Product Details
 | Final Fantasy XIV Collector's Edition |
| List Price: | $74.99 |
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Average customer review:
Product Description
Embark on the myriad journeys of an epic in FINAL FANTASY XIV, the revolutionary MMORPG from Square Enix. As denizens of the new and visually stunning realm of Eorzea, players will actively engage in compelling storylines narrated through high-definition, real-time events featuring the players’ own highly personalized and versatile characters. While exploring even the farthest reaches of this magnificent world, adventurers are given the freedom to entirely alter their gameplay experience by simply swapping out equipment, and realize objectives with or without the aid of others. The entire experience is crafted to accommodate the widest variety of play styles—from the lone mercenary with only moments a day to spare, to the legion of comrades campaigning for days on end, and every combination in between. Join players from around the world in an adventure of infinite possibilities. NOTICE: This product requires: (1) an active internet connection; (2) monthly recurring subscription fees; and (3) agreement to certain license and usage terms (available at FINALFANTASYXIV.COM). Currently, children under age 13 are not permitted to play; users 13-17 require parental consent. Users are granted a limited, revocable license only and do not own any data or intellectual property generated during gameplay.Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2738 in Video Games
- Brand: Square Enix
- Model: 91016
- Released on: 2010-09-22
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
- Format: DVD-ROM
Features
- Collector's Edition Content includes the following
- Early Access code! (8 days prior to standard edition)
- FFXIV Game Disc, Behind the scenes DVD, Buddy Pass Insert
- "Right of Passage" voucher, In Game Item, Branded Security Token, and Travel Journal
- Delivered by mail-Personalized and numbered "Right of passage" document
Editorial Reviews
From
the Manufacturer
Product Description
Embark
on the myriad journeys of an epic in FINAL FANTASY XIV, the
revolutionary MMORPG from Square Enix. As denizens of the new and
visually stunning realm of Eorzea, players will actively engage in
compelling storylines narrated through high-definition, real-time events
featuring the players' own highly personalized and versatile
characters.
While exploring even the farthest reaches of this
magnificent world, adventurers are given the freedom to entirely alter
their gameplay experience by simply swapping out equipment, and realize
objectives with or without the aid of others. The entire experience is
crafted to accommodate the widest variety of play styles-from the lone
mercenary with only moments a day to spare, to the legion of comrades
campaigning for days on end, and every combination in between.
Join
players from around the world in an adventure of infinite
possibilities.
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Customer Reviews
Please don't waste your money
From the account creation
process (and subsequent cancellation) to patching the game to finally
playing it, there isn't anything that feels natural or works well about
this game.
You'll need to create multiple accounts to initially
get logged in, from a Square-Enix account to a service account to a
credit card billing company account. When I finally canceled the account
I had to read the instructions on the web page to do so, something I've
never had to do with another game before this; it should also probably
be pointed out that the instructions on the site refer to options and
terminology that didn't even actually exist on the page, so chalk up
another thing that's incomplete and more complicated than it should be.
Add to this that the game is $9.99/mo, plus $3/mo per character without
your first character included, making it ridiculously expensive when
compared to other MMO's to have more than one or two characters in this
game.
Nothing about the game is designed for the PC, even though
it's a PC game whose counterpart console version is months from release.
The game is nearly unplayable without a controller, and even with a 360
controller in Windows where everything is recognized the game doesn't
have any of its own keybinds already assigned and pre-configured...
You'll need to set up everything yourself from scratch with their
configuration utility. Literally nothing works like you'd expect it to;
logging in to the game requires you to click the Login button, just
pressing enter like every other program you've ever used doesn't work.
It's something that seems like a minor gripe, and it definitely would be
if this kind of behavior wasn't what you'll see with virtually every
other interaction you do with the game.
A good example is a
chest. You find a chest on the ground in the game, and to open you can't
just click it, or select it and then open it. You move up to it, click
to open a menu, select the chest from the menu, and then the chest
opens. You then need to reopen the menu and select to loot the chest to
gather its contents. Inventory would be another good example, since you
can't just press "I" like every other game you've ever played. You'll
need to navigate through the menu system to find your inventory and
equipment. You'll do this for most interactions you have in the game.
