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The world is Square

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Square-Enix, in their most diabolically evil move to date, has taken their already addictive game elements from the FF and forged them together with that most vile of habits, MMORPGs. May god (or whatever diety they may pray to) have mercy on their souls. This game is the most comprehensive MMORPGs I have played, and I have played quite a few, DAoC, EQ, and T4C to name a few. The sheer variety of things to do is frankly mindboogling, and we are only 1 day away as of this review from a major expansion called Chains of Promathia which this site inexplicibly does not have availible for preorder. But I digress. This game will gobble every moment of your free time then belch and ask for more. Those looking for a challenge will find battles to be exciting and quite infuriating at times, with the imminent threat of death always waiting. To those of you who quake at the idea of leveling down I say this. There are worse options SE could have gone with, loss of money, loss of items, even loss of stats are all possibilties any MMORPG must consider as a deterent to being kamikaze. They have even thoughtfully included certain spells in game that can lower your exp loss to as little as 1%. Those who enjoy more domestic pursuits and/or ways to support their expendatures in game will find a wide array of skills, ranging from relatively undemanding skills like fishing, to more time consuming skills like goldsmithing. In short (as if those words have meaning at this point) go buy this game, enjoy it, and if you find yourself on the Bismarck server and see a rdm by the name of Flintyoungblood, give me a tell to say hi.

How I Feel About the Game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. Many people have put this game down, when they have barely scratched the surface. There is so much that you can do once you get past the first 10 lvls. Yes it does start off slow, but that is the way the game is designed. There is no ending to the game. You have a lot of options in this game, so don't put it down until you have at least recieved your sub job. As for making gil, you just have to pick a skill and stick to it, also sell your crystals and other items for the apropiate price at the Auction House. There is plenty of ways to make gil, stop whinning and look for them.

An opinion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game, should you play it, will either be loved or hated. Many of the criticisms are true, but so are many of the rebuttals. Granted, if you want to accomplish anything, you're looking at spending the next three hours online, at a bare minimum. Gil can be rough to obtain, and you will eventually have to devote hours on end to some form of gil obtaining activities, whether mining, logging, farming, fishing, gardening, or harvesting. You are also essentially playing a forced grouping system, with only BST and RDM able to solo. I've heard some people complain about the horrors of grouping, and there is some validity to these complaints. Valkurm Dunes is the worst place you will ever be (roughly levels 11 through 18), with respect to the skill of your groups and the attitudes of the members. In Quifim, the groups will be better, skill-wise and hopefully attitude-wise, and as you continue the skills of your companions will progress and the "noobishness" will die out, and post-Garlaige Citadel (the level 33-36 visit, not the upper 40s and up visits for leveling and AF quests) you should rarely have a jerk in your party. This is probably because you will have come to know a fair amount of good players to ask first, and you will know a fair amount of jerks to avoid at all costs. Those are the true complaints which are near universal.

The positives are the wonderful graphics and sound, the storyline (which doesn't really start to get good until the Magicite missions, in my opinion), the job/sub-job system, a well thought out crafting system, and none of the botting/pking problems associated with other games. Another positive I found is the rewarding feeling you get when you are the only person your level wearing a given piece of very unusual gear, whether Steam Scale Mail, Morion's Earring +1, or a Mithran Scimitar. And then there is the friendship and social aspect, which, as an officer of a large linkshell (the fewest we have on at any one time is 23), leaves me with plenty of people to party with, quest with, talk with, help, and get help from. The enjoyment to be found when you can make an usual group become efficient (a 2 THF group, an all mage group, etc) is unparalleled, the satisfaction of a "perfect" group is great, and the sense of accomplishment from doing a given thing of above average difficulty (the RDM who soloed the avatar battles must have felt proud, and anyone who has done a BCNM successfully knows what I mean). The missions are extremely fun also, because of the story progression, even though they are rarely viewed as rewarding, with the exception of 2-3 (killing the dragon, allows you to participate in PvP) and 4-3 (the Magicite missions, gets you the Airship pass). There are more, but they all relate to my perceptions near exclusively. Everyone who plays ultimately has a reason for it. If it does click with you, you are drawn inexorably into the most intense experience of your life. If it doesn't, you wonder what all this hubbub is about. For others, there are times it will seem to click and times it won't, and they'll play intensely for a while, then sit back and take a break, feel they're missing something, begin to play more, and the cycle starts again.

