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Final Fantasy XI: Online
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Graphics & Sound:
Whether you were waiting in dread or hope, few games
have had such a large and varied group of people waiting in
anticipation for its release as Square-Enix's newest title in the
Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XI: Online. The
big change is, of course, that FFXI marks Square-Enix's
first massively multiplayer title and the first of the Final
Fantasy series to be both online and multiplayer. This news
was met with a wide variety of reactions by fans, some of which
were sure this spelled certain doom for the game. While it's true
that FFXI is a decidedly different game than its
predecessors, it manages to merge MMO gameplay with the
distinctive qualities of a Final Fantasy game perfectly.
Final Fantasy XI is a terrific game. However, the fact that
it's massively multiplayer will turn off some classic Final
Fantasy fans, while the Final Fantasy-style of gameplay
will turn off some MMORPG fans. For the rest of us, it's a damn
good ride.
I'll talk about PlayOnline a bit before I get to Final
Fantasy XI. When you purchase FFXI you are actually
getting three different pieces of software. Final Fantasy
XI, Tetra Master (an online version of the card game
from Final Fantasy IX, and the PlayOnline viewer.
PlayOnline is an 'entertainment network' which contains features
such as e-mail, instant messaging, and chat. You know, stuff you
can find anywhere on the internet. It is also the hub from which
you access any of Square-Enix's online games. PlayOnline is
interesting, fun, and confusing as hell. Installing and
registering for PlayOnline and Final Fantasy XI was one of
the most convoluted processes I've ever been subjected to. To be
fair, while the process was convoluted and time consuming, it was
also smooth. No strange errors, no server crashes, everything went
well. The process was extremely confusing, and I felt as if I
needed one too many login names and passwords. It works well guys,
but it needs to be more streamlined. I'd like to give PlayOnline a
little mini-score of 78 percent.
In this humble reviewer's opinion, the graphics of Final
Fantasy XI are peerless among MMORPG games. It's no secret
that Square games are some of the prettiest out there, and
FFXI is no exception. The graphic quality of the game might
be inferior in a 'technical' sense (polygon count, texture
resolution, etc...) to some of the other MMORPGs out there, but
FFXI proves that 'it is not the size of your polygon count,
it is how you use it'. The overall aesthetic beats the snot out of
anything else out there. I mean, what good is a super high
detailed player model if it looks retarded? This is a game that
definitely 'feels' like a Final Fantasy game in the visual
sense. Of course, since the graphics are highly stylized, you
might hate them with a passion if you don't like their particular
style. The look of the tarutaru race alone has been known to cause
people either 'awwww' at their cuteness, or to flee in disgust.
In an MMO first, Final Fantasy XI handles music in a
more traditional RPG method. Rather than having short clips that
play in certain places or times like most MMORPGs, FFXI
goes the usual route of console RPGs and just gives each area its
own musical theme. I doubt it comes as a big shock, but Final
Fantasy XI's music is the best of any MMORPG I've played to
date, by a huge margin. Even the battle music doesn't get terribly
redundant after hours of playing.
Just as with the graphics, it's all the little things that make
the sound effects in FFXI wonderful. The way different
weapons, even among the same 'type', such as one-handed swords,
make different noises upon impact. How heavy armor will rattle
while you walk. The different sounds monsters will make when they
decide to make a meal of you. Almost every spell sounds unique and
you can usually tell which spell is being cast behind you by sound
alone. Anyway, you get the picture. |
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Gameplay:
They said it couldn't be done. They said an MMORPG
could never present a cohesive story, that it could never have
cutscenes, and that the average player could never be the 'hero'.
Final Fantasy XI proves them wrong.
Here's a 'paraphrase' of the backstory information related
during the opening FMV. A being named the Shadow Lord rallied
together the different races of beastmen and made war upon the
'civilized' races of Vana'diel. The nations of San d'Oria, Bastok,
Windurst and Jeuno united their armies and defeated the Shadow
Lord and his army. The game takes place 20 years later where these
4 kingdoms maintain a 'strained' peace while vying for supremacy
over each other. However, it seems the different races of beastmen
are gaining power again, and a dark power stirs, threatening to
unite them once more.
