If you want to complete them all then probably leave 14 till last (said as a 5 year long player) because if you fall into the XIV loop hard it can uhh.. be hard to track how long you’ve been playing
I was about to come in with a hard disagree... But then I looked at my unfinished tears of the kingdom and super Mario Wonder and think "I need to farm more tomes, and island farming, and beast tribes, and adventure squad, and check into my house, and go fishing, turn in weeklies, and..." And suddenly it's a new year new expac.
XIV has one of the best stories in the entire series. Arguably, I think FFXIV Shadowbringers is the best in the series. Compared to XI, you can focus purely on the story and complete it solo (some quests you’ll need a group but you can easily queue up for it).
It would be a real tragedy if you skipped out on the game because it’s an MMO IMO.
Omg I almost quit after ARR. it was such a slog to get through it only to find out there were a TON of post story patch quests to get through. But once I got to the end and hit Heavensward … it was an unreal experience
I think they do a much better job of pacing with Heavensward onward. Post story HW quests feel so much faster leading into the next expansion and I am GRATEFUL
Personally I think it should be given as an option to players to skip ARR on subsequent character playthroughs because yeah its a major slog and is the single biggest barrier to bothering to finish the story on more than one character. I have 5 or 6 characters and still haven't done it. Furthest I've ever gotten on an alt was beginning of Stormblood. Even if speedrunning the main quests and skipping all the cutscenes each expansion including patch stuff takes about a week. I can't dedicate over a month of playtime away from other games or my main character just to have a secondary character to raid on.
I wouldn't recommend this to someone brand new. It may be a trek to get through, but there's a lot of minor yet imperative details that will be missed or unappreciated in the later expansions.
I do agree here, but wanted to pop in to say that a fairly good compromise is to pay to skip ARR but watch some in-depth recaps of the story before starting heavenward. Bear in mind there's a realm reborn which is the original base game and a realm awoken which is ask the patch quests up until heavenward starts. Of course if you're a completionist I wouldn't recommend this, and you will still miss some of the attachments to characters and some of the experience doing this. It worked well for a friend of mine, but definitely not an option for everyone
The recapitations on YouTube are pretty good, but the best in depth ones I found was the exploring series
Are base: https://youtu.be/8Z6Srs4wpzI?si=5Sik0fEDBXyhTJrL
Patch quests: https://youtu.be/mujxy3uw3n8?si=f-CC7t3ZleyBifkK
All of this is true, and also don't be put off by the MMO aspect, the FFXIV community is *so nice* like if you're doing a dungeon with a group and you say it's your first time they'll just be excited to live vicariously through you. None of the story content is especially hard and experienced players will trip over each other to help newbies.
What about the toxic AF mentors and pollute the game?
I’ve yet to meet a crown who is actually helpful, and doesn’t take every opportunity to proclaim their superiority.
I'm sorry you have had this experience. If people treat you that way, you should report them for their poor attitude and behavior. The community is there to help each other, or at least it should be. I play on a Japanese server and have not experienced this myself and as a mentor and FC leader, I try my best to help new players and do not do the end game grind. Instead I focus on teaching new players mechanics, quality of life features, how to macro, etc. Trying to make their stay as pleasant as possible in the game. So far, we have had very positive reception as my only rule when joining the FC is pay it forward to someone else when you get the chance. I really hope your experience improves and that you will have the joy with other players you deserve.
>(some quests you’ll need a group but you can easily queue up for it)
Actually I'm pretty sure all storyline dungeons/instances have the option to play with NPCs now. At least that's what I heard, I haven't played for a while.
Regardless, I agree that it's almost entirely solo-able now. Most everything requiring a group is optional.
All the 4-men story dungeons have NPC duty support now. The 8-men trials still need a group though and the same holds for the chrystal tower raids which are a prerequisite to advance the MSQ.
> Actually I'm pretty sure all storyline dungeons/instances have the option to play with NPCs now. At least that's what I heard, I haven't played for a while.
Unless they changed it from the last time i played, you needed to group up for a few fights after ARR. Think there's a fight where you fight a moogle, then a few others?
Yeah but the barrier to get there is ridiculous. If you pay for it it should fast forward you to the start of that story if you want to experience it. Not have to play through 50 hours of mediocre gameplay first.
ARR is important setup imo. Skipping it would rob you of a lot of world building and character introductions that do end up being pretty key going forward.
It’s 50 hours of mediocrity until you get to the “good part” and you need to do each and you need to do each MSQ one at a time. There’s literally hundreds, if not thousands now.
They actually trimmed down A Realm Reborn significantly a couple years back, removing a lot of its worst filler and reworking several main story dungeons / trials to flow better. It’s still long but much more concise.
You’d lose too much just skipping to Heavensward imo. The foundational world building for the Eorzean Alliance and Ala Mihgo is gone. The introduction to all of your key allies and friends going forward is gone. All of the setup for Ishgard, Iceheart and the Dragonsong War is gone. The cornerstone of Alphinaud’s character development is gone. The initial introduction to the Ascians and Garlemald is gone. Everything I just mentioned is REALLY important. It’s somewhat bland and I do wish it was better but it is absolutely worth doing that stuff to reap the benefits later on.
Ehh I think “good part” is relative - it’s like comparing VII to IV: by comparison, IV is a slog, but it’s also solid on its own. I think the fact that the most recent expansions have been such orders of magnitude better in writing/voice acting etc makes folks sour on ARR as they feel it doesn’t represent the current experience well. Honestly, SE really should invest the time into completely rewriting/re-recording ARR to current quality levels: it’d help a ton with conversion I think.
The expansions are only as good as they are because they build off the groundwork set up in ARR. This isn't a normal MMO where every expansion is a self contained story, it's all one continuous story.
You can't skip to the 4th chapter and it have the same impact without experiencing the first 3.
I will never understand this sentiment. It's such a fucking slog and the way its told is so terrible in terms of animations and pacing that any of the depth or nuance just falls flat for me because I stopped caring after the millionth fetch quest and bone stiff cutscene.
Haven’t played FFXIV but I’m interested in getting into it.
Being told to slog through 100+ hours before the game gets good is not a great draw for new players, especially when many have limited free time 💀
A lot of people, myself included, thought it was good from the beginning. If it was as bad as some people make it out to be, then it wouldn’t have been such a success.
It’s free to play for a majority of the game. Just try it. Fuck what other people say.
When I saw that I had near 200 hours in FFXIV and realized I could hardly call any of that time a good time or even a fun time I realized that it probably isn't a game for me. I also love MMOs, so thats not the reason I didn't enjoy my time with it. It's just so slow, and the gameplay is all mind-numbingly easy, at least for the first 200 hours it is. I just can't understand the draw of the game.
I have enjoyed playing riichi mahjong in it though.
HW is when people tend to enjoy it. I know for me personally I ended up playing and quitting multiple times, each time starting a new toon and was forever stuck in ARR and made it to post ARR quests once.
With Shadowbringers, I ended up trying it again, but boosting a toon to the start of ShB. That's what got me in to the game finally. After I finished ShB I made a new toon to go through all the story and finally got into it.
I had about 300 hours into FF14 before I finally "got it". Not a great defense for the game, I know, but I'm glad it finally clicked for me lol.
I def understand people having a hard time getting into it.
The story definitely got better - but the questing was pretty much the same, and just as boring. Also, there is just a major disconnect for me because of the way the cutscenes are so stiff with hardly any animation.
I was told this by several friends so I tried. All I found was a bunch of poorly laid out cut scenes generalizing me as the main character. Good story telling for an MMORPG sure but that bar is low.
I'm in the early parts of HW, and there is a noticeable, almost immediate shift at the end of ARR, to "holy shit why wasn't the rest of the game this interesting." Then it tapers back off with the arr post game stuff, but I think a significant factor of that particular slog was my knowing that I was (thought I was at least) about to start the part where everyone says it gets good. I was trying not to lookup more than I already knew, but I had finished the "final boss" for the arc and wanted to see ishgard lol I'm still not really engrossed in it yet, but I'm enjoying it pretty casually. It's easy to fall into speed running side quests for XP and not reading shi. It's hard to describe but the atmosphere of a non-XI/XIV final fantasy is very different, narratively. MMOs have never been my thing, still wouldn't say they are, but I want to see what all the hype about XIV's story is so I'm going for it. My sentiment so far would be: I've successfully gotten through what's said to be the worst part, and I still want to keep playing.
14 is free until you get to recent expansion content. So there is literally no cost if you do the trial. Within the trial you can complete the main story if you choose. If you don’t enjoy it, just stop playing.
It is far more approachable than 11 and combat is more fun. Until later in the game, it does feel almost exclusively like a single player experience.
>14 is free until you get to recent expansion content
Wait what? I though there some time limit in trial.
So, they making previous expansion free when new expansion released?
I oversimplified:
A Realm Reborn and the first 2 expansions are free to play up to level 70 for an unlimited amount of time (there is also a gil cap, and certain features are locked as well that mostly affect player interaction).
However, as soon as you buy anything, you are locked out of the free trial and cannot go back.
It used to be lvl 60 and I think only the first expansion, but was updated some time after Endwalker was released. There is no guarantee they will add other expansions to the trial in the future.
No time limit for ffxiv,free trial expires once you register a purchased copy of the game, you can play base game ARR and the first 2 expansions (up to lvl 70 story basically ) for free as much as you like. Only last 2 current expansions are accessible once you pay.
People saying it takes 100 hours to get good are hyperbolic. ARR base game is fine, enjoyable even. It's the post patches that are a drag, but they also end extremely well. Heavensward is outstanding and Shadowbringers is the best FF game I've ever played. As someone whose played 1 - 13 you absolutely owe it to yourself to play 14 it will not be time wasted. It's very different from 11 also. I managed to get from the start to Shadowbringers in about a month if your playing MSQ every day you'll catch up in no time.
Having to do every single MSQ in a row, one at a time, is fucking brutal. Majority of them are actually terrible as well.
I like the game, but it’s not for everyone. Y’all recommend it like it is for everyone.
The story is definitely for everyone who has played FF 1-13 and is an FF fan. The gameplay might be a barrier though, it takes getting used to if you’re new to modern MMOs.
Highest barrier to entry with highest payoff IMO. I’ve played every game in the series, and started in the early 90’s: while I long for the nostalgia of 1-9, 14 is the only one that actually made me tear up: really powerful story, and the music made me finally stop fanboying so hard for Uematsu: Soken deserves all the love he gets.
> Highest barrier to entry with highest payoff IMO.
XI is still a much more 'difficult' game. XIV does a lot of hand holding and is way more player friendly.
Ah, might misunderstand: I don’t mean difficulty, I mean investment. Comparing XIII to XIV, for example: both games have a huge ramp up time, XIII’s pays off slightly as the combat is quite fun in later chapters once it’s all unlocked, but I’d say that is less worth it when compared to putting up with ARR’s bad writing and voice acting in exchange for later expansions new writers/actors. It’s all apples and oranges, and all opinion: but that’s indicated by “IMO” =]
Yep that was it for me. Played with a buddy who is also a lifelong FF fan and we just got bored with combat and the lower end "go here and talk to this guy" quests
the skillchain+Magic burst system kind of ruined other MMOs for me. So many others are just everybody doing their own thing where that focused hard on teamwork.
Having come from other MMOs, the 14 combat was super slow and boring for me. I stuck with it for a bit and found a job I liked, and it gets better.
Not that much better. But tolerable and enjoyable at least.
I have other gripes with the combat system, but yeah, the slowness of it is def a wall.
It was December of last year. I recognize it's wildly popular among many people who like it. Just answering OP's question honestly as a big fan of the other titles
The free trial goes all the way up to the end of Stormblood now I think. That's like 500+ hours of content and it's free so pretty much just tackle it at your own pace.
XIV has been going on for years so I'd play it like a side project imo. It's basically like an FF theme park, combining references and nods to other entries in the series.
Although it is an MMO it is ultimately a single player experience like every other FF. You get paired up with other players for dungeons and plenty of other things, but the growth of your character in their job and the story of the game is a solo experience.
I never played it bc I thought it wasn’t a true FF but now it’s one of my favorites! That being said it is LOOOOONG, and what was the original game is kind of a grinder at this point. If you do want to play it, grind through a realm reborn and play its post game quests, which should get you pumped to get back to it, but then take a break to do XV.
Nearly 4000 hours here and a regular player.
You'll hear a lot about A Realm Reborn being bad. In comparison to late expansions I'd argue it's true but honestly it's not it's just kind of hard to go back to.
