Character creation is fairly straight forward, choose your character race from one of the six available, this also in turn chooses your characters gender. There seem to only be two female races and four male. This is somewhat cheap in my opinion, but does keep the number of brutish women down. It is almost as if the creators wanted a aesthetically pleasing world, rather than a diverse world. Once race is selected the game asks you to customize the character you’ve selected. The choices aren’t incredibly varied, especially when it comes to hair style. Height can be changed from shortest to tallest, there are no slider bars for fine tuning at the moment. Once customization is done choose a class, birthday and choose one of three starting locations and you are ready to go. Just make sure you dress yourself before heading out, Square-Enix has some interesting ideas on what is appropriate.
My first impression of Final Fantasy XIV while in game is one of mild confusion. Starting off in a small instanced area and being re-loaded into it when trying to escape. This however is solved by speaking to one of the NPC lying on the ground, which also was slightly confusing. Succeeding in figuring out the basic controls and talking to the NPC then triggers a short battle followed by a fun cinematic. It was one of the more interesting intros to a MMO I’ve experienced. Each starting area gets their own, and the start of the game depends on this rather than the class you choose like in most games I’ve played in the past.
The controls are very console oriented, and somewhat annoying to use for the PC. I’ve always been a firm believer in just being able to click, maybe hit space-bar to speed things up, or use hot-keys but FF takes another approach where magic is concerned. Enter is the main key used to interact with npc and also to carry out attacks you have selected.This just seems to be a feature designed for the console that may or may not be changed for the PC, considering its so late into the beta, its gonna stick around. If you have a controller laying around somewhere, it might be time to dig it up for this game, and save yourself from having to repeatedly hit the enter key during combat, well if you’re using magic that is. Melee users seem to get off easy, just hitting hot-keys once a target is selected does the trick, thankfully.
The starting cities aren’t overly large but still moderately difficult to navigate for a first time player. They consist of market areas for players to set up shop and sell their wares, along with NPCs, although their selection is quite limited. The market area seems to be split into several areas, whether or not these are then again instanced remains to be seen. Leaving the market was not as easy as entering, its only possible from the center while any other area just allows you to call a retainer to set up shop. It’s sad to say, but actually leaving the city took the better part of an hour. The lift to ground level is conveniently hidden in the adventurer guild, where you get your first quest. O_O
Upon leaving the starting city, its just a short walk to the first outpost and the beginning of adventure, and some good ole’ fashioned rat bashing. Head on over to the big crystal lookin’ thing called aetheryte and it will initiate a levequest. It is also possible to gain a slight boost for the duration of the quest via a favor system. The boost ends when the quests over but you gain favor by completing the quest so really, there is no loss or gain. The boost costs 200 and the reward for completing the quest is 200 favor along with some other minor goodies.
In terms of graphics, it reminds me much of its predecessor, Final Fantasy XI, the world is filled with well done vegetation and character models are rather nice to look at. Accessories move around and clothing texture actually makes it look like its being worth rather than glued to a character. The Monsters are done fairly well, although their appearances can be deceiving. Attempting to help the dodo go extinct backfired resulting in my first, and last death.
Overall, Final Fantasy XIV looks to be a decent game, although at times somewhat confusing, especially with the console based control orientation. Fans of the previous should have an easier time getting accustomed to the play style required though players jumping in for the first time wont be too far behind. The learning curve is by no means a hard one, nothing compared to Eve at least. I suggest jumping in while open beta is still going strong if you have a desire to try this game out before making a choice, but remember, it is beta. Most games aren’t really ready for months after release.
Rated: 6.9 Stars (the dodo picked that up from 6.5)
