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Good, but could have been perfect

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FFXI: The Vana'diel Collection is simply amazing. You save money by buying FFXI along with the Rise of The Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions all in one DVD (3 for the price of 1). Having owned both FFXI in Japanese and English, I must say this is a very good strategy. Compared to the Japanese versions of FFXI that have all-in-one bundles, this title so far is the only English bundle and it's great. Oh yeah did I mention that this is a GOLD box? Yes, it's a very commemorative piece. Any FFXI newbie MUST buy this.

The big flaw in this product is the BUDDY PASS, which allows you to give a friend a download code and an extra "serial number". A friend who uses the download code can download FFXI legally in one of SE's affiliated sites and use the extra "serial number" as registration code. Anyway, to the point. The problem is that the downloadable FFXI does NOT contain Rise of The Zilart nor Chains of Promathia expansions. Hence, your friend can't access any maps and stuff from these expansions. Eventually, your friend will STILL have to buy his/her own copy of the 2 FFXI expansions. Makes you wonder why they even put it there in the first place.

Ignore the Buddy Pass, it's basically near to useless. If you have a friend interested in playing this game, tell them to buy his/her own copy of FFXI. This title still kicks ass, definitely.

Are we there yet?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: April 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I'm going to break down the game based on my experiences with it so far. From beginning until now, I will give my best overall perception of the game.

(I have a PS2 with Dial-Up, so bare with me)

-Installing the game took around an hour or so. It wasn't too tedious, but I wish it could have been a little faster. Also, I had to install PlayOnline, which took another hour. So you're looking at 2 hours just to INSTALL the game. With dial-up, it took another hour to download the patch and updates for PlayOnline...Then came the fun part. Final Fantasy XI's patches, updates, and versions took 14 HOURS!!! If you have dial-up, like I did, just start the download before you go to bed, wake up, watch it another 7 hours, then you'll be ready to go. Can't wait to get the new expansion!

-I bought a couple ContentIDs for multiple characters, one for me, one for my woman. I hate the fact that you have to buy the game, then pay 13 bucks a month, plus a dollar for any other character, just to play. Highway robbery. Finally, I was ready to play.

-Starting out, I made a Tarutaru thief. I played him until level 8 and realized Tarutaru thieves SUCK! It took a while to solo up to level 8, and you can't party until at least level 11, so I canned him and made a Hume warrior. Tarutaru are good spell casters, THAT'S IT! Humes are good all around. I loved my warrior and still do.

-Getting gil is a problem. You can get crystals from monsters when you have signet cast on you and they sell between 1k (Earth) and 10k (Light) a stack (12) at the Auction House. You don't want to sell anything unless you have a stack. Some items don't stack, and some items do okay by themselves. Really, it's not getting gil that is a problem, it's the price of items on the Auction House. People charge insane amounts of money for items. It really takes away from the game when you are trying to buy new equipment and can't. You HAVE to have the best equipment after level 30. No way around it. I did a quest and got a scroll of warp that sold for 150k at the Auction House and that's the only reason I've been doing okay. Not good. Okay. CHECK THE SHOPS! You can buy full bronze armor for 1k in the shop, it's 1k a part at the Auction House. Leather and scale are the same way. Check other towns, also. Some towns carry different items. Guilds carry rings, armor, ores, and other synthesis items for CHEAP! Avoid the Auction House at all costs.

-Soloing is really fun in this game until you reach around level 10. At that point, you almost need a party. To get to level 11, you need 2000 experience or so. The MOST you can get from a monster is 100 and after the battle, I guarantee you'll be resting for about 5 minutes. The down time would be tremendous. Leveling to level 20 is fairly easy. Valkrum Dunes is the spot. While you're there you can get the items needed to get the subjob quest...Yes, it's a quest, you don't automatically have a subjob. From 20-30 is Qufim Isle. This takes TIME. And MONEY! This is where the game gets bad. The time needed to quest items, do missions, and get experience is overwhelming. This is the time where you say "I can take it, I wanna be the best", or you say "I think I'll save my 13 bucks a month for porn". Sadly, I saved my money for porn.

-Travelling is annoying. Badly. You have to walk everywhere until level 20 and it takes FOREVER. Once you get a Chocobo it isn't too bad. And to get an Airship pass is 500k or you can do a tedious mission.

