Final Fantasy XI Impressions

Twelve hours into this game and thirteen jobs later I feel like I am ready to make something that approaches critical opinion. This game is hard, in every sense of the word, it reminds me of playing MMORPG's back in the early days, back at a time when you were dumped at a city gate with nothing but a sword and a flustered smile. It is quite glorious.

Like a slutty single mother, I like it rough, so when Final Fantasy merely sneers and jeers at the notion of a tutorial I start to hump my monitor screaming "It's been so long, so long" whilst crying. Enough of my little tangents however, lets get down to the nitty gritty.

Final Fantasy 11 is Square's stab at the MMORPG genre. Basically all in all it is a fun experience but they fail by not catering to the mouse and keyboard set up. They have doubled their market by opening the game up to so many platforms but they fail to simply add a little user friendly sparkle to the PC iteration. Begrudgingly I bought a Windows 360 game pad and I have to say it is very enjoyable and very comfortable. As a PC Gamer this seems sacrilege to say this but I found playing this type of game sat back to be a revelation, no more back ache from hours of hunching over the keyboard like some sort of John Merrick figure, now you sit back, lay back, stand back and play this game in comfort, it is quite pleasant really.

As I have played a mere tiny slice of this what this game has to offer I cannot go totally in depth, what I can say is though that the game is grind heavy from the get go. I don't mind this at all, I actually enjoy the grind element, it introduces a little bit of that RP immersion, you are culling countless small animals to become a stronger, braver adventurer, I like this approach more than "Save the world from X by doing 1,000,000,000 quests which are hidden as grind". It is a refreshing approach to the gamer and is balls out honest.

The job system too is a little intriguing, your character is designed as such that he can be your only one, changing jobs (classes) can be done by a simple click of a menu, if you are bored of one you can simply swap, keeping all the progress you had intact until you feel ready to carry on. This is actually a nice change, sure at times it can break immersion a little but I quite enjoy the fact I can swap around and it solves the problem of grouping to an extent. Need a healer? Just swap, it is simple and quite clever.

My only problem with the game however is that the learning curve is a little too steep at times, sure I love the fact it is challenger and not just anybody can do it, but at times, well you can feel a little left out, trying to figure out crafting as a newbie is like trying to solve the riddle of the sphinx, the only way to get about in the game is to google various guides, I am torn between whether or not this is amazing or garbage. On the one hand, unlike WoW not anyone can just pick it up and play it, there is something to learn in this game, Square challenge you to actually understand the game and offers you something a little more complex, but then on other WoW is just inherintley easier and more relaxing.

Years of easier and simple MMO's have warped me slightly, expect more on this conundrum of a game later, final verdict, confused, it is glorious and great and then unforgivably too hard.