The
graphics in the game are very nice and mostly well done, but screen
tearing was noticeable every time I played it. Even with Vsync forced to
enable from video options for the card (there isn't an option in the
game itself) it was still there every time I moved. Despite running
fairly well with little slowdown, pop-in from other player characters
made it nearly impossible to proceed with quests in some cases in the
early game because an NPC would not appear unless you knew exactly where
to look for them and manipulated the camera to ensure there were few
enough people in view that the game would show them to you.
The
game has been heralded as a return to old-school mechanics in that it
doesn't force feed you information to guide you along your gameplay
path, but the reality of the game is that it doesn't even give you the
basic information you need to get started. I was able to complete my
first story quests and my first levequests (a sort of daily quest), but
afterward was unable to obtain more and had no idea where to go to
continue. I chose a non-combat class to start with and was given no
recipes to craft, and was only able to craft items while on a quest to
do so, and hit a brick wall of being unable to progress. Letting you
figure things out on your own would be perfectly fine if the game
followed conventions that were even remotely familiar; things seem
designed specifically to be obscure to impossible without involving
yourself in a community outside of the game...
...because there
is no community actually IN game. Hours of play time and I saw someone
speak maybe twice, which was unreal. The chat system is difficult to
navigate and controllers are practically mandatory so maybe that's why
it's avoided, but I've never played an MMO before this where people
weren't even talking to each other.
There wasn't a single minute I
spent with this game that was fun rather than frustrating or felt like
it wouldn't have been better placed elsewhere, and it is absolutely
impossible to recommend to anyone. I would strongly urge anyone
considering it to look elsewhere, or at the very least find a way to try
it before purchasing it to be sure you aren't wasting your time. As
this is a review for the CE of the game, please also note that the CE is
very light on things to make it worthwhile for the average buyer, with
its best incentive to purchase being an early start to the game that has
already passed.
FFXIV = FFXI -1
Rantish review... My aim is
bound to change targets (you have been warned)
After nearly two
weeks of trying to really, really like FFXIV I can say with out a doubt
that this game is absolute rubbish and a complete waste of money. I
bought the collector's edition and other than the joy I had of seeing
the huge box arrive, FFXIV has been nothing but one disappointment after
another. The CE itself is cheap paperboard, the included bound book a
few paged of colored pics with the rest wasted and repeated watermarked
pages. The only thing "special: about is was the FFXIV version of the
security token as even the DVD case box art is lame cgi.
As for
the game itself it is one hassle after another... Make SE account if you
don't have one. Add FFXIV to SE account. Add token. Add third party
payment account. Verify third party payment account. Find out third
party payment option is one of the worst in the business and get endless
calls from my credit card company stating as much. Enter bonus codes
again and again until server accepts them. Install... Patch... Try to
play...
Windowed mode requires window frame... Yuck!!! Exit...
Change settings... Fullscreen!!! Alt+Tab... CRASH!!! SE still knows how
to make computer users hate life. (back to windowed mode it is)
It
looks pretty standing still, until you move. Even with a 3.8Ghz 6-Core
and SLI'd GTX 470s I only get 20-30fps in the main areas (damned
windowed mode). It runs like a bad console port and the shadows, even
when set on high) make all the characters look like crap. Outland areas
cap at 60, so I guess it has that going for it. Quests and combat aren't
that horrible but get stale/repetitive rather quickly.
Of course
SE didn't forget to take everything that should have been a no-brainer
cut and past from XI and leave it out of XIV.
No Ctrl+"key" menu
short cuts
No seek party flag
No Auction House (seriously!?!?)
No
way to sort inventory
No map markers
No party/npc targeting
through F1~8 keys
No way to quickly do anything!!!
Add in...
Unresponsive
GUI (requires ACK from server)
Mobs that pop after they agro if you
use Herme's boots
Slow menus that are 5 layers deep
Partying is
useless due to low Skill Points earned
Having to check through 20+
slots to figure out what gear is damaged
I can go on and on and on...
Horrible
game is horrible... If you plan on buying this wait at least a year.
This game will either be fixed or dead by then.
Needs work
I liked the World of FF 11, Square's last mmo, but the combat system was so archaic, and it was so
hard to find groups (for many reasons) that I couldn't handle it, but I
had heard they had fixed many of the problems that plagued FFXI at U.S.
launch so I had high hopes for FFXIV.
To be perfectly honest, it
feels like FFXI all over again, but for complete different reasons. I
must say I'm trying to like it even now, but it could use a lot of work.