Speaking of cutscenes, when I first heard that there were going
to be actual cutscenes in FFXI I was pretty pumped to say
the least. What I didn't expect was how many there were going to
be. I only expected a few, in just the really important areas of
the game, but you can see quite a few just walking around a town
for the first time and talking to people. Of course, some of these
aren't really earth shattering and can be about stuff as
non-threatening as a tavern running out of salt. The really
important plot progressing cutscenes are generally seen when you
acquire and complete missions.
Now don't let the word mission scare you. I don't mean anything
like the missions from Star Wars Galaxies. The quest system
in Final Fantasy XI is easily one of the best I've seen.
The quest log not only records the NPC who gave the quest, as well
as their location, and the task you must complete, but it will
also keep a record of quests you have completed. My only complaint
is that it doesn't always record all the necessarily information
you need to finish the quest, which means you have to write down
information anyway which kind of defeats the purpose of the quest
log.
There also seem to be what I refer to as 'secret quests'.
Talking to an NPC that 'asks' for something won't always result in
a quest being marked in your 'current' quest log. It will,
however, be put in your 'completed' quest log when you finish it.
Sometimes you really need to read between the lines of what some
NPC's are saying to figure out that there's a quest there. Of
course, this also can lead to you trying every crazy thought that
passes into your head and results in some wasted time and money.
It also behooves you to finish quests that don't result in
anything substantial, as each quest you complete will raise your
'fame'. Some quests can only be received after achieving a certain
fame level.
Missions and quests are actually two separate things. You can
have any number of quests on your quest log at any one time but
only one mission. Missions can most easily be described as quests
that progress the overall story of the game. Missions must be
completed in a more or less linear fashion, and are different
depending on which nation you are a member of; San d'Oria, Bastok
or Windurst (you can't officially 'join' Jeuno). Completing
missions gives you rank points. After gaining enough rank points,
your rank with your nation increases. While missions themselves
usually don't directly result in substantial rewards, higher ranks
mean cheaper prices from NPC's, access to more areas of the city,
cutscenes and other perks. As far as being the central hero, the
cutscenes themselves play out with you as an important, if not
central, figure. Many others are seeing the same scenes played out
with them as the central figure instead, but you'll just have to
suspend your disbelief or something.
Final Fantasy XI marks a return of the job system found
in the older Final Fantasy games. There are initially six
basic jobs to choose from: warrior, monk, thief, white mage, black
mage and red mage. When you reach level 30 there are some advanced
jobs, such as paladin, summoner and bard, which you can unlock by
completing certain quests. It pretty much works like the class
systems found in most MMORPGs but with two unique twists. The
first is that you can change jobs at your Mog House (kind of like
your own private apartment that you can access in cities). This
means you can try out different jobs without having to make a new
character. This is a good thing, since each separate character you
create will cost you an extra dollar a month. Also, since each job
levels up separately, you could theoretically achieve the max
level of 75 in every job, though it would take you years and
years. The second twist is the concept of subjobs. You can
complete a quest at level 18 which will allow you to 'equip' a
subjob. Equipping a subjob increases your stats and gives you
extra abilities, but you have to level up your subjob separately.
There are five different races to choose from in FFXI:
hume, elvaan, tarutaru, mithra and galkan. Hume are the most
balanced of the five and represent your typical 'human' race. In
an interesting twist, the elvaan, which are more or less elves,
are strong and powerful swordsman who aren't very dexterous or
agile. Instead it's the tarutaru, tiny little midgets who ooze
cuteness, who are the powerful magic wielders. Then we have the
mithra who are the most dexterous of races, and finally the galkan
who are big and strong, but are very poor at using magic. Race
seems to matter a bit more in FFXI than most other MMORPGs,
but you can still have a very effective taru warrior or galkan
blackmage if you work hard enough at it.
