FFXI is an underapreciated game that has a FANTASTIC community and pushes, for better or worse, mostly team play.
A great war has worn the people of Vanadiel. the 3 nations, Bastok, Windurst, and San doria pull together past their differences to face a mighty foe. a couple decades have past and Vanadiel seems at peace, and you brave adventuror start your adventure, and hope to make a name for yourself.
GAMEPLAY
since an MMO has lots of different features, too much to just mash together, and changes as you play along, i will break this review in this order: Character Creation, First levels, Mid levels, Advanced levels, PvP and economy. Character Creation:
in FFXI you may choose from 5 races: the Humes (humans) Elvanns, Tarutarus, Galka (all male) and Mithra (all female). Humes are the very balances and felxibale race, and do well in almost every job available. Elvanns, unlike other games who call them Evles usually, are slower than humes, but are stronger and can take more hits and have high MND wich goes towards healing and magic def. the Tarutarus are the small magical race. they have low physical stats, but are the best race to choose for any mage class. Galka are big, BIG brutes. just by looking at them you can tell theyre the more physical class of the bunch. Mithra are the swiftest. they're also the race that will cause males who plays this want to fix their pants >.> *uh-hem* when you start you choose from the basic MMO variety of jobs, warrior, the basic tank, white and black mage, healer and nuker, their and monk, dmg/sec. and redmage, wich is bacicly everything kind of mixed. but as you play the game and do different quests, you can open new jobs. now your thinking "but, how am i going to play it, i dont want to make a new character!" good new for you people, you dont have to. in FFXI, if you choose warrior (WAR) at the beginning of the game and latter decide a black mage (BLM) looks way more fun to play, all you have to do is go to your home in the city, and change your job. this encourages you to play around with different jobs without creating a new character. though you will have to start back at lvl 1 for that job.
also, at a certain level you can take a quest to have another job, a subjob. with this abillity you can be a BLM/WHM (black mage/ white mage) and you can nuke and heal your party. your subjob adds stats and is caped at half your main job level, so if your lvl 30 BLM and sub WHM, who is at lvl 35, it will only be at lvl 15 and your only allowed to access spells youve learned up to that lvl on WHM. this adds a new element entirely to the game as you can mix and match different jobs to find the best mix for your party (though most have been found and noted on FFXI sites and most everyone is expected to use them to get a party) Early levels(1-30)
in this part of the game, most jobs dont have all their abilities, if any. for newbies, this is the time to learn your jobs place in a party, and how to use it well. for example, if your a WAR you should learn early on how to hold hate and keep the enemy on you as your WHM and BLM wear it down and keep you alive and your other Party members help you out or help take out the monster. you'll also learn skill chains (SC) as you use a weapon you gain exp for that weapon. as you lvl up that weapon your learn different special attacks for it. use these in a party to add extra damage. use 2 correctly and close to eachother causes a SC. this adds more damage to the enemy, and mages will learn that they can preform Magic Bursts (MB) after each differnt SC by casting the right element. this adds more damage to the spell. as you progress, more and more SC and MB will open up, and will be a vital part to every party if they want to survive.
Mid Levels (31-60) at lower levels you might see a couple extra jobs like a Paladin (a warrior who is more defensive and wears heavier armor and learns white magic, at the expence of atk ) and a Dark Knight (a warrior who is more offensive who looses most of his defence but learns Black magic) but now you should see them more often as lvl 30 is when you can quest fo these extra jobs and many do so. also, by this point, most jobs should have all or most of their abillities (except mages). this changes the gameplay up a bit as new mixture of jobs will be seen more often. for example, Dark knights (DRK) learn their famous soul eater ability, where they looses hp per hit but adds emence damage. with these new abilities, different tactics on how to use SC are used and how jobs are selected for partyss. Theives are usually passed on earlier levels, sinc Monks do more damage in the same amount of time. but now Theives have Sneak Attack (attack behind an enemy do huge amounts of damage) and Trick attack (adds damage when attacking behind and ally and puts all hate generated on that player). with SATA (Sneak Attack+ Trick Attack) Theives become a almost must for partys as they help keep hate on the tank, wich is important as more powerfull healing spells from WHM are being casted more often.