Will you find this fun... maybe. If you have regular 5+ hour periods available for playing and don't mind that it's forced grouping for essentially all jobs other than RDM and BST, then you likely will. If your computer hardware or internet connection are sub-optimal, you are a casual gamer, or you don't like grouping with little option of soloing, this game isn't for you. As a background for my statements, I am Taru 60 BLM/ 32 RDM/ 33 WHM/ 20 SMN/ 12 RNG, Windurst Rank 7, and have been playing since early December.

Amost Great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The Good:
-The graphics
-The incredible amount of content

The bad:
-Crappy loot
-Depending on others: advancing is impossible at higher levels unless you have very kind friends to help you get through level "caps"
-Level penalties: always loosing your playing buddies because they're either three levels too high or too low to group with you

The ugly:
-Logging on: Game installs a funky browser and buggy email ssystem which you have to go through just to log on. Have to cclick through 9 screens just to log into the game!
-Travel... guild events were practically impossible because nobody had enough time to do the travel it took to meet somewhere
-The repetition of leveling: same mobs, different names...
-The time required: The last required quest I did took 7 hours, and I was helped by a team of high-level players.
-There is no real guild system in the game. You can join multiple guilds by collecting their pearls and wearing them when you feel like it. There is therefore no way of having a committed guild. There is no system for guilds to have a bank or share items. This game highly relies on guild-mates, so this lack of proper guild settings makes no sense.

Very fun game but not appropriate for the casual gamer.

Don't bother...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 48
Date: October 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I played the Beta of this thing, what a waste of time. I'll just start by saying I've played all the Final Fantasy games previous to this one, many to the end, and enjoyed all of them.

This is not a Final Fantasy game.

You don't control the combat, you just tell you character to start a battle, then stare at the screen. It takes like 4 hours to gain 1 level and many more to complete one quest.

Sure the graphics look nice, but what are fancy graphics if the core gameplay is fundamentally flawed.

Also it takes FOREVER to get anywhere in this thing. Prepare to spend 10 minutes just running across town to buy or sell all the useless garbage you collect from enemies. Speaking of items, there is a limit to how many you can carry. Just one more non-Final Fantasy aspect of this game. This means you'll be making that long distance walk more often than you care to.

Back on the subject of graphics, while everything does look nice (assuming you have a powerful graphics card), it's rather bland in design. You'll come across a thousand shades of brown. Everything that isn't brown is green.

One more thing, this is the game that keeps on taking as well. You'll have to keep shelling out each month if you want to play this game. There is no single player mode. Not to mention you'll not be able to play it twenty years down the road when the servers are gone line all your other beloved Final Fantasy games.

Anyway, the final verdict is, don't buy this looking for a Final Fantasy game. I suppose that if you're into games like Everquest you may like this.

FINALLY AWESOME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: March 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As MMORPG's go this one tops them all. The game play, the spell casting, the interactions with other PC's and NPC's is outstanding!

It's all about personal taste

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: April 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by saying that I have played UO, EQ, AC and DAoC. None of those games caught my attention to keep me online more than 2 months. I gave EQ and AC 2 tries because I was bored and wanted to play but just did not enjoy playing them...

Now for FFXI, I will start with what you have to have to play it. You need a PC with their minimum requirements and a connection to the internet. You will also have to pay $12.95usd a month to play it.

So what is good about this game? The graphics are great if you care about graphics. And the story of the game is very good and quite interesting. While these two things don't make or break the game for me, they are nice to see.

