Of course after doing some leveling up, I was able to further pursue the main storyline of the game. The overarching story continues to be very intriguing and suspenseful, while very well paced, through well crafted and beautiful cutscenes. For that matter, the dialogue is very good in just the text conversations between characters without the use of cutscenes. Your character is kind of like a fish out of water throughout the early part of the main story, as your playable character honestly knows about as much as you do. This allows for you to be able to feel like you are truly stepping into the shoes of your character as you are learning more about the world. Through guilds, you have side stories you can be a part of as well that help to supplement the time that you aren’t involved with the game’s main story.
One of the elements I really enjoy about A Realm Reborn is that you can kind of pick and choose exactly what you feel like doing at the time. If you want to go for the main story, you can find those missions, though it can be a little hard to tell which one is next at times. You can just spend days on end doing random quest after random quest. You can even just go around killing creatures on the map for hours if you choose. You will have to play a little bit of the main story to unlock some of the game’s areas, but the world map is so vast that sometimes it’s almost a little intimidating on deciding what you want to tackle next.
Once you reach Level 15, you will be able to progress far enough in the story to access the first dungeon in the game, Sastasha. I had mostly been playing the game solo up to this point, so this was my first experience using one of the game’s biggest additions, the Duty Finder. All you have to do is go outside of an area, such as a dungeon, and bring up the Duty Finder. At that point you just can wait and the game will eventually put you into a party with the other type players required to tackle that duty. The process is pretty quick too, with myself waiting less than 10 minutes on average. This can be used just to get into the dungeon and get it done, but is also a possibly way to meet new people in the game. I’ve met some people in game that I ended up adding to my friend list as a result. Of course you may have some bad experiences getting paired up with useless gamers, but so far I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with the feature.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is one of the very few MMORPG’s available on a console, alongside the former Final Fantasy XI and still up and running DC Universe Online. However, I really do hope to see more of them becoming available as we move forward to the next generation of gaming. I’ve played exclusively on the Playstation 3 version, and I’ve been loving it, even with just the use of a controller. Just about the only complaint I have is that the choosing of nearby enemies are still difficult to pick just by pressing the X button. Especially when fighting a group of enemies, such as in Fates or levequests, it seemed like hitting the button would choose the wrong target a lot of the time, which can get kind of annoying while in very intense combat. However, the hotbar system is utilized very well in how you can activate certain abilities with the press of a button and can be customized to your specifications. The entire gameplay system feels like Final Fantasy at its core and I love the fact that I have the ability to continue playing the series on a home console.
As mentioned above, the game has had many server issues since its launch a couple weeks ago. There have been some days where I would login and try to play. However, I would constantly get Error 1017, which meant that the world was currently full. As a result, I would usually move onto something else as I didn’t feel like going through menus trying to get in for hours. Luckily, Square Enix did some maintenance early this week to add more servers and I have not received the error since then. The whole online server aspect has long been one of my qualms with getting into the MMORPG genre, but after the debacle that was the original release of Final Fantasy XIV, Square Enix seems invested in solving any issues that come forth post-launch for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
Other MMORPGs that I have played in the past never seemed to grab me quite like this game has. I would play them a little bit and be tired of the useless grinding and such within a very short period of time. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has kept my attention for multiple weeks now through both the beta and the full release. The vast array of options allows for you to customize your experience and carve your own path for how you want to tackle the game. The game doesn’t hold your hand and tell you where you need to go at all times, which is nice in today’s gaming world. Other than not being able to do certain things until you reach a certain level, you can essentially go about the game in exactly the way you want. I cannot wait to keep playing this game and see what will be unfolding in front of me story wise and gameplay wise.
sephirothighwind
September 8, 2013 at 5:40 PMThink that it costs too much to pay 15 bucks monthly to play the game? Guess what, I got myself a free copy of this game from ff14download . weebly . com, it’s cracked by skidrow and it’s FREE FOR LIFE.
Tiger Dave
September 9, 2013 at 2:34 AMLike you, I had a miserable task getting my account to accept. Come to find out, unlike the web page that is so flexible and accepting, you cannot log in with your email but must use the cryptic account name at you set up the account with. This after an hour of changing and verifying passwords and updating secret riddles to be answered by fell things in a dark underground grotto with an affinity for raw fish. That being said, my account is now perfectly linked and I am we’ll pleased with the game. Plenty of old-school Japanese rpg goodness here (always a hundred times better than anything we could come up with), combination quest, grind, sandbox and cutscenes. Best part is that you have a purpose -astory as to why you are here and why that matters. Nothing males we feel better when they begin to peruse my origins…!!!