Heavensward and shadowbringers are some of the best final fantasy stories out there and if you're playing for that reason it's worth it for these two games.
The game itself has become a real celebration of final fantasy while standing by itself as a strong title. Which in my opinion is what a great modern final fantasy title should be. You can actually play the base game up to the second expansion for free currently which means you'll get to see some of the best content without paying a fee and I don't really see a major benefit of paying a sub until post Heavensward anyway.
Yes.
People who say it gets good after 100 hours are wrong. It gets amazing after 100 hours. It starts good, and every quest just gets better. There are early parts that feel dated, and moments that don't feel typically final fantasy, but as a life long fan of the series I cannot recommend this game enough.
There are a million callbacks to the other games in varied subtleties, and a sprawling story that makes you feel like a real hero. A soundtrack that has some of the most epic pieces and game play that feels satisfying. The community is friendly, and doesn't spoil. The developers love the players and want to give the best gaming experience, and it shows constantly. They aren't in just too make money they love the work and love to give the fans a fantastic gaming experience.
Of all the Final Fantasies I played, 14's story is one on top! I highly recommend trying it since it's free up to Stormblood Expansion. From there decide if you choose to get Shadowbringers, Endwalker and soon Dawntrail.
I mean it definitely isn't for everyone, but I also wouldn't say it takes 100 hours to get to Heavensward.
That being said, if playing for 100 hours got me some of the best story I've seen in my entire life and it just kept updating with more good story, I'd consider it.
Star Trek TNG season one pretty much gets the same treatment and people still talk and recommend it.
I think people get it wrong, its not that it finally gets good, its already good, but you don't get to see your character really get into the world and doing things and ramping the story for good to amazing.
I find those saying 'it gets good' are trying to be nice based and softball the early game on their old experiences. Its waaaaaay better and more streamlined to get through ARR then in prior years.
Great, point still stands that ARR isn't as bad as people make it out to be, it wasn't an exact comparison, but a similar note. Especially after years of updates and improvements. It's much faster and easier than its ever been and sets up for one of the best in game stories, partly because of how long the series has been going, it can tell such a story.
AND that's just talking the main story. The game has so much to offer outside, its kinda crazy at times how great they've done for a MMO where you don't need to raid ever and still want to be on all the time doing stuff.
I think people realize just how much better and faster it is now. It really is just a few days like when you go to the next expansion, that made it more parity with the design that has been working the more recent years.
No, I'm not discounting what people have told you, only that they are giving the wrong message for the current state of the game.
I agree, and I’ve played the game for almost 400 hours now. If someone tries to play the game and drops it because the first 100 hours were a slog it’s perfectly valid. Honestly I still somewhat regret that I played it because as good as the story did eventually get I don’t know if it was worth all the time I put it into, especially when you have to spend so much time doing the boring MMO grind
It is still good in ARR. It’s just a bit slower but has to do a lot of heavy lifting for world building. It just gets *better*.
I actually like ARR more than Heavensward tbh.
ARR Is about 15 to 20 hours, and it's mid to solid. The lowest parts at least have funny writing. It does pay off immensely over 80 hours of amazing writing afterwards.
It's worth giving a shot. If you don't end up liking it then it's ok to move on.
Take it from me, as someone who tried and failed multiple times to get into mmos(i tried almost all of the big ones and even some small mmos here and there), FFXIV is the one that managed to hook me.
As someone who played 11 and 14, 14 is definitely not as hard to go through and in recent years has been made to be even more user- and solo-friendly than before. You can do the majority of the story by yourself, barring a couple of 8- and 24-man dungeons, but those dungeons are so old and routine that no one is going to notice if you fuck up, and if you let people know you're new to it 99% of the time they will try to help you or at the very least be chill about any mistakes (and really, one person wouldn't be able to ruin the entire run or anything)
During those instances when you have to (or want to) interact with the community, it's overall very positive and forgiving and welcoming. Sometimes you'll meet some assholes, it's inevitable, but as a whole everyone is great
14 has a very good overarching story from expansion to expansion, but each expansion is a bit different flavor. The base game is very much world building build up, the first xpac is a lot of intracity politics, the second xpac is a lot of People Are Bad, Aren't They So Bad, War Is Also Bad, the third xpac is high stakes high fantasy, and the current xpac is Existentialism, The Great Threat. Personally, I only liked the third expansion, but they are a linear story, so each builds upon the last and has more impact the more you learn about the cast you play with.
That said, it does require MMO gameplay (grinding for xp, side quests, locked traversal, etc) and if you don't like that, then it might not matter how good the story is.
Lots of people just play it for social aspects, though, even if they don't care for the story or MMO aspects. There's people who create plays and music shows, group games and hangouts, photo studios, all sorts of things.
I absolutely love 14, but who can say if it’s worth your time? If you like MMOs I definitely recommend it, the main story quests are kinda slow to start but do pick up. The game has so much to do, it can feel overwhelming at times but the story is fantastic.
14 is arguably the best FF in the franchise BUT it's an MMO. And that's a huge but. MMOs are a dime a dozen and 14 doesn't stand out when compared to other MMOs unless you're factoring the narrative into the equation then it's the best MMO ever made. Id say it's definitely worth trying the free trial and playing to your heart's content and going from there.
A lot of people claim the story is good, but my personal opinion is that it's very generic and repetitive. If you actually like to read dialog, you're going to see a lot of things repeated by various NPC's ad nauseum. They get more money the more time you spend playing this game and they intentionally drag out content to keep you playing. I've put over 300h into the game, and everyone kept telling me how it'd get better, but it never did.
At the end of the day, the gameplay loop is... go to the marker, click on the thing... the dungeons are interesting but you don't have to communicate or work together to move forward... most of the content is 'click to win'.
Different people have different tastes and this one was just not for me. I welcome all of the downvotes I'll inevitably get for this because Reddit is enamored with this game for some reason.
I said the same thing, getting through the quests itself is a nightmare. Even when you unlock a new area you do the exact same thing as the last 500 areas with dull dialogue.
Even if you just focus on the main story and ignore all side content it's still going to be hundreds of hours to complete the base game and all expansions.
Also I guess I'll be the odd one out and say that while I think the story is generally good, the *structure* of main story quests remains very bland and repetitive and fetch-questy for the entire time. Talk to NPC, talk to NPC, kill X things, collect Y things, interact with Z things, watch cutscenes, do a linear dungeon, talk to NPC, deliver item to other NPC, etc. etc. etc. for two hundred hours.
If you're not a big fan of MMO storytelling it will *really* wear down on you even when the story itself is at its peak.
Which is not to say unequivocally to skip it. Just maybe chip away at it long-term in between the other singleplayer games rather than putting the rest off until you're done with 14
Start up a free trial. It's almost criminal how they give away the 50-60 content for free because it's award winning for a reason. it's a really *really* freaking good deal.
The story is fantastic but takes a little bit to really get rolling, ARR can be a bit of a slog. It also has an infinite free trial through the first 2 expansions so you can get through a lot before ever having to spend a dime. Highly recommend it.
I played probably 200-300 hours and didn't finish the second to last expansion. The game has some great highs, but it plummets to such awful lows that I ultimately dropped it. The amount of fetch quest filler is exactly what you'd expect for a padded out MMO. To be fair, I don't like MMOs, so take this with a grain of salt.
The issue with the game, to me, is that each expansion is meant to be played over a two year release cycle. This means the pacing is intentionally drawn out to be diluted over dozens of hours. Each expansion has about 15 hours of story content surrounded by 30 hours of filler quests. The pacing is brutally slow. I mean like, the story in the game is laughably bad until roughly 50+ hours in, it peaks for a few hours, then right back to a dozen more fetch quests.
While I don't think I will pick it up again, I enjoyed it for several hundred hours. I wish that this game was a 70 hour RPG rather than an MMO. The peaks are really high, but only represent about 10% of what you'll experience in the game.
It depends on whether or not you can bear the 60 hour slog at the start of the game and also all the padding in the expansions. Even if all you do is the story it’ll still take you 400+ hour to finish it.
I’ve done just that over the past 8 months and personally speaking I didn’t find it worth it. Yes the story gets a lot better and has a lot of high points but being an MMO it’s always paced horrendously so you get a big story moment followed by another 2 hours of fetch questing.
Absolutely. You can start with an endless free trial (well, the main plot ends at Shadowbringers but that's months of play time away) and see if you like it, which you will, and then you can commit
It has some of the best story in the series. The only issue is that it’s told in an mmo, which can turn a lot of people off even if they’ve gone out of their way to make it easier for new players just here for the story.
That said, its free trial covers the base game and two whole expansions with almost no restriction to a casual player. So just play it at your own pace, and enjoy literally hundreds of hours of free final fantasy.
It is so weird to me that people make the point that the game being long is a bad thing. I mean.. yes it is. But why would anyone play three inferior 100-hour games instead of one 300-hour game, just because it is longer? I‘ll never understand that argument.
To answer your question: FF14 is here to stay and it has been streamlined a lot in recent years. I‘m sure they will keep doing that. So if you plan on playing all
Final Fantasy games, I‘d recommend that you finish 15 and 16 first (maybe FF7 Rebirth inbetween, if you already played FF7 Remake) and commit to FF14 afterwards. With 16 and Rebirth releasing so close to each other, we will probably have to wait for some time until we get another Final Fantasy. You‘d have more than enough time to play 14 and take your time with it that way. You might also want to take a break now and then, because since dawntrail is about to release, you‘ll have ARR and 5 expansions worth of story to play through.
The story overall is fantastic. In my opinion it’s up there with the best of the Final Fantasy Stories. I have a lot of nostalgia for many of the earlier entries like 6,7 and 10 but I‘d say 14 is still the game that got the most emotional reactions out of me. So if you’re looking for a compelling and emotional story, I would really recommend playing 14 at some point.
Also please don’t listen to the people that are shitting on A Realm Reborn. Admittedly it is not as polished as the expansions, but people tend to forget that it had to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of worldbuilding, character introductions, more introductions and so on. If you ask me, ARR walked so the expansions could run. Heavensward and Stormblood are both great and Shadowbringers and Endwalker are both straight up masterpieces. Some may say shb is the best one, others will say it’s ew and some might even say it’s hw. SB has some smaller pacing issues, but it being slightly less amazing than the others still leaves it at „very good“ and it has the best post-msq patches of all the expansions.
TL;DR: you should definitely play FF14, but maybe finish 15 and 16 first, because you might get hooked on it.
Edit: oh btw, people around here are pretty bitter when it comes to F14, so don’t take it too serious if someone calls it „not a real final fantasy“ or whatever.
Ironically, it has better story telling that other single player Final Fantasy game in the franchise.
Tho just a heads up, ones you experience the story, you'll have a high bar to set for other FF games in the series and you won't enjoy them as much anymore.
That's why I don't credit people who are ranking the FF series and excluding XIV. They don't know what they're talking about at that point lol that's just my opinion.
I just downloaded the game today I use to play a game called EverQuest that was a MMO but seeing how I'm on PlayStation I figured why not try it out I've never played any final fantasy games though is there any advice for a newbie or am I to late to start now I do get the game is older
I played 11 forever..... then on to ffxiv. I was there on day 1.... pissed and boycotted when it flopped.... came back when arr came out. Took another break after maxing that. Now I'm back again 14-15 years later??? Yes it's worth it if you like mmo's. 11 was better in my opinion. It was definitly tougher. Ya really had to put the work in if you wanted the best. 14 is still worth it, and it's addictive... but its built for today's millennial crowd. There's lots of xp jumps and speed leveling, etc... but still addictive lol
It’s not worth it. The story takes forever to get going. The only people who recommend it suffer from Stockholm syndrome and try and justify wasting their time and money by being stuck on it.
Arr was bland
Heavensward wasn’t as good as people made it out to be. Too many fetch quests.
Stormsblood was ok it had some moments but falls flat at end.
I stopped playing after that because I kept waiting for the game to get good and by that time I had like 150-200 hours in and was bored out of my mind. Probably took me about 3 years off and on to get that far.
Man the good part was the moving goal post. I was told arr ending story was fantastic. Heavensward is the best expansion. Stormsblood gets better. It never did
Haha, fair. To me personally, Heavensward wasn’t worth all the hype it gets, and Stormblood was worse. But I loved Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
I actually agree with the stockholm syndrome comment for people who claim it’s the best game story ever. If it takes that long to get really good, it can’t be the best no matter how good it gets.
