I never thought I would get hooked on an MMO but lo and behold – I’ve plopped a just shy of 300 hours in this huge fantasy RPG. I’ve worked through the base game and the first expansion and, at the end of 2020, I’m working through the second major expansion Stormblood. It’s an unbelievably cozy, easy-breezy game to return to day after day, and it was an incredibly important game to me, too: I played it for hours upon hours while exercising, resulting in (alongside other exercise regimens) losing nearly 35 pounds throughout 2020. Few games have had this impact on my lifestyle – FFXIV is now a treasured game in my heart.

Full Review: https://neoncloudff.wordpress.com/2020/09/01/now-playing-august-2020-edition/

A Realm Reborn, what was originally a reboot of Final Fantasy XIV, sets the groundwork for what's seen as one of the best games in the franchise...but my GOD, is it a slog. It feels like a string of side quests that have next to no connection, and what actually happens in said side quests has next to no substance either. Up until you reach level 40, you're stuck going around the world, doing meaningless tasks for various settlement and crawling through dungeons that don't really lead to anything story-wise. The final stretch is fairly good, and the gameplay is fun enough to get through it, but as what is many's first impression to the game, this was not handled well at all.

It's really good don't get me wrong it definitely has its flaws, with the biggest one being in the climax of the story. In order for you to enter the last dungeon you have to be level 50 and the Main Scenario Quests tend to give you enough XP to keep up with the story HOWEVER you gotta grind (I know it's stupid to complain about grinding in an RPG specially as an RPG fan but ARR made the one time where you HAVE to grind extremely tedious) about 2/3 levels to keep playing the story and your best chance is either daily roulettes or farming the same level 41 dungeon a bunch of times.

That one issue aside that made me drop the game to a 4.5 it's still fun. Although make sure to play with friends so you can get the best experience possible, even better if they're sprouts (Essentially new players with a little plant next to their name) because getting to experience even the "worst" part of this game with friends is a fuck ton of fun.

post endwalker review:

its still pretty mid, but after beating endwalker and knowing details that were previously unknown enhanced the experience
arr does have its moments, one that stuck out to me in particular was the final battle against lahabrea and the little undertale-esque moment that happens (i know this game was pre undertale but idk how else to describe it)
the dilly-dallying is still ridiculous though and really dampens the urgency that the game is trying to convey
all in all its alright but ffxiv gets soooo much better with later expansions and does a lot of tropes used in arr better with future expansions as well

This review is mostly only regarding the main scenario quests of the base game. Starting this game is an awesome experience, when you’re running around a huge beautiful world for the first time it’s jaw dropping. The gameplay feels pretty tight, but it’s also very simple until you’re nearing the end. The overall art direction, UI design, and sound design carry everything for a really long time, and I mean like 80 hours or so. The story starts out sorta okay, then gets incredibly boring for hours and hours before it finally hits a point where things start getting interesting. The last 20 hours or so of the story are legit awesome, with fun dungeons and an actually challenging boss fight or two, and by this point you’re starting to actually care about the characters. The final battles and cutscenes are great, and while it feels more like the setup for a bigger story, it’s a pretty satisfying conclusion to the main conflict. It’s weird to review an MMO like it’s any other Final Fantasy game, but you can now play the entire base game (and I believe some of the expansions?) as basically a single player RPG so it sorta works. It was a long, mostly dull road but by the end I only felt excitement to get further into it. Is it worth it? I don’t fully know yet, but just experiencing the world for the first time is enough of a reason to give it a shot.

Only reason I got through this game was because of my friends, and more than half of them quit before beating this expansion. The story was bad even for the basic Final Fantasy "collect the crystals of light" story telling, and while that's only scratching the surface it really doesn't get much deeper than that. Not to mention the boring dungeons and mundane gameplay that really doesn't get half good until the next expansion. Some classes still aren't even remotely fun and I'm the third expansion. The best part of this expansion is how A Realm Reborn actually came to be, and I highly encourage all who don't already know its story to look into it. There's an incredible documentary series on it with developer interviews and it's overall very fascinating and inspiring.

I'm also not going to act like the next expansion Heavensward is as amazing as people make it out to be. It's severely over hyped as most media tend to be, but it is of a much higher quality than ARR in almost every regard and I personally did find myself more invested in its narrative and characters, not to mention the dungeons which do become a lot more fun, especially in the post game. However I personally can't find it within myself to tell some poor soul to play through this pile of shit to get to what comes directly after. The third expansion Stormblood isn't even good either and not going to lie it has a lot of the same pacing problems ARR had.

Post stormblood update: This fucking sucks

The worldbuilding-heavy base for my favorite stories ever told.

I am probably more passionate about ARR than your average fan of this game, as it tends to be pretty widely disliked to some degree, but I honestly do like it, even apart from its significance to the greater story of FFXIV.

