So Final Fantasy 14 sucked! Like a long time ago, 11 years-long-time-ago, holy hell it was the worst MMO to probably ever release. It sucked so bad that Square Enix literally let everyone play it for free, forever. Meanwhile behind the scenes they brought in a new game director who said, "Yeah this game is ass, we have to build a brand new mmo from the ground up because it is too shitty to patch."
And in one of the craziest business moves for a AAA-Publisher to make, Square actually said, "Yeah okay."
Thus they spend an amazingly short development cycle rebuilding the game, made the first version fucking explode, and released Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. And suddenly it was one of the best MMO's on the market where today I will be arguing that it is STILL the best MMO on the market.
I actually didn't play FF14 until well after that last expansion came out, Shadowbringers, which is the third expansion. I was getting bored with WoW and decided to try FF14 for shits and giggles. I liked the game a lot back then, I really did, however I couldn't stick with it because at the time I still had lingering attachments and friends in World of Warcraft so it just wasn't feasible to juggle two MMO's at the same time. So I bailed on FF14.
Now that FF14 has a Playstation 5 upgrade and i have a shiny new 4k monitor, and major releases have been dead this year....well I'm back to the grind.
So Final Fantasy 14 already gets a lot of points with me simply for being a Final Fantasy game. It features all the typical Final Fantasy things I expect from a game like amazing music, and giant chickens.
FF14 is also a pretty typical hotbar MMO, your abilities all appear on a hotbar and you gradually get more and more things to press as your character levels up. But what makes FF14 stand out over WoW is....everything....okay not everything, but the biggest stand out is that you actually don't level your character at all. Instead you level your character's job (aka class), and your character can learn to be every job in the game. While this means that you can literally do anything you need for a group on a single character, it's not technically getting rid of the alts because each job levels up on it's own so the jobs themselves act like alts even if you are on the same character. However there is an extra bonus to this in that, once you reach a high level with a job, you gain EXP bonuses on any other job that is lower level. Thus making leveling up other jobs much easier and faster and granting you more play options quickly.
Each job in 14 is crazy unique in terms of flavor. Every job has it's own mechanic that you are trying to use as well as dealing with whatever battle you are in. While WoW's class all technically have different abilities, they all break down to the same mechanics of: 1. Build resource. 2. Spend Resource. 3. Repeat. And there isn't really any variation. Meanwhile in FF14 every job fights in a drastically different way. Even if you are a damage dealer, the way that your job does that damage will be much different than another damage dealing job.
For example you can be a monk, which has a series of attacks that require the monk to move to different spots on the monster. Some attacks deal extra damage when dealt to the monster's sides, while other attacks deal more damage when directly behind the monster. This means that the monk is constantly having to dart around the monster in order to make sure each attack hits the correct spot to maximize damage. And by doing this correctly, they build up an attack speed buff making them attack faster and faster, but you loose this bonus if you fuck up.....or when the boss goes away to a new phase and it takes too long before you can hit something else again.
Compare the Monk to another melee damage dealer in the Ninja. The ninja does not give a shit about where he hits the monster, just hit him where ever it's fine. However the Ninja has to use Naruto hand signs to use it's special attacks. And there are three different hand signs which all set up different attacks. However you don't just hit the three signs, you actually have to memorize hand sign combos. For example the three handsigns are based of Air, Water, and Fire iirc, and to que up an attack you would use Air, then Water, then the special attack. And there are loads of combinations which all change the nature of that special attack. And if you fuck up you are locked out of using your special attack and new handsigns for a few seconds.
So while both of these jobs punch bad guys. They do so in very different play styles. And every Job in the game does that. Which all in all makes the combat in FF14 quite the standout in terms of MMOs.
Then there are jobs for crafting and gathering. And these aren't bullshit jobs like professions in other games. No, each of these jobs has a story, has their own gear progression, and a whole hot bar of abilities. And they don't fall off later on either. Crafters can make useful items even at max level, so none of the profession jobs become trivial at the end game.
Boss fights are super epic as well. The game uses a lot of mechanics to test player skill. Because the real challenge of the game comes not from learning how to do all of the Ninja's handsigns and super attacks, the challenge is to remember your rotation while also running around all over the place to dodge all the shit the boss is doing around you AND also somehow still trying to hit the fucker on top of that. And every fight is pretty unique. While some fights build on the same mechanic ideas, each fight will utilize the same mechanic in a slightly different way which always keeps you on your toes even if you think you've seen everything the game that throw at you.