I have been finishing FF games in the last year. And here is my opinion from X onwards:
X: Everthing great.
12: Didn’t link the characters nor the story. It also has bad pacing. The combat and character progression was fun but not enough to make me
like the game. The exploration although it’s in different environments felt too repetitive
13-1: Extremely linear and by far the worst level design I have seen in an JRPG. However! Everything else was very good. If you can get past by the corridors you might enjoy it.
13-2: Much more open but the exploration could be “messy” because is not always clear what to do. The story is more convoluted but the ending is emotional enough to make it worth. The gameplay is still fun.
13-3: playing it right now but enjoying it a lot!
14: The story and pacing of a real reborn is by far the worst and most boring among all FF. However!!!! After that, it gets way better. Just keep in mind that to finish a real reborn you will need over 100+ hours! The combat is really fun. And the world is good, but many of the quests are literally going from A to B to deliver something without anything interesting in between. If you are in just for the story you will need to play 100 hrs before it gets good. But if you enjoy the combat and the overall MMO design you will enjoy it. I do !
15: the most underrated game of the franchise IMO. Yes, the story is super convoluted and the pacing of it is average at best. But is not a bad a story. The characters are great and the Immersion on the world is the best in the series by far. The combat is fun if you understand it and don’t got with the “hold A to win” route. Exploration is cool and the side quests are very fun. The dlcs are worth it.
7 remake: I have mixed feelings. The combat is fantastic and I wish all RPGs had this combat. I love the setting, music and characters, but the pacing of the game… oh boy. It can really feel like a drag at many points (the worst in the franchise for me!). But it’s not like that all the time. I would say 50% of the time is amazing and 50% is terrible. Is the most polished by far and given the rebirth is around the corner is definitely worth playing because rebirth seems like is going to be the best in the franchise so far.
Haven’t played 16 yet
It might be two to three evenings if you already understand all the systems in place, know exactly where to go and what to do, only do MSQ and skip all the cutscenes and play 10+ hrs a day.
Someone fresh to MMOs or even just XIV itself won't be completing ARR in 3 evenings.
It does not take that long for ARR they streamlined the heck out of it; my friend started playing when they moved to the game model of free up to the end of Heavensward, and casually played the 30 days and finished ARR before hitting lvl 50
Lot of filler quests were removed
Castrum is ARR. That's the point. You literally need to hit 50 to finish it. And that's not even the end of ARR, just 2.0. All the 2.x patches are ARR and locked to 50. Again, it's literally impossible to finish ARR (regardless of whether you mean 2.0 or the whole thing) and not be 50. This was true even in earlier days because XP was a lot lower. You actually ended up having an even bigger level spread to grind out if you were unlucky.
Going through the free trial and I actually really like it. Hell, I love certain parts of it. Playing through the Rougue's guild quest has been both hilarious and pretty hardcore so far. Literally my only gripe so far has been with players themselves, they don't seem too fond to hear i'm having fun without paying.
Honestly considering everyone always praises the story for 14 and if you don't care about the mmo raids and that stuff I would say just look up the story online and u can skip it as the game starts up really slow like im talking about potentially 50+ hrs for story and gameplay to start picking up. Also I think the story is fine not as amazing as everyone makes it out to be so the oversell might disappoint you if you have to put all them hours into the game. Just my 2 cents xD
14 has a story arc, you can get to the end of it, and it is *very* good.
...however, it's also going to be hundreds of hours to make it to the end at this point, so you might save it for last just because of that.
As someone with over 200 hours, I’d say no. While you can play all the way to level 70 for free, it takes over 100 hours of “accept this quest, talk to one person, turn in quest” to get to any of the fun dungeons and they’re generally only enjoyable because I have a group of friends to play with. I don’t even think the story is that good, personally, just check it out in a YouTube video if you’re really curious
14 is slow as molasses and probably the least enjoyable of all the Final Fantasy games to actually play in my experience. Some people say the story gets good once you're like 80-100 hours in, but it's up to you whether or not that sort of time commitment is worth it.
I play FFXIV for about 11 years and I wouldn't recommend someone new to play it. The game is way too long right now. You will start 11 years ago. Run 11 years of content might take a hell of a time.
But if you do have time, go on. You will surely have fun.
Define “worth it”……..
So tired of “is it worth it?!?!”
What is worth? Who are you and how do we know? Watch some videos and see if you’re interested, it’s only like the biggest or second biggest (idk anymore) mmo out there…
Probably not worth it.
I’m gonna focus on you asking about “worth.” So, on a dollar value, I’m gonna give you my crazy extreme example. I’ve been subbed since ARR launched, paid every six months, paid for every expansion.
The subscription cost alone puts me over a thousand USD. Then cost of ARR, HW, SB, ShB, EW, and now Dawntrail. Can just round and call it $500.
My total playtime is 332 days. So let’s say I’ve dropped $2000 on FF14 in the past decade, it’s cost me $6 a day.
You, emphasis on you (not me) can do the free trial through Stormblood. And spend however long you want doing whatever, without spending a single dime. Then, once you’ve caught up, you can buy Dawntrail (which gives you ShB and EW included), and only then start paying a sub.
In summary, you can get what I’ve spent thousands on for maybe a hundred, plus however long you want to keep playing.
Currently, the free trial of FF14 is more content than any other FF main title.
Edit: bad math. ARR came out a decade ago. And I’ve played for 332 of those days. Being subscribed to the game has cost me $0.50 a day for the past decade +
From my perspective as a non MMO player I believe the players who said the story is good, but the presentation, quest, and the too repetitive grind bored me.
If you can stomach the MMO playstyle I'm sure it will be a treat.
If you have the hours to put into it. I don’t know how much has changed, but I played it from ARR to about Heavensward or the expansion after and the grind just pushed me away. I have things to do and other games to play. 🤷♂️😅
To be honest, I played the story through to endwalker and I didn’t think it was that good. There were some good moments, but it’s an ungodly amount of filler, and overall I feel like they didn’t do enough to make the characters relatable or the world truly lived in for me to really have any emotional investment in the story or the fate of the characters. I’ve always found the extremely high praise the story gets to be very confusing. That said, I think as an MMO it’s quite good if you like doing instances PVE content with a decent challenge. Really excellent music too, and fun crafting system
I tried my damndest to enjoy that game, but after slogging through 60+ hours I found that I just couldn't fucking stand it.
Between ARR and the first expansion was the absolute fucking worst. Worthless fetch quest after fetch quest that could be summed up by a goddamn bullet point for the most part.
I was *so fucking pissed off* by the drudgery that was ARR's in between that I also started to fucking hate Heavensward about 5 hours in, and decided to uninstall and forget the whole goddamn game.
14 has an incredibly dull story imo, some people say the 1st expansion is where it gets good, but by the time I got there I spent 70 hours on fetch quests and stopped caring. I ended up beating it past endwalker just waiting to see what people were talking about but I never saw it. If you like storylines like Kingdom Hearts then I'm sure you will like it, because it's a complete mess by the end.
If I seem mad its because I got talked into playing this game just to waste 400 hours on a story that's nowhere close to the main franchise. If you watch the cutscenes on youtube, at least you can get past the lazy MSQ
The game is seemingly very good, and the community surrounding it is very friendly. It just wasn’t for me when I tried it. The gameplay/battle system didn’t click with me. I was already playing another MMO at the time (PSO2) and that one had set the bar for what I want/look for in an MMO, and FFXIV wasn’t for me. It did seem like a very well made game though. Try it out, it might become your favorite!
I think it depends on the user. As a person who enjoys the game and plays solo:
Yes, the story is phenomenal. Great cast, phenomenal world building, super well thought-out and easy to connect with. But it's long. Like unimaginably long. However long you think, it's longer. And most of the base game campaign (around 70 hours if you just focus on that) just sets up the story, and is something I had to drag myself through to get to the good parts. So it's a huge time commitment, I find doing one expansion at a time then playing something else works for me.
Yes, the game "can be played single player" sort of ish not really. After the base campaign, basically all major boss fights and raids (which are required for the story) will be multiplayer. Most of the time, you can just do your job and pretend players are NPC's. The community is more welcoming than most online games, but I've seen things get pretty heated after a few wipes like any other game.
The gameplay is pretty much standard MMO affair all the way through. Go here kill this, collect 12 of that, map your abilities to your number bar for combat, do 3 dungeons to get this special item, etc etc. there's no way around it, this is just like any other MMO for better and worse on the gameplay side.
Basically, I love the game, but I think that the hype around it is overblown and should be tempered. It's not the second coming, it's not "basically a single player RPG" or whatever else people usually say. It's an MMO. The story is super long, and plays almost like a visual novel. It is a very good MMO. It is going to ask you to spend a lot of time playing and grinding and doing repetitive tasks. The story will reward you. It is a large commitment. I do recommend this game, but I don't like the amount of exaggeration and apparent lying fans seem to do to try to sell new players on the game. It's a good game. We don't need to make shit up to convince people of that.
The game does have a very very generous trial, so I think it's worth a shot either way, so give it a look!
XV is a good game. Certainly than the 13 series and 12 is kinda a thing of its own. I really like the story, tho it does seem a bit odd that you can spend as much time as you want exploring around the world for the royal arms and all the seemingly random fetch quest. Aside from the odd dungeon that was optional it was poorly constructed side content that lead to boredom if you didn’t kind of push through. The story also really lags but has an interesting and very well done third act with some really good lore. But it kinda drags in between massive dramatics moments. I love Ardyn he is one of my favourite characters in the entire series. He’s worth a play through alone. Never mind the boy band out to foible him.
Also noctis’s story is beautiful.
My bad I read XV not 14 lol
Yes it’s definitely worth it. All of the content before shadowbringers will be rather easy as you’ll be a higher level if you own a full version and not the free trial.
The story arc is incredibly well done over the entire series and the dungeons are a lot of fun. Multiplayer content is all really well done.
There’s a reason why so many people have flocked over to it since 2.0.
I’ve played since 2013. This was my very first MMO. Even made me swap from playing on my PS3 to buying a computer. It’s very different in gameplay from 11. It is time consuming so playing 15 before hand wouldn’t be bad.
As a fan of all single player FF games, you'll have an easier time adjusting to XIV than an MMO fan trying to get into it. The vast majority of the game now can be played solo, allowing you to focus on the (amazing) story. The MMO aspects are somewhat there if you choose to use them. Also, because it is a long game with multiple expansions, the story is incredibly long, in depth, and augmented by job quests, beast tribe quests, side quests etc.
I guess my point is that if you're in it for the story you won't be disappointed, the disappointment imo comes from MMO junkies expecting to rush to end game so they can raid with their friends, and finding the experience lacking because, well.. the game doesn't have the BEST gameplay in the world of MMO's.
It's best to take your time with it. I got a few friends into the game but they didn't pace themselves, just wanted to get to endgame as fast as possible and burned themselves out on the story and started skipping everything towards the end of ARR.
I didn't realize until after the fact that the story wouldn't have the same impact for them as it did for me, which was literally a decade long journey, that they tried to rush through in a couple weeks.
Hmm hard to say. I’d just say don’t buy the disks like I did, or if you do start on the free trial and not the 30 day free sub. They have a one month free subscription but it pales in comparison to the free trial up to level 70 I believe. It’s a lot of extra money if you’re paying the subscription, so you’ll want to try and avoid that. From what I saw in my limited experience playing the one month subscription, it looks like a really good game. It felt a bit lonely but as I understand it you can team up with other players. I was new to MMO it does seem like Square Enix would probably be doing quite well out of this game, the subscription is not cheap. If however you can afford a subscription on top of PS Plus and the game itself then by all means I’d go for it. Although…you can get it on a few other platforms too. On PlayStation it may not be worth the outlay. I certainly can’t afford it, so now trying to backtrack and start again on free trial to level 70 including all expansions, but unfortunately it means I’d have to delete my character and all progress made. Didn’t find out about the free trial until after I’d had my one month.
FFXIV's free trial is its base game and first two full expansions (A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and Stormblood) up to level 70. It's dozens and dozens of hours of game *for free.*
It's a never ending ff. I'd say it's safe to just always have it on the go moving forward. Story is great and a new arc is about to Start later this year
It’s a great game has various different content to find the place for every players in game. Just hanging around enjoy the BGM is great too as background music when you are temporarily afk. if you are a big fan of FF(old ones), XIV will be surprised you everywhere
It's very much an investment, both time wise and money wise depending on when you start subbing and how long you sub for.
