What the hell is that? Oh right, this is a Final Fantasy game.
This is an unusual one. Not the game - well, perhaps that too - but the timing of it being added into my rotation. Up until a few months ago I'd never played Final Fantasy XIV, which - according to the rules I've set for myself - meant I wasn't likely to get around to it until the second half of this year at the earliest. However a few months ago my regular gaming partner started playing the game, and since we'd had a lot of fun duoing in Neverwinter back in 2018 I couldn't say no to taking a look at FFXIV sooner than I'd planned. Since then my opinions of the game have started to sneak into posts I've written about other MMOs, so I've decided to let this one skip the queue - partly to give those opinions some wider context, and partly because there's a lot to say about Final Fantasy XIV.
As always for 24 Hours In... this will be a brand new character. I'm still levelling the other one, but I take a very different approach to games I'm playing with a friend as compared to the games I discuss here. There are things I will do differently here, and not only because I already have some knowledge of the game.
As usual when I kick off a run on a new title I'll add a few words about my history (if any) with its wider franchise. Like most people in the western world who owned a Playstation in the later half of the '90s my first exposure to the Final Fantasy series - and the entire JRPG genre - came in 1997 with the release of Final Fantasy VII. Expectations were through the roof after watching the demo disc trailer* and reading the reviews, but FF7 more than lived up to the hype. "An insurmountable level of excellence" said the trailer, and I still wouldn't argue much with that assessment..
*Click here to bask in nostalgia. This was absolutely mind blowing back in '97, and it's still one of the best game trailers ever made.
Subsequently I played both FFVIII and FFIX on the PS1, though perhaps inevitably neither game quite lived up to the standard set by their predecessor. IX in partcular, which I know is well regarded but which I never actually finished. At some point in that game - quite late on - I realised I'd completely lost the thread of the plot and had no idea of where I was, what I was supposed to be doing, or why I was doing it. Looking back on it I may have even been in the final area, but I'd lost interest and never went back to it.
I also moved on, eventually, from a console to a PC for gaming, so I never played any of the following games in the series, and that included both FFXI and later FFXIV. Those two were on PC, but I never felt any particular urge to try them out. Once I started this blog it was inevitable that I'd eventually get around to FFXIV, but there were a lot of other MMOs ahead of it in the queue.
So that's where I am with Final Fantasy. I'll always regard VII as a great game (though it's been close to two decades since I last played it so I've no idea if it still holds up) but I don't consider myself a dedicated fan of the series. Much like Star Wars: The Old Republic then FFXIV can score some easy points with me by echoing those aspects of its franchise I remember fondly, but also like SWTOR it will still have to stand up as a game in its own right.
Final Fantasy XIV is known as one of the least alt-friendly of MMOs. It's not only possible to level up every class - combat and crafting - on one character, it's more or less recommended to do so. The game has systems in place to encourage this, such as an XP boost for second and subsequent classes, and it's easier to swap between classes in FFXIV than it is to swap between builds in some other games. While maxing out all of them would be time consuming it's perfectly doable.
Perhaps a bigger obstacle to alting is the story. Final Fantasy XIV has a lot of story, and I do mean a LOT. Compared to this game The Old Republic and Secret World Legends are as sparse in exposition as Guild Wars 2, and sitting through all of this more than once might reasonably try the patience of any but the most dedicated. There's also no skipping it, as progression through the game is locked into progression through the Main Story Quest, or MSQ.
(I'll likely spend a lot more time than I usually do talking about the story in this game, and how it's delivered. It's that central to the experience... which isn't always a good thing.)
All that said, now that I've started my new character I'm finding I appreciate a lot of the story far more than I did the first time around. My original experience of the first couple of hours of the game was of being bombarded with so many names and places and background details that very little of it took hold. Events were presented with no wider context, characters I hadn't met yet were being referenced by name, and it was very hard to pick out what was important - or would be - from what wasn't. This time around I have context and can enjoy these sequences without so much wait... what... who?
(This is especially true early on of a lengthy flashback involving Thancred (which takes place shortly after the first encounter with an Ascian... hmm) and which now feels like it's actually about something.
Going into the game with this prior knowledge also allows me to avoid certain pitfalls I'd have otherwise dived into head first. There are aspects to FFXIV that are downright peculiar, but having some familiarity with the game now I'm spared from writing at length about my first impressions of things than only make sense later on. I shouldn't have to spend too much time in thes posts taking back things I said in previous ones.
My other character has just entered Heavensward, but I'll try to keep my commentary here relevant to whichever stage of the game I'm on with this character. I won't always succeed in doing so, but I'll try.
I've gone with a Miqo'te because in a game with literal catgirls why would anyone want to play anything else? I have to assume that the players of characters of other races didn't realise they could be cats until it was too late to reroll.
I've stayed true to my preference for tanky sword and shield characters and chosen Gladiator as my initial class. I do intend to dip into some of the others, but there's a couple of advantages to starting here. For one thing it's the only class I have prior experience of in this game, and for another I'll only be playing this character for about two hours a day and once I get into the group content I'd rather not spend a sizeable chunk of that time waiting for dungeon queues to pop. Sorry, DPSers. Really though it's more that there's a ton of boss fights in this game spread among dungeons, trials and raids, and it's enough of a challenge to learn all of these encounters as a tank without then having to relearn them as a DPS.
Not that I'm terribly tanky right now. I'm really missing my Shield Lob since that's been my instinctive opener in every fight on my other character for a long time. I've also died of overconfidence three times in these first couple of hours due to forgetting that I'm not a level 55 in head to toe Ironworks gear, but a level 5 in a mini-skirt.
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