bass mixed in it very industrial sounding, San d 'Oria follows its militaristic theme with a lot of bagpipes and marching type music while Windurst has a very upbeat, renaissance faire sound to it although it can be cloying at times. Sound effects are spot on and I did not find any delay in sounds changing when switching between the types of terrain being walked on, battle music is ok but can get annoying after hearing as often as you do like most games in the genre.

Alright now onto the meat & potatoes of every MMORPG - general gameplay, questing, crafting and combat. Overall the gameplay for FFXI is the same as any current MMORPG, kill stuff, sell stuff, buy new equipment rinse and repeat, but with the occasional twist. For Gameplay - for the entire game - is all your are going to say about it is that one sentence? Maybe bring the combat paragraph up and merge the sentence with that paragraph to give it more substance. If you don’t want to do that, then I would move the “Overall the gameplay” sentence to AFTER the “Before we get into the” sentence. Before we get into the actual gameplay let me touch on the controls, the default settings and controls in my opinion suck, plain and simple. The good news is that Square Enix has given players a second control scheme they call the compact layout which makes the controls 100% better, and using the WSAD keys for movement instead of the default setting of the number pad for movement. The chat windows at their default settings are way to small and are set to change size from a couple of lines up to seven and then shrink down depending on activity, quite annoying because you may miss part of a conversation but this can easily changed.

Questing, my favorite thing to do and also the reason why I haven't steadily played an MMORPG in almost 2 years. It seems every game I have tried including Everquest, questing was something you did if you were bored , or because it was the only way to get an uber weapon needed for the high level game, in FFXI its for money not experience and also for advancement to advanced jobs and different levels of crafting, more on that later. The quests follow the same basic outline of every game to come before FFXI, fetch me a few of these and bring it back, or go kill things until they drop a few things and bring them back. Now here in lies the difference, your not always given what you need, you may actually have to talk to other NPC's associated with the quest giver to find out what you have to get, or you may end up with a quest like the one I did as my first foray into questing in FFXI. I talked to the guy who ran the hat shop in Windurst and he said he would give me a bunch of cash if I went around his section of the city showing off the new hat he invented, basically I talked to everyone in his section of Windurst and found out there are 4 special people who comment on the hat, once it was all said and done I got a few hundred gil (money) and a decent hat with some resists that I can use once I hit level 4, not too bad for a half hours work and a little different than the norm for quests. Another type of quest is a mission that you accept from Guards in the city you swear allegiance too, competing these missions gives you a higher rank allowing you to use certain items, get different quests, and other benefits of higher rank in your nation. OK on a side note something special about FFXI is the fact that it uses cutscenes, like a lot of single player rpg's, to give depth and help move the story along and in this case to help give a little background on why your getting the quest, something I didn't think would fit into the MMORPG world but Square Enix made work and work well.

Crafting, in some games is a money sink to kill time, in some games just a pain in the ass to obtain ingredients for recipes for mediocre equipment, also number 2 on my list of what I enjoy about these games. My dream MMORPG would have a deep crafting system, one that I could take long breaks from grinding and run my own shop making weapons, armor, and items that players actually need at all levels of the game and those items should be the best or close to the best items in the game with exception to drops from very very large scale raids. FFXI's crafting system is a bit above most games but still falls short of what I would like to see in a crafting system. Most items that are crafted are useful in all phases of the game, the only problem is that crafting takes a lot of time to master and a lot of money to start and continue so it isn't something you can do full time if you feel like it and never go out and farm things to either use in crafting or to sell to fund crafting. There is something unique with the system that makes it a pain but also makes it different than other crafting systems, the use of Crystals. Crystals are used in place of forges, or cooking pots and in some cases the type of crystal needed makes sense and in a few cases it doesn't. Say you want to make a Meat Mithkabob which is used by a lot of melee classes due to its temporary stat increases, you need not only the normal cooking ingredients but also a Fire crystal which one would assume is used to cook the item, but to make Sliced Sardines you need a wind crystal? This is one of the things that makes the crafting system unique but at the same time it is very frusturating because to get these crystals you need to either go out and farm them from mobs by getting your nations signet cast on you by a guard or pay relatively inflated prices depending on the crystals because they are rare drops, or used most often, or have to be grown, which adds another dimension to the overall system and is something I will touch on in future updates to this review as I get into the midlevel and highlevel part of the game.

Ok now that all the above has been said lets hit the biggest part of any MMORPG, combat. Like most other games in this genre combat is a target, con, attack affair but with a twist or two to make it a little exciting. Unlike most other games there is a bit more strategy involved in combat, mainly the use of Tactical Points, or TP to activate special weapon skills that are different for each class and weapon used. You gain TP while in battle and slowly loose it while resting or not fighting MOB's, once you gain at least a 100% you can activate your weapon skill. While in solo combat at early levels there is much strategy involved in using your weapon skills, its once you get to the midlevel game where grouping because the only viable way to gain experience you used TP to create skill chains, which if timed correctly, and if the correct skills are used together, will create a massive amount of damage with special graphical affects to show you pulled it off. Consider re-writing the whole Combat Parapraph. It is jumpy, and not very clear on what your point is, that you are trying to get across.

Ok all that is left to be said now that I have rambled on about the heart and soul of the game there are just a few miscellaneous things I want to mention before I end this review. In my honest opinion getting around the gameworld in the early levels is not what I would call enjoyable. At early levels you will be running a lot which is not fun when trying to get to other cities and the only route there takes you through zones that are above your level. You can rent Chocobo's to help speedup travel but this cant be accomplished till your mid levels and you need to complete a quest to do this, and Airships are also available but that requires a ton of money or to be in you mid to higher levels to get to Rank 5 with your Nation to get an airship pass. There is a boat but it is a difficult run for lower level characters and high level mob's do tend to jump on the boat during its trip but that isn't always a problem if your below deck on the ferry. Something else that doesn't quit fit into questing or combat is Nation Conquest. What it is is that when you have your nations signet cast on you, on top of it allowing crystals to drop from mobs, it also gives your nation Conquest points to help determine what nation controls the current area, you can also gain conquest points by running supply missions to guard stations and then eventually spend some of your personal points on unique items only available with conquest points. Once your nation controls an area - vendors of your nation will start selling special items from the areas that are under their control, other than this there is not much of a reason to try gaining control of an area for your nation, unless it is used in roleplay. PvP was virtually non existent until recently when consensual events called Ballista were added, I have not had the opportunity to participate in these first hand, but look for something about them in the update to this review once I get further into the game and have the opportunity to see some things you will not be able to participate in until later levels. The last thing I want to mention is that every player starts off with their own “Mog House” which is essentially your own apartment where you can add furniture and store items right off the bat, these seem to take the place of banks which do not exist in the game. Overall I find this game enjoyable, which surprised me going in because from what I had read about the game it didn't seem like something I would enjoy, honestly I am happy I got to review the game because for the first time in over a year I found an MMORPG I can stand to play for more than a few weeks.

I would like to thank the folks in the Mithril Twilight Linkshell for not only inviting me into their Linkshell but also for the few screens they let me use for the review.


Ryan 'Findar' Delaney for Massive Multiplayer Hell.