Because of all these core gameplay foundations FF14 is easily the best MMO on the market right now. And you can play it for free! The free trial of the game gives you unlimited playtime through the base game AND the first expansion. Meaning you get like 600 hours of content for absolutely nothing.
There are some things I don't like though......which will be the next post because this is too long already.
And in one of the craziest business moves for a AAA-Publisher to make, Square actually said, "Yeah okay."
Thus they spend an amazingly short development cycle rebuilding the game, made the first version fucking explode, and released Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. And suddenly it was one of the best MMO's on the market where today I will be arguing that it is STILL the best MMO on the market.
I actually didn't play FF14 until well after that last expansion came out, Shadowbringers, which is the third expansion. I was getting bored with WoW and decided to try FF14 for shits and giggles. I liked the game a lot back then, I really did, however I couldn't stick with it because at the time I still had lingering attachments and friends in World of Warcraft so it just wasn't feasible to juggle two MMO's at the same time. So I bailed on FF14.
Now that FF14 has a Playstation 5 upgrade and i have a shiny new 4k monitor, and major releases have been dead this year....well I'm back to the grind.
So Final Fantasy 14 already gets a lot of points with me simply for being a Final Fantasy game. It features all the typical Final Fantasy things I expect from a game like amazing music, and giant chickens.
FF14 is also a pretty typical hotbar MMO, your abilities all appear on a hotbar and you gradually get more and more things to press as your character levels up. But what makes FF14 stand out over WoW is....everything....okay not everything, but the biggest stand out is that you actually don't level your character at all. Instead you level your character's job (aka class), and your character can learn to be every job in the game. While this means that you can literally do anything you need for a group on a single character, it's not technically getting rid of the alts because each job levels up on it's own so the jobs themselves act like alts even if you are on the same character. However there is an extra bonus to this in that, once you reach a high level with a job, you gain EXP bonuses on any other job that is lower level. Thus making leveling up other jobs much easier and faster and granting you more play options quickly.
Each job in 14 is crazy unique in terms of flavor. Every job has it's own mechanic that you are trying to use as well as dealing with whatever battle you are in. While WoW's class all technically have different abilities, they all break down to the same mechanics of: 1. Build resource. 2. Spend Resource. 3. Repeat. And there isn't really any variation. Meanwhile in FF14 every job fights in a drastically different way. Even if you are a damage dealer, the way that your job does that damage will be much different than another damage dealing job.
For example you can be a monk, which has a series of attacks that require the monk to move to different spots on the monster. Some attacks deal extra damage when dealt to the monster's sides, while other attacks deal more damage when directly behind the monster. This means that the monk is constantly having to dart around the monster in order to make sure each attack hits the correct spot to maximize damage. And by doing this correctly, they build up an attack speed buff making them attack faster and faster, but you loose this bonus if you fuck up.....or when the boss goes away to a new phase and it takes too long before you can hit something else again.
Compare the Monk to another melee damage dealer in the Ninja. The ninja does not give a shit about where he hits the monster, just hit him where ever it's fine. However the Ninja has to use Naruto hand signs to use it's special attacks. And there are three different hand signs which all set up different attacks. However you don't just hit the three signs, you actually have to memorize hand sign combos. For example the three handsigns are based of Air, Water, and Fire iirc, and to que up an attack you would use Air, then Water, then the special attack. And there are loads of combinations which all change the nature of that special attack. And if you fuck up you are locked out of using your special attack and new handsigns for a few seconds.
So while both of these jobs punch bad guys. They do so in very different play styles. And every Job in the game does that. Which all in all makes the combat in FF14 quite the standout in terms of MMOs.
Then there are jobs for crafting and gathering. And these aren't bullshit jobs like professions in other games. No, each of these jobs has a story, has their own gear progression, and a whole hot bar of abilities. And they don't fall off later on either. Crafters can make useful items even at max level, so none of the profession jobs become trivial at the end game.
Boss fights are super epic as well. The game uses a lot of mechanics to test player skill. Because the real challenge of the game comes not from learning how to do all of the Ninja's handsigns and super attacks, the challenge is to remember your rotation while also running around all over the place to dodge all the shit the boss is doing around you AND also somehow still trying to hit the fucker on top of that. And every fight is pretty unique. While some fights build on the same mechanic ideas, each fight will utilize the same mechanic in a slightly different way which always keeps you on your toes even if you think you've seen everything the game that throw at you.
Because of all these core gameplay foundations FF14 is easily the best MMO on the market right now. And you can play it for free! The free trial of the game gives you unlimited playtime through the base game AND the first expansion. Meaning you get like 600 hours of content for absolutely nothing.
There are some things I don't like though......which will be the next post because this is too long already.
