OrtizGames

Okay. So I got into the Final Fantasy XIV Beta. As a disclaimer, there are certainly things that could have changed from when I played until release. But let’s face it: release is, what, tomorrow? After the chaos that was betaregistration, the idea that Square Enix know what they are doing is laughable. There is only so much Square Enix could have changed about the game between beta and launch. And most of the game is horribly, horribly wrong.

Let’s begin with the good things.
Final Fantasy XIV’s character creation system is miles ahead of XI’s, and even ahead of World of Warcraft’s and Everquest 2′s. I never played Aion, so I can’t be sure of how it compares – let’s say it’s a step up from Monster Hunter’s character creation, which, in my book, is a pretty good place to be. It certainly doesn’t have the freedom of Brink and All Points Bulletin, but those are less parts of games as they are software in and of themselves. I was overall impressed by the improvements Square Enix made to their system and, despite being unable to find a hairstyle I liked (as is all too often the case for me in MMOs), I felt comfortable with my character – I felt ownership over him, like he was my creation. I played with the editor to try to make the most hideous character possible and discovered that it is actually very difficult to do so. It’s the opposite extreme to games like Demon’s Souls, where the tiniest nudge the wrong way will cause your character to flat out burst into flames of ugliness.
I was less pleased with the class system (What, there’s no class that wields a two handed claymore? Seriously?) but when the game started I felt I was off to an okay start.

That’s when everything went downhill.

My immediate disapproval arose when I was thrust into in a tutorial space where no actual tutorial took place. There are no actual players in this small private instance; instead, you’re given basic instructions on how to walk and look and talk, and are free to talk with a handful of NPCs of different persuasions. Despite the fact that I spoke to every NPC in the area, however, I got no hints on other aspects of the game, no special instructions – not even a decent bit of exposition about the world around me. I tried to leave the instance only to have the game warn me “Are you sure you want to leave this instance? You won’t be able to come back here if you do”, which immediately made me paranoid that I would miss something important, sand so I went back around and talked to everyone again, searching every nook and cranny for any valuable scraps I might have regretted missing later on.

But There Was Nothing! The game was warning me that I was leaving nothing behind! Why the hell was I here, if there’s nothing to do? To practice moving forward? Is that really the extent of this map – a map to teach me how to walk? And then you warn me that I might never see this “walk map” ever again? Good riddance with the walk map! It’s as boring as sin and you just made me waste ten to fifteen minutes on it, running back and forth like an idiot!

Fast forward a little and I’ve watched the first few cinematics in the game that include your character walking around and being featured in the overarching story of Final Fantasy XIV. Some people are thrilled with this new addition. After seeing what Bioware has been doing in The Old Republic, however, I’m not nearly as impressed; your character stumbles around in predetermined patterns like a drunken mute, and you have no control over his/her reactions to situations. It throws any preconceived notions about who you are as a character completely out the window, and what’s worse: the grand majority of the time, it seems your character plays a walk-on role in the majority of the story, with other more epic, more recognizable characters whoring attention like some horrible reenactment of a childhood musical where you play the tree while some other kid dances and sings with a cane and a bowler hat on center stage.
I understand if your character is a complete nobody at first and then slowly grows to become a powerful, notable individual. I am fine with the rags-to-riches/humble-beginnings story. It’s evident in almost every MMO out there. However, the odd thing about FFXIV is that the way the exposition is presented, it really doesn’t feel like a story about my character. It feels like you’re watching the cinematics of a Final Fantasy play out, with a plot and a story and drama and memorable characters and some dark evil force trying to destroy crystals and whatnot, only when the cinematics end, instead of getting into the main character’s shoes and moving them around, getting into fights and equipping legendary weapons, you gain control of your MMO character, who was standing around in the background the whole time like some retarded stalker.
This really kills the magic of the MMO – MMOs are about the self – that’s why the key aspects of an MMO (achieving, exploring, socializing, killing other players) are so self-satisfying. The elements of the game should emphasize that player experience as one of the player experiencing the MMO world through a character. Instead, Square Enix seemed to awkwardly present the MMO experience through other characters, and merely using the player’s character as a set of eyes fairly unconnected to the events occurring in the game.

