Anathema
09-07-2010, 07:52 AM
Title: User Preview: Final Fantasy XIV
Platform: PC, PS3
Platform Reviewed: PC
Developer: Square Enix (http://www.square-enix.com/)
Publisher: Square Enix (http://www.square-enix.com)
MSRP: 49.99 USD
Writer: S.M. - Anathema
Final Fantasy XIV User Preview
Impressions from a Former WoW player
Final Fantasy 14 is being touted by those who follow its news community as the dawning of a new age and the pinnacle of what an MMO should be. One thing that I have not seen said of it is that it will be a "wow killer," an announcement made by fan communities of Age of Conan and Aeon during the weeks before their respective launch. I feel it might be best to shout out to Tycho of Penny Arcade fame here, and state that he's right and the community knows it: Nothing will kill WoW but itself. It's too entrenched an opponent to win against. You can, however, make its officer staff nervous.
With the open beta having been launched I snagged my key quite carefully amid a flurry of "stress tested" access servers at Squeenix. I say I did, but really I went to bed and had my girlfriend hit refresh on the page for two straight hours till she gleaned a key from them. I took off my rose-coloured nostalgia-laden glasses before going in, knowing that if I went at this as a player of the FF series it would only sway my views. Speaking of views, I'm gonna lay it out in a nice block format similiar to Evil Avatar's reviewing system. Recognize that this opinion post is not representative of a finished product, being a beta client.
Controls
I tend to value these in a game more than anything else. So we'll start here. The controls are, at present, very unpolished feeling. They've recently made some advances in that you can now actually remap your keyboard keys (most of them) which says volumes for what they learned from their previous foray into MMORPGs. The mouse control is terrible, and why they're still using a software mouse instead of a DXinput is beyond me. However, if you (like myself) had a wired XBOX controller handy and ready to go, you would find the controls far easier to get into. I'd liken the controller based handling to the kin of mass effect or other over-the-shoulder/behind cam RPGs released for various systems. While the overall controls feel very clean, they still have some much needed refinement we'll hopefully see before release.
The game's system has a pretty harsh learning curve at present which will likely be fixed by tutorials during the beginning of the finished product. There are a number of areas that feel, at the start, like they're waiting to put in a helpful NPC to show you how to not be an idiot. It took me an hour to figure out what the hell to do with a quest I was given to go kill some rats, and then a half hour to figure out how to get back up after I'd died to a very fat looking bird who can apparently destroy you in two hits if you're not careful. Nevermind how long it took me to figure out how to put newly acquired skills on my hotkey bar.
The targetting system is decent, and for those who may or may not have been following the game from inception let me put some fears to rest: Combat is not slow anymore. Overall I found the combat system just a little bit more clunky than WoW, and that primarily because of controls and horrible nested menus which had to be used with the controller. There's still a brief second before combat starts where you take out your weapon which can be a little bit slow, but is hardly noticeable.
There is a concern many people have stated in that you can't jump, can't climb, and can't swim. From a player standpoint, I can state that except for a few rare cases you don't miss the jumping, you can walk up and down most hills and passable terrain is very easy to distinguish from impassable. The climbing, well, I can see where it would be useful, but for the most part anywhere you'd want to climb to get to the next ledge you can usually find a "ramp like" terrain to walk up to within a few paces of where you are.
Graphics
In a two word statement: stunningly breathtaking. The first thing I did was crank the anti-aliasing, textures, and shadows to their highest settings to see if my machine could handle it. Even in a beta client the world was amazing, the games' initial cutscenes are done in the fashion people have come to expect from square for years. I can't think of a non-square game to compare this to.
The downside is that for MMO junkies playing on older rigs, you may have to pass this by.
Other than a few random glitches, as outlined below, I didn't notice much in the way of graphics complaints. Likely, these issues stem from a non-final release.
There's a lighting-related issue in all areas where a straight line of shadow can be seen on the ground trailing from the right side of the screen to a central point.
From time to time, both in cutscenes and in general actions, characters will either randomly "appear" or disappear at the wrong times. (Teleports and area loading.)
Animations seem to fire on a "delay" and occaisionally sounds fail to fire where there should be sounds related to animations (emotes)
In some areas where you stand on a ledge with the sun at your back, your shadow is cast in a strange fashion, where it appears on the ground a ledge below you as if you're floating in the air. It looks very odd.
Sound
The music gets a short review. I have nothing bad to say about it. Call me a sappy emo-bag or whatever you like, but the overall theme (Susan Calloway and Nobuo Uematsu - Answers) is used to great effect. The background music in free-roam areas, in fights, and in cities all carry one thing which will reap a nostalgic note with anyone who's played a final fantasy game before ffX: The music contains the distilled essence of the area it's matched to.
The general sounds, (walking, weapons being drawn, fighting, etc.) when timed properly are perfect. For a portion of any time where i was walking i found myself staring at the ground, just listening to the footsteps change in sound with every extremely minor terrain change. Walking on grass sounds like walking on grass, then in the middle of some grassy hill you hit a small patch of rock and it sounds like walking on rock for a split second before you're back to the dull thuds of grassy boots. It's a very environmentally rich audio experience.
