Final Fantasy XI: Online review

The Final Fantasy series needs no introduction; these popular games have been around for a long time and each release on the PSone (and later PS2) has been a huge success, so it was only natural that Square Enix would use the PS2 as the starting platform for their online game Final Fantasy XI - which debuted in Japan in 2002. Since the game’s release in Japan two years ago it has expanded every five to six months, in terms of worldwide marketing. This began with the PC version in Japan late 2002; then a PC release in North America in 2003; followed by a PS2 version there early this year. The last step was adding the European market to the mix on the 16th September this year. What this means for us is that we have a well established, but perhaps outdated, two year old MMORPG with two expansions thrown in for good measure. This review is based on the US version, which included the first expansion, but for all purposes it should be synonymous with the European version.

Size does matter

The first thing you notice is the hefty package containing six CDs; four for the game itself, one for an online version of TetraMaster (which is the card game from Final Fantasy IX) and the last CD is the first Final Fantasy XI expansion, called Rise of the Zilart. Packages may vary but count on having to install at least six gigabytes worth of data. You can also count on not being able to play for quite a bit until after you set things up. For me it took five and a half hours to do the installing and the patching of everything with a good connection (8MB, but shared); one hour of that time was going through all sorts of registration and starting processes (having to use four registration codes for example). But hey, this is Final Fantasy XI we’re talking about! These games get bigger and bigger every time.

A lot of this time goes into installing and patching a program called PlayOnline, which acts as a central hub to Final Fantasy XI and TetraMaster. It’s also a communication tool giving you access to e-mail, chat and a friends list (although this is not as useful on the PC as it was on the PS2). Many probably remember TetraMaster as the annoyingly addictive card game from Final Fantasy IX. The bad news (or good, depending on how you look at it) is it’s even more addictive now, because of its new features and mostly because you can both play it against the computer and online against other players. So you might as well remove Solitaire now if you’re getting the game - although it comes with the price tag of one dollar a month (Take note that I only have access to US prices at the moment so I’ll leave the final calculations up to you).

The payment process comes down to this: you have your PlayOnline account which costs $12 a month (strangely there doesn’t seem to be a three, six or twelve month subscription) and in that monthly fee there is one character slot. If you want another character slot (called Content IDs) you have to pay an additional $1, and so on. Then there is the aforementioned TetraMaster subscription, which is also a dollar a month. It’s not all that bad though, as MMORPGs go, as the price is worth it and furthermore having access to just one character is not as bad as it sounds, which I will come to later. As is customary nowadays you get the first thirty days free of charge.

In Utero

After a very stylish intro movie you are able to select your character from five types. The first two races sound familiar: Humes and Elvaan. Yep, you guessed it. Humes are your human-type character while Elvaan have pointy ears. The last three are Galka (male-only big ogre types), Mithra (female-only cat people) and Tarutaru (some kind of rodent). Actually Tarutaru are tiny little child-like creatures specialising in magic (there goes the chance to be a cool-looking spellcaster, you’re going to have to settle for looking like the offspring of Mogwai and a gnome). With the ongoing trend of being able to customise your character in detail (City of Heroes, EverQuest II etc.) Final Fantasy XI is a letdown with only a few faces (which you can’t modify) to choose from, in addition to basic hair colour and size.

The next step is picking a job, which is the same as picking a class in the traditional sense. The Final Fantasy jobs of White Mage (healer), Red Mage (buffing and debuffing) and Black Mage (damage) are here, plus the more conventional Warrior, Thief and Monk. Every race is free to choose what job they want, although some are obviously better at one specific thing (like Tarutaru as mages). The benefit of the job system is the complete freedom of choice it offers - although you start with one job you can select another main job at any time with no penalty. This is the reason that having one character slot available isn’t so bad because you can experience all the jobs anyway. At level eighteen you can pick a side job (i.e. multi-classing) which complements your main job. An example would be a monk taking the warrior job, which allows him to gain more hit points, or a red mage taking a black mage side job for some extra spell power. Finally, at level thirty you get the really cool-sounding jobs to pick from like the Paladin, Ninja, Ranger, Summoner (Yuna!), and Dark Knight, so there are some fun strategies to be had in moulding your character. The level “treadmill” currently stops at level seventy-five and as of now this is strictly a player vs. enemy game, there is no player vs. player action in the game, but there have been rumours that this might be implemented later.

Server woes

Final Fantasy XI does not allow players to select a server for some strange reason; you get one selected for you. So in order to meet your friends, one of you has to find a special non-player character that sells World Passes and “buy” a server transfer (or you could go through the boring process of restarting the game until you both get the same server). Another thing about the servers is that everyone plays together: Japan, North America and most likely Europe too. This obviously creates some language difficulties and reportedly some friction, since the Japanese have been playing for two years and the English-speaking people have just recently arrived. So we have the real or imaginary division of the experts and newbies, in addition to the language problems. There is a so-called Autotranslate Function in which you can put in standard phrases and the Japanese can see it in their language, but it’s not exactly something that comes easy or can be used quickly. From my own limited experience most players just use English.

EverFantasy

It has been no secret that Final Fantasy XI models itself heavily after EverQuest, although it manages to present its own unique Final Fantasy style. EverQuest players will be familiar with a lot of concepts and speaking as a four-year old veteran of that game sometimes this is not a good thing.