I really enjoy the world presented here more than the story it's telling and the characters you're spending time with. Every city, zone, race and faction are established in sometimes painstaking detail, and it provides so much for future stories to work with. Because of its extensive structure, I am intimately familiar with the mechanics of this fantastical world in a way that I’m not with others. It makes for a wonderful framework of options when making new storylines and characters.

That being said, this game is truly extensive, and demands a level of patience and attention that can get exhausting in long play sessions. This is massively alleviated by its MMO structure, allowing you to explore a plethora of supplementary side content to break up the somewhat tedious structure of ARR. It is still a massive undertaking, and tends to shake off newcomers who come to the game hearing about its stellar expansion storylines.

The story itself is rather standard for an FF game: There is an evil empire, a stoic and imposing villain in Gaius van Baelsar, a motley crew of powerful people to aid you on your quest to topple them, and a dark and sinister evil lurking underneath it all. One would be forgiven food not expecting much from the main cast of allies, as they are unfortunately pretty lackluster in ARR. None of their personalities or designs stand out, something that would be remedied almost immediately in the following expansions. The voice work isn’t particularly strong either, which isn’t a huge issue as they’re entirely replaced going forward.

As far as gameplay goes, it’s difficult to talk about this in a segmented way considering how much has been changed and improved over time, but in its current state, the lvl1-50 stages of ARR are a bit slow, but provide a good basis for those new to tab-target MMOs. With the recent restructuring of the dungeons and trials of ARR, it almost acts as a longform tutorial at times, slowly rolling out mechanics that will be combined and subverted later.

I have a deep level of nostalgia for the early moments of this game, and I’m never personally bothered by slow-burn storytelling. As dense and slow as ARR can be at times, I find it to be kind of novel in a strange way. It’s far from my preferred way that this game delivers its narrative, but I have a deep appreciation for how much it informs the outstanding stories to come.

Final Fantasy XIV is a game that increases exponentially in quality, but that unfortunately does require starting at the bottom of the curve. A Realm Reborn is a typical, I would even say uninspired, JRPG story to which I was only paying half attention to the majority of my playtime. However, the gameplay itself is very fun and satisfying in classic MMO fashion, and packed together with some legitimately interesting worldbuilding the game managed to hold my attention long enough to get to the 'good stuff' - and thank goodness for that, because it's only going up from here.

the 1-50 grind is pretty boring and the combat feels very slow. i was wondering when the story gets good... then we hit patch 2.55 and then i understood right away.

also i love how the alliance raids are MSQ required which was super fun and a cool experience.

that being said a very beginner friendly opening which could turn some ppl off

A Realm Reborn.

Trabalhei 3 semanas igual tapado porque não conseguia parar de pensar nesse jogo. Eu não quero mais saber de mulheres, bebidas, drogas ilícitas ou qualquer outro prazer carnal. Eu só penso em andar de moto em Eorzea.


Perfeito, me lembrou a minha época feliz que jogava Cabal e não tinha que percorrer uma jornada de trabalho de 9 horas diárias, o que suga totalmente a minha vontade de viver, mas esse jogo conseguiu transparecer um pouco de felicidade para a minha alma corrompida pelo capitalismo. Excelente jogo, amei. Estou jogando igual viciado, vou dormir pensando nessa merda, acordo pensando nisso e gastei 150 reais numa porcaria de moto virtual do Cloud.

Enfim, recomendar isso a um amigo é o mesmo que oferecer uma dose de heroína direto na veia, ou para passar uma noite na crackolandia. Eu simplesmente não acredito que não experimentei essa droga antes (e olha que já experimentei várias).

O único defeito é que o jogo é gigantesco no começo e não existe um tutorial para as questões mais essenciais, como desbloqueios de conteúdos realmente relevantes até o sistema de crafting e profissões, mas se você não for um animal, você consegue de boa entender legal.

It's been a good while since I played it, but I'm mostly recalling my thoughts- I didn't enjoy it much at all, honestly. It was serviceable! But the story itself felt so bloated and had so many fetch quests for no real reason (like Titan). Post ARR patches had a similar issue, at least you had flight. Before the Fall was when it actually got really good, I got hooked from there. I'll review it again if I ever do my replay of all the expansions of the Saga. I don't wanna individually review the patches since I don't recall them, so maybe during the eventual replay.

ARR is just 180~ hours of politics and worldbuilding.
Is it bad? No. Did I wish it was something more interesting? Absolutely, specially as someone who doesn't know much about FFXIV.

I really enjoyed the last bit; "Before the Fall" because while it was still politics, shit actually got very interesting.
I don't want to individually review every part because I don't.. really remember them now but I will keep them into consideration for the following parts.