The game is set up so that you can hunt to gain levels. After level 10 it is best to group to achieve this goal. If you hate grouping, as I thought I did, you would be surprised at how easy FFXI has made this process. It is very easy to seek a group or form your own and building a great group/party becomes fun and exciting in itself.

Finding your way around is not too difficult. You start out with maps of the areas surrounding your home town and you can purchase maps and do quests for maps as you move to new areas.

There are things that you can do to earn additional money. You can sell the loot from hunting at the Auction House but beyond that you can craft. You can fish, garden, harvest and not sure what else to gain money but it is optional. You can cook, craft armor, wood work, craft jewelery, do alchemy, etc. These things can enhance your gameplay, for example, with cooking skill I can synthesize pineapple juice. When I drink pineapple juice I gain 1 extra mana per tick for 2minutes...

The thing that makes this game most enjoyable I think is the fact you can change jobs whenever you choose. (a job is like warrior, white mage, etc) When you choose a job you start at level one. However, if you level your job to 10 and change to another job, when/if you change back, you are still level 10 at that job. This keeps you from having to completely start over if you get bored or realize you made a mistake in your choice.

As I said in the title, your own personal taste will be the deciding factor... Personally to me, this game is fun. If you decide to play it, do a little research and learn about the weapon skill chains, that makes your battles really exiciting... See ya online.

Final Fantasy Fans Will Love this MMORPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm a gaming madman. I've played well over 180 days of pure playtime on mmorpgs and probably approaching 365 if I haven't passed it already. That said I've probably played out at least half the mmorpgs out there.

But before I was playing MMORPGs, I was playing Final Fantasy. I'm the biggest FF fan there is, FF XI, disappointed me because it didn't have a "Final Fantasy" feel like you get in the rest of the single palyer series, but it only disappointed me because I was used to such great games in the FF series. This game feels like an MMORPG, not an RPG. Don't expect too much gameplay like FF. I was hoping the fights would feel like FF, but it's your standard Player vs Evil MMORPG battles.

However, I gave this game 5 stars, because even though it disappointed me when I compare it as part of the final fantasy series, I was impressed by it being an mmorpg. There are a lot of simpler elements in the game that hasn't been seen in other mmorpgs, like auction houses, weapon skills, magic bursting. Players knowledge, style of play, alertness, severely impacts how well a group does. I can't believe the difference when I party with a japanese group as compared to an American group. And yes, you have to play with Japanese players, which adds a whole new element to the MMORPG genre. I've never had to deal with people that didn't speak the same langauge on an hourly basis, it is definetely a good, new experience on an MMORPG.

Final Fantasy has tons of quests, and you can be your favorite job, anyone who wanted to be a ninja can finally be one(although it's not as kick ass as you might have wanted it to be, haha) FF XI: A good MMORPG with some familiar FF elements, but not enough to have a real "Final Fantasy" feel. If anyone has wanted to play an MMORPG or loves final fantasy, this game would be a solid buy.

a quick note

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

One quick note over some peoples outrage about the $13 a month fee for the game. Almost all mmorpg's require some kind of fee which pays for server time, updates etc... and generally the fees are about $13 to $15 dollars a month. As for the game it is great, cutting edge graphics, good combat system, and the storyline is good. Over all a very good game.

Good but Great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 24
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is great! To play you will need a good Video Card to enjoy this game INSANE eye-candy. The game play is beter than EQ (everquest) much more fun. More to do than just fighting. Fish, do missions, and much more. I recomend this game for any Hardcore gammer with a good computer ( or you can wait for it for ps2). OK for some of you people that say this game suck... well... you are stupid. If you just dont like MMORGPs than go play something els. If you dont like FFXI thats why they made FFX-2 come out a few weeks after for you people that dont like MMORPGs than just play FFX-2. Smart for square-enix letting out FFX-2 and FFXI back to back.

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