While, Final Fantasy XI is primarily a cooperative game,
PvP is non-existent, there is still an interesting method of
competition between the three nations. Each nation has certain
guards that can cast a sigil spell on you. When you kill monsters
in a certain area while you have the sigil spell, you contribute
points toward your nation controlling the region that the area is
in. Controlling regions offers many perks. You can set your
homepoint (where you appear when you die) and get the sigil spell
cast on you at certain outposts for free when your nation controls
the region the outpost is in. Nations that control more regions
have more items for sale in town as well. There is also a
traveling troupe of NPC's that set up shop in the nation with the
most regions under their control. There is more, but I couldn't
possibly list them all. In another twist, beastmen can also
control regions. Every time a person dies in area, it contributes
to the beastmen taking over the area.
No massively multiplayer RPG's are all about fighting these
days. There also has to be some sort of crafting system, and
Final Fantasy XI is no exception. Item crafting in
FFXI is referred to as synthesizing. Players must use
crystals, which they can obtain by killing monsters in regions
under their nation's control, to synthesize ingredients into a
finished product. Crystals come in different varieties such as
fire, wind, earth, water, dark, etc. There are several different
'guilds' a player can join, each specializing in a different field
of synthesizing, such as cooking, smithing, leather-working, etc.
Players can raise their level in different crafting skills by
collecting the appropriate items and crystals and combining them.
Some of the more powerful and useful foods, items and equipment
can only be created by players with a very high skill. There is
also a guild that doesn't involve synthesizing, the fishing guild.
FFXI boasts the deepest fishing gameplay I've yet seen in
an MMO. I find it rather boring myself, but some people seem to
enjoy it. |
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Difficulty:
It's no secret that MMORPGs aren't the easiest games
in the world. They require a lot of time and frequently require
you to coordinate the actions of many players. While the
individual day-to-day battles in Final Fantasy XI can seem
a little harder than most, in the overall grand scheme of things,
it's one of the easier MMOs. Final Fantasy XI has a very
forgiving leveling curve. Rather than the amount of experience
required to progress nearly doubling every time you gain a level,
the required experience in FFXI generally only goes up
around 200 points a level. This really isn't a lot when you
consider the fact that getting 150-200 xp a kill in a normal group
isn't as rare as you might think.
Now some people have complained that the leveling system is too
unforgiving in certain aspects. Namely, that you are too limited
in the range of levels you can have in a group. At first glance it
would seem that you couldn't get a good influx of xp points if the
level difference of anyone in the party is greater than two
levels. This is pretty much true at the lower levels, but as you
get higher it begins to become less restrictive. The thing you
have to realize is that the amount of experience you are awarded
is based on the relationship between the level of the monster and
the level of the highest-level person in the group. So as long as
you are killing monsters that are a couple of levels higher than
the highest-level player in your group, the xp will be fine.
Another very important thing to consider when talking about the
difficulty in an MMORPG are the death penalties. It's pretty
simple in FFXI. If you die, you lose 10 percent of the
experience needed to level (if you need a total of 4200 exp to
level, you'll lose 420 when you die) and you are sent back to your
homepoint. There is no loss of equipment, and you don't have to
spend time walking back to a corpse. Additionally, you can set
your homepoint in far more places than most MMORPGs, which means
you'll spend less time walking back to the area your party is
fighting.
Speaking of walking time, this is one area where Final
Fantasy XI can be pretty unforgiving to a lower level
character. While higher level characters will get transportation
options such as teleport spells, chocobos and airships, lower
level characters pretty much have to walk everywhere, and the
areas of FFXI can be big... very, very big.
Now like just about any other MMO game, some monsters will
leave you alone if you don't bother them, and others will attack
you as soon as they realize you are there. Final Fantasy XI
has some very unique ways of handling this 'monster aggression'.
Different monsters will attack you based on different principles,
such as sight, sound, and smell. With some clever footwork, you
can walk through a nest of mean monsters that attack based on
sight. Sound and smell are a little trickier however. Time of day
can even make a difference; monsters such as orcs and goblins see
further at night. |
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Game Mechanics:
One of the really unique aspects of Final Fantasy
XI is the way player 'guilds' are handled. Just about every
MMORPG allows players to form player organizations. In FFXI
they are called 'linkshells'. While most MMOs only allow a player
to be a member of a single organization, FFXI allows you to
be in as many as you want, though only one is 'active' at a time.
