I think it needs some polish, but I personally like the core gameplay here. Definitely is fun, despite its flaws. I like the retainer system, the graphics, the sound and music (which are amazing!), the cinematics, and the the story so far (story is really good!). I don't like the user interface, the controls, and the lack of content currently missing from the game. I'd hold off on buying now, but reconsider in a few months after some patches.… Expand

I bought the game simply because I'm a fan (but not so much anymore) of the Final Fantasy series. I was hoping FFXIV would be a step forward from FFXI (as I really didn't like FFXI at all). Unfortunately, it isn't. In fact, it almost feels like a step back. Yes, graphics are nice, but the UI is just horrid. Everything feels clunky and slow. Developers certainly didn't have user-friendliness in mind when they planned FFXIV. Lack of quests and content is also appalling. You get around 15 minutes of playable content every 36 hours (Guildleve system). There is no auction house as of now (I don't know if one is planned), so getting new items and trading is a NIGHTMARE. Believe me. For hardcore fans only, and even then, I'm sure SE just hurt themselves badly by releasing this unfinished and incomplete product.… Expand

The game is an insult to the Final Fantasy fanbase. It's an abomination. Poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. The fanboys are saying that the graphics are cutting edge, and the game is challenging, that it doesn't hold your hand. Aion's graphics are superior, and the game is impossible and it won't hold anyone's interest . . . for long. Check the reaction of the Japanese gamers on Amazon.co.jp. This could be Square-Enix's swansong. It's a Titanic fail.… Expand

After trying my very hardest to love this game in the Beta, the only advice I have to fans is to run. Run far, far away from this game. Never look back. Horribly designed, sluggish, with nothing to keep you involved or enmeshed in the game's pretty graphics. After a month, you will feel like you have wasted your money.

Too long do not read : poor UI, poor gameplay, pretty graphic. To be honest, I have to admit I am not a fan of FF14. I am OTOH a fan of various type of MMO (from UO, to AC, EQ, AC2, WOW, AION, Conan, LOTR....). I like to explore, level a few class , solo quest. Oh boy, this game fail on that on all level. Graphic : they are very good. From time to time I stop to watch at the environment. You need a good graphic card, but the result is excellent. Not much to say. UI: HORRID. They very very obviously made this game with console in mind, and quickly rushed the PC version. I can give numerous example of this. As a mage, I have to click/hit a key to cast a spell. But instead of hitting the target, I have to click a second time (only mouse) on the target other wise the spell don#t go out. The map CANNOT be scrolled with the mouse, you have to use the i,j,k,l keys, it can't be zoomed. UI is clunky you can't hit a key shortcut you have to open a main menu, hit inventory to see what you got , and a different menu (top one can't remember how it is called) to ready a weapon. Havign a single inventory and double click to equip unequip ? Not for FF14. Lookin at inventory take a LOT of time many seconds, it is as if UI and the rest was located on the server. Changing action bar is clunky and takes many seconds too. Also to switch class, you have to go in inventory (takes seconds) or use macro ! If you heard of the rest system , well it really is stupid. Not only they limit to 8 quest (battlequest) and 8 work order (crafting) but also it refresh only once in maybe 36 hours. Do your quest in 5 MINUTES, then wait 36 hours to be able to to remove it from the lsit and do a new one !!! And the limit after which you earn NO XP (faitigue system) is invisible. So you have to guess. Gameplay : I had a lot of fun with the various classes (except mage due to clunkyness) but the crafting / mining miniga,me is Much MUCH too slow. You have to click in a menu to begin gather stuff, then click a second time in a menu to "strike" "chop" etc... Why ? They could have done it a single click. And the wait time are horrid. Crafting is also laggy and you can only craft a SINGLE itme at the same time (I did not see a way to craft stack at least). But worst is that there is *NO* receipt book ! You have to note them, and manually add ingredients (not even counting that crafting talke ingredients from many other craft skills). And the menu are too deep. Click on a SINGLE material slot to add a material, do it for all material, then click craft, then click on what you want (if there is only a single possibility you still MUST click that one) then confirm , then confirm again somehow , then start. For a single item I hestimate it could be anywhere around a single minute. Also levelling is sloooooooooooow. I haven't been able with normal play to go above 7 levels in 24/48 hours before "fatigue" kick too much. But it felt slow, because you have to stop after a while because you get ZERO XP in that skill. The trick I use is to switch various fighting class, and once I am finished with the last one, level a bit the first one. But it is sub optimal. It forces you to do sutff you might not want to do, or just stop playing for 24/36 hours. There is no auction house, only single vendor which takes hours to "load" the UI, and you can't search among them. When I tried to find an overpriced item , I had to manually click 12 vendors, then I gave up. There were , I dunno, 40 vendor each side. And you can't preview or know what they sell. The payment system is not good, but I don't count that in the review. Bottom line : STAY AWAY. Rushed. Clucky. MMO technology wise, older game 15 years ago got much of that right. FF14 did not.… Expand

I'm going to give this game a score of two. I think this is a fair score considering they didn't F up two things. Graphics - AWESOME! 10/10 Stability - Pretty damn good here for me and a couple of friends of mine. I crashed once, but I think it was my fault. I crashed hourly during Age of Conan's launch. 9/10 Everything else (i.e. the bazaar system, leve system, macro system, equipment/character level progression...) Sucks big. I understand it takes a little time for the market to mature and such, but other than that I don't see a game overhaul happening to fix the other things I don't like. 0/10 I wouldn't recommend this game, there are more mmo titles just around the corner. As a side note, this doesn't surprise me, I thought FF13 sucked too.… Expand

This game is an insult to the Final Fantasy series which always strived to be games of superb quality. It's as if this game wasn't even made by SE. Only good thing about the game are graphics. There is a ton of really annoying bugs, no one ever talks because of restricting chat system, no content because of their brilliant idea to restrict people to 8 leves (quests) per 36 hours, market and economy is terrible because they didn't provide necessary tools to let you search for items or use an auction house. Everything takes ages to do. Crafting is overly complicated and grindy. 98% of this game is just grinding monsters or annoying yourself trying to craft by searching for 20 different items just so you could create one single weapon.… Expand

The best way I can describe it is if somebody took out all the good things about FFXI and made the problems even worse. Some lag and bugs are to be expected at launch so I'm not even counting those against it. Partying is broken due to the way skill gains are awarded and an exp bug that has been in for a long time since beta that prevents some people in groups larger than 2 from gaining SP. The market wards are a complete joke and you have no idea if the item you are looking for is actually for sale anywhere. The lack of content is appalling. The one saving grace could have been the story but even that is falling flat (maybe the others have better but Limsa's is pretty lame up to 20). The UI is quite possibly the worst out of any PC game in the past decade. No drag/drop, clicking on things typically doesn't do anything, and you have to go thru more menus than an old DOS MUD to get anything done. Not even sure this game has potential anymore. It HAD potential, but given that it's release and they haven't accomplished anything of significance and made so many bad decisions already I don't think they can dig themselves out anytime soon. The graphics and music are nice but the rest of it can hardly be classified as a game.… Expand

Wow i don't even know where to begin. 1. The UI is a joke horribly slow and confusing 2. Overall controls are sluggish it feels like im slogging through water trying to move my mouse " and NO i dont want to play with a frikin controller I shouldn't HAVE to" 3. Spellcasting is overly tedious , I have to target mob, select spell, hit enter, hit spell agian ..just to cast a spell?! WTF?! 4. Crafting is horribly slow and painful and so much downtime waiting for menus to popup 5. Fun Factor = 0 NOTHING in this game is fun to do, everything is a CHORE everything requires insane amounts of time to do mainly because of the horrid ui and controls. 6. Con system, Has anyone actually figured out how to con mobs yet? Should it be this difficult to figure it out? 7. Combat, slow and boring it makes me want to fall asleep its so boring 8.Quests are tedious and boring I don't even know where to begin 9. forming a guild/linkshell is a pain in the ass. Do you have ANY idea how ridiculously hard it will be to invite people to a large guild if you have to meet EVERYONE in person to actually do it? 10. Chat system is horrible is it even possible to reply to someone w/o having to type there name out all the time ? Should it be this hard to figure it out? 11.Death, It took me 10 minutes to figure out that when i died i had to open my menu and hit return...thats ridiculous I had to figure out what to do when I die. Unacceptable. 12. Terrain , SO MUCH COPY PASTE its so obvious that they copied so much terrain its not even funny. 13. The world map, we really can't zoom in or out? Really? No really?! wow.... This is quit possibly the WORST mmo I have ever played and that's really saying something. I've been gaming for over 15 years now and this is literally the worst. Even ff11 played better than this and its not that much better. It literally makes me want to spread the word out and make sure no one ever even thinks of buying this horrible excuse for an mmo. How anyone could possible give this game a good score is beyond me. They either are complete and total FFanbois or have just never actually played a good mmo before and are basing this game off of FFXI other than that it makes no sense when there are so many obvious flaws with this game they practically scream out to you.… Expand

I was really hoping that this would be the new mmo that i really could get into but the game fights you from the very start.It felts like SE has been living in a cave for the last 10 years.The one thing that is great is Graphics but that doesnt make a good game.There is no AH they use a bazaars system where people put up insanely high prices, you may have to click through hundreds of bazaars and spend hours looking through them, npc markets are not labeled.The game is soloable to max level which i dont have a problem with but there is no endgame and you get only 10 quest per 48 hours.That alone make this a game very hard to play.You can just level with out the quest but the respawn rate on monster seems to be off to when theres are so many people going for the same monsters.Every action you make in this game has a 3 sec delay before you do anything.If you played final fantasy 11 there were at least classic classes to be played,in this game you could max all the classes and pick what ever abilys from them you want so in the end everyone will be mosty the same class set up or your not going to be picked if and when thiers ingame.The UI is the worst ive ever played.If you want to open a bag or in this case your inventory you would think just hiting I would do that but no its doesnt.Its seem they want you to make macros for everything and that is just insane in the modern times of MMOs.There was also very bad lag not on the first two days but on the 3rd and 4th i couldnt even start my quests and for some reason and i almost never see anyone chatting unless they wanted to sell or buy anything.As for crafting is takes why to long to gather and make stuff.Lets say you want to mine some ore it goes into a mini game and thats not the problem there are mini games for fishing mining gathering herb BTW, but the problems is its take like 5 sec or more per action you can spend two hours just mining 3 or 4 times,and why doesnt the game show you what you can make this option is even in the wrost of MMOs.You have to log out then go to a site and look up what you need to make something!! REALLY!I say log out because if you try any other way the game crashes most of the time.Oh yeah another thing about crafting is you have to do them all because they all seem to rely on each other.I could go on and on about the many problems about this game it seems very rushed.They needed about a year or two more.The races are the same as final fantasy 11 and alot of final fantasy 11 problems seem to of been port to FFXIV.When 11 came out i could look over most of them but in 2010 this isnt acceptable.Everything that made FF11 great like Notorious Monsters classic class isnt here.So if you think its like a prettier looking Final fantasy 11 you are mistaken.Now i bring up WoW and most fans of final fantasy will ream you for this,but the maker of this game wanted to target the WoW players saying that FFXIv will target a more casual friendly audience and i would say that this game seems only geared for the hardest of core fans.Just playing the game is hard.maybe in 2 years this game will be playable but for now dont buy this let Square enix know that if you make a bad game people wont just buy for thier name on the product. PS:Ive been a FF fan since the start in 85 so please dont get on me for misspells and grammer just because your upset at my review. thank you Sorry i forgot the score in my last review 2 out of 10… Expand

Stay away from this trash. I will tell you that after 48 hours I closed my account and they won't even let me back in for the remainder of the first 30 days, so be aware. You can't even talk in chat, no auction houses, you have to get the quest and then go to a quest hub to start the quests. The Graphics are quite spectacular compared to the 6 year old WoW but that was about it.