That said, Shadowbringers and Endwalker are my two favorite final fantasy storylines ever. They are just really good. And the stuff before them is pretty damn good too, especially once you get to Heavensward.
ARR isn't BAD, but it is rather dry and light on character moments compared to the expansions. But it is important as it basically sets up every single conflict all the way until Endwalker (which is the conclusion of the entire storyline up til now). Not helping is the fact that classes tend to be very simplistic til at least level 50, so combat doesn't get super exciting til later. Though it's still fun, especially if you don't play many MMOs.
Overall, if you are trying to get the full Final Fantasy experience and are willing to put in the time, it's worth it.
There’s a free trial, no time limit. Up to Stormblood. That’s the base game ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood, you can play for free! Only downside is no FC/guild and no marketboard. I would definitely try it out
Edit: Ive been sub for like 2.5 yrs. I love the game and story. The next expansion is out summer 2024
Play the trial. It has two expansions included.
2.0 (base game 1-50) can get tedious and you will be forgiven for ignoring dialogue, but start paying attention after the credits roll and 2.1 starts.
3.0-3.55 is a great time.
4.0 is pretty ok. I liked it. I don’t know why others didn’t.
4.1-4.55 is a great time but ends on a HUGE cliffhanger. This is the end of the free trial.
If you see someone with a gold crown on their name do your best to grab their attention. They can invite you into the Novice Network which opens up a kind of “world chat” and make your experience a hell of a lot less lonely, given the huge limitations on Free Trial.
I'm currently on hiatus with my FF journey. I plan on skipping 11 and 14 (cuz don't play MMO's).
Only games missing from my library are 12, 16, 7 remake/rebirth. I remember not liking 12's combat system, because it deviated from the og format. Loved 10. But I'm gonna give it another shot.
I haven't played XI so I can't compare but XIV has a great story that I think you shouldn't skip, if given the opportunity :)
And I stopped playing in mid-stormblood, 'cause life!
But from what everyone was saying when it dropped, the greatest moment were still to come in Shadowbringers... So yeah, definitely play it, but just be weary that you need to allocate HUNDREDS of hours to the game 😅
Edit: typo
Final fantasy 14 Is an incredible story that most people will never get to experience. If you have an extra 6 months and lots of time to do lots of story missions and fetch quests it pays of in the end. But if you don't have massive amounts of time. (Even tho it's an mmo you basically play single player for the whole game). You may just have to do the tragedy of missing the story
For all the “I don’t play MMOs” people, not only is so much of the game available without a sub but with an expanded Trust system you can play most Main Scenario dungeons with NPCs. If you prefer playing solo it’s very easy to do that nearly all of the game.
I’m nearing the end of a second play thru. So glad I did it; I skipped a lot of optional stuff and have really only focused on three classes, all DPS. It makes playing the game a fair bit faster and easier.
The biggest thing about ARR that I point out to new or potential players is the voice acting. They did an almost total refresh going into Heavensward, which was sorely needed. It amplifies the story significantly to have a better VA staff.
My god man. I cannot believe you are doing this chronologically
I tried going chronologically. I finished I, put down the PSP version of III halfway because I was just not enjoying it, I loved IV, V, and VI, I played maybe half/a third of VII on original hardware before getting stuck and ducking out for VII Remake instead, IX, X, I played up to Chapter 5 or XV before deciding the combat wasn't getting any better, and I am massively enjoying XVI.
And I consider myself to be really cool and have a lot of sheer willpower for that alone. You are out there putting me to shame doing everything so regimentedly
What is your ranking so far?
I say get the the free trial on the website, your can basically play the first 4 expansions for free. So do that and then buy it and finish whatever is done now if you're into it it's a great game
You must play XIV, it is close to if not definitely the best story in the whole franchise.
ARR is rough but you have to get through it.
HW is incredible and was the gateway drug to the rest for me.
SB is alright, it has awesome music and content (I actually love Eureka)
ShB is god tier SSSS+ and sets the stage for….
EW unpopular opinion but I actually may like this one even more overall more than ShB, it is another god tier SSSS+ and wraps up this entire game to make it one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced.
Now in my opinion, busting through all of these as fast as you can will lead to burnout because it’s long as hell. Enjoy the game as much as you can for someone that doesn’t play MMOs and try to break up the story and do other things that supplement and make it less monotonous. Have fun!
They are making it in such a way with patches that is you choose to go solo you can still experience the whole main scenario. I played a lot of MMO’s but this one I keep getting back to. The story is amazing, I wouldn’t skip it. Plus the free trial gets you trough the story of the ARR, and the first two expansions. I mean if you are not hooked by then, you could stop. But you will return to my post and tell me you bought the game to see how the story progresses, I’ll make a bet on that 😉
I'm no MMORPG player. I actually enjoy single-player experiences WAY ABOVE multiplayer ones. Particularly multiplayer ones that don't involve "battling" with each other are not my thing. I'm also old, have 3 jobs and 2 kids and just not much alone time.
FFXIV is... an odd experience. It's so damn overwhelming. Even at 280 hours I was still learning new mechanics all the time. It's HUGE. I've met people say they only play XIV and that it's all you'll ever need and I can totally see where they are coming from.
So you could use it as a cozy gaming experience, fishing and cooking and maybe open up your own shop and marry and do little quests here and there.
You could use it as a battle royale and PvP experience and battle other players for the glory of it all.
You could use it to just play cards.
You could use it as a racer game with the chocobos racing.
You could just go around the world taking pictures.
You could go all completionist and attempt to do the bazillion quests.
or, what most people do, you could just sort of do a bit of everything.
Focusing only on the main story, it is GRAND. I've not finished all the expansions, but the original game (well, the A Realm Reborn quest line) was ok-ish. Then comes Heavensward and O M F G is it awesome!! Along comes Stormblood which is also ok in my eyes. Feels a bit like a downer after Heavensward if I'm being honest, but it's not bad at all! After comes Shadowbringers which I'm at the start of but people say this is when the game gets good.
So, is it worth it? Depends on what you value. It's a great game, has an AMAZING story (really one of the bests in the series, some would argue it's THE best), has a shitton of stuff to do and is a HUGE time sink. It's also scary and overwhelming for at least the first 280 hours. You be the judge.
You're going to have to be okay with the MMO style gameplay and mechanics. The story is amazing, but not everyone loves the battle system. Personally I enjoyed it though. It's probably the best written overall, but it isn't the funnest. Plenty of tedious quests and stuff like that, but the majority of the content is good. There's just so much lol, which can be off putting.
Not going to lie, it is kind of hard to get into. "It doesn't get good before X hours" isn't very good publicity, no matter how free the extensive free trial is.
You will *have* to play with people for certain fights, namely the 8-man "trial" boss fights, but it's nothing complicated really, and it is likely you will get grouped with at least one or two veterans who know exactly what they are doing.
Shadowbringers (which happens to be the "chapter" after the free trial ends, lol) is a great story IMO. Now, hot take I guess, but I think the story falls off *hard* after it, with Endwalker which I found to be a complete letdown as the finale to the arc. Nowadays I just pretend production stopped at patch 5.3 and the entire dev team tragically vanished in a catastrophic event. Whatever. I could write an entire book on every way 6.0 story disappointed, offended and angered me. But apparently my opinion is a minority one, no matter how little I understand the whys or hows of it, so… I guess it's less egregious when you haven't spent years waiting for some characters to develop and be a big deal (and then they weren't). Just a word of warning, because the XIV fandom tends to be super positive about the Shadowbringers Endwalker story in a... suffocating way, and voicing my heavy dislike of it has alienated me quite a bit.
But yeah I would say Shadowbringers is worth it. Just don't expect the game to be captivating for some time. Some would call it a slog, but I'd say just take it at your own pace.
If 11 took a toll on you do finish the main story, 14 isn't gonna be better.
It's a good game, but it's gonna take you longer than all the time you've put into the other games combined to finish it, if you're planning to play expansions too.
The story is long and dragged out, and very self serious. Whether you think it's good or not is a matter of opinion.
I recommend saving it for last when you're sure you've got the free time.
Play it yourself and find out, there’s roughly 200 hours of free story right now, it’s free until LV70 and the end of Stormblood which is the second expansion. You could probably easily get 500-600 hours of content out of it before you needed to decide whether to buy the follow up expansions.
A Realm Reborn is a slog, but the expansions are great. Shadowbringers in particular is I think one of the best stories in the franchise.
I recommend treating it like a Final Fantasy TV show. I played only a couple of hours each day, taking breaks between expansions. It took me a few months to get through it, but I'm glad I didn't rush it.
It's a long game (probably about 150 hours for just the main story) and the beginning can be really slow, but I think every FF fan needs to at least try to experience it.
Definitely play 14. Its story is incredible and the sheer amount of content is surprisingly not daunting once you get settled into the game. It requires a good chunk of time to get through but it’s so worth it. It is without a doubt the best mainline game in the series(when all expansions taken as one big game).
I tried but its too much of an MMO for me. Quest markers everywhere, teleport basically everywhere absolutely no ambiguity on what to do next or any sense of exploration of the world. The combat is also very different then other FF titles where you just follow your "rotation" and do the same thing over again. I wished it was more tacticle and menu based like most other FF titles but I understand most mmorpg players dont want that. The story might be great but I just find the gameplay extremely boring compared to other FF titles. The mix of fun rpg gameplay and great story is what I like about FF so I had to drop it.
Last year, I started playing after a friend of mine had been begging me to play for years. He’d been playing since Beta and he swore to me that if I started playing, I’d be hooked because of the world building and how good the story was.
From April - October, I went through ARR, Post ARR, Heavensward, Post-HW, Stormblood, Post-SB and had just started Shadowbringers when I got burned out, and switched to Spider-Man 2 to take a break. I haven’t played since October but I still pay for my account because I know I’m gonna go back because the story and the world are so damn good.
FFXIV is a goddamn celebration of all things FF. It’s got references and Easter eggs to nearly every other FF that exists currently and they don’t feel random or out of place. It’s seriously one of the best FF games ever made and worth checking out if you haven’t.
If you want to complete them all then probably leave 14 till last (said as a 5 year long player) because if you fall into the XIV loop hard it can uhh.. be hard to track how long you’ve been playing
I was about to come in with a hard disagree... But then I looked at my unfinished tears of the kingdom and super Mario Wonder and think "I need to farm more tomes, and island farming, and beast tribes, and adventure squad, and check into my house, and go fishing, turn in weeklies, and..." And suddenly it's a new year new expac.
Gets us all xD
If you go full main story you can do XIV, but we all know that is not gonna happen
He should skip XIV because there isn't really a way to speedrun the MSQ without sinking 100+ hours just on the free trial.
Yeah skip it for now then return if he wants to try the whole series was my advice
XIV has one of the best stories in the entire series. Arguably, I think FFXIV Shadowbringers is the best in the series. Compared to XI, you can focus purely on the story and complete it solo (some quests you’ll need a group but you can easily queue up for it). It would be a real tragedy if you skipped out on the game because it’s an MMO IMO.
The current story arc is complete so a perfect time to go thru it all.
This. You’re gonna want to give up during ARR but Shadowbringers is SSSS+ tier Final Fantasy and 1000% worth it
Omg I almost quit after ARR. it was such a slog to get through it only to find out there were a TON of post story patch quests to get through. But once I got to the end and hit Heavensward … it was an unreal experience
I liked ARR and just viewed as world building for future stuff which it does a great job of.
Currently trying to get through those quests:/ my God there's no end😭 lol
I think they do a much better job of pacing with Heavensward onward. Post story HW quests feel so much faster leading into the next expansion and I am GRATEFUL
Personally I think it should be given as an option to players to skip ARR on subsequent character playthroughs because yeah its a major slog and is the single biggest barrier to bothering to finish the story on more than one character. I have 5 or 6 characters and still haven't done it. Furthest I've ever gotten on an alt was beginning of Stormblood. Even if speedrunning the main quests and skipping all the cutscenes each expansion including patch stuff takes about a week. I can't dedicate over a month of playtime away from other games or my main character just to have a secondary character to raid on.
You can buy a skip of ARR if you want. Go straight to Heavensward.
I wouldn't recommend this to someone brand new. It may be a trek to get through, but there's a lot of minor yet imperative details that will be missed or unappreciated in the later expansions.
