Final Fantasy XI Review

Square Enix have gone to great lengths to polish FFXI and provide help for the new user. The game launched in the US in a very smooth and orderly fashion. However, while this garnered the game kudos, the game has been running in Japan for over a year now so they have had time to tweak and tune things in preparation for the US launch. It may also explain why I had to download 40 minutes worth of patches after installing the game. Those items aside, FFXI is accessed through a separate application called Play Online. This service serves as the launch pad for FFXI, the card game Tetra Master that can be played against others online outside of FFXI, an email client, an IM service to keep in touch with your guild members or game mates and see if they are online, a file manager that allows you to sort and archive screen shots, access to online manuals, FAQ system, support from Square Enix staff and the ability to submit and get help with bugs. In all, Play Online is a huge value addition to the initial purchase. The interface is very slick and is one of the best I have seen for a MMORPG. Play Online and all its features is something that other game companies would do well to copy.

I mentioned the quality of the animations during the character creation process, and although the quality of the character animation in game is not as detailed as in the character creation process, the graphics are top notch and as good if not better than any MMORPG on the market right now. Characters are animated smoothly as they run around or fight. As you switch out armor and weaponry, the look of the character changes accordingly as you would expect, but armor and weapons are very detailed and just plain look good. Terrain and structure graphics are probably, the best balanced and blended I have seen in a MMORPG to date. Buildings look like they really belong where they sit. The towns look and feel like real places that grew on their own rather than being plopped down by some game designer. Terrain in the wild also looks natural and makes it easy to play in for hours at a time and easy to get lost in (well for me anyway). Staying true to the same level of graphical excellence are the animations for monsters and characters as they move and attack. Each creature you encounter is rich in detail and I found myself leaning in closer to the screen to study the creatures up close. Spell and special combat move animations are full of color and special effects that help enhance the many combats you will engage in.

If there is one section that needs a little more variety added to it, it's the music. When a new selection is played, it has the usual beauty and catchiness that you would expect from a Final Fantasy score but too often, they get on my nerves as they repeat over and over again. When I was first patching the game after the initial install, I had to wait for 40 minutes. An old Final Fantasy standard of rising and falling chimes brought a smile to my face the first time I heard it. But the longer I waited for the patching to complete, the more tiresome it got. Finally, my wife, who had been sitting at her desk on the other side of the room, could take it no more and swept lightning-fast across the room and switched off my speakers. I dealt with this repetition (of the music, not the wife's irritation) by lowering the music volume.

The area that FFXI suffers the biggest hit by 'hardcore' MMORPG players is the lack of PvP support currently. For some players, pure 'carebear' gameplay, without a Player vs. Player element of any sort, does not offer the complete MMORPG experience. (A carebear is a player that would rather group with others and crusade against computer controlled opponents solely without ever going toe to toe with another human controlled character). However, this complaint will be moot sometime in the near future, as FFXI plans to implement PvP combat via an update. The player races already provide a bit of back story for old rivalries and grudges that can be played up to help motivate people to punt that TaruTaru like the football he already resembles.

Another complaint is that FFXI departs from the MMORPG standard that allows you to create, in some cases, up to eight separate characters per account without any extra cost. FFXI 'gives' you your first character for free but for each extra character you wish to add, it will cost you. The charge is not much but it came as a bit of a shock to me when I first realized this was the case. To me, anytime a game introduces an additional charge for content, it worries me that it may start a trend and other publishers may follow or worse, expand on the idea. Time will tell how this plays out.

The final irritation I have is that while battling monsters, if you do not have a ranged attack or some skill that allows you to 'agro' (provoke) a monster from a distance, you must run up, stop, and whack the monster to get his attention. If the monster happens to be moving when you want to hit him, you have to wait for it to stand still before you can take a swing. I would like to be able to stab at something while moving. It's not a big deal (Sounds to me like it is. - Ed.), but it does get annoying when you are passing through an area trying to defeat foes rapidly. I hope that this will addressed in a patch.

In all, the pros of Final Fantasy XI greatly outweigh the cons. The graphics, job and skill system, as well as the overall polish make it an enjoyable experience. The many quests and missions offered allow players to find things to do alone when friends are not online to form a group. For fans of the Final Fantasy series, they will take to FFXI like ducks to water. Players that are migrating from other MMORPGs should be pleased to see so many long waited features in other games already present here. Player housing, player controlled transport and an auto map system for example, though the lack of PvP will turn some hardcore players off. Square Enix has done a very good job in marrying (almost) all of the features that you would want in a MMORPG with the unique Final Fantasy universe and all the quality game features people have come to expect with the franchise.