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Beautiful fantasy, with unfortunate transportation problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you're a Final Fantasy fan, then this game is just what you'd expect. It immerses you in a beautiful fantasy world, richly detailed and innovatively imagined. One thing I really like about this MMORPG that makes it unique is that it actually has a story. The RPG genre just doesn't feel quite right without a story, but Final Fantasy knows exactly how to put meaning and context into all that fighting and leveling.

The battle system could be described as typical Final Fantasy mixed together with the usual MMORPG battle system that you find in Everquest, Anarchy Online, and World of Warcraft. The class system is perfect. You level up as a class rather than a character, and you can switch classes if you like. For instance, if you're a level 12 black mage, you can switch over to white mage where you will start out as a level 1. You can go back to being a level 12 black mage later if you like.

I do have some complaints, though. The game has many clipping errors, which is disappointing considering the high quality I've come to expect form Final Fantasy games. There are many, many, many items and equipment to collect in the game, but you can only store or carry very few.

The absolute worse thing about this game is the walking. Most MMORPG's have vehicles, horses, teleportation, or some other way to get from one place to another. Only very high level white mages can teleport in this game, and the rest of us have to walk everywhere. This means that it's not uncommon to spend half an hour walking just to meet a friend, buy something you need, go to the next place to level, and so forth. This problem alone was so irritating that it was the reason I gave up this otherwise very fun game.

Decent game if you give it a chance

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Lots of people truly don't give this game a chance when they first play it.I know I did when it first came out for the PS2. I'm glad I came back to give it a second chance. Though I do tend to perfer the Xbox 360 version over the PC version. This game seems built more for a controller than a keyboard.

MMO's are not like your regular games. You have to spend some time with them before you realize what the game offers. Most seem to give up because they can't do anything with their level 1 characters. MMO's start to shine when you get into the higher levels.

Sure the controls are frustrating and the interface a bit confusing at first. But with some quality time there is a nice little game behind it.

Its not your grind from 1 to 70 in six weeks game like your EQ's and WoW's. Lots of people like to try to compare it to those kind of games. You really can't compare it to them because its just a completely different game. I personally like the slower pace, and the ability to change professions on the fly.

Community is quite mature. Which one really learns to appreciate after playing WoW before making the switch. Refreshing not having to listen to a bunch of 10 year old brats talk about Chuck Norris and all the other useless banter that makes you spend most of the game with on the combat tab!

FFXI

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I havn't been so addicted to a game like this since Diablo II!

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.

This game isn't worth buying.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 12
Date: November 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have played many MMORPG's on the internet, and by far, this was a huge let down, I've played all the version's of Final Fantasy, and loved them all, Until I baught the internet edition, What a huge let down.

Good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is a very good MMORPG, very well laid out and people are helpful in this game. In the game someone can give you a linkshell and this is a very helpful tool because you can communacte with 10-30 people usally, and they are always very helpful. The downside to the game is that some of the early levels get very boring, but after thoes levels you are able to start doing more. I would recomoned this game to anyone who like the final fantasy series or like mmorpgs.

Great MMORPG!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Never having played a MMORPG (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) before, I was apprehensive at even thinking about buying this game due to the possiblity of extreme disappointment. My friends were playing another popular game title like this one but Final Fantasy has intrigued me ever since the original console games came out for earlier systems.

To say the least, this game could possibly take you forver to play! There are so many different things to do that clear this game from the genre of simple hack-n-slash game - it's a truly in-depth world with unlimited possibilities.

Graphics - 8 / 10
Gameplay - 10 / 10
Support - 9 / 10
Onine Service - 10 / 10

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.

Hard Work

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: October 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Good: Great story. Sense of accomplishment at higher levels. Good graphics. It's Final Fantasy. Immersion in another world. I liked it.

Bad: Costs a lot to get started. Difficult to play. Confusing interface. Can't really solo past level 15. Additional characters cost $1/month. My wife didn't like it.

Conclusion: I played FFXI for a year until World of Warcraft came out. Now my wife and I play Warcraft together.

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.

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