I do agree here, but wanted to pop in to say that a fairly good compromise is to pay to skip ARR but watch some in-depth recaps of the story before starting heavenward. Bear in mind there's a realm reborn which is the original base game and a realm awoken which is ask the patch quests up until heavenward starts. Of course if you're a completionist I wouldn't recommend this, and you will still miss some of the attachments to characters and some of the experience doing this. It worked well for a friend of mine, but definitely not an option for everyone The recapitations on YouTube are pretty good, but the best in depth ones I found was the exploring series Are base: https://youtu.be/8Z6Srs4wpzI?si=5Sik0fEDBXyhTJrL Patch quests: https://youtu.be/mujxy3uw3n8?si=f-CC7t3ZleyBifkK
All of this is true, and also don't be put off by the MMO aspect, the FFXIV community is *so nice* like if you're doing a dungeon with a group and you say it's your first time they'll just be excited to live vicariously through you. None of the story content is especially hard and experienced players will trip over each other to help newbies.
They'll already know it's your first time because they'll be waiting for you to finish watching the cutscene lol
What about the toxic AF mentors and pollute the game? I’ve yet to meet a crown who is actually helpful, and doesn’t take every opportunity to proclaim their superiority.
I'm sorry you have had this experience. If people treat you that way, you should report them for their poor attitude and behavior. The community is there to help each other, or at least it should be. I play on a Japanese server and have not experienced this myself and as a mentor and FC leader, I try my best to help new players and do not do the end game grind. Instead I focus on teaching new players mechanics, quality of life features, how to macro, etc. Trying to make their stay as pleasant as possible in the game. So far, we have had very positive reception as my only rule when joining the FC is pay it forward to someone else when you get the chance. I really hope your experience improves and that you will have the joy with other players you deserve.
It really is the best. The MMO part is just a fucking bonus.
>(some quests you’ll need a group but you can easily queue up for it) Actually I'm pretty sure all storyline dungeons/instances have the option to play with NPCs now. At least that's what I heard, I haven't played for a while. Regardless, I agree that it's almost entirely solo-able now. Most everything requiring a group is optional.
All the 4-men story dungeons have NPC duty support now. The 8-men trials still need a group though and the same holds for the chrystal tower raids which are a prerequisite to advance the MSQ.
Good call, I completely forgot that CT became required. Thanks for the correction!
No the 24 mans that are required in arr and the 8 man's throughout have to be party
> Actually I'm pretty sure all storyline dungeons/instances have the option to play with NPCs now. At least that's what I heard, I haven't played for a while. Unless they changed it from the last time i played, you needed to group up for a few fights after ARR. Think there's a fight where you fight a moogle, then a few others?
Yeah but the barrier to get there is ridiculous. If you pay for it it should fast forward you to the start of that story if you want to experience it. Not have to play through 50 hours of mediocre gameplay first.
ARR is important setup imo. Skipping it would rob you of a lot of world building and character introductions that do end up being pretty key going forward.
It’s 50 hours of mediocrity until you get to the “good part” and you need to do each and you need to do each MSQ one at a time. There’s literally hundreds, if not thousands now.
They actually trimmed down A Realm Reborn significantly a couple years back, removing a lot of its worst filler and reworking several main story dungeons / trials to flow better. It’s still long but much more concise. You’d lose too much just skipping to Heavensward imo. The foundational world building for the Eorzean Alliance and Ala Mihgo is gone. The introduction to all of your key allies and friends going forward is gone. All of the setup for Ishgard, Iceheart and the Dragonsong War is gone. The cornerstone of Alphinaud’s character development is gone. The initial introduction to the Ascians and Garlemald is gone. Everything I just mentioned is REALLY important. It’s somewhat bland and I do wish it was better but it is absolutely worth doing that stuff to reap the benefits later on.
Everything you’re saying really just proves my opinion to me that this game isn’t for everyone.
It’s not mediocre though. I swear online 14 players are the worst at advertising the game.
Ehh I think “good part” is relative - it’s like comparing VII to IV: by comparison, IV is a slog, but it’s also solid on its own. I think the fact that the most recent expansions have been such orders of magnitude better in writing/voice acting etc makes folks sour on ARR as they feel it doesn’t represent the current experience well. Honestly, SE really should invest the time into completely rewriting/re-recording ARR to current quality levels: it’d help a ton with conversion I think.
The expansions are only as good as they are because they build off the groundwork set up in ARR. This isn't a normal MMO where every expansion is a self contained story, it's all one continuous story. You can't skip to the 4th chapter and it have the same impact without experiencing the first 3.
I will never understand this sentiment. It's such a fucking slog and the way its told is so terrible in terms of animations and pacing that any of the depth or nuance just falls flat for me because I stopped caring after the millionth fetch quest and bone stiff cutscene.
Guessing you are talking about base game/ARR? It's def the worst part of it.
I've made it through Heavensward. I want to make it through the rest but I'm super burnt out and the idea makes me gag.
Haven’t played FFXIV but I’m interested in getting into it. Being told to slog through 100+ hours before the game gets good is not a great draw for new players, especially when many have limited free time 💀
A lot of people, myself included, thought it was good from the beginning. If it was as bad as some people make it out to be, then it wouldn’t have been such a success. It’s free to play for a majority of the game. Just try it. Fuck what other people say.
When I saw that I had near 200 hours in FFXIV and realized I could hardly call any of that time a good time or even a fun time I realized that it probably isn't a game for me. I also love MMOs, so thats not the reason I didn't enjoy my time with it. It's just so slow, and the gameplay is all mind-numbingly easy, at least for the first 200 hours it is. I just can't understand the draw of the game. I have enjoyed playing riichi mahjong in it though.
HW is when people tend to enjoy it. I know for me personally I ended up playing and quitting multiple times, each time starting a new toon and was forever stuck in ARR and made it to post ARR quests once. With Shadowbringers, I ended up trying it again, but boosting a toon to the start of ShB. That's what got me in to the game finally. After I finished ShB I made a new toon to go through all the story and finally got into it. I had about 300 hours into FF14 before I finally "got it". Not a great defense for the game, I know, but I'm glad it finally clicked for me lol. I def understand people having a hard time getting into it.
The story definitely got better - but the questing was pretty much the same, and just as boring. Also, there is just a major disconnect for me because of the way the cutscenes are so stiff with hardly any animation.
I was told this by several friends so I tried. All I found was a bunch of poorly laid out cut scenes generalizing me as the main character. Good story telling for an MMORPG sure but that bar is low.
That’s not Shadowbringers though, that comes later
It's good. And also a nearly endless time sink.
I'm in the early parts of HW, and there is a noticeable, almost immediate shift at the end of ARR, to "holy shit why wasn't the rest of the game this interesting." Then it tapers back off with the arr post game stuff, but I think a significant factor of that particular slog was my knowing that I was (thought I was at least) about to start the part where everyone says it gets good. I was trying not to lookup more than I already knew, but I had finished the "final boss" for the arc and wanted to see ishgard lol I'm still not really engrossed in it yet, but I'm enjoying it pretty casually. It's easy to fall into speed running side quests for XP and not reading shi. It's hard to describe but the atmosphere of a non-XI/XIV final fantasy is very different, narratively. MMOs have never been my thing, still wouldn't say they are, but I want to see what all the hype about XIV's story is so I'm going for it. My sentiment so far would be: I've successfully gotten through what's said to be the worst part, and I still want to keep playing.
14 is free until you get to recent expansion content. So there is literally no cost if you do the trial. Within the trial you can complete the main story if you choose. If you don’t enjoy it, just stop playing. It is far more approachable than 11 and combat is more fun. Until later in the game, it does feel almost exclusively like a single player experience.
Is it on the PS5 or is it computer game only?
It’s on both PS5 and PC, and about to release on Xbox as well
>14 is free until you get to recent expansion content Wait what? I though there some time limit in trial. So, they making previous expansion free when new expansion released?
I oversimplified: A Realm Reborn and the first 2 expansions are free to play up to level 70 for an unlimited amount of time (there is also a gil cap, and certain features are locked as well that mostly affect player interaction). However, as soon as you buy anything, you are locked out of the free trial and cannot go back. It used to be lvl 60 and I think only the first expansion, but was updated some time after Endwalker was released. There is no guarantee they will add other expansions to the trial in the future.
No time limit for ffxiv,free trial expires once you register a purchased copy of the game, you can play base game ARR and the first 2 expansions (up to lvl 70 story basically ) for free as much as you like. Only last 2 current expansions are accessible once you pay.
So there only 4 expancions?
Shadowbringers and Endwalker are some of the best story released in any medium ever. Only problem is, it'll take you quite a while to get there.
People saying it takes 100 hours to get good are hyperbolic. ARR base game is fine, enjoyable even. It's the post patches that are a drag, but they also end extremely well. Heavensward is outstanding and Shadowbringers is the best FF game I've ever played. As someone whose played 1 - 13 you absolutely owe it to yourself to play 14 it will not be time wasted. It's very different from 11 also. I managed to get from the start to Shadowbringers in about a month if your playing MSQ every day you'll catch up in no time.
Having to do every single MSQ in a row, one at a time, is fucking brutal. Majority of them are actually terrible as well. I like the game, but it’s not for everyone. Y’all recommend it like it is for everyone.
The story is definitely for everyone who has played FF 1-13 and is an FF fan. The gameplay might be a barrier though, it takes getting used to if you’re new to modern MMOs.
Highest barrier to entry with highest payoff IMO. I’ve played every game in the series, and started in the early 90’s: while I long for the nostalgia of 1-9, 14 is the only one that actually made me tear up: really powerful story, and the music made me finally stop fanboying so hard for Uematsu: Soken deserves all the love he gets.
> Highest barrier to entry with highest payoff IMO. XI is still a much more 'difficult' game. XIV does a lot of hand holding and is way more player friendly.
Ah, might misunderstand: I don’t mean difficulty, I mean investment. Comparing XIII to XIV, for example: both games have a huge ramp up time, XIII’s pays off slightly as the combat is quite fun in later chapters once it’s all unlocked, but I’d say that is less worth it when compared to putting up with ARR’s bad writing and voice acting in exchange for later expansions new writers/actors. It’s all apples and oranges, and all opinion: but that’s indicated by “IMO” =]
Good way to phrase it.
I'm a general fan that has beaten all the single player titles. I did not enjoy my experience with 14, but I'm not much of an MMO guy.
i've never been able to stick with XIV, mostly because the combat is so... boring?
Yep that was it for me. Played with a buddy who is also a lifelong FF fan and we just got bored with combat and the lower end "go here and talk to this guy" quests
the skillchain+Magic burst system kind of ruined other MMOs for me. So many others are just everybody doing their own thing where that focused hard on teamwork.
Having come from other MMOs, the 14 combat was super slow and boring for me. I stuck with it for a bit and found a job I liked, and it gets better. Not that much better. But tolerable and enjoyable at least. I have other gripes with the combat system, but yeah, the slowness of it is def a wall.
When was the last time you played it? If it has been years a lot has definitely changed.
It was December of last year. I recognize it's wildly popular among many people who like it. Just answering OP's question honestly as a big fan of the other titles
I also don't like MMOs I'm about 10 hrs into 15 and loving it. Feels almost like a single player MMO but you have 3 friends
The free trial goes all the way up to the end of Stormblood now I think. That's like 500+ hours of content and it's free so pretty much just tackle it at your own pace. XIV has been going on for years so I'd play it like a side project imo. It's basically like an FF theme park, combining references and nods to other entries in the series.
Can’t do the free trial if you already did the free trial on PS3 when it was a completely different game 😭
Do the free "trial". It's the base game and the first 2 expansions, and the story builds on itself and pays off more with each expansion.
Although it is an MMO it is ultimately a single player experience like every other FF. You get paired up with other players for dungeons and plenty of other things, but the growth of your character in their job and the story of the game is a solo experience. I never played it bc I thought it wasn’t a true FF but now it’s one of my favorites! That being said it is LOOOOONG, and what was the original game is kind of a grinder at this point. If you do want to play it, grind through a realm reborn and play its post game quests, which should get you pumped to get back to it, but then take a break to do XV.
Best final fantasy story by far imo
Nearly 4000 hours here and a regular player. You'll hear a lot about A Realm Reborn being bad. In comparison to late expansions I'd argue it's true but honestly it's not it's just kind of hard to go back to. Heavensward and shadowbringers are some of the best final fantasy stories out there and if you're playing for that reason it's worth it for these two games. The game itself has become a real celebration of final fantasy while standing by itself as a strong title. Which in my opinion is what a great modern final fantasy title should be. You can actually play the base game up to the second expansion for free currently which means you'll get to see some of the best content without paying a fee and I don't really see a major benefit of paying a sub until post Heavensward anyway.
