It's 2.0, but what does that really mean?
So it's FFXIV 2.0, but what are you really getting?
Story:
Pretty generic story. Big empire trying to take over the world, secret organizations behind the scene, so on so forth. By all means it is not a bad story, but it's all been seen and done before. If you're seeking some unique story, you might be out of luck.
Graphics:
The environment in the game is beautiful. There's many places you can explore, and all of them a beautiful sight to behold. The character models are pretty well detailed. You have a wide selection of customization to craft your own unique character.
Sound:
The music is really good. Some of it is by Nobuo, but unfortunately not all of it. What disappointed me was that the story had a lot of cutscenes; however, not all of it is voiced. It is the 21st century, I thought we were done with having to read during cutscenes. This may or may not be a negative to some players, but I hate seeing text boxes in the middle of my cutscenes.
Gameplay:
So let's say after the 1.0 fail, Square-Enix really took the safe route on their re-release. The gameplay is pretty generic. The combat is your typical pick a target, auto-attack, and press a key for an ability. There's no innovative combat or any real fancy mechanics, just your typical MMORPG. Additionally the dungeon is relatively generic also. By no means does this mean they are not challenging. If you have played a MMO before and experienced a party-oriented dungeon gameplay, you'll easily slip into the role that you have chosen and probably breeze through the early dungeons as you level. The challenge comes around lvl35+ when you start distinguishing between people who know and do not know their role, and a team can fail a dungeon by poor comprehension of their roles. Furthermore, this game is definitely not very oriented for casual gamers. Does this mean a casual gamer can't enjoy the game? No, they still can. What this mean is that a casual gamer won't see himself/herself being able to experience the higher level contents, crafting, and such without putting a lot of time in. The game is littered with quests, but that only goes for your first class that you level with. After that, if you wish to level an additional class on the same character, you have to rely on sub-quests that you chose not to do on the first play through, levesquest which function on an allowance system (3 a day and caps at 100), dungeons (which can be a pain to queue for), and the most popular choice, fates (area events that everyone can participate in). Regardless of what you choose, it is a grind fest. It is the pure and simple truth. The lesser evil is fates because you can group with 7 other players to tackle them quickly and efficiently to provide you with the most amount of experience. Even then, the process to 50 can be a painful one. Once you reach the endgame, what can you expect? A very limited array of contents. This may change in the future with promises by SE for new content update with upcoming patches. However, currently you are restricted to one of 4 puggable dungeons (2 4-man and 2 8-man, only the 4-man provide lootable equipment). All four provide a form of ingame tokens to be trade for equipment and items. There are raids such as primals (3 straight up boss fights, which can be pretty fun the first time through) and coil of bahamut. However, coil requires an experienced and geared team who can coordinate properly to tackle it. If the raiding scene is not your thing, there isn't much else for you to do, but to level another class/character, craft, or run the same dungeons for tokens until your brain turn to mush. Even then, the token system is just one giant time sink because you need to run A LOT to save enough tokens to purchase your desired gears. Lastly, currency in this game serves no purpose. You can be the richest person in the game, but that won't do you much good. There's nothing worthwhile to purchase unless you are a crafter who is too lazy to gather your materials or someone who is after their relic weapon and too lazy to level a craft to make your own prerequisite weapon.
My review may seem a bit on the negative side; however, I do not mean to bash the game in any way. I, personally, enjoyed the game for what it is. However, if you seek some kind of ground breaking MMORPG, this may not be the game to do it. At least it wasn't for me. If you're a casual gamer hoping to play a little bit a day and expect to fully enjoy the game, this may not be your type of game either. It just takes too much time and effort to get to the enjoyable contents, especially since PvP has yet to be implemented. At the price of $25-$30, it is not a bad purchase if you're seeking a game to play to pass the time. But if what I described do not sound like your cup of tea, I suggest you save that money and wait until something else that really appeals to you come by.