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Score: 8.6/10

 

- Playstation 2 Game Reviews - Role-Playing Game Reviews - Reviews of Games Developed/Published by Square

Stepping into Final Fantasy XI’s game world can be a tad intimidating at first simply because there is so much one can do.  Thankfully everything is arranged so that players can nibble on various gameplay options at their leisure, giving them plenty of time to learn the ropes of how gameplay works.  Choosing a character class is a matter of personal taste, and there are several races to choose from: the hulking Galka with their brute strength, the nimble Elvaan who lean toward 

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close-quartered combat, the Tarutaru and their magic-oriented society, the cat-like Mithra, as well as the well-round (same may call it average) Humes.

Combat starts with players often soloing for their first 10-12 levels, fighting the monsters just outside their hometown.  With this they gain experience points and treasure, as well as knowledge as to how the basic play mechanics of FFXI’s battles work.  Early on enemies strike a comfortable balance between providing a challenge and not becoming too difficult, as players get used to strategizing what to attack and when, when to use a special attack, picking out the appropriate spells to use for specific situations, and so forth.  However, once players start to form parties it becomes obvious just how much depth there is to combat in this game.

Playing in a party really changes the dynamics as to how one approaches combat, and really forces all players involved in a party to think about the group, not just themselves.  Whether playing as a combat-intensive warrior, or being the party healer, or once one has stepped into the realm of the advance classes like a paladins, ninjas, and summoners there is just that much to consider when playing in a party.  There are so many ways one can approach battle and how players can join forces when fighting enemies that it’s hard not to have fun when play with a party.  Granted you could be stuck in a party full of idiots, but when that happens just leave them for another group.  Overall, though, combat is top notch, with so many layers to it that there may very well be debates well into the future as to what the “best” techniques are.

As mentioned earlier, there are many classes of characters available to players, and thanks to FFXI using the Job System (which has made more than a few appearances in the Final Fantasy franchise) players have the ability to change the job their character is using quite readily.  Clocking in at just over a dozen jobs, players will have warriors, red, black, and white mages, paladins, thieves, samurai, ninjas, dragoons, monks, summoners, beast masters, and dark knights at their disposal.  When first starting the game, players will only be able to select to be a warrior, monk, thief, or one of the three types of mages.  The rest of the classes are advanced jobs that can only be unlocked, first by getting one of the basic jobs up to level 30, then doing a quest to unlock the specific advanced job.  It’s a great selection of character classes, providing plenty of play options, while still presenting plenty of challenge to get many of them.

On top of this, when players reach level 18 for the first time they can embark on a quest that unlocks the sub-job feature.  With this players can have two jobs at the same time.  For instance a white mage can sub-job as a black mage, as a result having increased hit points and magic points.  However, the sub-job is always at half the level of a player’s main job, so if that white mage is level 30 their black mage sub-job will be at level 15.  Don’t worry though.  If that black mage is usually level 20, for instance, it won’t de-level when using it as a sub-job.  It only acts as a level 15 black mage so long as it is a sub-job.  If a player switches back to using their black mage as a main job it will once again be at level 20.  The sub-job is very helpful in augmenting a character's skills, but while playing FFXI there seems to be a certain stigma with unconventional class combinations.  Many players treat the game as a grind and expect their party members to use what many consider the best combination of character classes, discouraging playing around with combinations more off the beaten path.

But if players don’t particularly feel like spending most of their time crossing swords with enemies, there’s plenty of craft skills to master.  Final Fantasy XI has blacksmithing, gold smithing, fishing, cooking, alchemy, leather craft, and bone craft among other skills for players to sink their teeth into.  It does take a lot of time and gil (the currency of the Final Fantasy world) to hone these skills, so expect to spend quite a bit of time trying to get better at the various skills.  There will be a lot of failures, and a lot of lost materials along the way.  Once players start to tackle creating more powerful weapons and items they will need to have high levels in multiple skills in order to proceed.  Becoming proficient in the game’s crafting skills takes a lot of time and patience, but the end results often prove very rewarding.

And what would a role-playing game be without quests?  Final Fantasy XI answers this in spades with quests, missions, and conquest.  Quests are just what they sound like, as players do tasks for the various inhabitants of the game world.  Missions are quests of a more official nature, where players perform tasks for the military and people in government for their respective nation.  As far as conquest is concerned, these involve taking control of the various regions of the FFXI world.  With this conquest comes the advantage of your nation’s stores selling a greater variety of goods since they can import from the regions under your nation’s control.  One interesting aspect of these quests is the concept of fame and rank.  As players complete more quests in a city they become increasingly popular in that town, and it is through this that they unlock more advance quests.  A player's rank increases through completing missions, thus unlocking more advanced missions.  As such most quests and missions are not free for all to do.  Players must work their way up the ladder.  Quests and missions are functional, but the major problem they suffer from is that in a lot of ways they’re still the same old, same old.  With Fed Ex quests, fetch quests, and so on, the quests and missions have that same formulaic task completion approach to role-playing that the genre has suffered from for years.  

