This is my review after a good 30+ hours of gameplay (currently at 60 hours) and I’m very impressed.
0:00 Intro
1:00 The good
1:03 Graphics & performance
1:54 Story
2:21 Music / Soundtrack
2:54 Combat gameplay
3:25 Quality of life
6:00 Controller support
7:03 Cross platform play
7:41 Core game is free to play
8:10 Tons of content
8:41 Play all classes on one character
9:32 The bad
9:34 F2P trial version is hard to find & restrictions
11:45 Combat is slow & boring
13:46 Little to no voice acting
14:35 Very linear open world
15:39 Overall – Final verdict
You can find me on:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/zcripturez/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZcriptureZ
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zcripturez
My PC specs:
CPU: Intel Core i9-10900KF
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GRAPHICS: GeForce RTX 2070 Super
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MEMORY: CORSAIR 16GB
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MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z490 Steel Legend
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HDD: Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 250GB
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2nd HDD: Samsung 860 QVO 1TB SSD
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POWER SUPPLY: Apevia ATX-PR 800W
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CPU COOLING: Noctua NH-D15
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Great game, it would good if they added an action rpg combat system alongside it, its quite an expensive game to play though given you need to buy the expansions as they come alongside the monthly fee. Nice to see you get back into the mmo scene!
As far as overall quality of life, I think Guild Wars 2 is better, but they're both great in their own ways. I love both these games. Glad you're having fun!
One really cool thing about the controller support, YoshiP the game's Producer/Director; convinced SE NOT to copyright/trademark the crossbar system that gamepad users use, as he wanted more MMOs to freely adopt it (should they wish) so that they can reach a wider audience. He is a huge MMO fan and now that he's in a position to do so, he wants to push the genre forward so that more people can be able to play MMOs in general because he really believes in the format.
Edit: The combat will improve as you gain more abilities but they could stand to allow more of em to be available sooner for sure. Also the ARR part of the game if it feels lackluster in parts its mostly due to the fact that you just really REALLY feel the fact that they had to turn the initial launch of this game around in about 2 years when most MMOs from zero to launch take usually 5 years and they had to throw almost everything out after the 1.0 launch in order to turn the ship around so to speak. It will definitely feel like a huge glow up once you enter the first expansion for sure, as they finally had the time to give it that extra polish by then lol. All that being said glad to hear you and your fiancé are enjoying yourselves ^^b
Enjoyed the review! let me just give some extra context for your gripes with the game, hopefully they will alleviate some of your concerns but no worries if not
For the Free Trial, most of the community recommends purchasing the game or downloading the trial from the SE site over Steam. The non steam version of the free trial is really accessible (https://freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com/gb/) and not being hidden at all – the free trial speech is a meme in the community bc we recommend it so much haha. Unfortunate to hear that its hard to find on steam tho.
You can't add your friends to a party, but you can have them add you to a party. The marketboard restriction is an anti-botting measure. But also they cant give the entire game for free or no one would upgrade haha.
In term of combat, i think an element of it will never be what youre looking for bc its a tab target game and not an action combat game. That said, you might want to look into more mobile jobs. (Summoner at later levels has extreme mobility, all ranged physical dps jobs can move wherever the ywant and attack) and you said you had played 30 hours so I would assume you are not too high level. Most jobs get a vast amount of ogcds to weave into their rotation. Check out some videos of levle 80 rotations, the combat is very slow to start but I promise it gets much much faster.
Voice acting is something that also increases as you progress through the game. The simple truth is its a budget thing, this game is available in and supports several langauges (English, German, French, Japanese) so anything voiced has to be done in all languages. If you make it to ShB, a huge amount of the cutscenes are voiced – tho not all still. Endwalker we except more voiced scenes as well.
The game is very linear and not an open world but that is just the consquence of it being a narrative game. However the zones from heavensward and onward are much larger (and introduce verticality) ARR was built for the ps3, not the ps4 and while Heavensward supported ps3 it is much more expansive.
I am glad youre enjoying the game, and I hope that some of hte kinks get worked out later as you progess!
Don't worry, the anime feel to it will disappear. You will prob go back to it and laugh back at yourself for saying it.