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Addictive fun

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

I was hesitant to pick up Final Fantasy XI: Online at first. After all, Square is more known for their single-player, console games (granted, some were ported to the computer, but they were still single-player). As their first foray into online play, I think Final Fantasy XI is a very good effort!

This game is very, very addictive. There are so many different things you can do. You can craft, you can fish, you can run around and gain experience, you can do quests, you can complete story-specific missions...you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can even do none of those things and just spend time chatting with other players due to the online nature of the game.

If you are familiar with the Final Fantasy world, many of the mechanics are still the same. There are also many differences, so it's definitely not the same old, same old.

One drawback, however, is that it never takes a short amount of time to do anything. You could spend upwards of 10 minutes just trying to get to where you need to be. If you can't ride the airship it's more like 20 minutes.

And remember, folks, it's an online game and not everyone plays the same way.

Not a good buy.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: March 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I played this game from the beta, then of course bought the retail to keep playing with the friends I had made. After playing for a while I noticed several severe flaws in the game design...
First there are only about 8 types of creatures in the game. All they did was change the monsters pictures a tiny bit ( say a different weapon in hand or a different color) throughout the first 60 levels of the game I noticed this. At one point I noticed just about every undead creature looked like a skeleton, even a lich. I would be fighting beetles then crabs and goblins at level 11, then them again at level 40, beetles again, then at level 51...beetles YET again, with goblins. You are going to spend about 70% of your xping on these three I would say : Crawlers, beetles, and crabs.
Secondly, the xp system is terrible, basically your entire group has to be within 2 levels of each other to get any decent xp, I know that doesn't sound to bad but it can make forming a decent group practically impossible sometimes, this is of course especially bad since over level 50 its at least 10k+ xp for your next level and the toughest... a well balanced group can take without downtime would give about 70-120xp.
Thirdly the pointless quests designed only to slow down character advancement. Nothing in this game comes easy, you want a sub job for your character, do a long .. quest, you will know what I mean when you spend 5 hours in a group skull hunting just to lose the lot on the ONE skull you found. You want to ride around on a chocobo ? Do another long .. quest that takes about 6 hours...of consecutive time, cant come back without starting over. You want to use the airship ? Then you have to do 6 missions(the twisted version of quests) that I would say together take about 8-9 hours of game time if your lucky and have a level 35+ group to do mission six. Best part is after doing the missions and getting your airship pass.... you still have to pay to ride the dang thing. Come on jeuno, I am saving the world here, at least give me a freaking free ride.
If you want to get over level 50, its another long annoying quest(mine took about 6 hours with two level 70s helping), and then the same quest just with different quest items for EVERY FIVE LEVELS after that.
There are plenty more horrid game flaws present in this blemish on square's record but I am limited to 1000 words in this review. So in summation, I think square rushed too much to make this game and didn't think to put in the variety and quality that all the other FF titles have had.

YES!! and Darn!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: October 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was so happy when I heard they were making an oline FF game. Final Fantasy is my favorite type of game.... It's really cool, but like all online games, you have to pay a fee. You have to pay $12.95 a month, and and extra $1.00 to play tetra master (see FF IX). Despite that, this game rocks!

You better have LOTS of TIME & PATIENCE

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: November 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, this game is OK. If it didn't have the name Final Fantasy this game would merely be mediocre. In many aspects of the game, even including logging on is OVERCOMPLICATED. As another reviewer mentioned, it's like way to many steps do things that should be very simple. How many registration codes do u need to key in? 3, 4 if you want to play tetramaster. And you need to make a playonline id, a final fantasy content id, and a handle. HUH? What if you want to make a another character? Well you better remember that 8 digit playonline id that you got, cause they dont save it for you. AND WHY CAN'T PLAYERS RUN AWAY FROM COMBAT? You can disengage, but there is NO WAY to outrun any monster. Even fat orcs will catch up with u and kill u. On top of that there are hostile monsters which will gang up on you, and you lose MASSIVE exp points every time you die, and YES you can actually lose levels. Takes forever to level, and even longer for you to start enjoying it.

If you're ok with the monthly Fee, then buy it.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 27
Date: December 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game actually would be good if it didnt have a $13 dollar fee per month- just to play it. I have 15 other online games which have NO fees at all! They just want your money and if you want to play they get a lot of it. After 10 months they will have earned $130. Why not just price the game at $200 in the first place because eventually its going to cost that much anyway. This is the biggest rip off I've really ever seen. If you can handle the fee, then I guess it's an OK game. One more thing, there is no single player mode so when the servers go down in 10 years or so, you cant play this game at all. I cant believe how poorly they made this. Everything about this game is so bad, do not buy this. It looks great I know, wait until you get it, you'll see.

Bad Business

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 15
Date: August 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This review has nothing to do with the actual gameplay of the game. Because of bad business practices and incompentence on Playonline's part, I haven't been able to play the game at all.

Ok, to start off, I have owned this game for only twelve hours and am already completely frustrated. For the twelve hours that I have owned this game, the servers have been down for six. The registration server went down right after I gave them my credit card information (pretty convenient if you ask me).

