New Review Posted: Final Fantasy XI

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Mike Bracken reviews Final Fantasy XI:

"Perhaps the greatest thing about FFXI is also its Achilles heel—the game is simply massive. I’ve never played a game where I could spend 12 hours playing it, then quit, and feel like I’d accomplished next to nothing."

http://www.gamecritics.com/review/ffxi/main.php

[Dezlen]

I am curious as to what caused you to take so much away from the score at the end, Mike.

While I will be the first to recognize the major flaws of FFXI (horrid UI, not enough variation between character models and monsters, no solo ability) and minor flaws (travel times, not enough time in the day to do everything, some class balance issues) that you pointed out in your review, I do not believe the final score reflects the sheer scope and depth of a game that you have spent an amazing 13 days played in a month since the PS2 release. While I do not believe that FFXI is the end all be all of MMORPG (what MMORPG has gotten everything right from the start?), I would say that the score may need to be a bit higher.

Not trying to start the entire scoring debate again, just my 2 gil. Otherwise an excellent review.

Has this site done any other non-console MMORPG reviews? I am curious as to the effect of the "learning curve" on the final scores of any MMORPG in relation to a non-multiplayer RPG. Usually a MMORPG is a more complex, open ended, and bigger game than any offline RPG, especially a console RPG. Comparing the "learning curves" of these two styles of games may be comparing apples and oranges.

Also, not to be too much of a nitpick, but your definition of power leveling needs a bit of tweaking. Power leveling is possible, but not only in the definition that you stated in the review. Most power leveling in any MMORPG will not group together the lowbie and the powerleveling high level character. Rather, the lowbie will take on much tougher monsters that he can normally fight, and the powerleveler will stand slightly away from the fight, not grouped, and heal/debuff/buff the lowbie. The lowbie gets huge rewards with little to no chance of death. The way that Square-Enix has made the monster claiming rules eliminates the debuffing and/or fighting the monster to a sliver of its health aspect of powerleveling (thankfully). Unless there are massive changes to the rules regarding combat between a monster and a player, a white mage or red mage can be an effective power leveler thoughout the lower levels.

[Mike Bracken]

I figured someone somewhere would take issue with the final score.

Not to use this as a cop-out, but this is a game where the score doesn't even matter. Trying to "grade" a constantly evolving game like an MMORPG is sort of a fool's errand at best, I think. I don't think any of the game review magazines or sites have yet figured out how to really score these games. As such, I think FFXI is a really good game today--but I think there's room for tons of improvement too. Because of that, I took the "safe" score, which is right smack dab between average and classic. I would think that future updates and whatnot would only make the score go up.

I meant to add to the pleveling thing...I got sidetracked with a few other issues though and just never got back to it.

Mike B.

[Jet Black]

Way to go Mike.

I liked the review a lot. It nailed many of the concepts down post haste. You could spend forever on the subject but it has to be boiled down for review and I liked the parts you touched upon.

As you know I have been very vocal about some of the leveling / jobs / and party systems. And for a game as "massive" as this I thought Square over did it by not allowing for simple formula variation and instead chose a more mixed and complex variety of combining job skills - often with less than desired balance.

Also as you noted, playing your character solo is not an option after a certain point. And that's only the beginning. Though I can see the flip side of not boring people to death .....at least let there be an option.

Otherwise I found the review on par and on spot with all your excellent writings and observations of video games.