Others say...

"Great MMORPG!"
Never having played a MMORPG (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) before, I was apprehensive at even thinking about buying this game due to the possiblity of extreme disappointment. My friends were playing another popular game title like this one but Final Fantasy has intrigued me ever since the original console games came out for earlier systems.

To say the least, this game could possibly take you forver to play! There are so many different things to do that clear this game from the genre of simple hack-n-slash game - it's a truly in-depth world with unlimited possibilities.

Graphics - 8 / 10
Gameplay - 10 / 10
Support - 9 / 10
Onine Service - 10 / 10

"beautiful, but technicalities of gameplay ruin the fun."
It is a gorgeous game. there is no comparison. Even with the specs of the PS2 holding it back from advancing, this is the most graphically rich MMO, nay, game out on the market today, even if it beginning to be dated. There is alot of depth to the game, giving it an immersion that games such as WoW totally lack. However, be warned, it DOES take forever to do anything in the game. Also, it is nearly impossible to solo even easy monsters, so you are stuck always waiting for a group. I played this game for over two years, and while the first year it was pretty fun to explore new areas and do new things, it got old and repetetive fast, since it took so damn long. Some jobs are not balanced well, leaving them unable to get a group for weeks at a time. Example: My first advanced job was Dragoon, I loved it. However, no one else seemed to feel the same way. I stayed up for 3 days straight, trying to get a party, trying to make parties, everything .. no one wanted to level with me, and of course, I was unable to solo for minor experience while waiting. The game has harsh death penalties and its not hard to die, making it extremely frustrating. In addition, there are alot of minor technicalities which could be adressed to improve gameplay overal. For example, travel time is rediculously long. Sure you get to see the gorgeous scenery, but sometimes you want to get from here to there in a few minutes, not a half hour or more of running - even with teleportation spells. Also things like, everytime you walk past someone a little too closely (which is hard to avoid in major cities) you get stuck on them, and spend a minute or two trying to get unhooked in order to keep walking in the direction you want to go. Objects in the environment also do this. Its extremely irritating. The economy is way out of proportion. In order to buy even basic equipment that you need, you have to spend hundreds of hours farming - its no wonder so many people have resorted to botting, cheating, and buying gil with RL money. OF course, all the hardships of the game make it that much more intense, as every action you take is crucial to your time, money, and stress levels. After w hile the game feels more like a job than a game, it looses its fun completely. The new expansion remedied this somewhat - they made it possible to solo (barely) in the new areas and also added some content that felt like it was there more for the fun of it than something that you were forced into doing. In fact, thats how most of the game felt. Forced. Nothing ever seemed to go smoothly or be for the sake of fun alone, everything was boring and frustrating, but a necessity if you wanted to progress in the game. It has its pros and cons, and, well, it obviously was good enough to suck me in (and destroy my Real Life due to the massive amounts of time and effort needed to accomplish anything - if you want to log on for an hour or two and get some small quest completed or get a little xp when youve got the time, this is definately not the game for you. You need to be able to commit to sitting at your computer with very few breaks for 4 or more hours at a time). I will always have a spot in my heart for this game, but its just plain not that fun. I started to play WoW, and I missed FFXI greatly in there - it much harder to make friends in WoW than in FFXI, which has a real strong community. Wow also lacks in graphics and storyline compared to FFXI, and is also much easier of a game. However, WoW's gameplay itself far outceeds FFXI's, itrs playability and fun levels are much higher. Looking for a balance of the two games, I have since come to Everquest 2, which is absolutely fantastic IMHO. But, its all personal preferance of course. Overall, I would not recommend FFXI to anyone, unless they had a demo free trial copy, just to check out the awesome graphics.

"Hard Work"
Good: Great story. Sense of accomplishment at higher levels. Good graphics. It's Final Fantasy. Immersion in another world. I liked it.

Bad: Costs a lot to get started. Difficult to play. Confusing interface. Can't really solo past level 15. Additional characters cost $1/month. My wife didn't like it.

Conclusion: I played FFXI for a year until World of Warcraft came out. Now my wife and I play Warcraft together.



"Best game I ever played"
I played this game for about a year before finally giving up. It was probably the best game I ever played in my whole life. No game has ever kept me hooked for such a long time. I'm even considering playing it again.

The positive aspects of this game are (1) the team aspect makes the game more fun because it's just more fun to play with other people than it is to play alone); (2) works well on older PC hardware and is generally bug free; (3) the auction house is fun!

Negative aspects (1) when you start out you have no idea what to do; (2) if you can't find five other people to "party" with, then you're kind of screwed. At lower levels it's generally easy to hook up, but at higher levels it's harder if you don't have a normal group. You can only party with people the same level, so if you're level 30 and your friends are level 32, they probably won't want you; (3) some quests can be awfully difficult to complete; (4) you can't really figure out what to do in the game without spending time reading fan websites.

Don't buy this game if you are expecting to somehow "win." Even if you get up to level 75 (a long and arduous road), there will be other level 75 players who have been playing every day for three years and are still way ahead of you. The fun is in the journey and not reaching the end of it.

My advice for new players is to start out as a White Mage because you'll have the easiest time finding parties because White Mages are usually in demand. And White Mage is the standard "sub-job" used for other magical jobs like black mage, red mage, and bard.

Remember that the game freely allows you to change jobs in your Mog house while retaining all of the experience levels in your other jobs, so feel free to experiment with different jobs! The only problem is that some races (like Tarutaru) are good for spellcasting jobs but bad for physical fighting jobs, while other races (like Galka) are good for physical fighting jobs but have too little magic power ever to be useful in spellcasting jobs.

"disapointed"
We returned the game intact because we needed 80.00 in graphic cards to play it. In all we spent 29.00 plus 6.00 shipping ups back to Amazon and all we got in return was a 15.00 credit card credit. I am very disapointed in the money I lost and invested in one day. It makes me think about ever purchasing anything again from amazon.
Peggy Greisinger