How I started playing Final Fantasy XIV

I have never been a fan of the Final Fantasy series of games, although I have always considered myself a fan of everything Japanese. (Yes, yes, I’m an anime fan). And then one day I came across a video from StopGame – “The History of the Final Fantasy Series”. I remember how now, it was a Saturday evening, all the necessary routine had already been completed, I didn’t want to play. Well, I guess we can take a look. And then it started, someone would have thought. But no, I just watched all the released parts of the history of the series and forgot about the ending.

A couple of days passed and the cover of the first ending caught my eye – Final Fantasy I: Pixel Remastered. Who knows, I suddenly liked it, installed it on my bucket and started playing. The first time I played it for about five hours and forgot about it. A month later I took it off my phone.

So, I thought, apparently it’s not my destiny to join this series of games. I took out my 3DS and continued playing my favorite Pokemon. I play and feel gaming impotence, holding my favorite console in my hands. And then it dawned on me! You can download the final game on 3DS! This is what I did, played the fourth part for two days and forgot about it.

Sometimes, of course, I returned to Final Fantasy in my thoughts, but I didn’t even start the game. And so, summer came, I came back from vacation, went to work a couple of times and decided that I needed to play something. First there was Diablo IV (thank Zeus, I got myself a boxing account and paid full price). I wouldn’t say that the game is bad, it has an excellent foundation, it plays nicely, but I also reached level 60 or something. And I forgot about her.

Then there was a bunch of backlog, which I also left halfway through. And so, at the beginning of July, my friend tells me about Black Desert: he begins to describe to me how much better the game has become, what huge changes there are in it (I already played BDO, a very long time ago).

The renewed acquaintance with BDO did not last long, about two days. On the same day that I finished this game, another friend wrote in a general conversation in the cart about Albion Online. I’m thinking, "FUCK, RIGHT!».

I download Albion, log in for three hours, forget about it the next day. I’m sitting, thinking about what to play. I search YouTube, I go to reddit with a feeling of gnawing melancholy. I wanted a straight MMO game that would touch the soul, and that the plot was good, and the PVE was excellent.

And then I remembered! After all, Gamepass includes TESO. I think, cool, I’ll lounge on the couch and play MMOs with a gamepad. I only had enough time to create a character and the first 3 minutes of the game.

Praises.

After all this, I went to Steam to play Pufffinder. And at that time there was a sale on Steam and the first game that was highlighted to me was FFXIV. I think, well, I’ll go and read the reviews. And if not for one of these reviews, then sure as hell I would have decided to try it.

Of course, it was stupid of me to believe that this was a real review, but at that moment I didn’t even doubt it. I figured out what and how it works in this Japanese game of yours, downloaded the trial and got stuck.

How stunned I was by the main musical theme cannot be expressed in words. I had heard it before, but for some reason it gave me goosebumps at that very moment. This is where my reluctant introduction to Final Fantasy XIV began.

Anyway, let’s move on to the game itself.

As befits a true, unprincipled https://playhub-casino.uk/login/ and authentic lover of role-playing games since childhood, I created an ordinary person, chose the spearman class for myself and rushed into the world of final fantasy.

Imagine my sincere surprise when I heard (or rather, did not hear) the lack of voice acting. And this game is praised for its plot, I think. After all, this is not some kind of cRPG, with tons of text that is interesting and easy to read. Here you still need to know English, and it’s not easy. Starlings have transferred their accents and different dialects, which definitely affects the readability of the text and its understanding for Russian-speaking people. Fortunately, I generally speak English, and I translate incomprehensible moments with the help of Tataru Helper. An excellent utility that, using neural networks, translates the plot of this ending.

And so the game began. The combat is generally the same as in WoW. You click on the enemy, target him and just press the buttons, sometimes moving away from AoE attacks. Nothing seemingly dynamic, but this is only up to level 30. It still takes a long time to swing! -, you’ll think.

But no, the quality is actually very fast. As I later read, the developers cut out a good part of the fillers of the main plot (in the game community they call him ARR – in honor of the updated version of the unsuccessful launch of the original FFXIV, which at the moment is this great game) and accelerated character development. Very quickly you reach level 30, and some kind of dynamics already begins.

But first, let’s quickly go over the class system in FFXIV. It turns out that at the beginning we have a choice of several classes, without normal explanations: tanks, healers or damage dealers. After this, at level 30, each starting class is transformed into a profession, which represents the final appearance of the class. There are a total of 90 levels in the game, during which you will gain skills and update existing ones.