This is a most definitely "wait and see", or "skip entirely". Major problems exist, caused by the game not containing the basics of an mmorpg. The UI issues can almost be forgiven. The terrible performance can be overlooked. But the lack of content, missing of core systems (even the map doesn't work properly), terrible billing system, and complete lack of direction to this game is the nail in the coffin. Do not buy.… Expand

Im a big Final Fantasy fan for starts, but I cant give this game 10. Im just going to keep this simple for now on what I think of the game. Graphics = 10 (amazing graphics if your computer can handle it. I have an average computer with a 3000 benchmark and it lags alot with open night sky or wind / shadowed areas) Gameplay = 7 (mostly solo play so far. No one is really grouping and its mostly grinding crafting or leveling a class. Game was aimed more for solo play yet to see anything in group play as it is to early to tell. Funfactor = 7 (still have not grouped or played in dungeons as of yet) UI and controls = 6 (needs some work still for smooth play, still to much like Final Fantasy 11) Payment method = 4 (They could have done alot better in this area, everything is using a 3rd party pay site and it cost 10 per month for game and 3 per toon owned. Also additional charges apply to these sites) Im not going to say much yet about this game as its only been about 3 days playing and have not gotten far. But this is what my first impressions are so far.… Expand

Run as fast as you can from this game. Unless SE makes drastic changes this thing will be f2p within its first year. If you dont believe me just buy the game. Most disappointing mmo Ive played.

Really disappointed. I have been looking forward to this game for quite a while. I put up with all the problems in beta because, well, it's beta. But nearly all the problems made it into the release. The only saving grace in this game is the graphics, however. -Simply moving around is not fluid at all. You can get stuck on 2 inch tall pebbles and even the slightest incline. -Combat is clunky(nothing to do with lag) -Empty world.(Nothing in it but monsters and the occasional crystal camp) -Lacking in story(You literally have to grind four hours on end just to see 30 minutes of storyline every 10 or so levels) -Completely backwards party system(It's actually better to party up then solo on other sides of the map because of the way you get exp) -Aggro system is broken. A single heal spell can completely peel any mob. -Lack of content, you can craft, do a few daily style quests that are more bland than any WoW kill quest, then you grind until you can do more of those poor quests. -Frustrating UI that requires you to flood your whole screen with menus in order to do ANYTHING even opening a simple door. -Mobs are not balanced, randomly something that registers as "Weaker than you" can kill you in two shots, and others that register as "You don't have a chance" hardly does any damage -Crafting is the only way to reliably get gear(you very rarely get them from the quests) -Crafting even the lowest level newbie gear requires several crafts and lots of failing and losing items. It should not take several hours just to assemble a pair of level 5 pants. -Many many more problems. They rushed the release of this game, and forced through a poorly implemented quest system. Don't believe all the mindless fan boys. Unless you like grinding hours on end and don't mind a frustrating UI, you will not like this game.… Expand

This is possibly one of the worst MMO's to be released relative to other MMO's of its generation. The main story line so far has been blend. The game was touted for its engaging plot and immersive environment. The main quest starts then quickly disappears for a while. The player is left to figure out what to do (the only thing left to do is grinding guildleves and crafting, aside from a small number of quests). I'm fine with allowing players to explorer the world and figure out what to do. But there's nothing to do but grind here! Then there's the environment. A large portion of the world is narrow, twisted valleys connecting rather small main zones. Sure, it takes a while to walk from one area to another. But all you see is narrow paths that twists and turns. You generally don't see a vast area to explorer. Perhaps the lack of content can be understood, since the game just came out. However, the issue with UI is unforgivable. SE has had almost a decade to look at and experiment with UI. There are plenty of other MMO's that have shown how a good UI could be implemented. SE decided to completely ignore that and implement an archaic system of accessing practically everything via a main menu. You want to equip an item? Go to the main menu and open equipped item window. You can't just select an item from your inventory and equip it. You have to select a body part in equipment window, select an item from an inventory list that shows up, then click the equip button. Did I tell you that the inventory list is not sorted? There are plenty of other issues that made me cancel my subscription. You should be able to find them easily online. I'm not the only one complaining about them. My recommendation is, the game has potential, but it may not be realized for another year. Save your money and play some other MMO until then.… Expand

From installation to patching to account setup to playing... Everything about this game has been painful. Far less than I'd expect from an established developer.

(sorry for Grammar, not main language) I really really want to like this game. I've played FFXI for 3 yrs and had a lot of fun with it. However, FFXIV is not what I enjoy. I don't feel like I want to log in because there is nothing to do after I completed all battle leves. I tired crafting and harvesting but it's so boring - take so long time to do anything and I don't like it. So I have War and Magic to play. I have no choice but to grind mildessly , run kill , run kill errrr I just wonder I am playing RAGNAROK ONLINE 2010??? ... Also the skill up is buggy somehow or it's broken... I am Conjuror I suppose to skill up by casting magic such as Thunder , .. etc but belive it or not , after running around for 2 hour I've found that the best way to get skill up is spamming Spirit dart until enemy die even I use cure while fighting is not gain any skill point ... it's so strange and stupid I feel. Also, I feel sorry for those who don't have active Linkshell or Friends. They have no one to talk with! Nobody talk anything even in the Aetherite camp. Grats whoever get into LS and have a group going .. oh did I mention, as a Conjuror, in order to gain class skill in party as much as other melee class, I have to spam spirit dart as well! becuz I can't cast spell. I get aggro immediatly from only 1 heal or 1 nuke or 1 MPrecoverSkill - I've play EQ1 EQ2 FFXIV and I think I know by now the aggro system for caster or healer or Do FFXIV use other rule for aggro management ? If so they should have it in manual or something. Furthermore, why there's no Dev team or Community manager that communicate with player. Why SE never talk with their players? Where is official forum? All they have is Feedback system which won't be responded and E-mail system that takes about 3 days to get Copy-paste answer ... I can go on with so many disappointed things in this game. Sorry I feel very bad now I invest so much money to play this game. I bought a new computer i7 960 / GTX 480 / etc just to play this game and I thought at that time my money is worth it. Even in Beta, my friend told me it's better to use Controller and I bought it immediately in hope many things will be fixed when its released but it's isn't .... Map , Bazaar , Trade , even selling item to NPC is terrible .. slow and too much unnecessary progress... and WHY in the world I had to assigned the drop to myself when I am soloing ? I just don't understand... This is much worse than EQ2 Launch ... sorry for FFXIV fan ( I am also FF fan too but I had to speak the truth)… Expand

Decided to come back to the game for patch 1.18. Do not let those singing praises and ringing bells fool you, there are as many negatives to this patch as there are positives. For one, there is no practical hMP (Healing MP) solution in game yet. This is a problem because Cure costs were QUADRUPLED with the recent patch. This leaves mages with limited options as conserving and managing your MP is top priority. Secondly, Behests were completely ruined. Reformatted from large party adventure fun times into another solo grind activity which rewards minimal SP. Definitely the game's most fun feature so far was flushed down the drain. Thirdly, overall EXP/SP gain was nerfed down to accommodate the lack of Fatigue now. Unfortunately, you were able to grind FASTER pre-patch while on lower tiers of fatigue than you can now post-patch. The game really isn't in a position to be messing with new players, or bitter old players like myself, with fake fanfare. The only three good things to come out of the patch were AutoAttack/Stamina bar removal, the instanced dungeons and the CONJ/THM damage nerfs. The rest is objectively bad. Save your disk space. Save your bandwidth. Save your patience. The game is not ready yet. Wait for 1.2 if you'd like.… Expand

This game is AMAZING! The graphics are stunning, Character creation is light years ahead of FFXI, and gameplay is amazing! The most amazing aspect of this game is the crafing and harvesting. While I have always been a crafter in MMORPGs, the crafting system in FFXIV is far more engaging than any other MMO that I have played. Even the harvesting is addicting, which is refreshing. I have been looking forward to this game for years and I am NOT disappointed!… Expand

No search feature, no mail system, no AH and no support for party play are just a few of the things that are broken with this game. Stay far away from this, at least until they release it on the PS3. PC players are paying to play a game still in Alpha stage. I am slowing but steadily losing trust in SE a company I once admired.

As a long-time fan of FFXI I was disappointed by FFXIV. It's a pretty substantial step backwards from it's predecessor, despite coming out 7 years later. Overall the game feels unfinished and rushed, the UI is very slow, combat is badly designed and content is sorely lacking. It certainly may become a quality game after a year or so of patches, but currently it's pretty terrible. Save your time and money for something better.… Expand

One of the worst mmorpg I've ever seen. The UI is very complex and not user friendly, the mouse-keyboard support is very poor, the combat system is slow and repetitive, anche the graphics engine is very heavy. The worst thing is the absolute lack of content, and at the end is just a matter of grind.

FFXIV is an incomplete game, for that I have to give it a 3/10, it is extremely hard to give a game anything higher than this when initially the game has little to offer, and to add to that, whatever it has to offer is nothing but a horrible experience. The game starts you off with a few introductory cutscenes, then off you go doing levequests: quests which offer no story or plot, but to run around fulfilling random generated objectives, which is all just running to point B to kill a certain number of mobs, you get money and sometimes items as reward. You get 8 everyday and a half, some new ones opens up, and some are just repeats, it also helps you gain levels and class ranks since you have to fight a lot of enemies. The above sounds great and fun, but there are a few problems with the mission structure and balance itself: Problems: Skill points distribution: you get skill points from attacking enemies/heal/etc, this is so far a bit broken as the chances of you getting skill points are not very consistent, there are occasions where you could get really low amount of skillpoints from fighting strong monsters, even if you're to group with a few other players, which leads to the problem where soloing is a better and faster way to play. Difficulty balance - Low level leve quests were also too easy for a group, monsters die in 2 hits and you get no skillpoints at all, and for some quests it is also very easy to do at 3-4 stars even when you're 5-6 levels below the suggested rank. While certain quest have mobs with aoe attacks that could oneshot you. Lag - With the partying system, when the lag is bad on your server, there are bugs where you can't target your party members, can't reinvite, and invite taking tremendously long to process (or not process at all), this gets better as the server load is lower, but the targetting issue still exists, sometimes you can't see your party members hp. Lag leads to a lot other problems, abilities gets congested, with the long animation your character do, it delays a lot of your abilities. Surplus - This isn't as big of a problem as other players make it out to be, but it is a mechanic that a few might find annoying as it is there to restrict your playstyle and how you want to spend your time. You really can't progress on just 1 job alone, and if you like running around on your highest level job, you will eventually run into surplus - which gives a penalty to the skill points you gain, this isn't a problem if the game wasn't that much of a grind but the skill points required to level at lvl20s is really high, what SE doing here is to restrict people from progressing and forcing them to level other jobs and crafts, if you like that, it is ok, but there is a limitation to the freedom given. Crafting itself is more interesting but also tedious, the animations are too long so most of the time it would take 5minutes just to do a craft, imagine having to unequip all your gears, change to your crafting tools and having to access item box to repair them one by one, which leads to the problem of inventory space, and gears swapping, you have to type out lines and lines of macros so you don't have to unequip every piece of equipments by hand when you change jobs. The lines of macros is also limited. For a game encouraging you to switch between like 10 jobs, it is an annoyance as you also have to reset all your actions/abilities. Fighting enemies - Some enemies have weird pathing which they will run around and regen itself to full. Sometimes you can't engage your party members' target with a message "Target can not be engaged". Targetting is also extremely hard and you have to tab through a lot of targets. There are other issues people have already listed, most will run into problem that leads to another, the core of the game is great and the classes/ability mix is a great system, but there are too many problems that hinders a player's enjoyment. There's nothing to do but grind, there are a few cutscenes every 5-10 ranks. It is clearly an unfinished game with restrictions grant upon players so they won't progress too fast inorder to buy time for them to fix/implement new features. If you take a look at their site, they are still "looking into improve" many aspects of the game instead of already having the right idea and releasing patches. Most of the updates/maintenance are all bugs/glitches related that should've been fix during the beta phase, the menu and UI lag infact still exists and I'm not sure how people could tolerate it. The game has only been out for 2 weeks, it doesn't sound fair to judge the game at its current state, but it is also not very fair for consumers to be paying 60 dollars for an incomplete game, and for a better experience they have been encouraged to wait until they fix all the problems, for a game with a subscription fee, it is a really bad business practice from square-enix.… Expand

