I’d heard so much praise for XIV I was shocked when I came to this the first time, tried it for 20 hours and found it completely dull. I was baffled by all the love for the game everywhere I went. I heard it “gets good” in the expansions but I couldn’t see how you could really build something great out of this? A while later a small community I’m in was starting a new play along and convinced me to try again. I started having a bit more fun. I fell behind the group a bit but kept going. The narrative was still poor. Characters have a lot of words to speak but little of substance to say. There are hundreds of basic quests often involving travelling or teleporting between two places, walking a bit, fighting some enemies (combat mostly consisting of slowly auto attacking and cycling through commands waiting for health bars to go down and cool-downs to refresh). Party dungeons are a little more fun for having people with you, but again it’s all repetitive and basic. I finally got to the credits and felt such a relief, only to find there was a whole ‘post-game’ storyline as long as the first part. Here came some more characters with the tiniest bit more personality, people actually doing things in cutscenes. Is this the good stuff I was promised? Apparently not. It climaxes in a series of 24-man party dungeons bigger and harder than the others, and these really highlight what a mess it is. The screen is already so full of icons, text, buttons, names, especially on PS4, and now surrounded by all these players all using their own flashy abilities, you can barely see what you’re fighting. It doesn’t really matter, it’s just the same thing of watching bosses terribly high health points slowly decrease til you win. I will say the AOE zoning elements are kind of cool, when your character’s slow little legs and lengthy sprint cool-down let you escape.

The player community, particularly help threads online and the novice chat (which the game takes a long time to put you in) is really this game’s only saving grace. I’ll probably never understand their enthusiasm for this game beyond a virtual space to hang out with friends, a Second Life without the sex stuff (mostly?).

Here we are 100 hours later. I know for the unlikely reader this all sounds terribly hateful, I know. Honestly I only hold enough hatred for the game to rant this negativity here rather than let it out where people are having a good time.

Somehow I am walking out of this still interested in trying the expansions, but for now, I don’t want to think about it at all.

Sencillamente un inicio marcado por un mal ritmo tanto en las misiones como en el desarrollo de la historia, no soy de quejarme por tópicos cliché pero ciertamente tengo que hacerlo, una historia predecible y guiada por el poder de la amistad, personajes vacíos de contenido y personalidad, una línea de MSQ que deja mucho que desear, muchas de estas parecen relleno para estirar el chicle, y es que, ¿en serio dices que un personaje no puede comunicarle a otro que tiene al lado un mensaje y tengo que ir yo? Una broma de mal gusto completamente.

Entrando a lo narrado, si bien es cierto puede ser considerada como una "base interesante para posteriores construcciones", creo que el contenido a la hora de jugarla por primera vez es insufrible, llena de clichés y momentos predecibles (Malo maloso imperial rapta a minita importante para posteriormente rescatarla, enfrentarse a este malo maloso y caer derrotado porque el elegido de las gemas es el guerrero que salvará el mundo, posteriormente una entidad aún mayor tenía todo planeado y se enfrenta al prometido, cae derrotado y todo es salvado por él). Siento incluso que la conclusión de este arco está apresurada, pese a que la mayoría de la obra tiene un ritmo lento y denso, incluyendo diálogos que buscan agregar contexto a una situación que ya lo tiene de sobra, entre un manejo de los tiempos pobre y de las posibilidades de mmo y rpg poco exploradas (En ámbito narrativo).

Entiendo que el juego es un remake al desastroso FFXIV online del 2010, pero esta historia no solo no es novedad, si no que además es insulsa y carece de algo que poder valorar positivamente, el cast de voces parece sacado de un cementerio (Soy consciente que este cast cambia por completo en Heavensward) y una jugabilidad que depende exclusivamente de los bosses, los cuáles por supuesto, no acompañan bien.

Aquí solamente quería comentar mi opinión acerca del arco en sí, como juego me parece que tiene un montón de contenidos y posibilidades, pero esto solo lo podré valorar tras acabar Endwalker/Dawntrail.

Conclusión respecto al arco: 2/10.

despite what most people have told me about it, I liked a lot of it, but there was a lot of pacing in between the great moments, the story was very vanilla but I personally liked it and I really loved the main cast
the transition from ARR to HW was really really great

a lot of the side content really saved it for me
-Coil of Bahamut
-Crystal tower
-all MSQ trials on extreme
the first two especially were really great, and completely outclassed 90% of the story for me, true spectacles and really interesting lore drops
honestly, most of ARR was just unmemorable fetch questing with unimportant small plots and imo extremely bad quest design, the only thing keeping me interested was the excitement for the next trial and my love for seeing how the characters/story develop

I played this game for so long under the presumption that it gets better later on in the story, so this is only for ARR.

-The gameplay is boring and unbalanced (I spam dragon kick for dps, as it is overpowered)
-Ability variety is lacking compared to other RPGs
-The story is completely braindead and uninteresting.
-Cutscenes are only afforded the occasional model pivot, desynced mouth moving, and RARELY they get shitty voice acting.
-Most ARR multiplayer activities are dead. (can take hours to launch in depending on the time of day)
-Completely lacking thematic and story elements.
-Most enemies are total health sponges.
-The main plotline is filled with so much filler nonsense that it will take so much time to beat even though there is hardly anything going on (I must have spent well over 40 hours doing fetch and delivery quests).
-Monthly sub model.
-They will not shut up about fantasy politics.

If I was forced to think of anything that this game did correctly, I would say that it did a good job doing a cosmetic/transmog system.

This took me 9 years to beat. Only 140ish hours, so clearly I took a LONG break in there somewhere, but that was kind of the issue. Years of not playing meant the pals I was in a FC with had moved on, and each attempt to return I was met with the difficulty of playing with strangers, who in turn were having to deal with me trying to remember how to play. It was stressful and humiliating whenever the boot came in. But I slowly relearned my monk, and was elated when NPC teams became an option, allowing me to feel less pressure and just enjoy a fairly good mmo.
I feel like now I’m moving Heavensward this’ll only get better and better, as promised by others, but I had an okay time playing this that made my time playing feel worthwhile, and I definitely skipped most cutscenes because the plot was pretty crap.

Worth it all to have a Fat Chocobo.