Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

User Rating: 6 | Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward PC

http://katiejurek.com

I wish I could see more to this game. So here's how my short experience with it went:

- Log in, make my character, she looks great from the good amount of customization options at the start. Nice.

- I try to join a nice, active European server. Problem is, there are only two servers open, the others are completely packed. Once I choose, I apparently can't change my choice. I blindly pick one.

- I immediately look to find a guild. I find out guilds aren't actually called "guilds" in this game (since guilds are something else entirely for some reason), they're instead called free companies. Okay, I try to find a free company. No dice; there doesn't seem to be a place you can just search for free companies, at least not that the game tells you about. The "Free Company" part of my menu is also grayed out. So my only hope seems to be talking to other players and getting invited that way.

- Then I run into my next problem, arguably one of the biggest. The server seems dead. Nobody's talking, and I don't want to just ask to join the free company of anyone who passes me by. I want to join an active one where I've talked to or played with at least one of the members first. Since everyone is practically silent, this feels like something I should try later. Maybe people are more talkative at higher levels once they're not newbies like me.

- I start doing some quests to pass the time, thinking it'll be more obvious how to join a free company (maybe there's a quest to get that bit started?) or how to find more people to play with as the game goes on. Nope, nothing. After being nearly level 12, I've finally figured out for sure that it's not just the time I came on; the server really is just dead.

- I go online to figure out how to change servers. It's like $18 or some nonsense. What the hell? How was I supposed to know the server was going to be so dead before selecting and playing on it? The first switch should always be free, not just when a new expansion comes out.

- The social aspect of the game thus far has completely disappointed me. It's not easy to make friends, to figure out how to access the very basic bits and bobs of MMOs (like free companies/guilds), or to know which server won't be dead on arrival.

- I look to the combat part of the game. All I can say is it is incredibly trite and boring, and every battle feels like doing exactly the same moves in the same order do the most damage. The quests are just fetch and delivery quests. Rinse, repeat.

- The map isn't ugly, but is logistically an absolute disaster that does not show you in a simple way where to go next. Especially if you're playing with a controller, the map window also keeps closing itself even if I tell it to stay locked to my screen.

- There are hedges and mountains that block your way to a place you have to get to a lot of the time, and the map doesn't really tell you how to get around these obstacles a lot of the time.

Overall, this game is definitely not worth a monthly subscription. It's a shame a game with this much content can be so lacking on some of the absolute most basic aspects of what an MMO should have, like a simple social system that makes it easy to play with others and have fun. My character is cute, but other than that, the game is a pretty big letdown, and at only level 11, I discovered it was already just as grindy as other long-winded MMOs. 6/10.