Firstly, could people stop assuming the negative reviews are all becasue "we don't get it" and "we just want an "easy mode" game" That's really patronising and in most cases completely untrue. Check out all the review sites on the net. Although their are few "pro" reviews now, there are literally thousands of user reviews, the majority of them rating the game the wrong side of average. Given that all the fan boys voted this game a 10, then you'll see it's struggling to average 5.5 on most sites despite this. Why? Because the menu system is broekn (and no patch is going to change that any time soon) The lag (not people's porcessors or GFX card _ but the LAG is terrible. I get almost 50 frames a second, but a ping of over 1000 millisenconds constantly. The gathering pro's a re great, the crafting ones are hit and miss, some like them - many don't (they are - again - dull) The need to have the same animation every time you speak to certain NPC's - with the associated time wasted. I know the game is well animated - it looks wonderful. BUT GET ON WITH IT ALREADY, i have seen theis over long cut scene of the vendor turning to notive me a hundred times -it takes too long, and I don't want to see it again. I LOVE complex MMORPG's. EvE (which is VASTLY more complex than FFXIV will ever be) is my all time favourite. I DON'T WANT an easy mode game. But then again, I don't want to struggle through half a dozen menus just to select an item to sell or trade. The GUI is broken, the PING is dreadful for none Japan players, and there are start up bugs. The startup bugs will go, I can forgive them, all MMORPG's have them. But the intrusive animation, overly complex GUI and horrendous PING will probably be with the game forever.… Expand

Everyone complains about this game because they want it to be perfect and they can't handle the lag with the menus, and how it's so hard to do a trade, when really it's not hard at all. Most people who play FFXIV have played XI and they're so used to how they played XI that they don't want to be open minded about XIV. For example, my dad complained all day about how the Journal doesn't help at all, whereas XI didn't even help you with quests. I just think it takes some getting used to. I have no problems maneuvering around town, getting into battles, or doing any crafts. All the menus are easy to figure out and I don't find it to be a hassle. It just takes some common sense and hard work to figure out a game that has no guides.… Expand

1. Bad UI that is worse even than some console games today 2. Copy Pasted world terrain pointing to lazy developers 3. Rushed release for PC marked when the game obviously was developed for consoles (release for them after 6 months). 4. Lack of any communication between the playerbase and the developers because " the japnanese developers do not understand english " - OH MY GOD! 5. No direct payment method for the day - you need to use third party services like "click and buy" and paypal - Also points to SE not wanting to spend money to develop such service. All this just screams ka-ching. Paying to beta test the game for console release.… Expand

I played FFXI for four years and loved it. FFXIV comes back with a similar feel but totally different gameplay. Its still a lot of work to get things done like FFXI, but thats what I loved about the game, the feeling of accomplishment when you get something done is impossible to feel anywhere else. Tons of classes and complex crafting systems is going to have me playing for years. Furthermore, the graphics are beyond any in any MMO yet released. If you didn't like FFXI, I doubt you'll like this one, but if you did, definitely try this one out.… Expand

This is an amazing game so far. Yes the UI has got some issues, but it's beautiful and there is a lot of potential. I'm spending 6+ hrs in day in it easily each day, getting lost in this amazing world and throughly enjoying myself. Find yourself an amazing LS (I was really lucky to have found one before OB), and off to adventuring you go!

People are overreacting about this game. Yes. It isn't perfect, but the game reminds me of games like Asheron's Call, popular during the early mmo days. Don't believe the hype, the game is not for everyone and is loaded with problems, but if you like ffxi, give it another chance later on.

If you haven't considered changing your name to "Cloud" legally, this probably isn't the game for you. Even then your loyalty might be questioned. I've played FFXI for a number of years, as well as WoW, and this game succeeds in little else but setting the genre back. Gone are auction houses, every player is now expected to open up their own shop. Which isn't horrible in principle, but it's an archaic MMO design that was left behind for a reason. There's no search, so simply shopping can take hours dependent on what you're looking for. The quest system is the equivalent of 'dailies' in WoW, fairly short, uninspired, repetitive quests you can do once every 36 hours. There is a main story quest that I believe unravels once every 10 levels, the rest of the game is grinding dailies or just... grinding. NPC's rarely say anything useful, the entire world is incredibly beautiful... it just feels like cardboard. System requirements are absurdly high, and your results may vary on server lag or server queues, some of this is forgivable for a starting MMO. Stability is actually great, actually... but there's just nothing there. The game feels like a late alpha going into beta, not a release quality game.… Expand

The game has made absolutely no improvements to the genre, every major feature is incomplete or riddled with bugs or downright bad in it's implementation. You'll find yourself dropped into an unfamiliar (by mmo standards) world with absolutely no technical guidance and UI that seems straight out of a '99 console game; all of this while running code so poorly optimized for the PC that it makes GTA 4 (a notoriously bad console port) seem like the holy grail of solid FPS. All of this is truly baffling coming from Square-enix who should have had previous MMO experience. If you've played ANY mmo before get ready for some serious WTF'ing; if you've played FFXI and were hoping for the next-gen group based experience you'll be so furious you'll write a negative review on Metacritic.… Expand

Ok, so here's the real deal._____________ First off, graphically, sonically and aesthetically the game is great. If games were scored on looks alone I'd give this one an 8/9._______________ Well, games are like books, don't judge it by it's cover. And what's inside isn't prose it's gibberish.___________ I cannot comprehend how anyone can give this game a 10. It simply isn't rational. First, the combat mechanics are frustrating in the extreme. To give you a taste, lets say you are running around in ANY MMO you can think of and you engage a target. You can move around, reposition yourself or your camera easily, like a normal shooter for example. Not so with FFXIV. When you engage you "LOCK" to that encounter and movement becomes severely hampered and your cameras up down view is frozen. Yes, you heard me, you can no longer change the camera Y position. On top of that tabbing... tabbing targets ANYTHING including yourself and other players and NPCs and target mobs.... how frustrating do you think it will be to have 2-3 mobs putting the smackdown (oh and even con mobs can kill you pretty easy) only to find that you cannot fight them because you keep targeting everything OTHER than the mobs attacking you. It is the worst combat implementation I've ever seen in any game to date._________________ Now lets talk about the world. It's big. Big and pretty. And repetitive. And virtually empty. If you are expecting the rich and full environments you are used to in games like WoW, EQ, EQ2, Aion, etc then don't get your hopes up. You'll be running quite a bit looking at grass and bushes and trees with little else to create any sense of story or immersion.________________ Oh, and don't forget to avoid that 2 inch drop off! No you can't jump! How dare you ask! Go around! What do you mean it's only a 2 inch piece of tile on the ground? Of course you can't walk over it. What do you think, this is the real world? You're in our world now and you'll play by our rules of physics! No jumping and no stepping up or down!______________ Quests. I have to ask, what quests? Other than the main "story line" (which btw seems completely unrelated to the stylish opening sequences) and a couple of sidelines I don't know what quests there are, if any. For one I am pretty sure they are few and far between. But for another you are forced to talk to every NPC (and I mean EVERY NPC) just to see if they have a quest, or if they are your next step. It's so outdated and frustrating that you'll give up questing altogether pretty quick.______________ Guildleves... a very very sad replacement for leveling quests. They are meaningless, in far to short of supply and add absolutely nothing to the story of the game. At least in WoW the "kill x or gather y" quests were often written into a series of storyline related activities that made them somewhat meaningful. Here guildleves are like going to some kind of soda machine and pressing a button for a refill, only to find out that you've had your limit on refills for today._____________ Now lets talk about UI and add further to the interaction mechanics discussion. Remember the combat lock and camera note above? Well the same applies for talking to NPCs. First you have to successfully target them, once you've done that and then navigate a few menus just to begin dialog (yeah get used to menus for everything) you'll be locked into that encounter until you click away (don't miss!) to end it. Hopefully that works. So no, you can't simply move away to end like you can with every other MMO under the sun.___________ And how about that snappy UI! Well there's nothing snappy about this one other than hitting the logoff button.______________ Storyline interaction? Very short paragraphs of text in a very small window with a very small arrow on the bottom to scroll. You'll have no idea where you are in the dialog, how far you have to go, nor any way to go back OR see the overall context of the dialog. __________ Expecting NPCs to talk? Interact as you walk by with nice general voiceovers? Nope. _________ I can go on. As you can gather from my post the game has me pretty seriously dissapointed and very frustrated that SE has taken a game that had such enormous potential and has completely ruined it due to their apparent arrogance and complete disconnect as to what the vast vast majority of gamers are looking for out there._______________ I really think that SE should purchase the rights to the "You're in our world now" slogan since it so aptly exemplifies the attitude SE has taken to the player base in the introduction of this game to the market.… Expand

Worst peice of crap I have ever played in my life in concerns of an MMO. This is a warning to those that are thinking of getting this game. They have a fatigue system which limits your play. The UI is absolutely horrible too the point that its a stuggle to play fluidly. There aren't any servers in the United States so the lag is horrible. The only nice thing about the game is the graphics. Which aren't even close to enough to save the title. There aren't any REAL quests. only 8 simple run and kill "x" creatures a day leves quests. There is no content in this peice of flaming turd. This is a warning to you. Don't waste $85 like I did for the SE box. Don't buy the standard box. Just stay away from this title. I have never been so angry at a game in my life. I can't believe this unfinished turd was released to the public. It should be criminal. And too all of those that try to promote the game. Shame on you for making people waste money on a game that they are going to rage quit like half the population already has in less than a week. Metacritic should have allowed us to post reviews when the SE was released so the standard edition peeps could warn them of this ripoff. And as far as the company that already posted its 84 review. **** Code Central, shame on you. You have no taste and are betraying the customers in the gaming market. People turn to review companies to lead them in the right direction. I should start my own review company that actually serves the fans and warns them of such horrible titles. Enough said.… Expand

First and foremost this game IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. if your content with your MMO now this probably won't change your mind however im still gonna praise it for now. The UI has been bashed its not great, and could be soooo much better but apparently SE didnt take anyone to seriously about the UI in XI either o well. Compared to 11, this game is so much more accessible being able to change classes anywhere just by the change of a weapon is fantastic and the main classes, War or Mage disciplines are fun and enjoyable to play. The game forces you however to build up a craft and gathering profession which IMO. hurt it, Not being able to simply repair all your gear at a repair vendor is annoying and forcing you to either, seek out another player to do so or level up your skill to do it your self is just a pain in the ass. No more long low lvl hikes back from your Homepoint to the zone you died in, dying is much more forgiving now with no exp loss anymore the big draw back of dying is weakness which is annoying enough to not want to die to often. Graphics are good yay. A teleport system is implemented which makes traveling throughout the world far less tedious once you get your initial experience doing it 1000x over is just a pain in the ass thankfully they cut this out. Im forgiving the lack of auction house right now because lets face it, with one RMT would over take the market and destroy the economy right away and prices would be outragous, atm money is easy to make through gathering or crafting, the crafting system is fun and frustrating a huge step up from XI however this and the gathering skills are huge signals that this is not for the casual audience because simply clicking once won't mine your copper or make your cotton cloth, a little thought and understanding of the system is needed to be successful in either of the two. If you want a simple MMO this isn't for you If you want something perfect in all aspects and expect nothing less this isnt for you If you love the Final Fantasy series this STILL MIGHT NOT be for you this is not your typical FF If you can come into Final Fantasy XIV with the understanding it has it flaws and is going to eek you the wrong way now and again but in the end the outcome will feel very rewarding give this a try, if your on the edge because of the flaws, wait a couple of months check what SE has fixed via updates through just the first week the UI went from almost unbearably slow to a good speed between windows. They will get some of the issues out i just hope it doesn't take them too long.… Expand

I gave this game a chance. The Good Graphics are pretty The Bad Punished for teaming, xp drops significantly for no reason Groups of 11 people attacking Ladybugs Repetitive, gameplay and mobs are the same at L 20. I am still killing marmots. Terrible UI Everything looks the same No auction house, you have to click people individually to see what they are selling (usually junk), there's not even a place to put a title of the contents of your "store" like back in Lineage 2. Levelling is like molasses Chat system is primitive Summary: Someone on here wrote the game is a breath of fresh air, I disagree, it is more like a wiff of rotten fish my dog rolled in. The game is a step back in every way possible. Bad chat, UI, archaic and repetitive. Slow.… Expand

Absolutely gorgeous! I just wish I could figure out how to play it. The fact that (1) the instruction booklet has zero information about actual gameplay and (2) that no strategy guide company even attempted to make a guide for this game - should tell you everything you need to know about it.

