Final Fantasy XIV, Part 4

Welcome to the final part of my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV. This part will be about the story and some of my other overall thoughts about the game and will not be as long as the others.

You can find Final Fantasy XIV on the official site.

I know that trailer is for version 1.0, which doesn’t exist anymore, but it is a cool cinematic that still works. And this is the start of Final Fantasy XIV, what players saw all the way back when the game first came out.

So let’s go onto the story of Final Fantasy XIV! I’ve mentioned before that it is a big part of the game. It is how you unlock everything, but it is also how you get invested into the world and all of the characters in it. Your character shows up in pretty much all of the scenes interacting with the world and the people. It’s great. Officially, your character does talk, though the game rarely ascribes any words to you. You just see your mouth moving and you can fill in what you say yourself.

The main story is great. Being a long runner, there are ups and downs. Being an MMORPG, there are some quests that feel like they are there to pad the time, but it’s often still amusing. I won’t go too much into the plot of the main story, but it does feel solidly Final Fantasy.

I do feel the later zones in the expansions are way too large, though. Doing only the main story, you’ll get to see about half of the zone, but most of that is only you running past it to reach the next objective. It’s fine that there is a good amount of zone for side quests, but it still feels way too large. It’s like every side quest has its own little area with few cross-utilization between them. A lot of the enemies also seem to have their own little area of the map, too. I feel zones could stand to be a bit smaller, especially when the game repeatedly directs you back and forth between places.

The side quests in the game range from simple to fantastic. There are longer chains with mini-stories that are a joy to see. Each job also has its own quest story, and this includes the crafting and gathering jobs. Being so many different story lines, some are of course going to be better than the others. I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve played through, though. And I really enjoy the story of the crafting and gathering classes, perhaps even more than the story of the combat classes. They are full of good characters without having as serious of stakes as the combat classes.

The coolest thing about these story quests is that they’ll react to you doing other, completely unrelated quests. Most of the time, at least. I saved an NPC in an optional quest and she remembered me when I met her later on. Oh, but don’t expect time to work backwards. If you do a quest in a later expansion, it won’t affect you meeting NPC’s from an earlier expansion.

For my concluding feelings on Final Fantasy XIV, it is a solid MMORPG with older mechanics. The story of the game is both its greatest strength and weakness. Going through the story, you’ll really get invested in the world and the characters. It makes a lasting impression.

The story is also mostly a single-player affair, though. The game also locks everything behind the story. Do you want to go to a zone? Better do the story so you can unlock it. Same with dungeons, raids and more. It makes rushing to catch up to your friends so you can do current content rough to do unless you want to just skip all of the cutscenes.

But why not give it a try? It comes with a free trial of A Realm Reborn and Heavensward. Find it on the official website.