This game has taken 300 hours of my life so far, and all I want is to STOP!......but i can't.....
User Rating: 8.2 | Final Fantasy XI (PlayOnline Entry Disc) PS2
Well, ffxi sure is a world or its own. But is that such a good thing? This reviewer doesn't think so. As several other of these reviewers, I'm a long time ff fan. And frankly, this game upsets me. It is in no way a ff game. And I in no way am a religious MMORPG player. But I still am having some fun with this game. This is actually a very hard game to review, but I'll do my best. This game looks very good, highly detailed scenery, lots of enemies and customizable characters. Truly something good to look at. Not being a fan of mmorpg's I'm not fond of the battle system, but fans would be. The battles are get close to enemies and fight them live, I prefer the tradition ff style of a separate, enclosed battle. And the leveling is....well, it just is. I'm level 26 now, and I often spend an entire day playing and level once, it really takes forever. But I guess that's the way in mmo's. It also adds a lot of prestige for higher lvl players. And it helps a bit to keep you playing. Surprisingly, I checked my game clock and I've been playing about 300 hours so far. The hard drive is pretty cool, so far I've only gotten use of it for ffxi and resident evil: outbreak (which sucked ;P). Then you've got the Tetra Master game, which just plain sucks. They should've gone with the ffviii card game, that was good. However, if they'd gone with Blitzball, from ffx, I would have paid for a Blitzball only game! Simply put, Tetra Master was the worst side game they could have put in there (but lucky for me, I save my $1 a month by not subscribing to it any more.) Speaking of money. These cheapskates didn't accept a $100 sticker for the PS2 version as being enough, no. You must pay $15 a month for 1 content id on ffxi alone just to play (although the price is dropping). And if you want a second player, its another $1 a month. But its good though, because the PlayOnline guys are always working, always putting out new updates and patches and doing server maintenance. In fact they've been doing it for like 3 years now! This game has been out for a long time in Japan. Even I got it almost a year ago for PC, unfortunately my video card couldn't handle it and I had to abandon playing (but don't try taking this game back to video game stores! no!). Anyway, I'm rambling. So this game might get you hooked, might get you pissed off. Got me both. So is it worth it? For ff fans, I'd say no, not for the $100. It's a disappointment if you go in looking for an ff game. For mmorpg fans: there are better mmo's out there, check out star wars. And for anyone else: this game isn't the worst way to get into the mmo world, but it is one of the worst to get into the ff world. So, final thoughts: thumbs down, sorry square enix... 