Garbage. Absolute garbage. The lack of hardware mouse cursor, xp restricted on a timer, sluggish UI, far too much reliance on server side processing, unintuitive gameplay. I'm sorely disappointed in SE here. Pretty graphics do not a solid game make. 0/10 for SE. I was so looking forward to this. Only a completely out-to-lunch JRPG knucklehead designer would release such tripe to the NA market. For shame, SE, for shame.… Expand

The game isn't as bad as these kids are whining. Anyone who rated 0 or 1 shouldn't be taken seriously. It's impossible to give this game a rating like that even with the problems it has. Theres no such thing as objectivity here. Theres a lack of mid-end range content. A few systems are broken and need tweaking. There are barely any bugs. The game runs great. The systems are fine. Gameplay is fun and exciting. Classes are well thought out. Anything thats wrong with it can be fixed with time. Server issues, content, missing systems, lag. The game officially launched TODAY for christ sakes. Kids these days have no idea what an mmo launch is like.… Expand

Still playing, level 25 atm. Rushed release, anyone who doesn't think so isn't 20+. SE needs to rehaul a lot of things, long time fan of their franchises but terrible choices here. Anyone who defends moronic decisions around their designs is in denial.

ATROCIOUS. This game is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind our day and age. Square Enix doesn't understand what they are doing, they are still stuck in 2000 when it comes to making MMA...actualy I think they want back in time. Why did WoW do so well? it was fun and refreshing for players. Everything in FFXIV is a tedius task that is built to annoy the living crap out of a player.

The graphics are the only redeeming quality to this game. The game is missing everything that you would come to expect from a modern MMO. And worst of all, there is nothing to do but GRIND. The VAST majority of quests are just "kill X of monster Y" or "Collect X items by killing monster Y". And even then, you can only do a tiny amount of these quests because they are locked out on a 48 hour timer. Trust me people, steer clear of this game until AT LEAST the first expansion. If it even makes it that far.… Expand

It's fun. Just a bunch of whiny kids with no patience. A zero? It doesn't even make sense to give this game a zero. Metacritic reviews are worthless. Noone gives an honest review. The gameplay is fun. Graphics are great. Story is good. I've never run out of stuff to do. Are there problems? Hell yes there are. Not one of them can't be fixed with time. They already have a ton of stuff planned to improve the game.… Expand

Haters gonna hate. The game is far from perfect, but it isn't horrible. The game isn't designed for power levellers or the people who play all day long. So far the game has been fun. The game is designed to make people craft their own items, and sometimes the crafting can be complex. This isn't a game where you just go do the "optimal build" and pound on baddies and pray for awesome armors. You have to make your own armor or pay a premium for it. There is no "optimal build" and there are a ton of ways people can customize their gaming experience. You can be a rogue character that can heal. You can be a caster that can beat the crap out of things. You can make your own items, or team up with a group to make items for everyone. There is almost too much to do right now, and people who don't have a big bad boss to go after first thing haven't a clue as what they should be doing and they'll lose interest. The graphics are gorgeous, naturally. There hasn't been much of a story line, but then again, the game isn't complete yet. I have a feeling it won't be "complete" until the PS3 release, and this is just a bigass beta test. The quests can get kid of repetitive, but there's a lot of things to do. I have a feeling this game is going to shape up well. It's not complete and there's things to do yet to finish it, but I think it will do well. Oh, for the whiners about keyboard/mouse control: This is a game designed for gamepad use. Either use one or get over yourselves.… Expand

1. Sold as solo/casual - hardcore grind 2. No quests or significant content - only guildleves on a 36 hour cooldown and not enough teleport anima to do the ones from the other cities every 36 hours to get 8 battle quests. 3. random skill point and exp rewards 4. no point to grouping 5. world feels dead and empty. 6. Literal copy and paste landscape - I mean you will think you are in the same place you just walked through 10 mins ago - it's literal copy and paste. 7. No decent market system 8. Forced crafting essentially 9. Time sink annoying repair system 10. Forced to play most of the other classes to be competent. 11. Did I mention the grind after the teens is horrific. Go back to Aion, it's a joke after FFXIV. 12. UI is the most horrific experience of any PC MMO to date 13. Game is designed around horrific barely hidden time sinks to artificially slow your progress. 14. Partying is pointless 15. Guild leves are boring 16. Crafting requires knowing several other crafts to make most anything. 17. No real story 18. Not enough mobs to even make grinding viable. 19. Mobs don't scale properly - some own your face off as blues, some reds are soloable. 20. No way to travel when anima is low - i.e. no chocobo, airships etc Goods: 1. Game looks beautiful 2. Combat itself, if you burn mana etc, is really fun, some cool animations (seismic shock for example) 3. Having options for lots of classes on one character is a cool idea. 4. Crafting has potential 5. Combat has potential 6. Economy has potential 7. The game world has hints of possible good things down the line 8. If the above issues are fixed the game would be pretty awesome. Overall, tons of potential locked in a sucky, time wasting, broken mechanics package that sucks your will to play and turn on the game. For the price and monthly sub, I recommend you give this a pass.… Expand

This game is an astounding disappointment. I feel sorry for others like me who waited years for this polished turd. I have to ask myself: Did they just spend all their time tightening up the graphics? Questing is abysmal. You'll finish levequests within minutes and then have to wait literally a day and some until you can get more. There is no pacing in the game, no direction or story development. Instead you're left to your own devices trying to forge a path using a horribly thought out system. Speaking of systems, the UI and menu system are atrocious. There is just so much wrong in this game that I could go on for hours. Square, you have failed us, go hang your head in shame.… Expand

Theres a lot of butthurt kids throwing out zeros because they feel insulted. Grow up and learn to look at something objectively when rating. The game has problems, that will be fixed. The gameplay is fun. Graphics great. Story is great. They've already laid out a roadmap of all the things they'll be adding to the game. Don't take these reviews seriously. Some of these people are pathetic.

The online community of this game is far better then any other ive played with. no trolls no really way for people to annoy you. i havent seen anyone trying to sell gil or been bugged my someone to go to some site that sells it. people that play this game are great to interact with. ui is buggy, markets wards are somewhat if a mess but you can really find things out by interacting and talking with people. People who find the game hard should just stop and do something else. if you cant take the time to find simple forum posts on a on a question you have, go play something else. unlike some games this doesnt cater to the casuals as much… Expand

I personally quite enjoy this game, however it is not for everyone! This mmo is very Archaic compared to more recently released games. The game does not hold your hand at all and is not afraid of repeatedly kicking your ass. If your expecting a game similar to wow then you should save yourself the trouble and move on. If you are considering this game then it would be in your best interest to wait at least a month or two for a major patch.… Expand

I've played this in both the open beta and on release, and I've never seen a game that has come out with so many flaws and problems. Just like FFXI, the entire basis of the game is the advancement of a linear storyline... and that's it. The game boasts impressive in-game art, graphics, and cinematics, but the gameplay is boring and repetitive. Once you get through your first few starting quests, you are left to do repeatable daily quests in one of three categories: Battle, crafting, and gathering. So basically you are left doing daily quests in a very similar fashion to World of Warcraft's endgame play, only that is what you will be doing for the entire length of the game. To make matters worse, the combat controls make working in a group a pain, as they do not allow for point and click casting. A redundant target select is built into the game so that people with gamepads can keep their eye on one target while healing people around it, but this only complicates PC controls. The crafting in this game is a carbon copy of the Final Fantasy XI crystal crafting system with an unintuitive mini-game added on top. You have no recipe list, so you must look up all the recipes online at their website and you also have no way to tell if the item is too difficult for you to craft at your given skill. This also means you must manually put in all the materials for the item into a grid of boxes before you start crafting. Once at the mini-game, new players will be left scratching their heads in frustration as they vainly try to learn the crafting mini-game with a complete lack tutorials. Sure, if the player is smart enough to pick up the crafting tutorial quest back at the city he will have something to work with, but the tutorial fails to explain the intricacies of the game, such as what the pretty light on your crafting tool represents. Also, when you fail at making an item, all the ingredients you meticulously collected are destroyed, only adding to player frustration. The gathering mini-game trades the frustration for boredom, and is just as unintuitive as the crafting mini-game. Thankfully the introductory gathering quest is helpful here, but "hot and cold" mini-games belong in the realm of things to do on long car trips when we don't have advanced electronic devices available to us, not in a video game. At least not in the unintuitive, and rather dull application it is applied here. The player market is a mess as well. Square went with a Bazaar system as opposed to an Auction House, and since the economy is mostly player run (think like 90%), this ends up creating a convoluted mess. You will be stuck searching through an army of retainers (the npcs that player hire out to put their stuff on) for close to an hour before finding what you want. The costs will also be either out the roof or ludicrously low due to their being no way for players to gauge the marketplace in order to set a good price for their goods. The game's physics engine is a rip straight out of Final Fantasy XI as well, meaning poor interaction with the environment and no swimming or jumping. You are guaranteed to always be on the ground in this game. The only improvement that this game boasts over its predecessor is the fact that it allows for solo play. This is nothing to be proud about, however, since that has been standard issue in MMOs for at least the last 5 years. So basically we have a game system that is a carbon copy of the Final Fantasy XI system with the only difference being repeatable quests and solo play. The only thing to look forward to is the storyline, but we've moved far beyond linear stories with games such as Baldur's Gate, Dragon's Age, and Fallout. Nothing to be proud of here folks, and certainly not worth wasting your money on. Pretty graphics give this two stars, but ancient game-play mechanics on top of endless player frustration gives this a 0 in game-play category. 2 out of 10 for this one folks.… Expand