System and Atmosphere, read as "misc other"
The atmosphere of the game is an overwhelming experience. Sound and visual come together with gameplay in such a powerful way that it brings back that wide and expansive feeling you've gotten in some of your favourite video games. The few bugs detract hugely from the atmosphere, sadly, and there are a few things that definitely need that final coat of polish:
There are fish tanks in the city of Limsa Lominsa in which fishes float in place, barely moving their fins, and do little else.
There's a very lengthy boat-trip between continents which feels empty. Surrounded by beautiful water, an amazing skyline, and a horizon that slowly changes over time, you find yourself realising that you're standing on a boat with the steersman and no one else. It feels very lonely and empty.
The regions don't yet appear to be connected to anything, or atleast after all day of roaming the countryside following one straight road I didn't find a way from one continent to another.
System wise the game still lacks polish. I can't talk enough about the horribleness of the nested menus. I'll be very glad when I can have my mouse and hotkeys back. The word "counterintuitive" applies quite well at present form. The ability to switch classes on the fly is great, and having the refreshing ability to redistribute your attribute points on the fly is a welcome change. The downside is how completely infuriating it is when you switch between classes and have to set up your action bar again from the ground up again.
Summary
It's not finished yet, but my overall opinion is positive. The few issues I found with the game were largely related to it being a beta, and clearly "unfinished." At launch the game has the potential to be a completely immersive and wholesome experience. Even just the rich commentary from minor NPCs in the beta are very evocative of real dialogue. Squeenix has a lot to be proud of.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/35.gif
The Good Amazing graphics
Breathtaking soundtrack
Great atmosphere
The Bad Nested menus
Learning curve
The Ugly No searchable "auction house" system, seriously?
I am a former hardcore raider, I played WOW for some 5 years and saw almost all of TK/SSC during BC before dipping away and going a slightly more relaxed route. During Lich King I operated a casual guild focused on 10 man raiding for fun instead of progression, and pugged into more than a few "hardcore" raids on many of my alts. I levelled, successfully, one of every class both horde and alliance above 70, totalling out at 9 level 80's before I stopped play over disagreements with design philosophy change at Actiblizzvisionard (read: realID.) I have had a crack at LOTRO, FFXI (for all of 10 minutes,) Age of Conan, D&D online, and one of the super-hero mmos (that one didn't last long) in an attempt to find something to fill the gap after I left WOW. Finding those lacking, I've been playing a lot of league of legends, and replaying a number of somewhat dated PS2, NES, and SNES games. I have been a gamer ever since my brother first handed me the joystick of an atari 2600 at age 3.
Platform: PC, PS3
Platform Reviewed: PC
Developer: Square Enix (http://www.square-enix.com/)
Publisher: Square Enix (http://www.square-enix.com)
MSRP: 49.99 USD
Writer: S.M. - Anathema
Final Fantasy XIV User Preview
Impressions from a Former WoW player
Final Fantasy 14 is being touted by those who follow its news community as the dawning of a new age and the pinnacle of what an MMO should be. One thing that I have not seen said of it is that it will be a "wow killer," an announcement made by fan communities of Age of Conan and Aeon during the weeks before their respective launch. I feel it might be best to shout out to Tycho of Penny Arcade fame here, and state that he's right and the community knows it: Nothing will kill WoW but itself. It's too entrenched an opponent to win against. You can, however, make its officer staff nervous.
With the open beta having been launched I snagged my key quite carefully amid a flurry of "stress tested" access servers at Squeenix. I say I did, but really I went to bed and had my girlfriend hit refresh on the page for two straight hours till she gleaned a key from them. I took off my rose-coloured nostalgia-laden glasses before going in, knowing that if I went at this as a player of the FF series it would only sway my views. Speaking of views, I'm gonna lay it out in a nice block format similiar to Evil Avatar's reviewing system. Recognize that this opinion post is not representative of a finished product, being a beta client.
Controls
I tend to value these in a game more than anything else. So we'll start here. The controls are, at present, very unpolished feeling. They've recently made some advances in that you can now actually remap your keyboard keys (most of them) which says volumes for what they learned from their previous foray into MMORPGs. The mouse control is terrible, and why they're still using a software mouse instead of a DXinput is beyond me. However, if you (like myself) had a wired XBOX controller handy and ready to go, you would find the controls far easier to get into. I'd liken the controller based handling to the kin of mass effect or other over-the-shoulder/behind cam RPGs released for various systems. While the overall controls feel very clean, they still have some much needed refinement we'll hopefully see before release.
The game's system has a pretty harsh learning curve at present which will likely be fixed by tutorials during the beginning of the finished product. There are a number of areas that feel, at the start, like they're waiting to put in a helpful NPC to show you how to not be an idiot. It took me an hour to figure out what the hell to do with a quest I was given to go kill some rats, and then a half hour to figure out how to get back up after I'd died to a very fat looking bird who can apparently destroy you in two hits if you're not careful. Nevermind how long it took me to figure out how to put newly acquired skills on my hotkey bar.