I could probably write 5 pages of review, but I'll refrain from getting
into the nitty gritty and gloss over the things that stood out.
Pros:
1.
Gorgeous, looks amazing no arguing that, this in turn means fairly
steep system requirements, I'm not sure how well optimized it is but I
digress.
2. Feels like a Final Fantasy, if you've played them you
know what that means. You kind of feel like you're in a story even
though it's an mmo.
3. Combat - the funny thing is that even though I
wouldn't say that it's as advanced as other mmo's, if you played FFXI
when I did, it's leaps and bounds better, it's a more active combat
system than it's predecessor.
Cons:
1. Not very user
friendly, there is a small tutorial for some of the quests and whatnot,
but there is very very little explanation when trying to figure stuff
out. Some of it's logical but some of it is very confusing without
direction, I found myself on google quite a bit.
2. Clunky interface,
from everything from selling items, to crafting, sometimes you'll wade
through 5 menus before you actually get to doing what you want to do.
From what I've heard SE doesn't allow custom interfaces? Makes me want
to cry, there's a severe lack of custom hotkeys too, very restricted on
what you can change.
3. Inconvenient, granted I don't want this to be
WoW, where once you hit cap you could pretty much never leave the town
and still get anywhere in the game you wanted, but FFXIV takes it a bit
too far in the other direction. There is no auction house, trying to buy
items means clicking through literally hundreds of player-owned npcs to
look at their individual wares to find something, the problem with
these npcs is there's no way to know what any of them have! They appear
in different locations, with different items each day.
4. Chat system
seems pretty bad, maybe there's a way but I'm not sure how to create
different chat tabs, pretty much any message spam goes into the main
chat log, it gets really hard to talk to people when you're seeing "John
Bonjovi made 10 logs!" "Fred Flinstone failed the synthesis" on top of
talk text. As such I feel like there is very little communication in
game as of right now. There aren't any chat channels for things like
help, recruiting, etc. As a result even though things like lack of
auction house really make it important to communicate, people rarely do.
5.
Game just feels incomplete, it's missing many things that I liked about
FFXI, good things, things that everyone liked, why aren't they in game?
If I've got to wait 3 years before early game and just overall gameplay
is where Square wants it to be, maybe I should come back in 3 years.
6.
Interface lag, ugh, this one's a doozy, from every single combat
action, to opening menus, to talking, everything has a second pause, it
drives me crazy and I'm not sure if it's because of system lag or if
it's how the game was designed but it's really annoying.
7. lack of
classes? They say it's got 15 classes, but really half of those classes
are "professions", crafting can be fun but I don't consider chopping
wood a class.
8. lack of things to do? You get some daily quests to
do, but let's say I only want to level my gladiator class, I do the
three daily quests I can get (which are on some strange timer, night 1
quests are there for my friend and I, night 2, quests are there for me,
but not him, night 3 quests are there for both of us, night 4 they
aren't there for me), those are good for maybe 15% of the level? Then
what? Either wait for the quests which aren't always there, or get
grinding? That seems like a huge lack of content, there's the main
storyline which may or may not give you anything, then there's a piddly
amount of quests.
I realize it's early stages of the game but it
still feels like things were rushed, heck "open" beta was what, 3 weeks
before release? Anyone who knows anything about games knows there are
different teams set to complete different tasks. Where was the "help"
team? The team that took time to explain how to do things in game? I
don't want to be spoon fed but I don't want to have to fumble around not
knowing what I'm doing wrong.
Post review:
Brief examples: I decided to become a blacksmith, I buy my blacksmith hammer, put it on, voila, I get to crafting. I do this without a hiccup for a couple days. I hit 10 on my physical level, go back to the blacksmith, try to use his forge, and he says "hey only members of the guild of the hand can use our forges". So here I am, being stupid, thinking, "weird maybe now that I'm 10 I need to find this guild of the hand to join". I'm looking around, talking to all the crafting guys, etc etc, 5 minutes later I realize it's because I didn't have my blacksmith hammer on. I didn't realize putting on my hammer meant I joined the guild of the hand, and taking it off removed me from said guild, why can't the guy just say "only blacksmiths can use this"?. There are dozens of things that are logical yet will make you pull your hair out the first time you have to figure them out. Once again really not any in game help with most things.
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