It has been about four years since I began waiting for this game. Originally known as Rapture, the game was said to be the next generation of MMORPG. I would like to preface this by saying I have played more than half of the Final Fantasy titles and beaten them, and on the other hand, I have played a handful of MMORPGs including FFXI. The Good: - Graphics: The game looks fantastic. Characters are alive and beautiful, and the armor in the game is incredibly detailed. I'd say this game has the best graphics of any MMORPG to date. - Sound: While not one of the better Final Fantasy soundtracks, the music is definitely solid. Sound effects from attacks to footsteps are very convincing and add to the atmosphere of the game. The Bad: - Performance: This game simply isn't optimized. Many players, including myself, have powerful rigs but still chug along. Granted the graphics are great, but the scalability is deplorable. If you don't have a recently-upgraded PC, don't bother. - Interface: I think the best way to sum this up is to say the decade-old Final Fantasy XI had a better UI. Navigation of the interface is unbearable at times, and adds minutes of wasted time. The game has been developed with the console in mind, so navigation with a controller is optimal, but is still incredibly tedious and archaic. You can't sort your interface, and everything seems to take twice as many steps as it should. Want to sell some items? Well, you'll have to go through a handful of dialogue boxes just to sell 1 item. Games for the last few years have been using what we call the "right click" on the mouse. Why doesn't this game in 2010 have it? Oh, and targeting is incredibly bad. - Lag: Inputs take seconds to execute. This adds to a "clunky" experience both in combat and out. Yes, the game is new, but Square Enix should have at least allowed client-side interactions. Everything needs to be communicated to the server in Japan meaning everything you do has to be registered on the server before it executes. Frustrating to say the least. - Gameplay: To enter combat, you have to press a button to take out your weapon. This leaves you standing in 1 place for about 2-3 seconds while your character pulls out your weapon. Animations are slow and must be completed, so if you want to use abilities quickly in combat, good luck. The combat isn't very fun either. Abilities aren't very interesting or varied, and interactions are clunky. - No tutorials: This game makes you feel lost, very lost. Square Enix doesn't seem to have taken the precautions to help people figure the game out. When crafting items, there are no recipes, so you'll have to use pen and paper. During missions, you'll be left guessing who to talk to. Instructions are nowhere to be found. Heck, nobody even tells you how to switch classes, you'll have to refer to the internet for that. - Controls: No key mapping for the keyboard means you're stuck with some ridiculous keybindings set by Square Enix. Controls are easily the worst in any MMORPG in the last decade and reek of 20th century. - Content: Chocobos are in the game but no way to ride or interact with them. Grinding. Lots of grinding. Quests with no purpose. You can't see your party members on the map. Very few search options ingame. No /invite command. The list goes on and on. - Market system: No auction house. If you want a specific item, you'll be left begging in /shout and searching through hundreds if not thousands of bazaars to find the item. This game is inconvenient. Very inconvenient. It feels like a game from over 10 years ago but with modern graphics. This game was advertised as being welcoming to casuals, but running around takes ages and the combat is slow. Leveling takes an eternity and the lack of direction is evident. This is the most disappointing game I've played in years. I don't recommend it to anyone.… Expand

Empty. Souless. Unfinished. Stay far far away from this disaster. Worst UI in MMO history, massive empty world filled with nothing except cut-and-pasted terrain. Utterly boring quest system, hilariously broken economy (no ah and no way to search retainers).. I could go on and on.... Be very clear if you buy the PC version of FFXIV - you are paying Square-Enix for the 'privelige' of beta testing their PS3 release.… Expand

Good game. In 3-6 months it will be an amazing game. Graphics rock, gameplay is fun. love the story. love the concept. lots to do even at launch. Ignore anyone who'se too much of a tool to give an honest review. A 0? seriously? give it a rest. It's at worst a 6 right now. Will easily be a 9 in 6 months

I am disappointed with the overall game. The User Interface is lackluster and cumbersome. I have read that SE took the time to observe what made WoW such a HIT; yet, SE failed to deliver. Even with the great graphics in this game, I cannot rate the game any higher than a 1. In addition, the game lacks an actual auctionhouse or something similar. All the FFXIV servers are located in Japan. Total letdown if you ask me! LAGGGGG much? You are also limited to a certain amount of questing/experience gain a day or so, which is dumbfounded. Terrible! Also creating additional characters seems to be frowned up in this game. There seems to be more work involved with actually adding new characters... and it is supposed to cost money too to have more than one character... (After your trial expires) JUST TERRIBLE! Worse MMO thus far to sum it up. I rather play WoW!… Expand

Was a big fan of XI. XIV is pretty horribad. The UI/Engine are totally gimped because this was written for the PS3 from the ground up. Lag abounds. Vast (beautiful) zones filled with nothing. Few mobs, no NPCs/Dungeons/POIs. Pre-internet level of account management/subscription management Its pretty, and it sucks

I find it funny that 2 of the reviews have sdfg spammed, people who only played beta and refer to lag that has been fixed, a couple reviews who look at the fatigue system as if they were like the rest of us when we first heard about it. Heres the thing about reviews in the first week of launch, reviews are gonna be terribad. Look at ffxi when it was released in jpn first couple weeks, bad, now, still considered better than wow. Just sit back, and relax, FINAL FANTASY (note the caps of the game, you know people play for the name too) XIV will be here to stay.… Expand

A bunch of whiny spoilt kids that expected every game to be flawless at launch scores this game a '0'. Even if you hate FFXIV was a passion, you have to admit the graphics are way better beyond any mmo out there currently, which would at the very least be a +2 to the score ratings. The game in itself is unique, it is not like any of the other mmo's out there that are just WoW clones, the game-play is completely different, the combat system is completely different from other mmos; +2. FFXIV offers multiple classes that users can play on one character, by switching weapons on your character you will be able to play as a different class which is very diverse and an enjoyable aspect of the game; +2. The crafting system is in a whole league by itself, FFXIV made the most detailed, in-depth crafting system to date. The crafting system gives players various options on how they would like to craft their items; each with their pros and cons of course... The crafting system is not just a stupid point and click craft button like WoW and their mmo clone counterparts; FFXIV's craft system gets the players involved in the actual craft and makes the whole experience worthwhile; +2. The Storyline in FFXIV is very entertaining and will capture most people's attention with various cutscenes showing your character interacting in the short clips, the story itself which applies to the quests you do takes players through the actual FF journey. +2. +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 = +10 Sure it has its cons as well, which game doesn't? The UI can be confusing when you start off, as the UI is unlike the standard normal typical mmos, not many people will be as comfortable with it at the start. It can be seen as very cumbersome and takes too much type going through the various menus, however one can argue that by doing so, players get more involved with their character that way, they get to control what their character is actually doing with this UI instead of just auto attacking... ;-2. At the least it should be an 8...… Expand

Huge disappointment. If one buys games like this for the graphics, then look no further. If one buys games like this for the gameplay and lack of frustration, look elsewhere. Square is dead.

Final Fantasy XIV Online, We see alot of these MMOs come and go, right now we have a Saturated Market of F2P P2P and everything inbetween. I think that is why people tend to troll games that are fresh on the market threatening there safe places. I like this game, Im sure we all know of the issues that it has, but truely, what MMO does not have issues on release? CONTENT Promised WILL COME, there is alot to do right now! without having to get our heads around MORE CONTENT at this time. its diffrent and thats what makes it special, it will grow on you and you will love it,or you dont want to learn? fairenough its nto a game for you, Pace yourself and enjoy the small things, thats what this game says to us, if you can do that it will reward you. NOT perfect but water it and it will grow into somthing special.… Expand

A lot of existing graphic and control comments. Here is my review on gameplay. The combat is more tactical, for example as a pugilist soloing I can swing behind a creature and attack before MOB responds and receive a "you hit X from the rear for X damage". Also works for left, and right. This is more of a to-hit bonus than a damage bonus from what I can tell so far, but still cool that I can do it. You are able to design a character from the ground up with skills and stats that affect both combat and gathering/crafting. You can increase your elemental stats to increase both your damage mitigation and spell damage. Say I want to have more powerful Lighting spells. I increase my lightning affinity. Affinity also affects drop rate for elemental shards used for crafting. Carry a sword and drop a fireball spell from time to time. The game allows it. Gathering is a good mini game and you can share nodes with other players so no more "Hey that was my ore site!" As you gain levels in gathering class you receive skills. For example, a speed buff when going from node to node. Crafting is also a pretty good mini game with things that directly affect results, like using facilities, (just a buff you pay for). Eating food to increase stat and effectiveness. There is still a lot of mystery to crafting, intentional though also a bit tough to figure out. I saw someone make a +1 weapon last night so the possibilities beyond normal results are there. Reminds me of D&D with +1, +2 gear. FF14 requires you to really give socialization a once over. I am used to doing most things myself in other games. I know this has been tried in the past with varying results, games like EQ2 tried interdependence at launch but they had to tone it down quite a bit. Folks are just now discovering Faction Leves and from what people have said seem grander in scope than the Kill X of X Battle Leves. Faction leves require a certain amount of faction points to receive. You gain points for completing Battle or Crafting leves. I don't even have 100 points yet, so haven't done one myself. The game tracks things you do in the game but how you see results of that tracking is unknown to me. For example, I received notifications that I completed 10 Crafting leves and another one saying I killed 200 monsters.… Expand

I like the game, call me crazy, or addicted. No need for "alts", more need for reputation less trolling, win/win imho. Do everything on one character, all classes, all skills. Horizontal and vertical growth. The higher level behests are fun, and they are every hour. Localleves give you a ton of things to do regarding crafting, and guildleves come quicker now than in beta. I don't think many people even bother giving this game a chance beyond rank 20, just like they did with FFXI, which is rather amusing when I played FFXI for years as well. It's just one of those games, that begs people to bash it. Eh, video gaming in 2010 is not like it was in 1989. GET OFF MY LAWN!… Expand

At the present, there is little to reccomend about FFXIV. It has little to no content barring a few repeatable daily quests, and 3 mainy quest lines. It looks pretty, however pretty doesnt make the game fun. This is no FFXI, in fact compared to most MMO's its a little inadequate, the UI is slow, buggy and cumbersome, the content is severely lacking, once you hit about rank 23-24 there are no longer any mobs, or zones you can level in. The servers lag, and the chat system is appalling, the servers are like ghost towns community wise, and the linkpearl system is getting old. That said the game has potential, but needs a year or so of content to make it worth buying, as it stands, even the most casual will get to rank 25 or so in a few weeks, and thats where the content and zones abruptly stop. Stay away for now, but come back in a year and see how the expansion makes the game play.… Expand

Having been a fan of FFXI since it's NA release as well as owning every FF game to date (13 was a let down...) I was excited for FFXIV. Myself and a few LS members from FFXI Bought the game and rolled on Besaid. Sadly we were greeted with issues from the start... Setting up an account was pretty painful (not as painful as dealing with PlayOnline, but a pretty close second). Patching up the game uses probably the most annoying torrent system I have ever used. Once in game performance was OK, but the UI lag was pretty bad. The menu navigation is best described as tedious, as pretty much everything in the game requires you to sift through several menus and menu layers to get anything accomplished (add in the UI lag and you get frustrated really quick) Combat: I have read everywhere from various fans how the combat is deep and engaging... I have no idea what game they are playing, but it is quite the opposite. Slow and cumbersome come to mind when describing the combat system in FFXIV. Melee combat isn't too slow, but slow enough. Spell casting on the other hand ends up being a lot of *Click target, click spell, click spell again to actually use the spell (sort of a confirmation that 'yes, I want to cast this') and then wait 5 to 20 seconds for the skill to go off, rinse repeat*. Character advancement is pretty poor. You are presented with 8 guild leves every 36 hours, as well as a few local leves. Once these leves are completed (about 3 hours tops at around PL 22) the rest of your time will be spent grinding XP from mobs (which are few and far between and mostly controlled by grind parties) or crafting (which can be really expensive and even more tedious due in part to the plethora of menus/sub menus you have to trudge through for each step). The community in the game is pretty elitist overall. While there are a few players who are willing to help others out or answer a few questions, a majority of the players we encountered usually replied with a 'This isn't WoW' or just totally ignored us and our question. Basically after several days of playing we decided to head back to FFXI. We were going to burn out the rest of our 30 days that came with the CE, but then decided it just wasn't worth the headache. If you are interested in the game, grab a buddy key from a friend or wait until the have a free trial. I would not recommend buying the game unless you have tried it first.… Expand

