The third beta phase for Final Fantasy XIV is well underway and I’ve had the chance to give it a spin. Now, I’m here to share my thoughts on it.

I should preface the meat of the post with an important bit of information: I tried Final Fantasy XI — I disliked it, greatly. I went into this beta with the same attitude I left XI with, very low expectations. Perhaps, that was a blessing.

You should know that the beta, as it is, is limited — the game world is not fully open to test, there’s limitations in place (whether temporary or not, I cannot tell) and this does effect the feel of the game. For instance, it seems there are three starting areas in the final version, but only one of the starting areas is currently playable. These types of limitations will, most likely, change from now to open beta and on to release — so I will try to update my opinions of the game later on to reflect these changes. (Get that? It means I *might* be willing to purchase this game… Should say something about it.)

Character Creation:

Simply put, it’s pretty well done. The majority (almost the only) customization that you do is done on your character’s head. There’s not a *ton* of options for each part, but there are enough options to make a unique enough character. One thing you will notice immediately is the graphics — characters look *awesome*.

Classes:

I can’t dig too deep at the moment here — I’ve only tried four classes so far: Lancer, Marauder, Fisherman, and one of the mages… I think it was a conjurer.  The two melee classes felt fairly similar, at least it does at the beginning, while the mage was different — I’d say much better, at the beginning, than the melee classes. The fisherman is one of the harvesting classes and the biggest pains in the ass I’ve seen yet. The combat classes are pretty self-explanatory — you kill stuff — so, I’ll hit on the fisherman instead. To reinstate: this doesn’t cover all the harvesting or crafting classes, I haven’t covered the real crafting classes or the other harvesting ones, this is purely my introductory experience with the fisherman. You start the class like any other, going through the tutorial. The tutorial has a combat section — fisherman don’t do combat. (You throw rocks for about 1 damage a pop, wee!) So, this tutorial and the subsequent quests are pretty much fluff, at least from my point of view. The real meat starts with the first guildleve you get to do — which involves catching fish. Now, most people likely wouldn’t have tried fishing yet (largely because they wouldn’t know how) so this is the first experience doing what your class does. Turns out, fishing isn’t simple. You get a basic tutorial to ‘help’ you through the process, but the information is only useful in getting started and doesn’t even walk you through doing it properly. The process is roughly this: At the edge of a fishing area you use your ability called Gulleye (go into action mode, hit ’2′ or so)  which finds any nearby fishing holes to use. After finding one (you’ll notice the tiny little exclamation mark pop up in the upper portion of your screen, just like you find when near the aetheryte  crystals) you open your options menu and select Fishing there. Fishing will begin and you’ll have a few new UI elements pop up (and that won’t be terribly well explained). To actually fish you set your depth (might have a bearing on what fish are caught) and select to either wait (something that might be more useful as you rank up, not sure since it isn’t explained well) or jig. Jigging is most helpful at the start, it seems, and is accomplished from a metronome type UI element. Simply click it when it passes near your desired location (what that location does? or means? no real clue) and wait for the text to tell you if you hooked anything, or not. If you do manage to hook something a little bar underneath the metronome will fill up and you’ll get one of numerous messages that will be your rough guide to how well you’re doing catching the fish (such as: “You take in a great amount of line.” “The fish takes some line.” “You take in some line.” “The fish is tired but you are unable to catch it.” Etc.) You’ll then get to play the metronome game some more, in what others have called a hot/cold sort of game, either trying to land on the place you first did or somewhere different. That’s the confusing element. Some of the messages seem really random as I’ve had taking in a great amount of line pop up once, then landing nearly on top of it again had the fish taking some line. Reading on forums, even, I only found speculation — it seems there might be a system in place but it isn’t always consistent. This can lead to a very frustrating first leve.

Tutorial:

The starting tutorial, for the Limsa Lominsa starting area, sees your character on a ship bound for the port city. There’s not too much explained in this early part (a recurring trend in the game, really) as it is mostly cinematic cut-scenes and a little combat tutorial. The cut-scenes are pretty epic for an MMO tutorial, though. After you leave the ship you get your first experience in the game — figuring out what to do. Quest NPCs have no real marking, from what I can tell, and you’ll just have to ask around till you find it (hint: he’s right next to the ramp) and start it. Your first quest leads you to a bar — a sort of hub for the starting area — that will have you watch another cut-scene before getting your real quest.

I found the tutorial to be interesting, story-wise, but lacking tutorial-wise. I didn’t really feel like I learned a lot. The game has tons of features, interface quirks and systems that aren’t common in other MMOs — it’s not quite as different as XI was, but still very strange to use. Having very little information on these different elements makes the game much harder to get into — in fact, it seems you have to scour forums in hopes of finding the information to learn anything (or just trial and error it to some understanding). This is a real barrier and one of the points I do not like, especially during the tutorial.