There is a catch, however. In order to be a member of a linkshell,
you have to be in possession of their 'linkpearl'. Linkpearls take
up inventory space and inventory space in FFXI is
extremely limited. Thankfully there are a series of quests
that allow you to increase your inventory and mog safe (the
FFXI equivalent of bank storage). However, completing these
quests is usually very expensive.
Oh wait, I haven't talked about auction houses yet, have I? Any
MMO worth it's salt nowadays has some 'automated' (as opposed to
physically trading the item and money) method of pawning off your
excess items and equipment to other players. In my opinion
Final Fantasy XI nails the perfect way to do this. While
most MMOs simply let you pick a specific price and put the item up
for sale, FFXI uses a sort of 'blind auction system'. In
truth it's not really an auction at all. There's really no actual
'bidding'. When a player puts something up for auction, they will
select a minimum price to sell the item at. When another player
goes to buy an item, they don't see how much the seller is
actually charging, but he can view a 'price history' which lets
him see what the last 12 or so people paid for the particular item
he is interested in. The buyer then selects how much he is willing
to pay for the item. As long as his offer is at least the minimum
price the seller selected, they get the item. If he offers more
than the minimum price, then the seller gets more money than they
asked for. I won't get into a detailed economic discussion, but I
think this prevents a lot of problems that can crop up in other
online auction systems.
Another interesting aspect of battle I haven't mentioned yet is
the 'skill chain', or 'renkai', system. As a player increases a
certain weapon skill, such as one-handed swords, two-handed axes,
or pole arms, he/she will learn weapon skills specific to that
type of weapon. As a player takes or inflicts weapon damage in
battle, he/she will accumulate technique points (TP). When a
player accrues enough TP, he/she can use a weapon skill. Different
skills contain different elemental attributes. When a group of
players uses certain weapon skills with the correct timing, they
can perform Skill Chains that will inflict extra damage to the
enemy. The system is actually pretty deep and contains far more
intricacies and strategy than most new players will, at first,
realize.
The final Final Fantasy XI first I'm going to mention is
one I've been awaiting for quite some time. FFXI has NPC's
who are children! How can all these other games talk about how
'immersive' they are when there are no friggin children in the
game, anywhere! I mean, what's up with that? The only thing I can
come up with is that they figured it would be in poor taste for
players to be able to mindlessly slaughter children. Thankfully
that's not really an issue in Final Fantasy XI since you
can't attack NPC's. Some players won't like this, and there is a
certain level of immersion that is gained from being able to
attack anything and everything. It's a tradeoff I guess: mindless
slaughter or children.
Children... that reminds of something I wanna warn people
about. So far it seems the community of Final Fantasy XI is
younger, on average, that most other online games with a monthly
fee. This means there are a lot more players between 12 and 16
than you usually find an MMORPG. It's not as horrible as you might
think however. Since the game is geared towards cooperative play
and there is a lack of any and all PvP, for the time being, the
immature behavior seems to remain at a minimum. The real problem
that crops up is in grouping. It's much easier to find yourself in
a truly horrendous group. This will hopefully become less of a
problem as people learn how to play the game. Until then I highly
recommend trying to get into a Japanese group. Since they've had
the game for a year now they are already very experienced, and the
XP will fly. The auto-translate function is very handy and takes
care of most communication problems.
There's no getting around it. Final Fantasy is one of
the leanest, meanest, flat out best MMORPGs out there, period.
That is, as long as it's the kind of thing you're into. There's no
accounting for taste, and despite how good it is there will be
some people that just won't dig it. If you've never liked the
style of Final Fantasy games before, there's no reason to
think you'll like this one. It's a bit of a cliché, but
FFXI is one of those games where you either love it or you
hate it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play some taruball.
-punts the taru- |
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-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Pentium III 800mhz processor,
128 MB RAM, GeForce III, RADEON 9000, or better video card,
DirectX 8.1, 6GB hard drive space, 56k modem |
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Test System:
Windows 98, Pentium III 700mhz, 448 MB RAM, Geforce 4
MX420 |
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