UI: a slow interface requiring multiple clicks to navigate wasting time Crafting: From the first level you notice dependencies on almost every other crafting job and materials that you have to spend hours tracking down. Repair: requires exotic materials and many crafting jobs to repair your own gear, NPC is overpriced and cannot repair all your gear. Combat: Lag/no auto attack/Slow/Targeting issues (click attack and wait 2 seconds to see if you attacked). And then the chipmunk kills you. Oh do you feel weak. Combat became easier as I got the hang of the system and re-issued my commands over and over. Definately understand why there's no PvP.... I feel like I write my character a postal note saying please wand attack again, then give it to a courier and /pray the courier actually gets to my character before she's gnawed to death by a fluffy critter. Lag: despite a killer connection running into a room doesn't even load static NPCs for a long time making quests difficult (am I in the right place?) Inventory: 80 slots, cannot sort, cannot "consolidate" split stacks easily, very tedious. Economy: N/A - right now if you want to buy a piece of crafted gear you either get to run around shouting all over cities and craft points or visit the retainers in the wards. Imagine 1000 people in a room and 1 person has something useful, you need to do a lengthy/slow interaction with each one to find the item you want (if its even there) Graphics: Pretty, would be enjoyable if the rest of the experience was. Music: Could be better Quests: wow - only can do X quests per couple days. And they're the same repeatable ones. Plot: NPC's with screens filled with text. Very little voice acting. If I ever met someone who spewed 3 pages of text /wout letting me read I'd shot them, however not an option here :( Music: Music: Music: Music: Music: Music: Music: (am I getting repetitive?) Forums: They appear to be all rants. I see almost no promising posts from SE. I wonder if the forums are being read. As a big fan of MMO's I am really sad to score FFXIV at 2 - I can /pray it gets better, but at the moment I'm writting the expense off as a loss and canceling my account. I had Realm First achievements in Warcraft along with 6 level 80 toons, I've played many many many MMO's including FFXI which I actually enjoyed.… Expand

First off, I must say this: How exact a game company can look at thier currently released MMO and decide that features it utilizes need to be removed from thier new game is beyond me. FFXIV does a few things right, but so many wrong it's downright baffling. Visually the game is in the top tier of MMOs, with nice high fidelity scenery, very well done player and item models. Unfortunately, that's about the only praise I can give it. It has beautiful scenery, but that scenery is copy pasted all over the world in such blatant fashion it's painful. You will walk through numerous areas where the exact same monsters are in mirrored positions from where you just came, and every rock/tree/bush/hill is in the same place as well. Performance is spotty at best on my high end gaming PC. Controls are sluggish if you use mouse and keyboard, almost forcing you to resort to using a controller. (Works well with 360 controller at least.) But the real meat and potatos of the game is the real problem. FFXIV took gameplay mechanics from FFXI that were already inherently not well balanced, and makes them worse. Gameplay is bogged down with tedium and artificial ways to increase time sunk into the game. Trying to craft a single item could take you hours upon hours, or 3x's+ the actual valve of the item. So, you say to yourself, FF games are about story! This is true in FFXI, the only MMO I know of where I cared about the story going on. Shame this is not the case here. There is almost no story content in the game so far as much as a small handful of scenes per city, and then nothing but the big experience cap wall to chip away at. In case you hadn't heard, FFXIV introduced a series of systems to restrict your experience gains. The first is an 8 hour limit per week, account wide, that any time past 8 hours means you start to lose out on experience. The second being more party/powerleveling related, where if your healer heals more than 5 times, exp is reduced or nullified. It's an honest shame. I actually enjoyed FFXI, regardless of it's flaws. I was truely hoping that SE would learn thier lessons from FFXI and carry them into a beautiful, well crafted, and enjoyable game. I can barely give it one of those three.… Expand

I find it funny that fanboys are stubborn on admitting that this game is very bad. The only positive thing I hear from them are the graphics, sadly this did not make a game playable for me. I prefer a game which is fun to play, with a good story and good game play over the graphics. FFXIV Online sadly only does OK in the graphics department. I'm saying OK, because the graphics aren't as amazing as some fanboys would make you think it is. Ofcourse, the CGI/cutscenes are great as expected from Square, however you will notice that most of the environment is the same and gets very boring quickly. The graphics are comparable to Eve Online, amazing but you'll notice the same everywhere. I won't even go in detail regarding the other aspects of the game. I have played games made by ONE SINGLE PERSON and they were better in all the other aspects. I wonder how big Square's developer team was, but in my opinion and I am being serious, I believe it consisted of trained monkeys. No offense, OK maybe a little, because I was really looking forward to this game.… Expand

I really like the graphics. They are good looking, fresh, and new. But the game feels linear. It doesn't have an 'open world' feel. It feels like I am playing an MMO on rails. I have to follow a certain path, I can't climb, and I can't jump. It feels like an old school game. If I wanted to play an old school game, I would have bought an old school game. I really don't like the fact that I can't even see the recipe that I have learned. Crafting looks cool but takes way too long to produce a single item. It's not the actual crafting time, it's the three second delay to do anything. Gathering is cool, but really, really cumbersome. Changing classes takes way too much time. You have to open your gear bag, mouse or joystick over to your slot, find the weapon in your inventory, and then change the weapon, then delay...... class changed. It's annoying. The combat is slooooooow. I don't like how you can only take 8 quests every 48 hours. Sometimes you need to walk for 20 minutes just to get to the quest starting location. It's annoying. I guess I'm really not impressed. FFXIV is more annoying than fun, but the graphics are good.… Expand

If this gets any more than a 5 officially and a 2 on the user score I will have lost all faith in the validity of the gaming fanbase. While gems like Demon's Souls are trampled underfoot compared to Call of Duty and FFXIII, I direct my sights to a game so bad even people who lie to themselves as much as you casuals can't give this game any more than a 5. Should you have sense every review here would be a 0. You are not having any fun at all playing this. You aren't.… Expand

You ever wish you could back in time? Well than go buy Final Fantasy XIV. When playing Final Fantasy XIV I feel as if I have gone back in time at least ten years. All modern advances in the MMORPG genre are absent from Final Fantasy XIV. Who needs friendly user interfaces? Who needs a auction house? Who needs a tutorial explaining how to play? Who needs direction where to go? Who needs a friendly travel system? Who needs lots of quests? Who needs a experience system that isn't buggy and broken when grouping? Who needs a game that performs well on a wide range of systems? Who needs a game with content? Well I need all of the above mentioned features. Stay away from Final Fantasy XIV at all costs!… Expand

There are some pretty polarizing reviews of this game. Anyone that rates it a 0 or a 10 should be immediately discounted. The reality is somewhere in-between. The game is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also not without potential. For sure, Square Enix has their work cut out for them to make this game truly enjoyable. Here's hoping that they start listening to their player base sooner rather than later.… Expand

I really wanted to like this game. I really did. When I bought it and installed on my PC I felt like I've been sold cheap Chinese product that barely works. But on to the point, this game lacks everything and it's simply not fun to play. The core content is doing quests around big crystal that require you to kill critters for experience. I think Square Enix ran out of time and they just slapped higher stats on rabbits because they couldn't be bothered with making enemies models.… Expand

They rushed this game out the door so fast they didn't have time to bribe their usual gaming websites. - Played FFXI since launch and loved it - Has been waiting for this game since the project rapture tech demo they released in around 2006 - Invested $600 in PC upgrades to be able to max this game out - Played the Beta and thought things were going to get better once retail hit - Bought the Collector's Edition gleefully Even I can't deny this game is complete and utter **** I've tried to lie to myself, tell myself it's going to get better, but the Square MMO team are complete frackups, as clearly laid out by FFXI. Somehow, they managed to make a game that takes all the good of FFXI and turns it to **** and then took a huge steaming **** on top of it, and put a cherry on top for the beautiful graphics. This game is abysmal. It's a complete failure. I'm a fraking Finfan fanboy for fracksake, and I can't stand this pile of horse**** Here's to hoping Guild Wars or that bland looking Starwars MMO can finally pull me away from the cesspool that is WoW. As for this game, I just hope they shut down the servers quickly before too many people find out about it so it isn't etched into everyone's minds as the biggest failure in MMO history.… Expand

You notice how most of the positive reviews feature people familiar with FF 11? There's a reason for that. This game has the worst UI of any MMO released in years. Someone needs to tell Square that FF 11's crappy UI is unacceptably bad in 2010. Pile that on top of the slowest patching system ever invented, how crash prone the game is, the fact that crashing in the middle of a quest causes you to fail the quest (and in some cases not be able to do it again for two days), whisper message size limits that make tweets seem long, and all around general problems... and you have a game not worth playing. It would be bad even if it was a F2P, but for a monthly fee this is a disgrace.… Expand

One of the largest disappointment ever. As a Final Fantasy fan I can't fathom what Square Enix is doing anymore. This is not the quality I expect, it's simply abysmal. The graphics are fine and the music is enjoyable, but beyond that there is nothing. The story is lost and frustrating to try and follow, leveling up is a chore, the "mining" systems are horrifically boring. The battle system in not intuitive at all and is simply a matter button bashing. Many of the promises made about the game have not come true. I am disheartened to say this, but I think this way as well be the "Final" Final Fantasy. The quality of the series is no longer worth it, and it is simply selling because of it's name.… Expand

If an individual wished for an MMO that did not feel it should copy World of Warcraft, this would be the one. Challenging and Complex to boot. It caters to a more hardcore gamer than those with a mentality that wishes for instant gratification. The graphics are outstanding, quite frankly the best of any MMO out there. It also has, in my opinion, one of the most in depth crafting systems out there. While it does have some problems with lag and other minor inconveniences. A die hard Final Fantasy fan should find the game to their liking.… Expand

If you enjoyed FFXI, you'll enjoy this without a doubt. The game has really brought back the feeling of immersion, and why we play MMOs in the first place: Community!