We all know that levelling treadmills exist for all MMORPGs, in one form or another, but Final Fantasy XI is particularly time consuming. You can solo up until around level ten very well and beyond, depending on your patience, but soloing reaps very little rewards compared to grouping. Now I’m not getting into the old debate of “why solo in a MMORPG, go play Morrowind!” but the fact is that sometimes you feel like soloing (or you can’t find a group) and it’s nice to have the option to be able to make a decent progress that way. So in short, Final Fantasy XI puts the emphasis on groups and it’s hard to be the soloing type in the long run (but you can farm stuff for trade skills by soloing).

The player guild system is very simple; it’s basically just a chat channel called linkshell and that’s about it. The founder of the linkshell gives out linkpearls to the members which they equip so they can use the channel. Other things that Final Fantasy XI does differently from EverQuest is that you are unable to alt-tab out of the game or minimise the window. In fact EverQuest used to do that but stopped some time ago, along with most other MMORPGs. This is a bit annoying but as I understand it, this is done to minimise possible exploits, because Square Enix has had some problems with that (I remember hearing about some money duping exploit some time ago).

There are a lot of other game functions and things to do in Final Fantasy XI, too many to cover here, so I will just touch briefly on three more aspects and then go into the actual gameplay for a new beginner: looting, auctioning and Mog houses. Looting is automatic; you kill something and the loot gets placed into your inventory. When in groups you can select the preferred looting method. Auctioning, or selling and buying items, is actually very easy but a bit confusing to learn at first. You simply click on the so-called Auction Houses and put your items up for bidding. The buyer does not see what you priced it as, but as soon as he offers more or equal to your price he buys the item(s). Players can view the bid history of an item to get ideas for a price. Another method to sell and buy is to have your character enter trade mode, like in EverQuest. Mog Houses is where you receive the money for the items sold but it’s more than that; it’s basically your safe haven in the world; your apartment so to speak. In there you can furnish the room with plants and whatnot, store items, switch main jobs and so on.

“We live in a beautiful world”

The game world (called Vana’diel) is huge and there’s a lot to do; you can fight, explore, do quests or trade skills like blacksmithing, tailoring, mining and so on. Again, if you know EverQuest, you will be familiar with a lot of concepts here, but often done better since Square Enix has the benefit of learning from Verant’s mistakes. A nice example of this is that when you engage a mob it’s yours, no one else can attack it (unless you disengage) and its name changes colour. No more kill-stealing drama! Another example is that the raid mobs (boss mobs that require a group of high level players to kill) are in instanced zones.

I picked an Elvaan monk initially, since he seemed the most newbie-friendly, and had a lot of fun with him smacking things around. I had a choice of three starting cities: in the Republic of Bastok, the Kingdom of San D'Oria or the Federation of Windurst. These nations are all allies but still compete for land (now isn’t that nice, a non-violent expansion war!). Derived from this is the Conquest System, in which you can partake right away by getting a spell called “Signet” cast on you by a guard in your hometown (this is something you should always do before you go out killing, since it gives you conquest points that you can spend on items and allows you to loot crystals used for tradeskills or to sell). The nation that has the most land benefits by having special merchants in its main city. Killing for experience is very straightforward at first, you attack and fight automatically, but in time you will get more specials (spells for casters and fighting abilities for melee types) which you can use strategically. When you die you lose 10% of your experience, but you respawn with all your gear intact at your bind spot or get a resurrection from a fellow player.

Travelling is slow at first but after level fifteen you can rent a Chocobo (yellow ostrich-like beasts that run really fast). Later on you are able to travel by ships or airships, but it’s somewhat expensive.

The Nitty Gritty

The game has a steep learning curve for newbies, starting with the controls and the interface. For the first thing the controls are actually hidden, you have to rely on keyboard clicks (holding down control or alt usually) rather than visible mouseclick menus. You also have to get familiar with making macros right away or you’ll do things slower. This is presumably because Final Fantasy XI originated on the PS2 and this setting is probably easier on that platform. This has the bonus of leaving the screen uncluttered but is definitely unintuitive and takes some time to master. If you see yourself playing this a lot on the PC it would probably be a good idea to get an USB adaptor for a PS2 controller.

The graphics are very nice, facial features and bodies have nice detail to them and character movement is well done. You also have a lot of emotes at your disposal. The landscape is convincing and has an immersive feel to it. The most important thing however is that things run very smoothly, both in terms of graphics and connection, even on a two year old system like mine. Speaking of graphics, Final Fantasy XI features one thing that I’ve longed to see in a MMORPG for some time: cut scenes. Sometimes when you talk to a quest character, the camera takes over - enhancing your role-playing experience so to speak. The connection has been absolutely solid for me with no linkdeaths.

The sound and music are as they should be in a MMORPG, with a non-intrusive quality that at the same time enhance the game experience.

Conclusion

Final Fantasy XI certainly has a lot to offer, there’s a lot of content and a lot of things to do. This is especially true for the European market, where we are getting a MMORPG that has had time to develop and comes with two expansions. The TetraMaster card game is also a fun mini-game. The connection is remarkably solid and the graphics are good but will face some fierce competition in a few months time when EverQuest II and World of WarCraft hit the streets.

In MMORPG terms some of the gameplay is a bit old-fashioned, it’s a continuation of the much maligned time sinks and that of unforgiving deaths where you can use levels gained. The trend for other MMORPGs now is to try to involve the casual player more and reward him for time invested, but Final Fantasy XI doesn’t really do that. It has more good points than bad though, at the least it will tide you over until the next generation of MMORPGs hits the streets and at best you will have fun for months, even years to come.