So, at level 30 I had the opportunity to become a Dragoon. These are these dudes in the finale universe who are somehow connected with the souls of dragons and fight with the help of various spears and all sorts of jumps with and without fire. The history of the profession immediately began to gain momentum. From the starting location of Gridania, which is surrounded by forests, I was sent to Coerthas, a mountainous area whose capital is the dragon-fighting city of Ishgard.

I haven’t gotten to Ishgard itself yet, but I got a great buzz from Coerthas. Mountain peaks, everything covered in snow and wyvern enemies. All this seemed to reignite my interest in the game and I continued to play with great pleasure.

The gameplay itself has also become faster. Finally, I got my Chocobo (mount), joined the alliance and the guild. One is connected purely with NPCs, and the other, as in all MMOs, is an ordinary guild.

The combat began to feel much more pleasant. Now I didn’t just sit and poke another button. I now have additional skills that need to be pressed during the main attacks, after which, without wasting time, I need to press the main attacks and combine them. There really are combinations that can be performed by pressing in a certain attack order. These combinations are conceived by the game itself, are indicated in the description and the necessary attacks are highlighted in advance if you start the combination in the required order.

My magnificent Dragoon. In fact, this is a basic set that is obtained for completing a chain of quests according to the plot of the profession, but how do I enjoy it?.

Story

At this point, I haven’t even finished ARR yet. And this is just the story before the first expansion. At the beginning it was difficult, unclear, a lot of exposition. But being at level 37 of history quests, I begin to understand that this was not all a useless pouring from empty to empty. Of course, at the beginning there are fillers, and there are quite a few of them. But, if you let the story unfold (and I’m already used to giving Japanese games more time than they deserve), then it becomes very interesting to follow the twists and turns that happen in the world.

I feel just as cool playing as Dragoon

Our hero is an adventurer who arrived in Eorzia to… as I understand it, just to help people, damn… Amazing motivation, of course, but nothing, he’s just a naive fool. And so, helping various personalities, the hero and I plunge headlong into this world, explore it and meet amazing characters.

After this, we learn that the animal tribes that live in this world are trying to summon Primals – dangerous creatures that, having gained sufficient strength, can be insanely dangerous. We also find out that our hero is special (who would have thought), he is able to see people’s memories and the goddess herself communicates with him. So, we are found by a group of people whose goal is to stop the animal tribes and prevent the Primals from taking over (or destroying) the world.

But that’s not all. Five years ago there was a war from which no one has yet recovered. It was all because of the Garlean Empire, which is trying to take over the world.

And so, in this tangle of plot twists, we have to deal with the hero. As I said earlier, at the beginning the plot accelerates for a very long time, even cutting out a good part of the fillers, the Birdhouses could not get rid of useless missions. The main thing is to run through them quickly and not focus on them.

The plot itself is decent so far and keeps you on your toes. I can’t say it’s great or unique or anything like that, but out of all the MMOs I’ve played, it has the best story. (Especially when compared with the latest WoW efforts, although Dragonflight seems to be praised, but I don’t follow it anymore)

What am I doing at the moment

Now I’m at level 37 of the plot and, as it seems to me, the most interesting things are just beginning. I leveled up my dragoon to level 52 and decided to start leveling up the ninja (Yo, dogs, I’m Naruto Uzumaki). On a ninja, the gameplay is much more dynamic, you have to, like in Naruto, add seals and use a variety of jutsu. For now, playing ninja is more fun, but I’m so attached to Dragoon.

By the way, in order to change the class, you do not need to create a new character. Apparently that’s why it’s called a profession. The only thing is that the initial professions need to be upgraded from scratch, but those that were added with the addition start at different levels from 50 to 80. (This is as far as I understood until I got to this point).

And so, at dragoon level 52, I sometimes run to the dungeons, sometimes I just start hanging out with my clanmates (and the community here is just awesome) and just exploring the world of Eorzea.

I hope that with my mini-long impression I can encourage someone to try this game, considering that the trial is completely free and does not greatly limit the comfortable familiarization with the game.

P. S. This is my first long, so I’m happy to receive feedback. In general, if at least someone likes it, I plan to keep a player’s diary like this in FFXIV, telling all sorts of different things that happen in the game, etc. d. And if someone in general starts to notice my graphomania, I’ll start writing long stories for other projects. I will be glad to all the advice you give. (Even if you write, I advise you not to write longer ^_^)