Regardless of your thoughts on Final Fantasy or MMOs, you have to admit that the story of Final Fantasy XIV is an interesting one. But I don't mean the story in the game, I mean the story behind the game. The fact that Final Fantasy XIV even still exists in 2024 is staggering. Never mind that Final Fantasy XIV has gone on to be an unfathomably successful live service game for all these years.
Final Fantasy XIV was far from a success at launch. In fact, it was an absolute disaster. I remember being really interested in it at the time. As it happens, Final Fantasy XIII was the first game I bought for PS3. In fact, I bought the game before I even owned a PS3 console. Call it dedication, but I just knew that I really wanted to delve into an HD-era JRPG, and I'd been playing FF games since I was a kid. But let's back up a bit. Final Fantasy XIV's roots were in Final Fantasy XI, which was an MMO released on PS2. I never did play that one, although I did buy it years later along with the network adapter. I was just really into collecting clearance PS2 games at the time and couldn't pass up a good price. But I never played it because I wasn't interested in MMOs at the time. When Final Fantasy XIV was released, I guess I was more open to the idea. Maybe because I was one of the odd freaks who enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII, so I was riding high on that. But when the game was released, the reviews were abysmal. And there was a subscription fee to rationalize. I just couldn't do it. People legit hated the game, so I couldn't justify paying a monthly fee just to play it. And then Square took one of the biggest risks I can think of in modern gaming. Instead of just throwing in the towel and nuking the game altogether, they actually decided to completely rebuild it from the ground up. And in its wake, they re-released it as A Realm Reborn in 2014. And strangely, the risk paid off. People liked this new Final Fantasy XIV. It got a ton of buzz. I played it briefly using a 30 day free trial and then never really thought much of it again. But the legacy of Final Fantasy XIV only grew in the decade to follow. Major expansion after major expansion got critical acclaim. And somehow, fourteen years after its initial disaster of a release, Final Fantasy XIV is still a game that gamers seem to adore. And as I replay it today, there's a much more generous trial period for the game, which means I can take it all in on my own time instead of cramming what I can into a month. My first impression of Final Fantasy XIV is a reminder of why I never got into proper MMOs. Sure I've loved random online stuff like Phantasy Star Online or Genshin Impact. But FF14 is a game where I literally spent the first two hours without ever engaging in any combat. I put time into making a character and tweaking menu options to adjust HUD elements. But I never actually felt like I was doing anything substantive. And I mean, I'm 42 years old. I have a high pressure job. I have a 4 year old to bond with when I get home. We're in the middle of moving right now. There's a lot going on. So to spend two hours and feel like I've done literally nothing is rather bothersome because frankly, I just don't have two hours to burn. Maybe when I was 32, and definitely when I was 22. But at 42, nah. I did attempt to give this game a try, though. I felt like I owed it to Final Fantasy as a series. I mean I've been a fan of the series for decades. So how could I not even try one of the most perennially popular in the series, especially when I can do so for free? So I made a character named Newt Ripley, because I'm a sucker for the Alien franchise. And also because I tend to name all my characters Newt because I'm unoriginal and don't want to spend a lot of time making new characters. And so Newt Ripley is a cute redhead archer, because I prefer ranged combat in games like these. I spent a bunch of time trying to learn the ropes, doing tutorial quests and all the stuff you're supposed to do in the opening hours of the game. That stuff is immensely boring by the way. It's all fetch quests and reading little explanations of how the menus and systems work. A lot of that information is fleeting to me, though because this game was not made with a controller in mind. I've struggled my way through menus just trying to make the HUD less cluttered enough to not bother me. The world of Final Fantasy XIV isn't all that interesting to me either. Although the original Final Fantasy was certainly inspired by Wizardry, and thus certainly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the series has always meshed fantasy with sci-fi. Even the first game had The Flying Fortress. By Final Fantasy VI we had mechs. By Final Fantasy VII all bets were off. But Final Fantasy XIV goes full Lord Of The Rings with its setting and the result feels rather bland to me. Given the Metacritic scores and Square's annual income from Final Fantasy XIV, I know I'm in the minority here. But I just don't find the whole thing all that compelling. Obviously I've seen Japanese games do European-style fantasy well. The Dragon Quest series alone has been plugging along in this lane for nearly as long as Final Fantasy, so that's an obvious one. Anyway, we completed our move into our apartment while we work on selling our house before looking for a new one. And I'm extremely tired. We've spent the past four days moving heavy things and unpacking and setting things up and all that and I finally plugged in my PS5 and sat down to play something and... the server was full so now I had to wait to log into Final Fantasy XIV. I guess I could pick another server. I don't know. And then I open up my quest log once I'm finally in and I've got all these boring tasks like "go talk to this person" and "deliver this letter to this person" and "kill three of these things" and it's just like why? And eventually I ignored all that stuff and left the town I was in and just started attacking things and trying to grind for a while. I went up another five levels and then messed with a huge tree monster that was almost three times my level and almost died before running away. Which brings me to maybe the most glaring (not really) fault with this game: it's not meant for solo play. It's just not. You can make a character and go off adventuring alone. But it's an MMO. You're meant to find other players to guild up with. And that's not at all where my head is at in 2024. It's sad but true to say that I've lost touch with the vast majority of my gamer friends. Ten years ago I had a surplus of free time to dick around and half fun playing games online with a coordinated schedule. Even five years ago I could probably make things work with a few close gamer buds once in a while. But now? No. I squeeze in my gaming in those brief hours between husband and dad responsibilities and work in the morning. And so while I might have fun with something like Genshin Impact, let's just admit that I'm no longer the target demographic for Final Fantasy XIV. Which is ironic because on release I probably was the exact perfect gamer to play it and I just wasn't interested enough to give it a go. Oh well.
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