I no longer play FFXI in preference to EverQuest but all-in-all Final Fantasy Online was a pretty good game. Pros: - Excellent Graphics - The regions, cities, and dungeons in the game were very detailed and realistic. The breathtaking scenes in it were some of the best I've seen. Environmental effects such as shadows, sunsets, and the spashing of water when you walk through it were very cool. - Great Music - While I noticed a lack of music the further away from the starting cities you traveled, the music in places like Bastok were very catchy. The variety of battle music was very good too. There was one theme for soloing outdoors, one for soloing in a dungeon, one for grouping outdoors, and one for grouping in a dungeon; all of which were catchy. - Nice Job System - I enjoyed the ability to switch to any class you'd like whenever you felt bored with whatever class you had. The addition of sub jobs was another great aspect, I found the quest which unlocks the subjob system to be realitively easy and quick. Cons: - Unacceptable downloading times - One of the biggest drawbacks to Final Fantasy Online was the length of time it takes to get started. By started I mean just getting to the game itself to play. I find that taking 5+ hours on a DSL connection to patch over 7000 files after installing the numerous discs already to be extremely time consuming and tedious. Then add to that the fact you need to update and patch Play Online just to get to the point where you can do any patching at all you can easily spend many many hours just getting the game up and running on your computer. - Lots of Lag - While in general the game isn't horribly laggy, I do find that on my computer in crowded areas or in single groups with lots of spell effects going off at once that lag tends to be bad. I am running a 1.6 Ghz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of RAM and a 128 Nvidia graphics card so I would imagine running on anything slower would be even more laggy. - Poor User Interface - Another big drawback for this game is the fact that it was designed with the Playstation 2 console in mind. After playing EverQuest for over a year before starting FF Online I found the inability to use the mouse effectively in 1st person perspective to be annoying. I couldn't even click on a door to target it when in 1st person - I would end up targeting myself so I would have to switch to 3rd person just to open a door. I hardly found the macro system to be useful. Unlike EverQuest where you simply pressed a button 1 - 0 on the keyboard to use a macro (known in EQ as a hotkey) in FF Online you have to press several buttons to get to the macro to use it. (I'm not entirely sure how to work the macro system in Final Fantasy Online but from what I saw when I experimented with it I didn't find it all that useful.) - Huge Travel Times - Getting to your hunting ground of choice was another complaint of mine. I found that I was spending upwards of 30 minutes real time just getting from one place to another. While I love to travel from place to place (Example: Bastok to Valkrum (sp) Dunes) and see the sights since the graphics are so great, I do find that having to be on a constant watch for hostile monsters while I'm just trying to get to my group to be ardious. The further away from the cities you go I noticed an increase in the number of hostile monsters vs. the non hostile ones which can further increase travel times if you need to skirt around a baddie in your way. - Stuck Grouping - This game is not intended to be much of a solo style game. This becomes apparent by around level 6 as a caster and a little higher as a melee class. The difficulty level of the mobs jumps drastically at this point and you need to group for safe experience. The problem is that as a caster you'll find that most melees at this level aka warriors can solo up towards level 9 or 10 and gain much better experience then by grouping with a caster leading to the result of casters having a difficult time getting into a group just to get a positive experience flow. Experience pentalties for this game weren't horrible in my opinion. While the experience loss from a death isn't small, in a good group you can gain some serious levels to compensate... just getting through the first 10 or so levels as a caster though is extremely difficult. In conclusion, if you enjoy grouping and have a good deal of time both for patching, downloading the game files, traveling within the game, finding a group, as well as having a good deal of patience to get through the first few levels of the game and have a machine that can handle the demands of the game then this is an okay game to play. If you prefer to hunt solo for experience I would recommend other games instead.
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