Combat:

Combat in FFXIV is pretty fun and easy enough to pick up. Hitting the ‘F’ key will put you into active/combat stance (you’ll draw your weapon) and allow you to fight. Simply select a monster, make it the active target (which will pull up the action bar) and start hitting your attacks. There is no auto-attack in this game, if you want to deal damage you have to use an ability. The camera does auto-lock during combat, so strafing around is easy — there’s not always a lot of movement involved in fighting, though. The biggest let-down I’ve had in combat, so far, is figuring out what monsters really con at. In the Guildleve’s (quests, can think of them like terminal missions in SWG) monsters can con red and still be easy, in the field green con monsters can easily kill you — I really don’t understand. I don’t want monster difficulty to change, I just want to know what the heck I’m fighting.

Questing:

There seems to be two types of quests, Quests and Guildleves (or just leves?). Quests are story driven and seem to follow some arc — they also seem to be much fewer in number and no obvious identification that they exist (apart from cut-scenes leading you to them). Guildleves are handed out by a specific NPC and involve traveling to a camp with a crystal (that acts as a teleportation device and bind point) and activating it. After activation you have 30 minutes to perform some duty (either killing or crafting, depending on what type of leve you selected) . Once completed a miniature, temporary node will appear that you can turn the quest in at and teleport back to the camp. Completed leves can be ‘turned-in’ at the leve NPC to improve the next leve you get. (As in, you turn 1-4 leves in at the leve NPC and the specific leve you turn them in on will get improved, like better rewards.) The downside to guildleves is that, currently, you can only complete 8 every 48 hours or so — real time. This means they’re all but worthless for real leveling and with unusual monster con’s you’re only real option is to group to level. (Grouping sounds good at first, but it seems XP gain is based on damage done/hits done — class not big on the damage? Too bad!) While guildleves are awesome the first run through, they are overall disappointing currently. The quests, on the other hand, I really enjoyed — even if I didn’t get to do that many. The story driven/cut-scene driven content is really well done and showcases that Final Fantasy talent.

NPCs:

There’s very little information depicted on NPCs. Apart from targets in leve quests, I haven’t found a single symbol on them. The easiest way to find an NPC you want is to either check the map and head to a general area (maps usually have some indication of what’s there, in cities at least) or look for a list on a forum. Most NPCs you’ll run into likely won’t even have anything for you except a bit of flavor text, it can be a bit frustrating.

UI/Controls:

This was the big hurdle for me in FFXI — I could not stand the UI or controls on the PC. Thankfully, FFXIV is a bit improved. But just a bit, really. The biggest problem with the UI is everything seems to be server side — even the mouse pointer. Yup, mouse pointer. What does that mean? The UI lags. A lot. Using the keyboard is much quicker right now, but the game really doesn’t play all that well with only the keyboard since tab-targeting is a bit cumbersome — it can take a bit of tab spamming to get your intended target. Also, to access a lot of things, you have to use the menu — sort of like an options menu when you hit escape (only it’s less intrusive) but you can open it by hitting ‘-’ on the numpad. Opening that menu is how you access various other game menus and even initiate some actions in the world (like the aforementioned fishing and crystals). There doesn’t seem to be nearly as many menus to go through as in XI, but there’s still plenty of them. Many of those menus are not explained well, or at all, either. Lastly, there seems to be no chance for custom UI mods. (Or I’m just blind.)

Graphics/Art/Story:

These three elements are what make Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy to me. The graphics are great, the art is great, the quests that depict stories are great (though when the stories complete or continue, I have no clue) and much of it is shown through cut-scenes — which are also well done. What isn’t very well done about all of them is the optimization. The game really runs like roadkill. I’ve tried adjusting setting numerous times and, really, couldn’t even see much of a difference in FPS with high settings versus low settings. The only graphical element I could see that was truly different in the low version was the *UI*. (Yeah, the UI gets to look like crap while the rest of the game doesn’t really change much… that really helps the lag. Not.) I can’t say if the PS3 version is any better, but if it is… Well, it would be cheaper to just buy one of them than upgrade a PC to handle the game. (Which is sad.)

Would I Buy It?:

The answer — yes. Eventually. This is a question that will only truly be answered during open beta, when the game gets closer to the finished product. As it stands, the game has tons of promise and many more frustrations. As always, it’s up to the developers to make a game great. (And to not only listen to the feedback, but see how it might be implemented.)