Final Fantasy XIV has an interesting release history. It is the second MMORPG in the Final Fantasy series after Final Fantasy XI. However, the first release for PC was a disaster and the developer had to literally rebuild the game from scratch and re-release it as A Realm Reborn. Final Fantasy XIV Online: Starter Edition is basically a rebranded A Realm Reborn, containing the base game as well as 30 days of game time. However, in an awesome decision, Square Enix later included the first expansion, Heavensward, for free. After the initial free 30 days, you do have to pay for a monthly subscription in order to keep playing. Also note that you can play the trial version of Final Fantasy XIV which gives you access to everything up to Heavensward but with several gameplay restrictions, although those features aren’t a necessity so it is perfectly viable.
The game can be overwhelming to a new player, whether you are a new player to MMOs or a new player to RPGs. The first thing you’d notice is that the game is designed with keyboard and mouse in mind, and the controller mapping, while decent, is still an afterthought that can feel awkward at times. The DualShock 4 does have a touchpad that can be used to simulate a mouse, as well as pressing L1 and R3 at the same time will bring up a mouse pointer that you can control with the left stick, although this isn’t really that useful. The game is also inundated with a gigantic menu that will definitely take some time to become familiar with.
The combat system is one that resolves around skills on cooldown and positioning your character. You target one enemy at a time and your character will auto-attack for minor damage. The big damage comes from the skills that are mapped to the bar onscreen, which you use by holding L2 or R2 and then pressing one of the face buttons or d-pad. This allows you sixteen hotkeys that are easily accessible and then in addition, you can have up to eight different sets. It works well enough although you’ll have to make tough decisions once you near the level cap of the first expansion on which skills you want quick access to, and which skills you can afford to put onto a different set that isn’t as easy to get to. Once a skill is used, you cannot use it again until the cooldown is over.
When enemies do an area-of-effect attack, it highlights the area that it will hit so you have some time to move your character out of the way. The combat is mostly focused on one-on-one so if you end up getting into a situation where numerous enemies are attacking you at once, it can be precarious. When you first start the game, you pick a class that will fall into one of three categories: DPS, Tank and Healer. DPS focuses on high damage output, Tank on defense, and Healer on healing. These roles are important for dungeons as the single player portion is designed to be able to be progressed no matter which class you pick.
One of the bigger annoyances is the resolution that causes issues with the size of the text. Both the default of 1080p and 4K will make text too small to be read easily. Blow up the UI and you have to blow everything up, including all the text above NPCs and other players, clogging up the screen. You can’t just increase the text size and will need to compromise one way or another. The PC roots show up even more when targeting. It requires the d-pad to move between the available targets. Changing your enemy target can be awkward in the heat of battle where there are a lot to cycle through. This extends to talking to NPCs too as you need to select them first to actually commence the dialogue.
There are a lot of issues that you have to get used to with the game, but once you do, it will feel like second nature. The open world is quite impressive. It is split into different areas with loading screens in between. It’s a shame that they couldn’t have the three main cities as one big map though. Enemies roam the field and some will not target the player as they run past, while others are aggressive and attack on sight. Granted, you can easily outrun all of them if you don’t wish to fight, especially since they give pitiful experience points.
The minimap and objective markers are not that great. You will often pull up the big map that covers around 30% of the screen so you know where you are going. There are warp points, generally one per map. Perhaps the most aggravating is how the player can only sprint 20 seconds at a time. The cooldown is 60 seconds, so you have to put up with 40 seconds of slow jogging, making traversal feel like a big chore.
This is a MMO so you will see other players running around and going about their own business. Despite this, the game is quite solo-friendly. The majority of the story is designed to be solo’d, although there will be dungeons, bosses and raids that you have to team up with other players. If you don’t have your own party, you can use the in-game tool to form a party with random players. It is easy to use this tool to queue up but how long you wait before you are put into a party will vary depending on your class. If you are in a DPS role, then be prepared to wait for a long time. Whereas as a Tank or Healer, it is much faster to form a party and then continue on with the story. It takes a while before you hit the first dungeon that you need to find a party for and it is a lot of fun once you experience one.
Unfortunately, the base game is filled with fetch quests and hunt quests. They make up the bulk of the gameplay and this is the base game’s biggest problem. With only one fast travel point in each map section most of the time, it can be a chore running from place to place. You’ll often be told to go to this point only for one piece of dialogue and then told to go back. There are something called FATE events which frequently pop up in the map. These are designed for players to come together and defeat waves of enemies to gain experience points.
The story of the base game is quite boring. There is a ton of text but it is bland flavor text that hides how barebones the story is. You play as a new adventurer, rising through the ranks and seeing the aftermath of the calamity that happened a few years before (i.e. when the original XIV transitioned into A Realm Reborn, coinciding with the in-game even of the second moon destroying a lot of Eorzea). The game takes its time with a lot of world building, and with it, you learn that the world experience cycles of great calamity and then a period of peace, and it is currently up to the seventh cycle.
The game is fun for the first 15 hours or so but it eventually becomes bogged down once you approach 20 hours. It is at this point that you realize that you are hitting the same fetch quests and there’s really only so many times you can do it before becoming sick of it, especially if you are playing long sessions at a time. A patch was made to streamline the base game with quests made shorter, removal of several quests, and a boost in experience points so you don’t get gated with minimum level requirements for the main story quests anymore. You’ll actually easily become overleveled and the game will start capping your level for specific quests.