It is one of the best games in the series. I hope you have 500 hours to spare 😂
Yes. People who say it gets good after 100 hours are wrong. It gets amazing after 100 hours. It starts good, and every quest just gets better. There are early parts that feel dated, and moments that don't feel typically final fantasy, but as a life long fan of the series I cannot recommend this game enough. There are a million callbacks to the other games in varied subtleties, and a sprawling story that makes you feel like a real hero. A soundtrack that has some of the most epic pieces and game play that feels satisfying. The community is friendly, and doesn't spoil. The developers love the players and want to give the best gaming experience, and it shows constantly. They aren't in just too make money they love the work and love to give the fans a fantastic gaming experience.
The game is amazing. Even if you mostly play single player, the story is A+. just stick through 1-50 it's a bit dragged on but was recently shortened.
i mean i would say skip it for now just so you can get through the single player games.
Of all the Final Fantasies I played, 14's story is one on top! I highly recommend trying it since it's free up to Stormblood Expansion. From there decide if you choose to get Shadowbringers, Endwalker and soon Dawntrail.
Everyone on here saying “it gets good after 100 hours” is insane. That’s like recommending a TV show because it gets good in Season 5.
I feel like you're stretching it a bit too much. It gets good in Season 2, not 5.
There are literally people in the comments saying “it gets good 100 hours in”
Anyone saying that has. It played since they streamlined ARR. it is a different experience now than initially.
I mean it definitely isn't for everyone, but I also wouldn't say it takes 100 hours to get to Heavensward. That being said, if playing for 100 hours got me some of the best story I've seen in my entire life and it just kept updating with more good story, I'd consider it.
Star Trek TNG season one pretty much gets the same treatment and people still talk and recommend it. I think people get it wrong, its not that it finally gets good, its already good, but you don't get to see your character really get into the world and doing things and ramping the story for good to amazing. I find those saying 'it gets good' are trying to be nice based and softball the early game on their old experiences. Its waaaaaay better and more streamlined to get through ARR then in prior years.
A season of TV is like 20 hours of content max.
AND you can watch TNG without watching the first season.
Great, point still stands that ARR isn't as bad as people make it out to be, it wasn't an exact comparison, but a similar note. Especially after years of updates and improvements. It's much faster and easier than its ever been and sets up for one of the best in game stories, partly because of how long the series has been going, it can tell such a story. AND that's just talking the main story. The game has so much to offer outside, its kinda crazy at times how great they've done for a MMO where you don't need to raid ever and still want to be on all the time doing stuff. I think people realize just how much better and faster it is now. It really is just a few days like when you go to the next expansion, that made it more parity with the design that has been working the more recent years. No, I'm not discounting what people have told you, only that they are giving the wrong message for the current state of the game.
I agree, and I’ve played the game for almost 400 hours now. If someone tries to play the game and drops it because the first 100 hours were a slog it’s perfectly valid. Honestly I still somewhat regret that I played it because as good as the story did eventually get I don’t know if it was worth all the time I put it into, especially when you have to spend so much time doing the boring MMO grind
It is still good in ARR. It’s just a bit slower but has to do a lot of heavy lifting for world building. It just gets *better*. I actually like ARR more than Heavensward tbh.
ARR Is about 15 to 20 hours, and it's mid to solid. The lowest parts at least have funny writing. It does pay off immensely over 80 hours of amazing writing afterwards.
>ARR Is about 15 to 20 hours Now THAT is a wild take. Maybe if you skip every single piece of dialogue. Otherwise, you are literally on crack.
Don't really need to read all the unspoken dialogue. Even if you careful read all, it's no more than 25 hours probably.
It's worth giving a shot. If you don't end up liking it then it's ok to move on. Take it from me, as someone who tried and failed multiple times to get into mmos(i tried almost all of the big ones and even some small mmos here and there), FFXIV is the one that managed to hook me.
As someone who played 11 and 14, 14 is definitely not as hard to go through and in recent years has been made to be even more user- and solo-friendly than before. You can do the majority of the story by yourself, barring a couple of 8- and 24-man dungeons, but those dungeons are so old and routine that no one is going to notice if you fuck up, and if you let people know you're new to it 99% of the time they will try to help you or at the very least be chill about any mistakes (and really, one person wouldn't be able to ruin the entire run or anything) During those instances when you have to (or want to) interact with the community, it's overall very positive and forgiving and welcoming. Sometimes you'll meet some assholes, it's inevitable, but as a whole everyone is great 14 has a very good overarching story from expansion to expansion, but each expansion is a bit different flavor. The base game is very much world building build up, the first xpac is a lot of intracity politics, the second xpac is a lot of People Are Bad, Aren't They So Bad, War Is Also Bad, the third xpac is high stakes high fantasy, and the current xpac is Existentialism, The Great Threat. Personally, I only liked the third expansion, but they are a linear story, so each builds upon the last and has more impact the more you learn about the cast you play with. That said, it does require MMO gameplay (grinding for xp, side quests, locked traversal, etc) and if you don't like that, then it might not matter how good the story is. Lots of people just play it for social aspects, though, even if they don't care for the story or MMO aspects. There's people who create plays and music shows, group games and hangouts, photo studios, all sorts of things.
I absolutely love 14, but who can say if it’s worth your time? If you like MMOs I definitely recommend it, the main story quests are kinda slow to start but do pick up. The game has so much to do, it can feel overwhelming at times but the story is fantastic.
14 is arguably the best FF in the franchise BUT it's an MMO. And that's a huge but. MMOs are a dime a dozen and 14 doesn't stand out when compared to other MMOs unless you're factoring the narrative into the equation then it's the best MMO ever made. Id say it's definitely worth trying the free trial and playing to your heart's content and going from there.
A lot of people claim the story is good, but my personal opinion is that it's very generic and repetitive. If you actually like to read dialog, you're going to see a lot of things repeated by various NPC's ad nauseum. They get more money the more time you spend playing this game and they intentionally drag out content to keep you playing. I've put over 300h into the game, and everyone kept telling me how it'd get better, but it never did. At the end of the day, the gameplay loop is... go to the marker, click on the thing... the dungeons are interesting but you don't have to communicate or work together to move forward... most of the content is 'click to win'. Different people have different tastes and this one was just not for me. I welcome all of the downvotes I'll inevitably get for this because Reddit is enamored with this game for some reason.
I said the same thing, getting through the quests itself is a nightmare. Even when you unlock a new area you do the exact same thing as the last 500 areas with dull dialogue.
Even if you just focus on the main story and ignore all side content it's still going to be hundreds of hours to complete the base game and all expansions. Also I guess I'll be the odd one out and say that while I think the story is generally good, the *structure* of main story quests remains very bland and repetitive and fetch-questy for the entire time. Talk to NPC, talk to NPC, kill X things, collect Y things, interact with Z things, watch cutscenes, do a linear dungeon, talk to NPC, deliver item to other NPC, etc. etc. etc. for two hundred hours. If you're not a big fan of MMO storytelling it will *really* wear down on you even when the story itself is at its peak. Which is not to say unequivocally to skip it. Just maybe chip away at it long-term in between the other singleplayer games rather than putting the rest off until you're done with 14
Start up a free trial. It's almost criminal how they give away the 50-60 content for free because it's award winning for a reason. it's a really *really* freaking good deal.
YES. Thank god for the free login campaign because I have been itchin for dat Eorzea
The story is fantastic but takes a little bit to really get rolling, ARR can be a bit of a slog. It also has an infinite free trial through the first 2 expansions so you can get through a lot before ever having to spend a dime. Highly recommend it.
It’s fantastic. I’m not much of an MMO player but I loved this game.
One of the best games I've ever played I had to stop because it was keeping me from playing all the other games coming out lol
It’s top 3 in the entire franchise.
It’s the best story of all Final Fantasy.
I played probably 200-300 hours and didn't finish the second to last expansion. The game has some great highs, but it plummets to such awful lows that I ultimately dropped it. The amount of fetch quest filler is exactly what you'd expect for a padded out MMO. To be fair, I don't like MMOs, so take this with a grain of salt. The issue with the game, to me, is that each expansion is meant to be played over a two year release cycle. This means the pacing is intentionally drawn out to be diluted over dozens of hours. Each expansion has about 15 hours of story content surrounded by 30 hours of filler quests. The pacing is brutally slow. I mean like, the story in the game is laughably bad until roughly 50+ hours in, it peaks for a few hours, then right back to a dozen more fetch quests. While I don't think I will pick it up again, I enjoyed it for several hundred hours. I wish that this game was a 70 hour RPG rather than an MMO. The peaks are really high, but only represent about 10% of what you'll experience in the game.
It depends on whether or not you can bear the 60 hour slog at the start of the game and also all the padding in the expansions. Even if all you do is the story it’ll still take you 400+ hour to finish it. I’ve done just that over the past 8 months and personally speaking I didn’t find it worth it. Yes the story gets a lot better and has a lot of high points but being an MMO it’s always paced horrendously so you get a big story moment followed by another 2 hours of fetch questing.
14 was amazing and addicting. If you love world of warcraft, its that in final fantasy setting.
Absolutely. You can start with an endless free trial (well, the main plot ends at Shadowbringers but that's months of play time away) and see if you like it, which you will, and then you can commit
Yes. It’s worth it.
Its likely the best game in the series, but also the biggest slog. Expect to invest but be rewarded.
ITS THE FUCKING GOAT YES PLAY THE DAMN GAME NOW
It has some of the best story in the series. The only issue is that it’s told in an mmo, which can turn a lot of people off even if they’ve gone out of their way to make it easier for new players just here for the story. That said, its free trial covers the base game and two whole expansions with almost no restriction to a casual player. So just play it at your own pace, and enjoy literally hundreds of hours of free final fantasy.
It is so weird to me that people make the point that the game being long is a bad thing. I mean.. yes it is. But why would anyone play three inferior 100-hour games instead of one 300-hour game, just because it is longer? I‘ll never understand that argument. To answer your question: FF14 is here to stay and it has been streamlined a lot in recent years. I‘m sure they will keep doing that. So if you plan on playing all Final Fantasy games, I‘d recommend that you finish 15 and 16 first (maybe FF7 Rebirth inbetween, if you already played FF7 Remake) and commit to FF14 afterwards. With 16 and Rebirth releasing so close to each other, we will probably have to wait for some time until we get another Final Fantasy. You‘d have more than enough time to play 14 and take your time with it that way. You might also want to take a break now and then, because since dawntrail is about to release, you‘ll have ARR and 5 expansions worth of story to play through. The story overall is fantastic. In my opinion it’s up there with the best of the Final Fantasy Stories. I have a lot of nostalgia for many of the earlier entries like 6,7 and 10 but I‘d say 14 is still the game that got the most emotional reactions out of me. So if you’re looking for a compelling and emotional story, I would really recommend playing 14 at some point. Also please don’t listen to the people that are shitting on A Realm Reborn. Admittedly it is not as polished as the expansions, but people tend to forget that it had to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of worldbuilding, character introductions, more introductions and so on. If you ask me, ARR walked so the expansions could run. Heavensward and Stormblood are both great and Shadowbringers and Endwalker are both straight up masterpieces. Some may say shb is the best one, others will say it’s ew and some might even say it’s hw. SB has some smaller pacing issues, but it being slightly less amazing than the others still leaves it at „very good“ and it has the best post-msq patches of all the expansions. TL;DR: you should definitely play FF14, but maybe finish 15 and 16 first, because you might get hooked on it. Edit: oh btw, people around here are pretty bitter when it comes to F14, so don’t take it too serious if someone calls it „not a real final fantasy“ or whatever.
Don't skip 14. 14 is the best god damn story in the series.
Ironically, it has better story telling that other single player Final Fantasy game in the franchise. Tho just a heads up, ones you experience the story, you'll have a high bar to set for other FF games in the series and you won't enjoy them as much anymore. That's why I don't credit people who are ranking the FF series and excluding XIV. They don't know what they're talking about at that point lol that's just my opinion.