Overall, I'd say it is a good game if you have time. Lots of time. Highschool, middleschool, and live-at-home kids with no jobs could really take up this game. People with lives and families cannot, so don't even try. You will need around 5 hours a night after level 30 to do anything, and from there it gets worse. Finding parties is tough, and keeping them together is tougher. People tend to do stupid things that drive other people off. Doing missions and quests are long and boring most of the time. Leveling takes forever and keeping money and attaining items is impossible. Unless you have time. That's the key to FFXI.

Waste Your Life Away with FFXI

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: March 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rather than give you a long winded review on why you should and shouldn't buy it, let me just list the pros and cons of the game from an experienced ex-player (level 75 rdm) and let you decide for yourself.

Pros:

-excellent community if playing with players over the age of 20.
-addicting strategic battle system
-intricate and easy crafting system.
-great amount of battleplanning and mob hunting.
-excellent graphics even for a dated game, runs great on most PCs.
-Great variety in amount of jobs being able to play; three new jobs are expected withthe upcoming expansion.
-Was the best PC online RPG out on the market before World of Warcraft was on.

Cons:
- Flawed party system. You must party in order to gain experience and level.
- Time consuming game. After level 70 you must quest in order to get to higher level areas to fight. Quests are hard to find and aren't always successful.
- Time consuming to get items. Crafting system, while easy, is not cost effective early on, which means you lose money, and are always broke.
- experience parties don't get any good drops, which means you must quest for decent no-drop items. These quests consume more of your time.
- Flaming community sites. While playonline doesn't run an official forum on their website, allakhazam and killingifrit do. They are quite possibly the least moderated and most flamed forums I've ever seem.
- Higher levels (level 75 is capped) have a huge demand on artifact 2 gear, and crimson gear. You must quest, quest quest, every day for at least two months in order to get all the gear you need. This also means you need to go to areas like sky, ballista, dynamis and various other NM hotspots as well. You also must help out your linkshell teammates get their items too, which wastes even more of your time.

- After level 60, expect to be playing this game at least 4-5 hours a day if you want to get anywhere. Want to join an exp party or run dynamis with guild mates? Cancel your plans with your friends tonight, you're not going anywhere.

My overall opinion:
20% of FFXI population left for World of Warcraft. Most of them never came back. I was hard headed and stayed the course in FFXI, never realizing how much time I wasted in this game until I was 75 with nothing to do except lot for gear and fight end-game.

This game is so very time consuming. You have to be glued to your computer in order to play in the higher levels. Lower levels were a lot more fun, no commitments, all parties. This game has become corrupt though from all the inflation of prices on the servers, bad community kids, and level 75 newbies who use bots in order to get high level mob pulls before everyone else.

Want to know what being a high level in this game is like? Imagine standing around for three hours waiting to pull a monster that has a 30% chance of dropping an item you might need. There are 12 other people around you who also want the same item, and they all don't like you. Welcome to Final Fantasy.

Good experience, but not the best

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: February 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

OK, first of all, let me specify that I have only been playing MMORPGs for the last three years, which does not make me an expert. Still, I've had a chance to try a few of them out including (WOW, SWG, DAOC, and COH to name most of them).

Cons:
Final Fantasy XI is very much geared towards console games. As a PC player, I've had to learn to adapt a lot to the commands which are very different from any other MMORPG I've played before. It is a lot more rigid than other MMORPGs in the sense that the UI is not really open to debate. It is what it is and you have to get used to using it tat way. That I personally don't like. Traveling is restricted in the sense that you have to be at least level 20 to get Chocobos and even higher to get other means of transportation such as airships. It makes grouping a very tedious task. I've spent as much as an hour waiting for another group member trying to earch us. Because of traveling certain areas have become the designated leveling areas, which is a very bad thing. Also grouping is by far the most annoying aspect of this game. first of all the game is designed for grouping, not solo, so if you like to solo, don't play FFXI. If you do like to group, consider that most people want a full group (6 members), which often leads to endless amounts of waiting for a full group before you can begin leveling. This is extremely annoying since you can't be efficient if you only have one or two hours of play time.
This leads me to my final con, which is suspense of disbelief. How is it that a person could be killing a goblin and have three other goblins in the area not flip out and come in for support? Oh they have aggro ranges and linking for some creatures, but it's very poorly implemented. And what is the point of a group standing in one spot waiting for a thief to pull a monster to all gang up on it. I mean in the end this to me seems like glorified virtual hunting. Where is the roleplay element in this?