There is a difficulty spike towards the end of the game with one of the dungeons where if you weren’t expecting it, it’ll catch you off guard and wipe your party out. Especially if you are a Tank or Healer, even the trash mobs will hurt you really badly and quickly. It’s there that you have to make sure you have situational awareness and make good use of your abilities by juggling the cooldowns. However, once you’ve completed it, and if you end up coming back in the future, you might be amazed at how easy it is now that you’ve had experience of what to do, and that is a great feeling.
There are some excellent parts to the story but the overwhelming majority of it is boring. It only gets better right at the end, when finally, after so long, you have gathered all the crystals and battled against all the primal. There is a good lead up to the ending of the base game with the introduction of full party dungeons (eight players instead of the four you’ve been doing up until now). It can lead to even more chaotic scenes and epic fights. It manages to tell a strong ending to an otherwise bland story. Although at this point, since A Realm Reborn content is so old, as a newbie, you’ll be surrounded by veterans that are much stronger, much more efficient and probably will carry you through easily, making those two final dungeons a joke.
After the base game’s story, your mount, which is likely still a chocobo at this point, can now fly. This is really awesome as you can fly directly to places without worrying about following the map boundaries. This speeds up any fetch quests by a huge amount and makes travel less cumbersome and boring.
Before you can get to Heavensward, there is still a bunch of post-base game story quests that were added in patches in the lead up to the expansion. It is a long and slow chain of quests and story, which is very tiring. It locks story progression behind completing “Hard” versions of older boss battles and also complete a certain storyline (that pays off in about two expansions) that involve several 24 member dungeon raids. Just like the final dungeons, these 24 member raids are a joke since most of the players are so strong that you will never play out several bosses’ key mechanics that had made them unique and fun at the time of release.
Despite the long slog between the end of the base game’s story and the beginning of the Heavensward expansion, the finale of that chain of quests contain the best story cutscenes so far in the game. It actually manages to make a decent payoff from all the fetch quests that you had done to gain allies. It sets for a cliffhanger ending that contained significant unexpected events. If you had completed it straight after these quests were added in the patch, you would have felt gutted once you’e realized that you would have had to buy the Heavensward expansion to see the ending of what it started. Completing the base game’s story plus all the patch story quests will take around 50 to 60 hours.
Once you finally reach Heavensward, you’re in for a treat. The quality of the expansion is leaps and bounds better than A Realm Reborn. The story has the Warrior of Light (i.e. the player) moving to Ishgard, where there is a current war between the dragons and the Ishgardians. This is known as the Dragonsong War, and the Warrior of Light must find a way to end it, hopefully in peace. It doesn’t immediately address the massive cliffhanger ending but it still runs along at a brisk pace. It then slows down in the middle and while its quest structure is still mainly fetch quests, it feels less tedious than the base game. The dungeons are more straightforward as well, with less annoying gimmicks. Once you’ve pushed through most of it and you go to the final area, the story rapidly ramps up.
Heavensward doesn’t end on as high a point as the cutscene that had started it. Despite that, it was still an amazing ending, if deliberately leaving a few loose ends by the time the credits roll. It is a decent expansion, with a lot of content rivaling the base game but of a much higher quality. The main chain of story quests will take around 24 hours to complete. The quests in the patches in the lead up to the next expansion, Stormblood, close off a lot of the loose ends and give a more satisfactory ending. However, it provides closure of the existing plot threads by around the midway point, so the pacing suddenly stalls, especially considering the high points right before it. These patch quests will take another 10 hours to complete.
One thing to note is that while you can freely fly in all the areas of A Realm Reborn once you have completed the story, when you go to the areas added in Heavensward, you’ll be back down to traveling at the slowest speed. It can be painful until you advance far enough in the story to increase your mount’s speed once again.
Even with only access to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, there is a crazy amount of content. Of course, the meaty story will take up almost 100 hours of your time but that is barely scratching the surface. You can try out and level other jobs, whether using your existing character or creating a new one. Swapping to another job is as simple as equipping the appropriate weapon. While there are a bunch of inconsequential side quests, there are some substantial ones. There are PvP modes and tons of other minigames. You can focus on crafting and gathering. Plus, there are seasonal events and the continual grind for loot and levels.
This isn’t just a generic MMO with a Final Fantasy skin; there is tons of fan service. One of the best things is how the game integrates Final Fantasy elements into the world, from chocobos to familiar monster types, to crystals and the summons (known as Primals in this game). It feels every bit a Final Fantasy game, and may well be one of the best Final Fantasy game you’d have ever played. The music starts out as just something to fill in the background but as you progress through the story, there are some epic and noteworthy pieces that take your attention. This is especially true of the theme songs that play during the credits. However, since the game was also released for the PS3 (and discontinued in 2017), the graphics aren’t super great. There are times where it is impressive, and times where it is not.
Overall, Final Fantasy XIV is a great introduction to a MMORPG. It is more focused on the storytelling and the vast majority of the story is designed to be played solo. Using the in-game tool to create a party for the mandatory dungeons is an easy and painless solution. The dragged out story of the base game, even with the streamlining, and reliance on filler fetch / hunt quests are big negatives and will likely burn you out. However, persist and once you hit Heavensward, the game is on a whole other level with an impressive story rivaling the very best that Final Fantasy has to offer. Final Fantasy XIV Online: Starter Edition is an amazing game that’s well worth your time and presents tons of value.
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