speaking as a long time final fantasy fan i was incredibly dissapointed by this offering by square enix to the mmo genre
The basic premise is you play a character of your own creation in the world of vanadiel, you form partys quest and fight monsters for xp and gil.
right?
well, no, not really no.
To begin with the towns include around 200 npc's and only 15 to 20 have any actual relevance to the game in any way, sure there are quests but they are simple and bland, like the landsape itsself, but ill get to that.
you spend the first few hours selecting creatures, then attack and then sitting back and watching as your character fights, yes you actually have to do nothing till you learn higher skills. trouble is that as you level you require 2000xp just to get to lvl 8 which is obscene for an mmo, AND as you level up creatures give you less hp so the stronger you get in this game the longer it takes to level.
and the month subscription fee is more like a almost secret way to get people addicted, cus by the month has gone by you should be around lvl 20 havign put ina few hours and almost getting to fight big bosses and get your own chocobo!.
to bad you must wait a month to get any of the good stuff.
see what they did there?, they try and reel you in to paying the subscritption fee, i dont know about you but i believe somethign is onyl worth a monthly fee if it is a great fun experience during gameplay and with a great community, final fnatasy 11 unfortunatly has neither.
creatures dont drop money you must get a spell cast on you to get items which you must then auction sometimes for around 100 gil each in the beginner area, too bad items like a single potion are 600gil EACH!
Its an unfair game mechanic and lacks the simple get in and play fun factor the ff games have, even crystal chronicles.
sound wise this game is pretty good, very reminicsent of the crystal chronicles gamecube game.
graphics wise it surprised me by being very poor everythign is jagged and polygonal with trapezium shaped hillocks and bland porridge type colour pallete that seems reminiscent of killzone.
to put it bluntly this just isnt final fnatasy its a blnad, unimaginative and boring videogame with a virtually nonexistent community that seems to think that merely haveing the final fnatasy name makes up for the many faults of this game.
the long and short of it is this game is a poor game and an even poorer rpg, and definatley not worth a subscription fee, there are many free mmorpgs such as silk road, maple sotry, nostale, trickster ect. that dont cost a dime and are much mroe vibrant ,colourfun, easyier to get into adn most importantly FUN.
this is a mediocre game for hardcore final fantasy fans and no one else, deinfantly not worht a monthly fee, this gets a thumbs down for me, avoid this one.