I played the beta and also tested the game once more at launch. And i all can say is... Only buy this if you are a final fantasy fan or really enjoy asian mmorpgs. Since this is insanely boring and the most linear game i ever played! I mean common! They copied the terrain like 6-10 times at some places! The most entertaining in this game is the spelling errors. The overall combat is very very very slow as well even once you get several abilities it's still slow and some of the controls are just simple horrible! And remapping them wont work since it's the game it self that is played in such a odd manor! This game will never be fixed.… Expand

This game falls so extremely short on all aspects, poor gameplay, poor quests, poor dialogue, poor interface, poor environment at least the graphics and music is good. But the game is simply bad, sure graphics are nice but all the maps are like puzzles you will run past the same scenery like 15+ times, monsters are few and bugged not to mention the overall time it takes to kill one is 25-40seconds and this is your basic newbie mob. The game runs at a snail speed and it's so linear that you can't skip anything. The crafting system is decent if you care to figure it out. I thought FF13 was boring, but this simply sets a new high. I Probably never watch on a final fantasy game the same way any more. Even free asian mmorpg's can beat this crap!… Expand

The good: * Powerful graphics engine * Flexible class system The OK: * It has decent music * It has a new take on crafting and gathering in MMOs The Bad: * Everything else I really cannot even begin to list the problems this game has. In nearly every way except for graphics, it is a massive step-back from even SE's previous MMO title (FFXI). The User Interface is terrible and sluggish. It takes multiple confirmations and clicks to perform even the simplest tasks, such as moving items from your inventory to your retainer (bank). It will take you upwards of 10 minutes to just sell your vendor trash. The terrain is copy-and-pasted to such an extent that it will make those who complained about WOW's copying of caves die of shock. Areas just feel bland and lifeless. There is absolutely no reason to do anything in the game (except for it's own sake) because the game has no content (only 8 copy-pasted kill quests every 36 hours, no end-game to speak of, etc). There is absolutely no sense of progression in the game. Many dozens of hours in and you're still traversing areas that look exactly the same (literally because they are) and still fighting Moles and Rats; monsters that feel like they should be reserved for characters under level 5. The item durability system is absolutely terrible. It is impossible to repair your gear up to 100% without the help of an outside player, or you spend hours trying to work through the terrible crafting interface and retarded recipe design philosophy (a level 2 recipe requires level 15 recipe reagents from the same craft) to level up your own crafting skill. Your character will even get stuck on 2-inch high walls (I am not even joking), and have to walk around them. There are dozens of features that should have been implemented by release, but are still absent (Chocobos, AH, Airships, Company System, etc etc etc). I could go on forever but hopefully you get the idea. This MMO is in no way shape or form ready for a commercial release; it's barely in an Alpha state right now. I cannot recommend this MMO to anyone, but I can recommend you avoid it like plague. If it is not dead in a year, check back then and see if it is finally out of pay-to-play Beta.… Expand

At every turn this game makes things difficult for the player. The menus lag, the NPCs don't give you important directions, the map is horrible, there's no Auction house, the retainer system (where players set up their own shops) is painful to use, the game doesn't store your recipes for crafting, you're limited to how much XP and skill points you can receive, you can only do a small number of guildleves a day... I could easily keep going. One or two problems could easily be fixed but there are so many fundamental design flaws with this game that it requires an incredibly extensive re-write that I can't see them doing post-retail. I've never cancelled a subscription to an MMO as fast as I have for FFXIV. I usually stick with them, even if I'm not enjoying them, in the hope that they'll improve in the future. That's not going to happen here.… Expand

Honestly, I bought Final Fantasy XIV as just that - a Final Fantasy. The single player RPGs in the series have never rated high on my preference list, though I've enjoyed them, however I've always felt the worlds portrayed by the series would play so much better as online worlds. And, as such, just as I was excited for Final Fantasy XI, I was (and remain) excited for Final Fantasy XIV. And I honestly have to say, it delivered. Final Fantasy XIV presented me with a unique and compelling world and what's more, actually asked me to set about exploring it. Now, I will not deny this game has flaws - it has quite a few. But I've always maintained it unbelievably stupid to judge an MMORPG on the flaws it exhibits in its first year, let alone first month. I'll come back and start niggling over resolvable issues then, maybe. For now, I see potential, and I like the basic systems I'm presented with, along with the world and the basis for the kind of roleplay I enjoy. I expected pretty much exactly what I got from Final Fantasy XIV; a good world, a good story, and enjoyable battle system, an actually fun crafting system, and a unique take on the systems so generally formulaic in modern MMO games. Is Final Fantasy XIV for everyone? Very likely not. But for me, it's very much the online RPG I've been looking for to replace Ragnarok Online the best part of a decade, and I'm pleased to have bought a Collector's Edition. What's more, it's remarkably friendly to the casual player - if you define casual as a player with limited time available, which describes me perfectly given my recent return to university. The experience system is geared to give large bursts for a short time after login, and then level out should you attempt to grind; just how I like it. Sorry if this isn't the most useful review ever, but simply put, I'm having fun and I'm sure there are a lot of people who will also, so long as their only definition of 'fun' isn't the formulaic, Western MMORPG, or bust.… Expand

I really can't understand how people can give this game a "10" or anything higher than 4. I've played over 30 MMOs since I beta tested Ultima Online in the early '90s and have seen quite a lot of failures, but this game has to be one of the worst I've ever played. Every single thing about it is either outdated, sub-par, or simply stupid. There are absolutely no quests outside of the main quest line and that leaves you with 99.999% of your time grinding away on the same mobs with 1000 other people because the mob:player ratio is very poor. The UI is obviously made for a console and the entire game has been dumbed down for PS3 users to be able to use it. I cannot stress highly enough, DO NOT LISTEN TO THE FANBOYS HERE GIVING THIS GAME A GOOD REVIEW! This game is, literally, a taint on the MMO industry and should be avoided at all costs. I can't even begin to tell you in words how bad this game is. It makes STO look good. There. That's how bad it is.… Expand

I was really excited about this game. From a financial side point, the worst possible thing they did was have an open beta. I didn't expect it to be fast or amazing based on its beta, but the entire game was just plain terrible. The introductions were nice, but they had no tutorial whatsoever. All in all it was just an extremely user unfriendly game and I canceled my limited edition pre-order just in time. The company we knew and loved that produced FF's such as 7,8, and 10 is dead. 12, 13, and 14 are the epic failure of a declining masterpiece in gaming.… Expand

After navigating through the mind numbingly complex process of actually setting up your account, you get the choice of creating your character (you only get one, unless you want to pay more money, so make sure your friends are all on the same server), and watch what is a stunningly beautiful cutscene with good voice acting. After the cut scene, however, you're basically dropped off in the city with a "good luck" The graphics are well done, too well, perhaps, as even some high end gaming computers will struggle with it to be even semi-smooth. The sound has two settings, off and loud, and gets very repetitive very fast. The user-interface is slow and horrendously designed, to change weapons you have to open the main menu, and once you find the gear section, it doesnt only bring up items that can be placed in said equipment slot, it brings up your whole inventory, so you have to scroll through and find what you want. The main quest line, which seems interesting, has quests that are too few and far between, and it relies on a system of "levequests", of which you can only do 8 every 36 hours. These are your standard MMO style quests, go here and kill x monsters, but leaves nothing to backstory about the world, or stories about characters, or anything. The crafting system, which Square Enix has clearly placed a lot of emphasis on, is neat and refreshing at first, but quickly becomes exceptionally irritating. You have to either have their players website open and alt-tab to view recipes, or write them down yourself, as the game provides no in game recipe book. Another downside to this, is that the only way to get gear is either to buy it from someone else or craft it yourself, the emphasis being on crafting it yourself. This can be a horribly confusing and aggrivating process, as after farming for materials for hours, you finally go to make said item, and it breaks while you are crafting it, costing you both the materials and the time you spent gathering them. Overall, while FFXIV is a visually beautiful game, the poorly designed menus, slow and shoddy targetting system, the almos impossible to read maps, the over-emphasis on an insanely coplex crafting system, and overall lack of feeling like you are actually a part of the world make this game not only feel much more like work than a game, its an insult to the many great games of the Final Fantasy series. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone… Expand

As a FF lover this game completely disappoints. Only good thing is a bit on the graphics. List of disappointments: 1. Graphics performance blows, especially on certain high end cards for no reason at all. If I can play Crysis on max settings on 1920x1200 I should be able to play this game on settings higher than all low. 2. No Square Enix communication. It's been over two weeks and there's been only one response to everyone's issues and requests for changes. 3. No real community forums, go find one. 4. Copy & Paste Land, seriously. Gets old real quickly when you have to run for 10 minutes and you see the same land over and over and over again. 5. Terrible means of transportation. The copy and paste just to make a bigger world but force you to basically run blows. You can do instant teleport from one place to another but you only can do it so many times before you run out and the regen is endlessly long. 6. Not allowed to just play a class you want. The game forces you to change jobs or be bored out of your mind if you just want to level one class. Why should I be forced to level a job I don't want to do? 7. So few quests. Very repeatative. After you do your set of quests there are no more to do. 8. No AH and selecting a person and clicking browse is terrible. Not only that but your store can run away from you while you're looking at it lol. 9. Slow loading zones and areas. Turn around and await a few seconds before people appear on your screen. 10. Loading, endless loading areas. 11. Bugs, omg the bugs. I've passed hundreds of bugs/issues with the game, would take me forever to list. 12. Terrible customer service. It's a joke. 13. Slow loading interface, everything takes 2-3 seconds before appearing. What a joy. 14. Cutscenes with no talking but you can see them talking. Uhh okay. 15. No information on how to do something or how something works. I don't care that it isn't just all handed to me but at least show me how to do the simple things while starting up a brand new complex game. 16. No armor/weapon seller besides level 1 gear. 100% community crafting. Now this wouldn't be an issue if there was an AH or something but since so few people want to stand around trying to sell and not only create 1-2 items the options are quite low. You can go through the main market area and see not one item for your job/class so you are forced to craft your own gear. 17. Game gets boring after an hour or two. It just doesn't keep your attention span. 18. Casting and selecting moving NPCs for AOE spells is painful. You click the ground instead of the mob, deselects off the mob now you have to reselect, click the spell again etc etc. By the time you start casting you've lost 25% of your health. So you're basically sitting on auto-attack...which gets boring to slowly hit the "1" key. There are a million more things that are wrong. I would give it a higher rating than 0 but I can't give a game something higher when the game was clearly released before ready, lazy effort on so many things, and didn't listen at all to the complaints in beta. I did hear they fixed a but this last patch that was found in alpha. Huh.… Expand

A staggering disappointment of a game for someone that loves the final fantasy series. Archaic UI, sluggish controls and extremely lengthy pauses when doing tasks such as buying and selling items just add further to aggravation when trying to do even the simplest actions in game. Quest dialogs assault you with a wall of irrelevant text that fails to pull you into the world and simply rehashes the tired travel kill/fetch routine already present in many mmos. The game touts itself as casual friendly, but fails miserably at instilling any sense of accomplishment if one only has a few hours a day due to so much travel between the repetitive landscape. Compared to the Fields of Valor and experience ring bonuses in FFXI, the system in FFXIV appears to be a fluffed up and overcomplicated copycat version with more travel. The lack of an accessible Auction House for easy buying and selling of items creates a time sink when trying to find of upgrade equipment navigating the poorly thought out and tedious market wards, aggravating for a player that cares only for questing and monster slaying. The graphics nice to look at, and the music is a feast for the ears, but the characters lack a warm soul to them, and the character armor available looks highly generic, the iconic artifact armor associated with final fantasy jobs is nowhere to be found, making this feel like its not a final fantasy game. This game is a step backwards from its well aged forebear FFXI in many ways, provoking the question of FFXIV's necessity in the market place. FFXIV tries to be different in several ways to set itself apart from other games, but frustratingly does so in the worst ways thought possible for those that area already fans of FFXI or more accessible MMOs. Given the state of the current game, I would recommend waiting until next year to give this game a try, provided they have heavily patched the game to address the myriad of other nagging issues too long to list that plague this game in its current form.… Expand

3 points por graphics,-1 point because resources optimization doesn't exist in this game.The rest is very poor.The worst numeric final fantasy.Compared with other mmorpg,ffivx is boring,frustrating,and very expensive,and doesn't have any innovations.What a waste of time.