at level 50, you jobs armor becomes available to be quested. the armor set is supposed to add the most to your job, but most dont seem to do so, as other equipment add alot more. but the set does add decent traits and is more easily attained then other stong armor. also around this time, partys are even more difficult to find due to many doing their Matt quests. to get past level 50, you must do a quest to make your level cap level 55. at level 55 you'll have to do another quest to make it 60, and so on till level 75. partys become harder to find since, many either stop partying to do these quests, or go back and level another job (like me) Advanced Levels (61-75)
by this time, more abilities are learned and (to my knowlege as ive never reached this level) more BCNM are easier to defeat BCNM (burning circle notourious monsters) are very hard boss fights that usually have very hard to get items. these items are usually very usefull, or very valuable to other players to trade to ;] PvP
their really isnt any player vs player option besides the game of Balista in FFXI. you must be level 30 and have done a quest to get your license. the game (in my experience and server anyway) usually isnt that popular, at lower levels anyway. mainly, 2 teams have to fight eachother to earn the right to score on their "Rook" they must find stones in the ground and travel to the other teams rook and throw them in at the right time and score for their team. the highest score wins. other rules also are in the game, but usually varry match to match and i cant remember them all. Economy
the econ of FFXI is has been inflated EMENSOULY as i remember it. at the begining idk how much everything cost, but when i last played, 100,000 gil was mere pocket change. also, most money is gained through the Auction House (AH), and most items are too. this seems well and all, but most items are greatly inflated due to what a many blame the people who guy gil instead of working for it. so when a person puts up an item 10,000 more than its work, and someone who doesnt care since hes bought so much, other sellers see this and start raising their asking price, causing many to pay this. also, this makes it hard on newbies since its pretty hard to make gil. quest dont give much, the highest ive seen was 20,000 i think, most way less, and mony dont pay. to make money without buying it online, is to farm maybe days on end for items to sell or use to make other items with to sell for more.
but that aside, players can join guilds to craft many differnet items. from the guild you can learn differnent recipees to make new items, and to take off caps on your synthasising level to make better items. this route to riches takes time, lots and lots of it, and lots of money if you have it. if not, add about 2X the amount of time for farming for crystals and other items needed for the item. though, if you have the patience, this is a very good way to make money.other ways are fishing, and actually farming as to growing plants. Batteling
as with most MMO, its all about the auto attack. just point, click, get close and attack. for melee anyways. different weapons can attack faster and cause less damage, or slower with more damage. as stated above, SC and MB causes timing and teamwork to pull off. casting spells is a little different. mages will have to select the spell and point and click. they will have to think when using spells though, as many cause lots of hate and will have to watch their MP so it doesnt run too low, causing the party to wait for it to restore after each battle. unfortunatly, fighting monsters is the only way to gain exp. doing quests only gives items or gil. though, this doest push people to join partys more often to gain exp. also, to get any good exp, you will need to join a party as weak enemys give very low exp and monsters that give you decent exp are too hard to take alone, as you will need to rest up to 5 minutes after each fight. this is good and bad, you will party often wich adds to the comunity as i met many new friends through good partys, but its very hard to solo, which i know many like to do. but for those that do, there is a job for that you can quest for, although not ment for soloing, many do use it for that with great success.
GRAPHICS/SOUND
graphic wise, FFXI is one of the best looking MMO's out there. the animations are very crips and character models and enviroments are very detailed for an MMO, unlike most ive seen that look a bit like a game from the late 90's IMO. Sounds is also great. like any good FF game, the soundtrack is fantastic, as many areas have their own soundtrack as you enter them. my favorite is the Chocobo Theme song that plays while riding one :]
OVERALL
a great MMO thats a little underapreciated by many with WoW in the market place. the community and gameplay will have you hooked for quite a while. though some will play this and think WoW is much better, idk though since i havent played WoW yet. though for someone who hasnt played WoW and want an MMO that will always be helpfull, kind, and mostly considerate, this is the game for you. a little note as well. what i liked about this game, idk why though, is its text screen. unlike most MMO ive played, their text boxis small and is barely noticed when players are typing furiously at you and tucked into a cornor. in this game however, it takes up about 1/3 of the bottom of the screen, but not too much where you think its in the way, and with no activity, it will lower down line by line till its all gone till another text is entered by a player that can be heard or a system message, but only goes up to reveal what that message has to say, not the whole thing. this IMO is great since you can more easily be in contact with your party as their message is usually hard to miss.