Pros:
The ability to change jobs any time you want by going back to your mog house is by far one of the best features of this game. I like being able to explore different classes without having to create 7 different characters.
The story attached to the ranks is detailed and interesting to go through (that is if you can somehow convince others to play along with you rather than go "Hunting").
The crafting system is very interesting and detailed also, even though it's not quite my ideal system.
The auctioning system is very well thought out and useful.
I like the fact that there is no PVP in this game because unfortunately I yet have to find a PVP system that works. Sadly enough real people get in the way of good PVP. To me PVP needs a reason to be, and most people like PVP just for the sheer fun of besting another "real" player. It rarely has a story element associated to it.

Overall, this game is not my favorite MMORPG, and I would only buy it if you are able to dedicate a lot of time to it (for grouping reasons mostly).

Jon.

"Work before you play, BUT PLAY!"

PS: Sorry for any typos. I don't have time to re-read through it.

A players view

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am currently and have been a player of FFXI for three years. I have a 63WHM 60RDM and many other jobs. Thats not what's important though. I agree with some of the reviews on this page and others I don't. On some of them they give false information, and don't give the full picture of FFXI. As a main job WHM I am usually needed for help and that's pretty much how I spend 50% or more of my time in game, and I do it willingly. This game is very detailed and does take time, but it does not require you be a "Stay at home child, or adolecent" to get into it, I know many players who have families, jobs, friends, and events in their lives that still have time to play. I believe that if you truely want an accurate review of this game please read Xiozen's post. I've read all of the reviews here and his is the most accurate. He leaves the most detail and a non-bias review on the game. Now with the two new expansions and the release for Xbox 360 theres tons of possibilities and 3 new job classes. Theres also new areas and new ways to have fun and explore. They've added 1 new avatar for summoner and much much more. And to clear up a few more issues, its 12.95$ a month and that includes one free character, with every purchase they usually include a free one month trial period, and with MOST mmorpg (other than guild wars, diablo, etc.) there is a monthly fee, and in my opinion its well worth it. SE (square enix) listens to what players have to say, they have in game GM's (game masters) who you can call upon if you have any issues that apply to the rules and regulations in game that you have a problem with. And if you have a genuine issue they usually will do something about it. But I believe thats enough of me blabbing, and as I said before PLEASE if you want an accurate review in much more detail than mine read Xiozen's review!! Thanks and happy hunting! :D

Best game I ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I played this game for about a year before finally giving up. It was probably the best game I ever played in my whole life. No game has ever kept me hooked for such a long time. I'm even considering playing it again.

The positive aspects of this game are (1) the team aspect makes the game more fun because it's just more fun to play with other people than it is to play alone); (2) works well on older PC hardware and is generally bug free; (3) the auction house is fun!

Negative aspects (1) when you start out you have no idea what to do; (2) if you can't find five other people to "party" with, then you're kind of screwed. At lower levels it's generally easy to hook up, but at higher levels it's harder if you don't have a normal group. You can only party with people the same level, so if you're level 30 and your friends are level 32, they probably won't want you; (3) some quests can be awfully difficult to complete; (4) you can't really figure out what to do in the game without spending time reading fan websites.

Don't buy this game if you are expecting to somehow "win." Even if you get up to level 75 (a long and arduous road), there will be other level 75 players who have been playing every day for three years and are still way ahead of you. The fun is in the journey and not reaching the end of it.

My advice for new players is to start out as a White Mage because you'll have the easiest time finding parties because White Mages are usually in demand. And White Mage is the standard "sub-job" used for other magical jobs like black mage, red mage, and bard.

Remember that the game freely allows you to change jobs in your Mog house while retaining all of the experience levels in your other jobs, so feel free to experiment with different jobs! The only problem is that some races (like Tarutaru) are good for spellcasting jobs but bad for physical fighting jobs, while other races (like Galka) are good for physical fighting jobs but have too little magic power ever to be useful in spellcasting jobs.

Final Fantasy XI

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: March 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FFXI is one of those games where it appears that there is very little middle ground on the oppinions of the players, you either love it or you hate it. I personally like the game but there are factors within that stopped me from playing.

