It's really hard to pick a place to start with the game. Final Fantasy XI is one of those rare games that comes along that only a select few will find real joy in. Gameplay is open-ended in Final Fantasy XI. You are the savior of Vana'diel, or at least that's what the story would have you believe. Obviously everyone that plays is the savior, but we'll just leave it that your character is the great one. The game uses the job system from the older Final Fantasies and has around 18 jobs (this being a review encompassing all of the expansions as well which includes Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, and Treasures of Aht Urghan) with only 6 selectable at the start of the game. You need to obtain level 30 before unlocking any advance jobs. Now, everything is skill-based. Your weapon, evasion, magic ability, and certain abilities are rated on skill level with a max according to your job. After about level 10 with any job, you're going to have to find a party. Most decent parties should consist of a healer, black mage, some damage dealers, and a tank. The tank being the character that attempts to keep the enemy attacking him while the healer maintains the tank's life. The dynamics of the party system here require precise timing and coordination. Sound a bit complicated? Believe me, it is. The very steep learning curve for the game will be an instant turn-off for some, so before you consider investing in the game, be willing to have a lot of patience and time. Now every job has a two-hour ability that's usually extremely powerful in exchange for the limitations on how much you can use it (i.e. only once every two hours) and several lesser abilities that can range from 30 seconds to 20 minutes to use again. Each weapon has a set number of weapon skill attacks, similiar to limit breaks, that can be used by attacking the enemy repeatedly. The enemies themselves are varied and many. You'll find the cheating pallette swap later in the game, but for the most part there's a solid variety. Some monsters are aggressive and attack on sight, sound, magic use, or health levels. All combat is real-time. If you can see a monster and it's unclaimed, you can attack it with no loading other than the brief time it takes to pull your weapon. There are a lot more details to get into about the gameplay, but I hardly have the room to do so. Suffice to say, you're going to be spending a long time playing this game to learn everything. Possibly longer than you have or it will exist. Each job takes a lot of refinement to understand.
The problem with the graphics is that they are basically PS2 graphics presented on a computer. You'd expected a lot more out of them, but for the most part, they're pretty decent. Character models are good looking and the environments are pretty detailed if only a bit grainy. The game plays fine in dial-up or broadband, though the latter is prefered, and the only slowdown in the game is likely due to a weak graphics card or a bogged down hard drive. Still, you have the option to turn down some of the effects to compensate for this, but this only further degrades the graphics.
There's not much to say about the sound. It's sort of there really. There's no vocal work in the game, but the background music comes across quite nicely. Battle music is usually pretty intense. Sound effects for the game are one of its strong points. Every spell or abilities has its own unique sound.
Most of the value comes from what Square-Enix does in adding content. This isn't the expansion packs that I speak of, but the usual seasonal updates. They are always balancing and tweaking jobs to prevent abuse and make lots of efforts to disuade real money traders (RMTs) from unbalancing the gameplay and economy. Every expansion also has its own bonuses, usually in the form of another story addition telling more about the history of Vana'diel. There are so many quests to undertake you'll likely feel overwhelmed. The only drawback to this is that some require groups of people so you might have trouble doing some of them unless you have friends or have joined one of the game's linkshells.
Final Fantasy boils down to either being a game you absolutely love or absolutely hate. There's very little middle ground and you're likely to not find any casual players. I no longer play the game due to money constraints and the fact that I simply played it so much that I burned myself out on it. If this is your first MMORPG, you might leave with frustrated feelings. In short, Final Fantasy XI takes utter dedication to get the most out of it and many may not have the time to do so.
The good: Very deep, complex gameplay, lots and lots of value, constant updates to fix any bugs or problems, fairly affordable.
The bad: Graphics are pretty outdated, sound is so-so, steep learning curve will turn a lot off, very long investment time before you get the most out of the game.
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