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Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

A Day of Rebirth

When Square Enix decided to end Final Fantasy XIV , the company didn’t just shut down the servers. No, it smashed the entire world to pieces: A dragon escaped from prison and wiped out most of Eorzea.

The idea was to set the stage for rebirth. Today, a completely overhauled version of the game is online, with a story set in the wake of the catastrophe, a new graphics engine, and a seemingly endless series of quests to complete.

There’s no question that this launch is going much more smoothly than the last one. Sure, there were some hiccups during the early access period thanks to server overcrowding. But unlike the original game, A Realm Reborn doesn’t have the feel of an incredibly promising but woefully incomplete idea. Instead, the title is highly polished, right from the get-go.

Does that mean you should sign up? It really depends what you’re looking for. While Final Fantasy XIV has indeed been reborn with this release, the MMO genre hasn’t been–this is a very typical experience, with few adjustments to the standard formula. Further, the early-game content is little more than an extended tutorial that can be incredibly boring. But beyond that, if you want a highly competent MMO with amazing graphics and a fresh Final Fantasy plot, and if you don’t mind paying up to $40 plus a monthly $13 subscription fee for it, this is definitely the game for you.

The instant you set foot in the new world–either with a character leveled up from the original game, or with a new one created through a simple and wide-ranging tool–it’s clear that things have changed. Despite all its flaws, the original game excelled when it came to graphics, and yet the visuals here are noticeably better. Thanks to improved lighting, the entire place comes to life in a way that few MMOs can match. The music is excellent, too, with some familiar themes blending with new melodies to immerse players in the universe of Final Fantasy .

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Screenshot

Soon, the land is bustling with activity, and your map is bursting with quests you can take–from storyline missions, to random strangers who need help, to folks who dole out endless “levequests” you can use to improve your killing and crafting skills. There are even “FATEs,” randomly appearing events in which players band together to achieve a given goal and earn EXP.

Unfortunately, in the game’s earliest hours, all these quests can feel a bit directionless. At first, you’re not told much about the plot, and the overwhelming majority of your missions are the kind that give MMOs a bad name–go kill some of this animal, go interact with a bunch of these items, etc. More than once, I had to simply walk up to NPCs and communicate with them through emotes. I even picked up trash.

I certainly appreciate that the game takes its time teaching you the ropes–the various systems are debuted one at a time, and they’re always explained clearly. But by the time things started picking up, I was bored silly.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Screenshot

Things do pick up, though. Around Level 10, you start encountering enemies who actually put up a little bit of a fight, and you start earning points you can use to customize your character further. At Level 15, you’re turned loose on the world and given a pass to explore other city-states, and you gain access to instanced dungeons.

At this point, the storyline gets a whole lot meatier as well–you’re given the details about what you’re fighting for (the Empire threatens Eorzea as it tries to recover from the dragon attack), and you receive a bigger helping of core quests along with the more stereotypical MMO fare. And when you are doing fetch quests, which are inevitable to some degree, you’re imbued with a grand sense of why your adventure matters.

Even the graphics become more impressive. Exploring Eorzea, and viewing cutscenes set in space, gives you an amazing sense of breadth–there really is an entire universe here, with topography that varies from place to place, and a fascinating aesthetic blend of fantasy and science fiction. The city-states feel like completely different continents. As you learn new moves, the animations really start to pop, and with multiple players fighting at once, it’s a veritable fireworks display of visual effects. A Realm Reborn comes as close as any game ever has to realizing the Final Fantasy franchise’s potential for beauty.

You also gain access to a wide variety of classes as you exit the earlier levels. One of the best ideas contained in the original game was that you could become whatever you wanted by changing weapons–grab a sword and you’re a gladiator; grab a hammer and you can do carpentry–and this feature returns here. Your character remains the same, but each class has a separate level and wardrobe. If you start learning a new class that’s capable of battle (for example, if you abandon a high-level gladiator to start a conjurer), the game gives you an EXP boost to speed the process along. And when you choose crafting classes, you need to learn a system that slowly becomes more complex–it’s a risk/reward scenario, where improving the item’s quality increases the likelihood that it will break.

These are rare innovations in a game that mostly sticks to the modern MMO formula, though. Pretty much everything else is drawn straight from other games–from the cooldown timers that spaces out your attacks, to the basic combat mechanics (with the exception of some attacks that give you a chance to get out of the way), to the obnoxious fact that you can end up booted to a land far away when you die. (I found this especially frustrating when I was fighting a boss alone in an instanced scene. Why can’t I just try again when I fail?) Even the FATEs are just a copy of the “dynamic events” in RIFT and Guild Wars 2 .

A Realm Reborn does break new ground by being a cross-platform release, however. I played on PC, where the controls are exactly what you’d expect–WASD movement, number keys for attacks, and so on. But the game also appears on PS3, where face- and trigger-button combinations set off the attacks. This is a handy solution for the problem of cramming so many moves onto a single controller.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Screenshot

The game also features some PvP content. There’s an arena that allows four-on-four and eight-on-eight battles, though for reasons I cannot understand, it’s restricted to characters of Level 30 and higher, which means you’ll be investing many hours before you can try it. Reportedly, there will also be areas in the world where PvP is allowed, but these won’t be revealed until the first patch.

So, if you want some PvP as an occasional diversion, A Realm Reborn will provide that, but it remains to be seen whether there will be much more. I’d have preferred a separate leveling system for PvP, so that all players could compete on an even playing field, as some other MMOs are doing today.

Of course, every MMO review has to come with a disclaimer: These are just my thoughts after logging some hours with the game. I still have a long way to go in my own adventure, and the game itself will change as Square Enix updates it and adds content.

But it’s beyond clear that Final Fantasy XIV has, in fact, been reborn. This is everything players wanted the original game to be–it might avoid pushing the boundaries, but it provides hours upon hours of well-designed quest sequences, breathtaking graphics, and a gripping plot. At last, we have a modern MMO worthy of the Final Fantasy name.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.8 Graphics
This is hands-down the best looking MMO to date. 4.5 Control
On the PC it’s exactly what you’d expect, but on PS3 it introduces a new way to handle MMOs on consoles. 4.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The tunes are great, with familiar themes blending with new melodies. 4.0 Play Value
There’s a ton of well-made content, but the early hours are boring and in most ways it doesn’t push the boundaries. 4.3 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • All the hallmarks of the Final Fantasy franchise, including an engaging storyline, genre-leading graphics, and HD real time cut scenes
  • Robust gameplay features such as player-run Free Companies, story-driven player-vs.-player content, and a unique summoning system, all designed to accommodate a dynamic player community.
  • Incredible new graphics engine that delivers a high level of detail and quality on both the PlayStation 3 and Windows PC platforms.
  • A flexible class system that allows players to change to any of the eighteen different classes on the fly, simply by swapping their equipped weapon or tool.
  • Breathtaking musical score by renowned Final Fantasy series composers.
  • Cross-platform play on PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.

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