If it were not for the title there is no way of knowing this is a Final Fantasy game what so ever it simply doesn't have the feel of the other Final Fantasy titles in the series not even remotely. This is a shame as I am a huge fan of the series and had high hopes for this one, alas those hopes were not realised.

Upon purchase of the game installation took well over an hour and I dont have a low end system, then setting up the account is the worst I have ever seen for any MMORPG it is very long winded and rediculously over the top and the full process will take you well over an hour even when you know what your doing.

Once you finally get into the game you are presented with the strangest control system that I have ever known for a PC game but knowing this is ported from the PS2 I was percistant and once you do get used to it the system does work very well.

One major thing to note, if you want to play this game with a friend ensure you both begin at the same time as you can not join any world at will you are randomly thrown into one of the 32 world servers. To make it so another will join you on the same server you require a World Pass which you purchase in game with in game money and you must give your friend the 10 digit world pass code or they will not get into the same world as you.

Once you are finally through all of that and you begin to play the game you will notice the game runs quite slugish and slow and not through bad system performance just from how the game engine runs. This can be annoying at times as it can take a while to get to where you want or need to go and also leveling in this game is a lengthy affair even throwing down the gauntlet to EverQuest for leveling speed.

You can not solo play this game either, very quickly you will see that you need a well ballanced party at all times to get anywhere in this game and taking note that upon death there is a XP penalty it can be quite frustrating when you get into a party and there is one idiot getting you all killed.

This game is an aquired taste and apart from a few small things like the presence of Chocobo's and Airships it simply doesn't feel or play like you would expect a Final Fantasy game to, personally I would strongly recomend buying this one with caution.

beautiful, but technicalities of gameplay ruin the fun.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It is a gorgeous game. there is no comparison. Even with the specs of the PS2 holding it back from advancing, this is the most graphically rich MMO, nay, game out on the market today, even if it beginning to be dated. There is alot of depth to the game, giving it an immersion that games such as WoW totally lack. However, be warned, it DOES take forever to do anything in the game. Also, it is nearly impossible to solo even easy monsters, so you are stuck always waiting for a group. I played this game for over two years, and while the first year it was pretty fun to explore new areas and do new things, it got old and repetetive fast, since it took so damn long. Some jobs are not balanced well, leaving them unable to get a group for weeks at a time. Example: My first advanced job was Dragoon, I loved it. However, no one else seemed to feel the same way. I stayed up for 3 days straight, trying to get a party, trying to make parties, everything .. no one wanted to level with me, and of course, I was unable to solo for minor experience while waiting. The game has harsh death penalties and its not hard to die, making it extremely frustrating. In addition, there are alot of minor technicalities which could be adressed to improve gameplay overal. For example, travel time is rediculously long. Sure you get to see the gorgeous scenery, but sometimes you want to get from here to there in a few minutes, not a half hour or more of running - even with teleportation spells. Also things like, everytime you walk past someone a little too closely (which is hard to avoid in major cities) you get stuck on them, and spend a minute or two trying to get unhooked in order to keep walking in the direction you want to go. Objects in the environment also do this. Its extremely irritating. The economy is way out of proportion. In order to buy even basic equipment that you need, you have to spend hundreds of hours farming - its no wonder so many people have resorted to botting, cheating, and buying gil with RL money. OF course, all the hardships of the game make it that much more intense, as every action you take is crucial to your time, money, and stress levels. After w hile the game feels more like a job than a game, it looses its fun completely. The new expansion remedied this somewhat - they made it possible to solo (barely) in the new areas and also added some content that felt like it was there more for the fun of it than something that you were forced into doing. In fact, thats how most of the game felt. Forced. Nothing ever seemed to go smoothly or be for the sake of fun alone, everything was boring and frustrating, but a necessity if you wanted to progress in the game. It has its pros and cons, and, well, it obviously was good enough to suck me in (and destroy my Real Life due to the massive amounts of time and effort needed to accomplish anything - if you want to log on for an hour or two and get some small quest completed or get a little xp when youve got the time, this is definately not the game for you. You need to be able to commit to sitting at your computer with very few breaks for 4 or more hours at a time). I will always have a spot in my heart for this game, but its just plain not that fun. I started to play WoW, and I missed FFXI greatly in there - it much harder to make friends in WoW than in FFXI, which has a real strong community. Wow also lacks in graphics and storyline compared to FFXI, and is also much easier of a game. However, WoW's gameplay itself far outceeds FFXI's, itrs playability and fun levels are much higher. Looking for a balance of the two games, I have since come to Everquest 2, which is absolutely fantastic IMHO. But, its all personal preferance of course. Overall, I would not recommend FFXI to anyone, unless they had a demo free trial copy, just to check out the awesome graphics.