Once that got going, they wanted me to download an update for the game. That's cool, I was expecting this, but the update was like 16,000 files and several gigs of information! Have they ever made update files before? Why did I even spend the time to install the game if I had to redownload all the files anyways? The setup continues... Finally! Now I have the updated FFXI and am ready to play. My frustration is starting to subside. I click the play button... ... ... ... All servers down for maintenance!? Ok, here's a concept: backup servers!

At this point, I am completely frustrated. I call the customer service number (which isn't toll free by the way) to ask for my money back. Customer service number is busy. Try again.... ...busy.

I love Final Fantasy games, and I also love MMORPGs. I hate bad business practices, and Playonline is full of those. Be warned, if you do purchase this game and want to take a few months off (three to be exact), you have to repurchase the game. This is terrible terrible business, and I would have expected a lot more from the people who make Final Fantasy. I would have loved to try this game, but that was not a possiblity.

Very mediocre compared with other MMORPGs

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 19
Date: November 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The annoying features of this game start immediately when you first boot up the disks. After three registration codes and an "update" download that takes over an hour to download using broadband (!), you're in business. Well, if you want to call it that.

The gameplay is confused and scattered. Not enough clear direction, no real record of what has happened, so that if you don't write things down, poof they are gone and there is no way to recall what someone said to you at all. It's pretty easy to wander around aimlessly in cities designed for the high-level Japanese PCs where you can only do window shopping because you can't afford a damned thing that they are selling. Get GILs with quests, you say? Sure, but good luck not getting killed with your subpar weapons and armor. And then, of course, you lose experience and your weapons and items, leaving you basically at wits end, reduced to begging other PCs to spare a few GILs so that you can buy another weapon.

And don't think about trying to create another character if you get frustrated with the first one --- that will cost you extra, amigo! You pay for each character you create, in addition to the monthly fee for airtime! What a raw deal financially -- greedy, greedy, greedy. I mean $1 per character may not seem like much, but when you're paying $50 for the game to begin with and then $12 a month for access, you have to ask when will the greed end?

The graphics? Okay, but I would have expected better. SWG has much better graphics than this. It looks like a console game, albeit a large one. The game world is certainly large -- that is true, but the graphic detail levels are adequate but disappointing.

The same seems solitary and antisocial, there aren't groups easily formed, there is a cultural disconnect between the players in Asia and the players in North America.

Frankly, bottom line -- in my view, it isn't really that much fun to play. When I play MMORPGs, I won't be spending too much time, if any, tooling around in this one. SWG and DAoC are both far more enjoyable, social MMORPGs than this one, and as a result a better use of the gamer's time.

A Very Involving, Enjoyable MMORPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Slightly sceptical to the idea of an online Final Fantasy game, I decided to give Final Fantasy XI a try. All that I must say is that it exceeds all my good expectations! Building on the battle systems and general ideas of the former RPGs in the series, FFXI takes the adventure to a grander, online scale.

The strengths of this game are found in its dynamic, epic gameplay that is found in MMORPGs. The ability to form parties and role-play gives the game a highly adventurous feel. This is augmented by Square-Enix's devotion to making sure that there is a decent storyline. Of extreme importance to ensuring the continued enjoyment of the games, players often find themselves filled with patriotic spirit for their given homelands, pushing them to play more to help their land gain glory and fame.

While it does help the game in some ways, the reliance on forming parties causes problems for some players. This can make the game extremely difficult for starting players, especially for those who start at white and black mages. Since parties are difficult to form for people at low levels (one would have to find a group of all low-level characters), these physically weak players are left to fight the hardest for the same experience that others are earning much more easily. If groups can be found, however, the party system makes for awesome game play.

Overall, I give FFXI 4 stars because it is still an awesome game. Even with its starting difficulty for certain jobs at low levels, this game gives player a lot of fun times that are definitely worth the small monthly fee!

Great at first

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I played this game from the beta, then of course bought the retail to keep playing with the friends i had made. After playing for a while i noticed a severe flaw in the game design... there are only about 8 types of creatures in the game. All they did was change the monsters pictures a tiny bit ( say a different weapon in hand or a different color) throughout the first 60 lvls of the game i noticed this. I would be fighting beetles then crabs and goblins at lvl 11, then them again at lvl 40, beetles again, then at lvl 51...beetles YET again, with goblins. Basically i think square rushed too much to make this game and didnt think to put in the monster variety that all the other FF titles have had.

Good game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've done my reading on most people's reviews. Saying how EQ's graphics are better and that EQ is better well I'm sorry but EQ is lame... FFXI Is so much better on PC than it is on PS2, yeah it does run smoother on PS2 thats because your limited to a certain amount of detail. Yeah it's true that final fantasy is a playstation game but before that it was a super nes game and before that it was an nes. It's just changing times and they made it on two different systems because 1) Someone may have a MAC or no computer or they computer is no good or 2) Someone may have Xbox, GC, SNES, NES, Sega, DC, etc., etc. but no PC but a really good computer.

Anyways back on the game

I don't think it's really a job, yeah you do a lot of stuff but FFXI is like D2 except there is a subscription fee, more characters, can personalize your hero more, etc. It is kinda a pain that the equipment costs so much but it makes the game more challenging. I suggest this game to anyone who has free time and the money. It is really fun to play and whether you get it for PS2 or PC its good.

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