The targetting system is decent, and for those who may or may not have been following the game from inception let me put some fears to rest: Combat is not slow anymore. Overall I found the combat system just a little bit more clunky than WoW, and that primarily because of controls and horrible nested menus which had to be used with the controller. There's still a brief second before combat starts where you take out your weapon which can be a little bit slow, but is hardly noticeable.
There is a concern many people have stated in that you can't jump, can't climb, and can't swim. From a player standpoint, I can state that except for a few rare cases you don't miss the jumping, you can walk up and down most hills and passable terrain is very easy to distinguish from impassable. The climbing, well, I can see where it would be useful, but for the most part anywhere you'd want to climb to get to the next ledge you can usually find a "ramp like" terrain to walk up to within a few paces of where you are.
Graphics
In a two word statement: stunningly breathtaking. The first thing I did was crank the anti-aliasing, textures, and shadows to their highest settings to see if my machine could handle it. Even in a beta client the world was amazing, the games' initial cutscenes are done in the fashion people have come to expect from square for years. I can't think of a non-square game to compare this to.
The downside is that for MMO junkies playing on older rigs, you may have to pass this by.
Other than a few random glitches, as outlined below, I didn't notice much in the way of graphics complaints. Likely, these issues stem from a non-final release.
There's a lighting-related issue in all areas where a straight line of shadow can be seen on the ground trailing from the right side of the screen to a central point.
From time to time, both in cutscenes and in general actions, characters will either randomly "appear" or disappear at the wrong times. (Teleports and area loading.)
Animations seem to fire on a "delay" and occaisionally sounds fail to fire where there should be sounds related to animations (emotes)
In some areas where you stand on a ledge with the sun at your back, your shadow is cast in a strange fashion, where it appears on the ground a ledge below you as if you're floating in the air. It looks very odd.
Sound
The music gets a short review. I have nothing bad to say about it. Call me a sappy emo-bag or whatever you like, but the overall theme (Susan Calloway and Nobuo Uematsu - Answers) is used to great effect. The background music in free-roam areas, in fights, and in cities all carry one thing which will reap a nostalgic note with anyone who's played a final fantasy game before ffX: The music contains the distilled essence of the area it's matched to.
The general sounds, (walking, weapons being drawn, fighting, etc.) when timed properly are perfect. For a portion of any time where i was walking i found myself staring at the ground, just listening to the footsteps change in sound with every extremely minor terrain change. Walking on grass sounds like walking on grass, then in the middle of some grassy hill you hit a small patch of rock and it sounds like walking on rock for a split second before you're back to the dull thuds of grassy boots. It's a very environmentally rich audio experience.
System and Atmosphere, read as "misc other"
The atmosphere of the game is an overwhelming experience. Sound and visual come together with gameplay in such a powerful way that it brings back that wide and expansive feeling you've gotten in some of your favourite video games. The few bugs detract hugely from the atmosphere, sadly, and there are a few things that definitely need that final coat of polish:
There are fish tanks in the city of Limsa Lominsa in which fishes float in place, barely moving their fins, and do little else.
There's a very lengthy boat-trip between continents which feels empty. Surrounded by beautiful water, an amazing skyline, and a horizon that slowly changes over time, you find yourself realising that you're standing on a boat with the steersman and no one else. It feels very lonely and empty.
The regions don't yet appear to be connected to anything, or atleast after all day of roaming the countryside following one straight road I didn't find a way from one continent to another.
System wise the game still lacks polish. I can't talk enough about the horribleness of the nested menus. I'll be very glad when I can have my mouse and hotkeys back. The word "counterintuitive" applies quite well at present form. The ability to switch classes on the fly is great, and having the refreshing ability to redistribute your attribute points on the fly is a welcome change. The downside is how completely infuriating it is when you switch between classes and have to set up your action bar again from the ground up again.
Summary
It's not finished yet, but my overall opinion is positive. The few issues I found with the game were largely related to it being a beta, and clearly "unfinished." At launch the game has the potential to be a completely immersive and wholesome experience. Even just the rich commentary from minor NPCs in the beta are very evocative of real dialogue. Squeenix has a lot to be proud of.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/35.gif
The Good Amazing graphics
Breathtaking soundtrack
Great atmosphere
The Bad Nested menus
Learning curve
The Ugly No searchable "auction house" system, seriously?
I am a former hardcore raider, I played WOW for some 5 years and saw almost all of TK/SSC during BC before dipping away and going a slightly more relaxed route. During Lich King I operated a casual guild focused on 10 man raiding for fun instead of progression, and pugged into more than a few "hardcore" raids on many of my alts. I levelled, successfully, one of every class both horde and alliance above 70, totalling out at 9 level 80's before I stopped play over disagreements with design philosophy change at Actiblizzvisionard (read: realID.) I have had a crack at LOTRO, FFXI (for all of 10 minutes,) Age of Conan, D&D online, and one of the super-hero mmos (that one didn't last long) in an attempt to find something to fill the gap after I left WOW. Finding those lacking, I've been playing a lot of league of legends, and replaying a number of somewhat dated PS2, NES, and SNES games. I have been a gamer ever since my brother first handed me the joystick of an atari 2600 at age 3.