This problem can be noticed in the environments, as well. Don’t get me wrong, Final Fantasy XIV looks beautiful. But it suffers from the same design problems that plague other [insert stereotypical "Asian" country here] games. The world, as beautiful as it looks, appears dead and uninteresting. I look up at the beautiful sky and feel nothing, because I know that my potential to explore that glorious landscape is pretty much zero. Japanese games have this thing about them where they just don’t want you interacting with the environment – it’s only there to appear stunning, not to serve any purpose. It’s like they just threw up a beautiful matte painting for a background but didn’t supply the cast with enough props and stage pieces to make the illusion convincing. It really doesn’t make it feel like an experience.

Now let’s talk game design, because that’s the real meat of any game.
For those of you new to the boat, “game design” refers to the “mechanics” of a game – the gears that make it function, the elements that determine whether it is “intuitive and fun”. And Final Fantasy XIV is far from intuitive and fun.
Horrendously complex menus that are never properly explained aside, Final Fantasy XIV’s interface is not too complex, but makes up for it in simply not behaving in the way you would expect an interface to behave. I can’t really explain what I mean other than it feels like half the time the interface is suggesting I should attack whatever I’m looking at – whether it be an enemy, a chest, a questgiver, a door, a party member. Maybe it’s just that the PC version plays like crap. The combat plays like a mix of Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIII with none of the good elements of either – which is remarkable, as they had very clear and obvious positives which Square Enix seemed to deliberately ignore.
There are buttons at the bottom right of the screen which for a long time I just wasn’t sure what they did other than one made me attack things and the other opened my items. Little indicators would pop up at the top of the screen and I had no idea what they meant or what they were doing. I got killed by a mole rat (at least it wasn’t a damn rabbit) and I could not figure out how to resurrect for a full three minutes because the damn game didn’t think to give me a hint as to where to find the unintuitive command (As if a menu item labeled “Return” is really going to scream “come back to life”). And quests! What quests? I had one quest, and when I was in the middle of it, the game crashed, and on logging in I found that my quest had disappeared and I had no idea what to do. I ran around talking to random NPCs but none of them had anything important to say, and there were no indicators on anyone as to whether they had a quest for me or not!

The game was torture to play. I uninstalled it shortly after getting booting it up for the first time and I don’t plan to buy it or so much as look at another Square Enix game again (which is a lie, because Birth By Sleep is loaded on my PSP right now and I’m thinking of writing a critique of that as well). Honestly, I think Square Enix just hasn’t been the same since the merger, and all of Square’s great storytelling and excellent ideas have simply evaporated without a trace. I truly have no idea what they were thinking when it comes to this new MMO, other than perhaps they were trying to appeal to an audience of players that is honestly not looking to play an MMO for the sake of playing an MMO but rather because they want it to be a Final Fantasy.

I think FF7, along with other Final Fantasies (and basically any Square Enix game nowadays) have always had a bit of a disconnect when it comes to certain features of the game commuting with the rest of it. I dearly love Final Fantasy 7, but I recognize I was only able to thoroughly enjoy it because I had the patience to learn and master the Materia system, to the point where Cloud would strike an enemy for 9999 three separate times every time he attacked, and then would counterattack when he was struck and deal 9999 three times again, and then would jump in the way of attacks directed at his allies, which would cause him to counterattack and, again, strike for 9999 three separate times.

I mean, that’s just awesome.

But you really need to learn the system, and unfortunately the Japanese (and Southeast Coastal Asian, generally) culture has this design philosophy about making games un-intuitive for players, and expecting them to fight tooth and claw to figure out the nuances, then share the information freely with everyone else struggling with the same. It is a very “communitive” (not real word) experience, and unfortunately it clashes horribly with the Western individualistic ideal. In the West, we want to figure these things out for ourselves, and if we can’t figure it out quickly and get our bearings – the Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master philosophy – then we assume the game is badly made and therefore is lacking in quality. And Final Fantasy XIV, as unintuitive as it is, was built to be a grueling experience built for an Asian a specific audience.

Unfortunately, in this case, FFXIV really was badly built. It really was. My blessings go to those who’ve decided to play. May you have more fun than I did.

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