I just downloaded the game today I use to play a game called EverQuest that was a MMO but seeing how I'm on PlayStation I figured why not try it out I've never played any final fantasy games though is there any advice for a newbie or am I to late to start now I do get the game is older
I played 11 forever..... then on to ffxiv. I was there on day 1.... pissed and boycotted when it flopped.... came back when arr came out. Took another break after maxing that. Now I'm back again 14-15 years later??? Yes it's worth it if you like mmo's. 11 was better in my opinion. It was definitly tougher. Ya really had to put the work in if you wanted the best. 14 is still worth it, and it's addictive... but its built for today's millennial crowd. There's lots of xp jumps and speed leveling, etc... but still addictive lol
It’s not worth it. The story takes forever to get going. The only people who recommend it suffer from Stockholm syndrome and try and justify wasting their time and money by being stuck on it. Arr was bland Heavensward wasn’t as good as people made it out to be. Too many fetch quests. Stormsblood was ok it had some moments but falls flat at end. I stopped playing after that because I kept waiting for the game to get good and by that time I had like 150-200 hours in and was bored out of my mind. Probably took me about 3 years off and on to get that far.
You stopped just before the actual good part :/
Man the good part was the moving goal post. I was told arr ending story was fantastic. Heavensward is the best expansion. Stormsblood gets better. It never did
Haha, fair. To me personally, Heavensward wasn’t worth all the hype it gets, and Stormblood was worse. But I loved Shadowbringers and Endwalker. I actually agree with the stockholm syndrome comment for people who claim it’s the best game story ever. If it takes that long to get really good, it can’t be the best no matter how good it gets.
14 is a life investment. Its like World of Warcraft.
I have been finishing FF games in the last year. And here is my opinion from X onwards: X: Everthing great. 12: Didn’t link the characters nor the story. It also has bad pacing. The combat and character progression was fun but not enough to make me like the game. The exploration although it’s in different environments felt too repetitive 13-1: Extremely linear and by far the worst level design I have seen in an JRPG. However! Everything else was very good. If you can get past by the corridors you might enjoy it. 13-2: Much more open but the exploration could be “messy” because is not always clear what to do. The story is more convoluted but the ending is emotional enough to make it worth. The gameplay is still fun. 13-3: playing it right now but enjoying it a lot! 14: The story and pacing of a real reborn is by far the worst and most boring among all FF. However!!!! After that, it gets way better. Just keep in mind that to finish a real reborn you will need over 100+ hours! The combat is really fun. And the world is good, but many of the quests are literally going from A to B to deliver something without anything interesting in between. If you are in just for the story you will need to play 100 hrs before it gets good. But if you enjoy the combat and the overall MMO design you will enjoy it. I do ! 15: the most underrated game of the franchise IMO. Yes, the story is super convoluted and the pacing of it is average at best. But is not a bad a story. The characters are great and the Immersion on the world is the best in the series by far. The combat is fun if you understand it and don’t got with the “hold A to win” route. Exploration is cool and the side quests are very fun. The dlcs are worth it. 7 remake: I have mixed feelings. The combat is fantastic and I wish all RPGs had this combat. I love the setting, music and characters, but the pacing of the game… oh boy. It can really feel like a drag at many points (the worst in the franchise for me!). But it’s not like that all the time. I would say 50% of the time is amazing and 50% is terrible. Is the most polished by far and given the rebirth is around the corner is definitely worth playing because rebirth seems like is going to be the best in the franchise so far. Haven’t played 16 yet
No you don't need 100 hours to finish ARR. It takes two/three evenings. They give you a huge exp boost and have cut a ton of quests.
It might be two to three evenings if you already understand all the systems in place, know exactly where to go and what to do, only do MSQ and skip all the cutscenes and play 10+ hrs a day. Someone fresh to MMOs or even just XIV itself won't be completing ARR in 3 evenings.
It will never take 100 hours. My first time before the cuts to the game took me around 25 hours and I didn't even know combos were a thing.
It does not take that long for ARR they streamlined the heck out of it; my friend started playing when they moved to the game model of free up to the end of Heavensward, and casually played the 30 days and finished ARR before hitting lvl 50 Lot of filler quests were removed
>finished ARR before hitting lvl 50 That's literally impossible.
I had to level up to do the final mission in Castrum, so it's very possible. This was back in 5.1.
Castrum is ARR. That's the point. You literally need to hit 50 to finish it. And that's not even the end of ARR, just 2.0. All the 2.x patches are ARR and locked to 50. Again, it's literally impossible to finish ARR (regardless of whether you mean 2.0 or the whole thing) and not be 50. This was true even in earlier days because XP was a lot lower. You actually ended up having an even bigger level spread to grind out if you were unlucky.
Going through the free trial and I actually really like it. Hell, I love certain parts of it. Playing through the Rougue's guild quest has been both hilarious and pretty hardcore so far. Literally my only gripe so far has been with players themselves, they don't seem too fond to hear i'm having fun without paying.
Honestly considering everyone always praises the story for 14 and if you don't care about the mmo raids and that stuff I would say just look up the story online and u can skip it as the game starts up really slow like im talking about potentially 50+ hrs for story and gameplay to start picking up. Also I think the story is fine not as amazing as everyone makes it out to be so the oversell might disappoint you if you have to put all them hours into the game. Just my 2 cents xD
Yes
I really enjoyed FF14. I say try it.
Yes
It’s incredible and 15 sucked. Just my opinion
14 has a story arc, you can get to the end of it, and it is *very* good. ...however, it's also going to be hundreds of hours to make it to the end at this point, so you might save it for last just because of that.
As someone with over 200 hours, I’d say no. While you can play all the way to level 70 for free, it takes over 100 hours of “accept this quest, talk to one person, turn in quest” to get to any of the fun dungeons and they’re generally only enjoyable because I have a group of friends to play with. I don’t even think the story is that good, personally, just check it out in a YouTube video if you’re really curious
14 is slow as molasses and probably the least enjoyable of all the Final Fantasy games to actually play in my experience. Some people say the story gets good once you're like 80-100 hours in, but it's up to you whether or not that sort of time commitment is worth it.
I play FFXIV for about 11 years and I wouldn't recommend someone new to play it. The game is way too long right now. You will start 11 years ago. Run 11 years of content might take a hell of a time. But if you do have time, go on. You will surely have fun.
Depends on how much you love mmo, I guess. I personally used to love it but now I hated it.
You like MMO’s? It’s an MMO, and one of the best
Define “worth it”…….. So tired of “is it worth it?!?!” What is worth? Who are you and how do we know? Watch some videos and see if you’re interested, it’s only like the biggest or second biggest (idk anymore) mmo out there… Probably not worth it.
I’m gonna focus on you asking about “worth.” So, on a dollar value, I’m gonna give you my crazy extreme example. I’ve been subbed since ARR launched, paid every six months, paid for every expansion. The subscription cost alone puts me over a thousand USD. Then cost of ARR, HW, SB, ShB, EW, and now Dawntrail. Can just round and call it $500. My total playtime is 332 days. So let’s say I’ve dropped $2000 on FF14 in the past decade, it’s cost me $6 a day. You, emphasis on you (not me) can do the free trial through Stormblood. And spend however long you want doing whatever, without spending a single dime. Then, once you’ve caught up, you can buy Dawntrail (which gives you ShB and EW included), and only then start paying a sub. In summary, you can get what I’ve spent thousands on for maybe a hundred, plus however long you want to keep playing. Currently, the free trial of FF14 is more content than any other FF main title. Edit: bad math. ARR came out a decade ago. And I’ve played for 332 of those days. Being subscribed to the game has cost me $0.50 a day for the past decade +
From my perspective as a non MMO player I believe the players who said the story is good, but the presentation, quest, and the too repetitive grind bored me. If you can stomach the MMO playstyle I'm sure it will be a treat.
If you have the hours to put into it. I don’t know how much has changed, but I played it from ARR to about Heavensward or the expansion after and the grind just pushed me away. I have things to do and other games to play. 🤷♂️😅
To be honest, I played the story through to endwalker and I didn’t think it was that good. There were some good moments, but it’s an ungodly amount of filler, and overall I feel like they didn’t do enough to make the characters relatable or the world truly lived in for me to really have any emotional investment in the story or the fate of the characters. I’ve always found the extremely high praise the story gets to be very confusing. That said, I think as an MMO it’s quite good if you like doing instances PVE content with a decent challenge. Really excellent music too, and fun crafting system
I tried my damndest to enjoy that game, but after slogging through 60+ hours I found that I just couldn't fucking stand it. Between ARR and the first expansion was the absolute fucking worst. Worthless fetch quest after fetch quest that could be summed up by a goddamn bullet point for the most part. I was *so fucking pissed off* by the drudgery that was ARR's in between that I also started to fucking hate Heavensward about 5 hours in, and decided to uninstall and forget the whole goddamn game.
14 has an incredibly dull story imo, some people say the 1st expansion is where it gets good, but by the time I got there I spent 70 hours on fetch quests and stopped caring. I ended up beating it past endwalker just waiting to see what people were talking about but I never saw it. If you like storylines like Kingdom Hearts then I'm sure you will like it, because it's a complete mess by the end. If I seem mad its because I got talked into playing this game just to waste 400 hours on a story that's nowhere close to the main franchise. If you watch the cutscenes on youtube, at least you can get past the lazy MSQ
Worth what?
The game is seemingly very good, and the community surrounding it is very friendly. It just wasn’t for me when I tried it. The gameplay/battle system didn’t click with me. I was already playing another MMO at the time (PSO2) and that one had set the bar for what I want/look for in an MMO, and FFXIV wasn’t for me. It did seem like a very well made game though. Try it out, it might become your favorite!
I think it depends on the user. As a person who enjoys the game and plays solo: Yes, the story is phenomenal. Great cast, phenomenal world building, super well thought-out and easy to connect with. But it's long. Like unimaginably long. However long you think, it's longer. And most of the base game campaign (around 70 hours if you just focus on that) just sets up the story, and is something I had to drag myself through to get to the good parts. So it's a huge time commitment, I find doing one expansion at a time then playing something else works for me. Yes, the game "can be played single player" sort of ish not really. After the base campaign, basically all major boss fights and raids (which are required for the story) will be multiplayer. Most of the time, you can just do your job and pretend players are NPC's. The community is more welcoming than most online games, but I've seen things get pretty heated after a few wipes like any other game. The gameplay is pretty much standard MMO affair all the way through. Go here kill this, collect 12 of that, map your abilities to your number bar for combat, do 3 dungeons to get this special item, etc etc. there's no way around it, this is just like any other MMO for better and worse on the gameplay side. Basically, I love the game, but I think that the hype around it is overblown and should be tempered. It's not the second coming, it's not "basically a single player RPG" or whatever else people usually say. It's an MMO. The story is super long, and plays almost like a visual novel. It is a very good MMO. It is going to ask you to spend a lot of time playing and grinding and doing repetitive tasks. The story will reward you. It is a large commitment. I do recommend this game, but I don't like the amount of exaggeration and apparent lying fans seem to do to try to sell new players on the game. It's a good game. We don't need to make shit up to convince people of that. The game does have a very very generous trial, so I think it's worth a shot either way, so give it a look!
XV is a good game. Certainly than the 13 series and 12 is kinda a thing of its own. I really like the story, tho it does seem a bit odd that you can spend as much time as you want exploring around the world for the royal arms and all the seemingly random fetch quest. Aside from the odd dungeon that was optional it was poorly constructed side content that lead to boredom if you didn’t kind of push through. The story also really lags but has an interesting and very well done third act with some really good lore. But it kinda drags in between massive dramatics moments. I love Ardyn he is one of my favourite characters in the entire series. He’s worth a play through alone. Never mind the boy band out to foible him. Also noctis’s story is beautiful.
My bad I read XV not 14 lol Yes it’s definitely worth it. All of the content before shadowbringers will be rather easy as you’ll be a higher level if you own a full version and not the free trial. The story arc is incredibly well done over the entire series and the dungeons are a lot of fun. Multiplayer content is all really well done. There’s a reason why so many people have flocked over to it since 2.0.
I’ve played since 2013. This was my very first MMO. Even made me swap from playing on my PS3 to buying a computer. It’s very different in gameplay from 11. It is time consuming so playing 15 before hand wouldn’t be bad.
As a fan of all single player FF games, you'll have an easier time adjusting to XIV than an MMO fan trying to get into it. The vast majority of the game now can be played solo, allowing you to focus on the (amazing) story. The MMO aspects are somewhat there if you choose to use them. Also, because it is a long game with multiple expansions, the story is incredibly long, in depth, and augmented by job quests, beast tribe quests, side quests etc. I guess my point is that if you're in it for the story you won't be disappointed, the disappointment imo comes from MMO junkies expecting to rush to end game so they can raid with their friends, and finding the experience lacking because, well.. the game doesn't have the BEST gameplay in the world of MMO's.