This game shows user interface really does matter.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: November 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My friends got me to buy this game and start playing. I'm sure they meant well. Actually, to be honest, I think they are all masochists who enjoy suffering and that they were trying to make me suffer as well. I have several problems with this game.
First and foremost: the user interface. Now, I played the PC version and did not chip out the money to buy the controller. I shouldn't have to buy extra equipment just to be able to play the game without so much difficulty. UI in games is supposed to be simple and convenient. I've played other games and I've always been able to pick how to do things up right off the bat. This game, though, has a learning curve to the interface. It's ridiculous. It is as though they designed it with frustration, inconvenience, and hand cramps in mind.
I mention that first because that was so much extraordinarily worse than the UI I've seen in any other game. The game has plenty of other problems as well, thogh. Ugly graphics (understandable because it's old at this point), boring gameplay (battles are very slow, lots of waiting around for parties since you can't play without one, die easily and lose XP when you do, I could go on), poor camera, and so on.

These are the only reasons I can imagine ANYONE playing this game:
1. They got addicted to it when it first came out. They have a sense of wanting to do everything (and this game DOES have insane amounts of potential play time since you can switch classes at any time) and have likely been driven mad over the course of playing the game.
2. The person has just had the misfortune of never playing anything better, which is almost everything else. They don't have a comparison to this game to realize how crap it is.
3. They have real life friends/good friends in the game and want to continue to play with them. Not worth it. These people should do their best to have a migration with as many of their friends as they can over to another, better game. Another person I talked to was able to convert all of his friends who got him to play this game over to WoW. I, sadly, was not as successful with my friends. I think this is because they fall under reason #4.
4. The person is evil and corrupted and enjoys misery, as well as inflicting the horrors of the game upon any poor person they can manage to get to play.

Now, the game does have a couple redeeming qualities. They don't come close to outweighing the defeciencies, of which there are far more than I even mentioned. Still, I suppose I should say something good about it.
First, the community seems unusually nice over all. The community of players can be very important in an online game, and the people who play this one were consistently very nice and helpful. In the end, this just makes me sad that so many nice people are playing such a poor game.
The idea to make working together with parties essential for pretty much any battling in the game is a nice idea in theory. If getting parties wasn't so difficult, it would be great. In a lot of games people are likely to just play solo through the levels rather than playing with a party, which is generally more entertaining. It's a bad idea not to give people the option of playing solo though.
Oops, both of my redeeming qualities sound like more criticisms. It really was hard for me to find anything good about this game. There are just other games out there that are so completely better than this, go get one of them.

I am right. If you disagree with me, you are wrong.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 21
Date: December 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Most of these reviews were written by Final Fantasy XI fans, who apparently think that the game is so godly. I still play Final Fantasy XI. I like it, but it's not for everyone.

The graphics are very good. The music is pretty good. But the gameplay... The gameplay is not good. I'll explain why. There is nothing "fun" about sitting in one place for hours, killing the same monster for EXP. This isn't even the worst part. You will have to invest a HUGE amount of time into farming, fishing, crafting, or using some other method of earning gil. You can do BCNMs too, which can be sort of fun... But chances are, you will not be spending a lot of time doing BCNMs. You probably won't experience the great storyline that often, either.

It's good to always have something to do, but not when everything is boring.

The Final Fantasy XI community is pretty good, but sometimes people will expect you to spend a lot more time earning gil to buy uber l33t gear, which isn't really necessary.

The customer service is horrible. The economy is horrible, too.

So you can listen to the reviews that only focus on the good part of the game, or you can listen to me. Final Fantasy XI is a very frustrating, time consuming game that shouldn't appeal to a large amount of people. If you're just looking for a fun game that you don't have to invest hours in everyday to get anywhere, get World of Warcraft. If you're prepared to spend ALL your free time on the game you buy, everyday, and still not get anywhere fast, get Final Fantasy XI.

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