As a former player of FFXI, I was really looking forward to this game. I really wanted to like it, and I was totally ready to love this game. However, after playing it for a few days, it became immediately obvious that almost no progress has been made since 11 came out so many years ago. On the plus side, the graphics and sound are stunning. There is some repetitiveness in the graphics, but the actual visual experience is amazing. The game compares pretty favorably with the best looking MMOs out there, and as usual, the music of Final Fantasy is incredible. The class system which allows you to swap classes on the fly and steal bits and pieces from multiple classes is a great idea, and opens up a lot of potential for creativity. You can tune a character to work exactly how you would like them to, and end up with something which feels pretty unique. Unfortunately, that's about all I can say I liked about the game. In many other vitally important areas, the game failed spectacularly. It feels as though the developers of the game worked in an isolated chamber, without the benefit of seeing any of the improvements in MMOs which have come out since then, and without anyone questioning the design decisions made in FFXI. The economy of the game is based on a retainer system, in which players essentially set up bazaars to hawk their items. There's no auction house or trading post to scan for the items you want, you'll be coming here if you want something you can't make yourself. So if you want a new sword, you're going to zone into a room chock full of hundreds of retainers. And if you want to find a sword, you're going to have too look at them one by one, until you find a guy selling what you want. I can't imagine how this idea made it through any kind of design meeting. And in an economy where almost anything you ever want is made by players, this is not going to to be a minor annoyance, but a constant chore. Navigating the UI in the game is perhaps the most terrible, painful experiences I've had in an MMO. Menus are entirely server-authenticated. I don't know if this was to prevent exploits or just a bad design decision, but it means that whenever you press a button, you'll have to wait a short time to see the result, maybe a quarter of a second, maybe a couple of seconds on a slow connection. If I were going to put this into a game, I would design the UI with this in mind, to make as few calls as possible, but instead, many task in the game require many, many menus, and many calls to the server. Crafting an item frequently takes navigating a half-dozen menus and opening and closing your inventory 4 or 5 times. The tiny lag on every menu action adds up, and makes everything take so long as to be incredibly annoying. The levequest system one of the more painful questing systems ever put into a game. You pick up levequests in a large town, go to the correct location at which to do them, and start them up. You complete whatever goals are set for you, and you get the rewards. However, you only have a dozen or so of these quests available to you at any given time, and you can easily finish them off in a couple of hours, and then you're simply out of content until these levequests reset 36 hours later. And unfortunately, these quests are not interesting or epic. Most of them are simply requests to kill X of a specific mob and come back. Once you're done with these quests, you're simply out of stuff to do other than grind. And you're not allowed to grind for too long, or else your XP will begin to fall off. If this happens, the only way to gain XP at the normal rate again is to switch classes, or simply not gain XP for a while. This leaves the game in an uncomfortable state in which you can't play for very long periods of time without running out of things to do, but you miss out on opportunities to level your character as best you can without logging on for at least a couple of hours each day. It's hard to figure out what audience this game and its mechanics were intended for. The game keeps many of Final Fantasy XI's annoying quirks. Storyline quests which are available to you are very limited and unmarked. You have to stumble upon the correct person while you are the correct level in order to find out if you can make progress. Most fast travel is either not yet available, or you are heavily limited in your use of it. This would be less of an issue if the maps were smaller. But some maps and cities are simply gigantic mazes, with ridiculous amounts of dead space. The menu system is unique to FF games, and painful. Even as a former FFXI player, it took me over half an hour to figure out how to equip new skills. I can't recommend FFXIV at all in its current state. At best, it is a 'wait and see' game, and I'm not too hopeful that the issues will ever be resolved.… Expand

- Fails to deliver a satisfying experience at even the most basic level...killing stuff - Quests are exceptionally dull - Combat is exceptionally dull - I feel there is no 'love' in this game - Generally just really disappointed with something that I had such high expectations for

This game is pure graphics, nothing more. There is almost NO tutorial and you have to find out and guess the controls by yourself. And let's not talk about the UI... FF XIV is pure fail in my eyes and the only reason it got 3 Points from me is: Graphics = 2 Final Fantasy = 1

This isn't a turnkey MMO as Square Enix doesn't hold your hand with tutorials and the like. But, for gamers with a non-linear vision of what a game should be, FFXIV is engrossing-- taking a decent level of commitment to to the game's various modes of play-- gathering, crafting, shopkeeping and, to be sure, battle. It's still too early to tell what the game will really be like given the player-driven economy and everyone's limited exposure to date, but directionally, it's a solid game with a lot of promise. I'm hooked.… Expand

Game doesn't deserve all the hate it is getting. The game plays nice and looks great. It is lacking in content, which is obviously going to be provided throughout the life of the game. I hated the keyboard/mouse controls from FFXI but am perfectly fine with them here. Takes a powerful computer to run. Has real potential.. but a lot of it is going to hang in the air until SE releases patches. It has more potential then any mmorpg I have seen released in the last 5 or so years.… Expand

This game was rushed to market by a company that doesn't listen to its player base. The updating system is garbage, and the game requires you to have a bleeding edge system to be playable. The game play itself is backed by interesting concepts that were executed beyond poorly. The crafting and gathering mini games are neat ideas but it takes forever to do or make anything. The interface was seeming planned out by someone who has never played an MMO before and coded by someone who failed out of junior college. It wasn't until maybe a week before release that they decided to allow a hardware mouse to cut the interface lag and make it usable. A great example of how out of touch Square is with the rest of the world as a whole is the fact that there is no auction house or mail system..... I mean really, take a second think about that. An major market MMORPG that does not have a mail system or auction house at release. Its as if the lead designer had a stroke half way through development. To make it worse they limit you to 8 "Guild leves" (for the love of God square why cant we just call it a quest, why do you have to go out of your way to confuse people by renaming things to which we are all accustom to some meaningless collection of letters?) ever 36(?) hours, but count yourself lucky, it was 48 hours just a week or two before release, I hear they cut the time down a bit just before release but I am not totally sure on that. On another note, each of these guild leves takes about 5 min. to complete leaving you with more than a day of wondering "ok...what now?". The graphics are pretty but there is a lot of cut and paste going on. A lot of people, myself included, were very excited for this game and really really wanted it to be good and enjoyable but it seems that the majority of use were let down in a big way. I can't help thinking that if the ideas, concepts and art for this game were given to literally any other company other than square it would be a good game but Square managed to pull defeat out of the cold clutches of success. I would recommend steering clear of this title, at least for the time being. I still hold out some hope that maybe they will learn their lesson and enact some sort of changes by the time the PS3 version is released sometime in March or April of next year.… Expand

In a word "unfinished". The game seems to have been rushed out, to reach shelves on time and quite clearley needs a lot of work before its ready for retail release. Some of the crafting in the game seems like, it could really work, forcing the economy to buy and trade but sadly this method just usually involves people selling items for ridiculously inflated prices. The game also feels like a complete console port and almost no effort has been made to hide it, hence the use of the crummy menu system to do anything and the almost complete lack of any customisation to the controls. With some work this could be a real contender in the MMO market but as it is, very little has changed from beta, and still many of the major bugs exist. Its a total joke that this was released at full retail price. I know several people who brought in early to the colectors edition, seeing the square enix brand and after the fantastic games they have released in the past I couldnt fault them, sadly they were betrayed by a company with a big reputation. I hope this hurts square enix, I hope it hurts them a lot and scares other companies into thinking about releasing unfinished junk into the market.… Expand

Funny to see people complaining about people rating 0 this game and yet they rate it with max score of 10 talking about objectivity.I have been playing many years FFXI and other MMOs but I have to admit that FFXIV is not up to the expectations, specially having so many years of experience. The whole system is very slow, the crafting system is an improvement: can get you exp AND crafting skill levels, however it is far too slow and makes it kind of boring (too many windows to have to be opened before actually get into the craft itself). The fact that you can set abilities from another job to you mage allows to customize the type of characters you want and make it unique, which can be good and kind of frustrating for people that like class specific. The party system, however, is a fail as everyone is just doing is thing on his own and not really relying on each others class specificity. The lack of quests is another bad point. The fact that you have to spend hours looking around bazaars in the hope to find what you're looking for is a time sink and very annoying. The auction house should have been implemented and the excuse of avoiding RMTs doesn't make any sense because they will be some anyways (already seeing them appearing) and they tend to actually put the economy down because of the massive amount of items they bring into the market so that it differs from overpriced items sold be players. A step back from FFXI in my opinion instead of an improvement (they could still have made a different system but keep players-friendly users). Now, instead of having the stress/fear of being killed while running to you grinding spot (and the time it took also to reach it, which all together made a nice experience until you could move faster with teleport/chocobos), you can just teleport around to go grind but have to spend hours just to try to gear you up. I'm not even telling about the uber rare piece of gears, just basic equipements are just a pain in the a.. to find. i think that just the use of an AH or a similar system would decrease player's frustration a lot. How the skill/exp gain in a party has still to be adjusted so that it is not just 'soloing with a group of people' and more based on cooperation (teamwork, yes please!). A function to sort inventory also should have been there from the start. The lag and/or slowness should also be worked out so that it doesn't take 10/15 just to sell the junk in the inventory (because you don't want to spend 1 hour putting those into your bazaar...). I am not far into the game yet but I kind of regret the huge maps where you can just explore the world and not series of tunnels leading to small areas. The graphic although are very very nice and deserve a thumb up. Not much talking in the '/shout' chat for the moment going on but this seems just a matter of time. No problems with the linkshell system, works like a charm. Don't indeed expect a game taking you by the hands (NPC with marks on their head to say HEY I have a quest for you), you have to talk to NPCs to actually see if they have some available (as far as I know, none anyways so far). So in the end, because of the problems of the system, the only enjoyable thing is to grind/guildleves and crafting a bit until gets too boring to wait 5s to 10s between each windows to open (and 5 minutes to craft one item). I would recommend to keep an eye on how it evolves but not to play right now if you are currently playing other MMOs that you like. If you seek a new MMOs to play, give it a shot (or go to a friend's place playing it) but surely do not expect the big revelation or the MMOs of the century. Take it as a new firm trying out to make a MMOs.… Expand

I just don't understand how a company as large as SE can make such a glaringly flawed game, it has already been mentioned many times but the flaws far outweigh the and positives. The atrocious UI was my biggest gripe, I can't even begin to describe how much I loathed it. I do believe there is potential but for a game to be released like this is an insult to gamers, shame on SE.

Pretty awful game. Yikes. I can't believe anyone is giving this a good review. SE must be putting some interns to work! I could go on about the glaring faults, including the retainer system, the copy-pasted dungeon crawler like terrain, the UI lag (oh my GOD the lag), the lack of content at every level, the ridiculous skill point system, the grinding, the broken party mechanics, etc., etc., etc. I could go on and on and on. The bottom line though, and the reason why people aren't going to play this game without serious improvements (if there's even enough left to salvage) is that FFXIV isn't fun. At all. Many people, including myself, bought this game because of the Final Fantasy name, and I have a feeling that we won't be making the same mistake again.… Expand

To everyone saying the game has improved: I have been playing since beta and this game has not improved in the slightest. I'm actually redoing my review in light of these new changes. The easiest way to explain how poor this game is, google "Is FFXIV Ready to Play?" Its a youtube video and it shows the simplest of bugs and as of this date it is still not fixed. They've finally added airships but those of us from FFXI will know its still not enough. "The airship ride is over in a matter of seconds." Wow, even in FFXI you could see the area below but a year later they still can't implement it in FFXIV. It seems to me that this was a last minute ditch effort to at least be able to claim they have airships. And chocobos. I'm sorry but if it takes a whole year to implement chocobos... how long will it take to make the game playable. Too little too late. The last time I logged in, the busiest city, Limsa Laminsa was bare. Only three people responded to my shouts. This does not bode well. When I asked where everyone was the reply I got was "They're taking a break until the new update" (chocobo update). We'll see. If they're smart they won't be on at all. There is a reason this game was awarded "Most Disappointing game of 2010". There's a reason it has the metascore it has. If you like this game and you rated it a 10 it only goes to show how blind you are. I've been playing Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy 6 on the SNES. After spending $80 on the Collector's Edition of FFXIV all I have to show for it is a stupid hardcover book. The Adventurer's Certificate never showed up and I'm realizing now, almost a year later, it never will. Not that I care at this point, I'm embarrassed to let any of my friends know I was ever interested. If you want to be frustrated and then spat upon by Square Enix, give it a try. If you have any sense at all, you'll come back here and rate this game a zero.… Expand