In spite of this, there is a very strong sense of community while playing the game.  There are four major chat options while playing that can allow players to either talk with people in their immediate vicinity, with anyone in a zone, one-on-one with someone else, just with their party, or with members of their link shell.  To clarify what a link shell is, this allows any players to form groups, kind of like an IRC channel, and talk together.  This is done by acquiring a link pearl that can be bought or, as often is the case, is given to a player by someone else.  These link pearl acts like a magic walkie-talkie allowing players to chat in the shell.  It’s the link shell where the greatest sense of community can be found.  Some shells may be populated by idiots and not worth one’s time, but once players get on one with kind people who know what they’re doing it becomes easy to create parties for various missions, ask questions, or just talk about the weather while doing some fishing.  Community can also be felt just from random acts of kindness.  Every so often a player may cross paths with someone of a happy-go-lucky who is more than happy to lend a hand, give directions, or cast a quick spell to help another player out.  There will always be jerks to contend with when playing games online, but the bozo quotient appears quite low in FFXI thus far, helping to keep the community a somewhat bigger, happier family.

Of course if players have a beef with someone else, they can always take it up in Ballista, the newly added PvP feature in FFXI.  There are requirements to enter the battles, firstly that the player must be of Rank 3 or higher.  After that other a level requirement will also come into play, but this often depends on the battle and changes with each Ballista.  It gives players a chance to have at each other without the fear of penalties when they die.  It may feel half-assed to ardent supporters of the PvP lifestyle, but those who don’t like being randomly whacked by another player will certainly welcome the controlled environment of PvP in this game.  

On other semi-community related feature in FFXI that deserves mention is the game's economy.  In most MMORPGs players can't walk two steps without being inundated with people shouting that they have this or that item for sale.  This still happens to a degree here, but players have alternatives in the Bazaar and the Auction House.  The auction house allows players to put items up for sale for a certain asking price then over the course of a few days other players may bid on that item.  If the bid is higher than the asking price the item is sold.  The bazaar is like a mobile shop run by players where they can sell goods in their inventory.  If someone is curious, they can just walk up, take a peak, and buy something.  It's a handy way to do business and at this point is regulating itself well.

However, not everything about FFXI is fabulous.  One aspect of the game that is an absolute pain is getting around the various regions of the game world.  Early on players are forced to run most everywhere, which can take forever.  It’s slow; it’s frustrating, and in the end proves to be a big waste of time.  Not until level 20 do players have a chance at faster travel when the quest that allows them to use a Chocobo is open to them.  Even then if players start to level up a different job, they must get that job to a certain level before they can ride their big yellow bird again.  There’s also the option to ride on boats and airship, but there is a certain amount of waiting to be at the right level to do these as well.  For the first two weeks to a month on FFXI players can expect to have long walks ahead of them before they can get around in a more convenient manner.  There’s an off chance a kind mage will offer to magically teleport players, but they usually charge a fee and not many do it for free these days.

Another problem the game suffers from is that it doesn’t allow players to choose which server they would like to play on.  Instead they are randomly assigned to one of the dozens of Final Fantasy XI servers.  This can prove very problematic for gamers who would like to play FFXI with their friends.  However, there is a remedy to this.  There is something called a World Pass that players can buy with gil in the game.  What this does is gives a password that the player can give to a handful of friends.  These friends use the password when registering their Final Fantasy XI account, allowing them to play on the same server as the person who gave them the World Pass.  On the one side this is an understandable step for Square to take because it helps prevent servers from being flooded with players while others are left barren, but on the other hand it still presents quite a few inconvenient hoops for players to jump through.

In terms of presentation, Final Fantasy XI is as pretty as one would expect from a Square title.  The image quality isn’t as colourful or crisp as that found on the PC version of the game, but that’s to be expected.  Nonetheless, the art right from the character and monster designs to the layout of the various environments are beautiful.  The game really brings a sense of whimsy and pulls the player into a different world through its graphics.  The animations are equally satisfying, only really stuttering in areas with lots of people in them, such as in the marketplaces of major cities.

Musically speaking the tunes are far sparser in this game than in past Final Fantasy titles.  In terms of quality they don’t jump out as much as some of the more anthemic pieces to grace the franchise, which is a disappointment.  However, there are the requisite appearances of traditional ditties like the Chocobo theme and the arpeggio harp piece.  What is particularly annoying is that yet again players are subjected to that low quality pseudo-midi sound quality for the instrumentation.  It just boggles the mind.  Here we have Square pouring in money by the truckload to bring us unparalleled graphics, yet they just can’t seem to give us top-notch instrument quality.  It’s doubly disappointing after playing through the Lineage II beta recently and hearing music of an extremely high calibre both in terms of composition and quality of instrumentation.

Luckily, the sound effects pick up the slack for their ailing audio counterpart.  The clashing of weapons, the whooshing and swooshing of spells, the grunts and roars of monsters, wind passing through a valley, the sound of crashing waves on the shore, they all bring the game to life.

Final Fantasy XI is by no means the be-all-end-all, shining example of what a MMORPG should be.  It still has its faults, but it’s good points far outweigh them.  Despite the cost of the game and its packed-in hard drive FFXI is well worth the time of MMORPG fans looking for a game that will keep them busy for a very long time.

Mr. Nash

(May 22, 2004)

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