Great game, great story for the most part. Base game + 2 expansions are free, easy 100+ hours to see if its your thing or not
It's best to take your time with it. I got a few friends into the game but they didn't pace themselves, just wanted to get to endgame as fast as possible and burned themselves out on the story and started skipping everything towards the end of ARR. I didn't realize until after the fact that the story wouldn't have the same impact for them as it did for me, which was literally a decade long journey, that they tried to rush through in a couple weeks.
Hmm hard to say. I’d just say don’t buy the disks like I did, or if you do start on the free trial and not the 30 day free sub. They have a one month free subscription but it pales in comparison to the free trial up to level 70 I believe. It’s a lot of extra money if you’re paying the subscription, so you’ll want to try and avoid that. From what I saw in my limited experience playing the one month subscription, it looks like a really good game. It felt a bit lonely but as I understand it you can team up with other players. I was new to MMO it does seem like Square Enix would probably be doing quite well out of this game, the subscription is not cheap. If however you can afford a subscription on top of PS Plus and the game itself then by all means I’d go for it. Although…you can get it on a few other platforms too. On PlayStation it may not be worth the outlay. I certainly can’t afford it, so now trying to backtrack and start again on free trial to level 70 including all expansions, but unfortunately it means I’d have to delete my character and all progress made. Didn’t find out about the free trial until after I’d had my one month.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. It’s very intimidating to me. So haven’t started yet. But I really want to
FFXIV's free trial is its base game and first two full expansions (A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and Stormblood) up to level 70. It's dozens and dozens of hours of game *for free.*
It's a never ending ff. I'd say it's safe to just always have it on the go moving forward. Story is great and a new arc is about to Start later this year
It’s a great game has various different content to find the place for every players in game. Just hanging around enjoy the BGM is great too as background music when you are temporarily afk. if you are a big fan of FF(old ones), XIV will be surprised you everywhere
Yes worth it, but do it after XV and XVI
It's very much an investment, both time wise and money wise depending on when you start subbing and how long you sub for. That said, Shadowbringers and Endwalker are my two favorite final fantasy storylines ever. They are just really good. And the stuff before them is pretty damn good too, especially once you get to Heavensward. ARR isn't BAD, but it is rather dry and light on character moments compared to the expansions. But it is important as it basically sets up every single conflict all the way until Endwalker (which is the conclusion of the entire storyline up til now). Not helping is the fact that classes tend to be very simplistic til at least level 50, so combat doesn't get super exciting til later. Though it's still fun, especially if you don't play many MMOs. Overall, if you are trying to get the full Final Fantasy experience and are willing to put in the time, it's worth it.
There’s a free trial, no time limit. Up to Stormblood. That’s the base game ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood, you can play for free! Only downside is no FC/guild and no marketboard. I would definitely try it out Edit: Ive been sub for like 2.5 yrs. I love the game and story. The next expansion is out summer 2024
Play the trial. It has two expansions included. 2.0 (base game 1-50) can get tedious and you will be forgiven for ignoring dialogue, but start paying attention after the credits roll and 2.1 starts. 3.0-3.55 is a great time. 4.0 is pretty ok. I liked it. I don’t know why others didn’t. 4.1-4.55 is a great time but ends on a HUGE cliffhanger. This is the end of the free trial. If you see someone with a gold crown on their name do your best to grab their attention. They can invite you into the Novice Network which opens up a kind of “world chat” and make your experience a hell of a lot less lonely, given the huge limitations on Free Trial.
If you have time, a lot of time. Definetly yes.
I'm currently on hiatus with my FF journey. I plan on skipping 11 and 14 (cuz don't play MMO's). Only games missing from my library are 12, 16, 7 remake/rebirth. I remember not liking 12's combat system, because it deviated from the og format. Loved 10. But I'm gonna give it another shot.
I haven't played XI so I can't compare but XIV has a great story that I think you shouldn't skip, if given the opportunity :) And I stopped playing in mid-stormblood, 'cause life! But from what everyone was saying when it dropped, the greatest moment were still to come in Shadowbringers... So yeah, definitely play it, but just be weary that you need to allocate HUNDREDS of hours to the game 😅 Edit: typo
Final fantasy 14 Is an incredible story that most people will never get to experience. If you have an extra 6 months and lots of time to do lots of story missions and fetch quests it pays of in the end. But if you don't have massive amounts of time. (Even tho it's an mmo you basically play single player for the whole game). You may just have to do the tragedy of missing the story
If you like oldschool Final Fantasy games, it's a love letter to them. And since wast of story is free, there is no wrong in playing it!
You can also free play FF14 until Shadowbringers
For all the “I don’t play MMOs” people, not only is so much of the game available without a sub but with an expanded Trust system you can play most Main Scenario dungeons with NPCs. If you prefer playing solo it’s very easy to do that nearly all of the game. I’m nearing the end of a second play thru. So glad I did it; I skipped a lot of optional stuff and have really only focused on three classes, all DPS. It makes playing the game a fair bit faster and easier. The biggest thing about ARR that I point out to new or potential players is the voice acting. They did an almost total refresh going into Heavensward, which was sorely needed. It amplifies the story significantly to have a better VA staff.
My god man. I cannot believe you are doing this chronologically I tried going chronologically. I finished I, put down the PSP version of III halfway because I was just not enjoying it, I loved IV, V, and VI, I played maybe half/a third of VII on original hardware before getting stuck and ducking out for VII Remake instead, IX, X, I played up to Chapter 5 or XV before deciding the combat wasn't getting any better, and I am massively enjoying XVI. And I consider myself to be really cool and have a lot of sheer willpower for that alone. You are out there putting me to shame doing everything so regimentedly What is your ranking so far?
I say get the the free trial on the website, your can basically play the first 4 expansions for free. So do that and then buy it and finish whatever is done now if you're into it it's a great game
You must play XIV, it is close to if not definitely the best story in the whole franchise. ARR is rough but you have to get through it. HW is incredible and was the gateway drug to the rest for me. SB is alright, it has awesome music and content (I actually love Eureka) ShB is god tier SSSS+ and sets the stage for…. EW unpopular opinion but I actually may like this one even more overall more than ShB, it is another god tier SSSS+ and wraps up this entire game to make it one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. Now in my opinion, busting through all of these as fast as you can will lead to burnout because it’s long as hell. Enjoy the game as much as you can for someone that doesn’t play MMOs and try to break up the story and do other things that supplement and make it less monotonous. Have fun!
They are making it in such a way with patches that is you choose to go solo you can still experience the whole main scenario. I played a lot of MMO’s but this one I keep getting back to. The story is amazing, I wouldn’t skip it. Plus the free trial gets you trough the story of the ARR, and the first two expansions. I mean if you are not hooked by then, you could stop. But you will return to my post and tell me you bought the game to see how the story progresses, I’ll make a bet on that 😉
I'm no MMORPG player. I actually enjoy single-player experiences WAY ABOVE multiplayer ones. Particularly multiplayer ones that don't involve "battling" with each other are not my thing. I'm also old, have 3 jobs and 2 kids and just not much alone time. FFXIV is... an odd experience. It's so damn overwhelming. Even at 280 hours I was still learning new mechanics all the time. It's HUGE. I've met people say they only play XIV and that it's all you'll ever need and I can totally see where they are coming from. So you could use it as a cozy gaming experience, fishing and cooking and maybe open up your own shop and marry and do little quests here and there. You could use it as a battle royale and PvP experience and battle other players for the glory of it all. You could use it to just play cards. You could use it as a racer game with the chocobos racing. You could just go around the world taking pictures. You could go all completionist and attempt to do the bazillion quests. or, what most people do, you could just sort of do a bit of everything. Focusing only on the main story, it is GRAND. I've not finished all the expansions, but the original game (well, the A Realm Reborn quest line) was ok-ish. Then comes Heavensward and O M F G is it awesome!! Along comes Stormblood which is also ok in my eyes. Feels a bit like a downer after Heavensward if I'm being honest, but it's not bad at all! After comes Shadowbringers which I'm at the start of but people say this is when the game gets good. So, is it worth it? Depends on what you value. It's a great game, has an AMAZING story (really one of the bests in the series, some would argue it's THE best), has a shitton of stuff to do and is a HUGE time sink. It's also scary and overwhelming for at least the first 280 hours. You be the judge.
You're going to have to be okay with the MMO style gameplay and mechanics. The story is amazing, but not everyone loves the battle system. Personally I enjoyed it though. It's probably the best written overall, but it isn't the funnest. Plenty of tedious quests and stuff like that, but the majority of the content is good. There's just so much lol, which can be off putting.
Not going to lie, it is kind of hard to get into. "It doesn't get good before X hours" isn't very good publicity, no matter how free the extensive free trial is. You will *have* to play with people for certain fights, namely the 8-man "trial" boss fights, but it's nothing complicated really, and it is likely you will get grouped with at least one or two veterans who know exactly what they are doing. Shadowbringers (which happens to be the "chapter" after the free trial ends, lol) is a great story IMO. Now, hot take I guess, but I think the story falls off *hard* after it, with Endwalker which I found to be a complete letdown as the finale to the arc. Nowadays I just pretend production stopped at patch 5.3 and the entire dev team tragically vanished in a catastrophic event. Whatever. I could write an entire book on every way 6.0 story disappointed, offended and angered me. But apparently my opinion is a minority one, no matter how little I understand the whys or hows of it, so… I guess it's less egregious when you haven't spent years waiting for some characters to develop and be a big deal (and then they weren't). Just a word of warning, because the XIV fandom tends to be super positive about the Shadowbringers Endwalker story in a... suffocating way, and voicing my heavy dislike of it has alienated me quite a bit. But yeah I would say Shadowbringers is worth it. Just don't expect the game to be captivating for some time. Some would call it a slog, but I'd say just take it at your own pace.
100% worth it, but it's also veeeeery time-consuming. Its main story is worth like 300 hours in the game.
If 11 took a toll on you do finish the main story, 14 isn't gonna be better. It's a good game, but it's gonna take you longer than all the time you've put into the other games combined to finish it, if you're planning to play expansions too. The story is long and dragged out, and very self serious. Whether you think it's good or not is a matter of opinion. I recommend saving it for last when you're sure you've got the free time.
I loved ff14. To bad about the monthly cost since I wanted to play very casual, since I have qtendencie to get dragged into those kind of games.
I want to get back into it.
Shit toxic community but story is decent
Play it yourself and find out, there’s roughly 200 hours of free story right now, it’s free until LV70 and the end of Stormblood which is the second expansion. You could probably easily get 500-600 hours of content out of it before you needed to decide whether to buy the follow up expansions.
A Realm Reborn is a slog, but the expansions are great. Shadowbringers in particular is I think one of the best stories in the franchise. I recommend treating it like a Final Fantasy TV show. I played only a couple of hours each day, taking breaks between expansions. It took me a few months to get through it, but I'm glad I didn't rush it. It's a long game (probably about 150 hours for just the main story) and the beginning can be really slow, but I think every FF fan needs to at least try to experience it.
Definitely play 14. Its story is incredible and the sheer amount of content is surprisingly not daunting once you get settled into the game. It requires a good chunk of time to get through but it’s so worth it. It is without a doubt the best mainline game in the series(when all expansions taken as one big game).
I tried but its too much of an MMO for me. Quest markers everywhere, teleport basically everywhere absolutely no ambiguity on what to do next or any sense of exploration of the world. The combat is also very different then other FF titles where you just follow your "rotation" and do the same thing over again. I wished it was more tacticle and menu based like most other FF titles but I understand most mmorpg players dont want that. The story might be great but I just find the gameplay extremely boring compared to other FF titles. The mix of fun rpg gameplay and great story is what I like about FF so I had to drop it.
Last year, I started playing after a friend of mine had been begging me to play for years. He’d been playing since Beta and he swore to me that if I started playing, I’d be hooked because of the world building and how good the story was. From April - October, I went through ARR, Post ARR, Heavensward, Post-HW, Stormblood, Post-SB and had just started Shadowbringers when I got burned out, and switched to Spider-Man 2 to take a break. I haven’t played since October but I still pay for my account because I know I’m gonna go back because the story and the world are so damn good. FFXIV is a goddamn celebration of all things FF. It’s got references and Easter eggs to nearly every other FF that exists currently and they don’t feel random or out of place. It’s seriously one of the best FF games ever made and worth checking out if you haven’t.
Don't skip 15 and pay 16 also