You cant believe with all the other mmorpgs around SE think people will think this is fun. Boring, Boring . just Boring.
So I gave this game a week before I reviewed it. Please read my FFXI review to get an idea of the drudgery and then think a bit worse. In my honest opinion they made a slow, boring game in their first attempt and then made it worse in their second outing.
The opening cinematic however is really good. It is quite clear this company spent more time on this stuff than the actual game. can you actually file some kind of suit as the trailer really does make the game look good but isnt what it says on the tin, spam vs ham, this is processed spam from clones which has been further mushed up, extracts added for taste and then put back int the can. what im saying is, the cinematic makes the game look good when it isnt.
Imagine this.
You are on the motor way stuck in a traffic jam and you know its going to be slow and boring, you have the bright idea to detour at the next junction to save some time but what happens, it takes twice as long to get to the same place and cost double the fuel . You may as well as just stuck with the initial idea but put on a different radio station to vary the experience. Cool analogy I know if your on crack. But I suppose you'd have to be mad hardcore MMORPGer, too much of a fan or ON crack to actually justify anything with this game.
I am not making this up. Im an avid gamer and gives everything a chance, and I really mean that. I will tolerate games until you have to say enough is enough.
I will highlight my experience with this game so far.
Before I start everyones complaining about the requirements, I have a very modest quad core 2.8ghz with a gefore9800 and its running fine. 1 crash so far in a week of solid playing, 1 major server crash (it happens . . yes even on WOW) so I cant blame anything on this.
Lets get the visuals out of the way . . everyone's saying they are really really good. They are ok,OK. They are about what you would expect in a game made (production 2008) 2010 standard nothing much.seriously. FFXI I think looks better if not the same. People get confused with graphics as they don't account for style. . . better gfx than wow they will say. Er no. wow had a style and it looked good and worked. FF has a style and it looks good but uninteresting. That's the good bits.
So what is a MMORPG supposed to be? A lengthy game with plenty to do but an investment of your time. FF ticks all the boxes. There was a G in that acronym though. GAME. The review by GS is unfair but they were right when they said it was work. It really does feel like it. You are not rewarded enough. I thought I was doing really well when I hit 100k in gil (this was RICH in FFXI in the first year it was launched) 100k in this game will get you less than a tenth of your gear for a level 10. With no auction house but bazaars created by the players you'd have to be pretty clued up with loads of friends to get crafted gear or sold cheaper stuff. This is another problem. In a weeks worth of playing ive tried to communicate with the besaid server . . a full one and had 5 replys, no joke 5 helpful replies. Ive spent more time on a FFXIV item site than on the game. I don't expect to be spoon fed the game but clear marked places and direction (after all this is a game and NOT RL no matter how much you would like it to be) shouldn't be too much to ask for. God. Being quite a hardcore gamer, I get it, im not daft I have worked it out but for someone getting into this I can the learning curve would be massive. Ive spent over 20 hours crafting low level crap (to gain level) and ive got nothing of any real worth. The game is a pure drag.
Im sure everyones read the quests issue but ive not found this so much of a problem since I joined a link shell with 3 active players, we just do each others quests over the 3 days then they reset . . .and then repeat. That is as exciting as it gets. Same quests, same area, maybe as a different class fighting animals in RL you would squash with your foot.
I don't want to compare this with WOW but I have to as they nailed that game in terms of the real reward, danger of wandering the beaten path, community and sheer epicness of some of the quests. Fighting through the deadmines for the first time was brilliant, awesome, a real party challenge of which I have made 5 life long friends of which ive never met. FF doesn't come close, its all too mundane, VERY slow and in the end totally unsatisfying.
Menu system. OH DEAR GOD. It IS, not one of, not could be, not pretty close, but THE WORST UI ive ever played. Im 30, an ex game programmer now a teacher of computing and I cannot even begin to think of even my shoddy programming where my user interface is as bad as this. It is cumbersome, slow and involves far too many clicks to do the simplest of things.
Leveling up. Well in other games you kind of know what you are, spell caster, tank, dps, but in this you can be any class at any times . .thinking about it, ive not actually checked but when you equip a different weapon in your main hand you change class. Im not sure if your skill points goes to a base with the change of this class or you keep the ones you've already set, so if you just whacked STR points on at the start, you switch to a conjurer (where you would want MND or similar stuff) would you still have 90 STR as a god damn magic caster (REALLY CANT BE BOTHERED TO PUT THE GAME ON TO CHECK THIS . . . .OK WILL…(23:18)UK time …. got to say game runs in window and I can browse net and type this while game runs in background, that I like, no alt tabbing…………………and im really not joking the last sentence I actually typed in real time as I was checking . . the time is now 23.25 to get error code, timeout ………tried again . . . time 23.25 . . error time out…………….so I cant say if your points are reset with class change or they stay the same, unbalanced and unsuitable . . . no really that last was in real time as I checked the game out)
Gamespots review isnt that fair 4.0 is a bit low, id say . . no, 4 may be fair, yeah . . ok its quite fair but the comments weren't. You do get used to the slow, over complicated nature of the game and it slowly becomes alright but only get this game if you really are a hardcore gamer with patience and a hell of a lot of free time with no gf or wife. There is something addicting about levelling up ill admit but when this game gives you over 40 traits to do this in. you are going to be there a while.
To keep telling yourself all MMORPG games start like this is just insulting and saying it will get better later is just trying to justify a terrible purchase and online subscription. I dont even remember runescape being this dull. WOW certainly wasnt, star wars galaxy was good (at first), everquest and guild wars were ok, dark orbit and eve were ok . . . .i think i can see just how much better its going to get cos all this was said about FFXI and as i logged in for the last time a year ago it hadnt change a bit since i played it regular. No this game is forever going to be slow. how can it change? Too many people have invested over 1000 hrs already. Sorry about grammar and typos, its getting late now and im frustratwdu qvhesbm;tblsev;am iecstbe;sger;vi AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
18/10/10 - update. Nah this game is ok now, a hardcore grind fest, some updates made this weekend helped some small issues but SE seem commite to getting itright. im gonna stick with it for 6 months, erally it aint that bad, get a great custom class and a linkshell pty and the game is pretty good
28/10/10 -
I was giving this game a chance before now ive just plain had enough. Why must the game crash all the time during quests and then abandon them
Why did it take me over 1hr and 5 mins to sell over 120 items from my back and inventory, why did it take over 2 hours to repair my gear myself (DON'T SAY GET THE PC TO REPAIR) cos if you were saying that you're a rank 1 idiot where your repairs are 42 gil, mine were 30,000 PER ITEM!!!!
God this is the most boring game ive ever played. They give us another free months trial. So what! Who wants to really play this game? Im down grading my score from a 6 (and I really really have no idea why I game it such a high score like that) to a 2. Its barely unplayable and for a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER game ive only met about 5 people who have spoken to me, 3 have give me help. 2 people in 2 linkshells which we helped craft some stuff, I liked that . . well that chat we had more than the playing of the game. God this is the worst game ive ever played. I really mean that. Some games are bad, yes ET was bad, superman was bad but it they didn't take themselves nearly as half as serious as this game. Millions and millions must have been spent to come up with this. It's an absolute joke and a waste of my money . . it really is a damn good job ive paid nothing to play this so far, the thought of funding this is a massive joke.
Even if you are just a tiny bit curious, find someone who has it and go and check out what you are not missing. Listen, Runescape, warcraft, guildwars, eve, are much better. I seriously recommend levelling a brand new char in wow before even trying this.