One of the most popular role-playing game series on video game consoles is the Final Fantasy series from Japanese developer Square Enix (formerly Squaresoft)--a series famous for complex storylines, spiky-haired heroes with impossibly huge swords, shadowy wizards who wear robes and hats that are so oversized that only their eyes are visible under the brims of their caps, and transportation by way of large, chicken-like chocobo birds. Square Enix has made the bold move of making the next game in the series an online role-playing game in the vein of EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot for both the PC and the PlayStation 2--a game in which you create a single character and explore a huge persistent world with other players. The PC version of the game is currently in a beta testing stage, and we were fortunate enough to have a chance to try it out for ourselves.

The long-lived console RPG series is going online, and coming to the PC and PlayStation 2.

In the PC version of the game, you'll play as one of five fantasy races in the colorful realm of Vana'diel. These include the well-rounded humes (humans, essentially), the tall and slender elvaan, the hulking galka, the feline mithra, and the diminutive, dog-nosed tarutaru. At the beginning of the game, you'll choose your race and your profession from a list of basic character classes, which include Final Fantasy standbys such as fighter, monk, white mage, and black mage, though you'll be able to follow different professions later on in your career and in so doing, you'll be able to advance to a more-advanced profession, similar to the job system in Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation and the advanced fifth-level classes from Dark Age of Camelot.

We took a brief tour of Vana'diel with a powerful character equipped with several levels in both the fighter and monk classes. All classes will have specific skills that can be used in and out of battle that can be recalled from a sub-menu or set to hotkeys. Fighters have the powerful "berserk" ability in battle, as well as the "taunt" ability, which, much like the EverQuest warrior's ability, draw an enemy monster's attention away from the more-frail members of your party squarely onto yourself.

Each character class will have its own role in battle.

The starting point of the tour was on the continent of San d'Oria, the realm of the elvaan and one of three nations on which you can start your adventuring career (the other two being Bastok, the home of the galka, and Windurst, home of the tarutaru). Starting from La Theine Plateau, we ventured along the outskirts of a wilderness town into the wild. Much of Final Fantasy XI's outdoor areas are picturesque--the game's grassy fields and dark forests look colorful but subdued, though as you might expect from a Japanese role-playing game, its characters are highly stylized and detailed. So are the monsters, including a fearsome giant sheep (yes, sheep) that's been known to haunt the plateau. Fighting it was a simple matter--as a fighter, we simply toggled on the game's auto-attack option while targeting the monster, though other character classes have various other abilities and magic spells. For instance, thieves have a damaging sneak attack, white mages can heal and protect their comrades, and both basic and advanced classes can attain powerful support abilities that can increase your strength and damage output, make you turn invisible, and even mask your scent to hostile monsters.