Final Fantasy XI :(
Final Fantasy XI was always an odd duck.
The Final Fantasy RPG games have always been close to my heart. My first experience with with Final Fantasy II on the Super Nintendo (Really it was FFIV...don't get me started.) with it's very non-traditional story. You don't realize it until a bit into the game...but your character, Cecil the Dark Knight...wasn't a nice guy. This kinda threw me for a loop, and I've been hooked on the series ever since.
All the FF games have been extremely story-driven, character driven endeavuers. Needless to say, the idea of our beloved series being 'hacked' into a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game like 'Evercrack' made more than a few people worry.
I know I did.
I was never very impressed with the visuals. Except for Moogles, chocobos, and airships...little was taken from the original games. I was younger at the time, and steered clear of the game. Now that I'm older, I've heard some pretty hardcore fans of the game, and have decided to pick the game up, at least the demo on the 360, to see where it's been and where it's going.
...
After playing the demo, the best word I can come up to describe my first experience with FFXI is...well...dismal. The game took me somewhere in the vicinity of three and a half hours to even get IN IT. (After strugling with activation codes and whatnot) Apparantly, if you play it in 720p or 1080i, it also runs the TEXT in higher resolutions, making it truly microscopic. So after struggling with Playonline's faqs (Play online is squareEnix's online service. Also under DISMAL.) and chatting in real time with a tech who was clearly not listening to what I had to say, I bumped it down to 480p and proceeded to 'grind' to level 2.
Thrilling.
Everything is counter-intuitive. Everything is the hardest, most complicated, most grueling experience possible. Did they play test this before releasing this? I'm downright scared to see EverQuest...if this was the step UP. I can see dozens of design flaws, things that have been put RIGHT by other MMORPGs years ago. Course, maybe it took FFXI to do that.
Nothing has been optimized for the 360. In any way. Even the character design, the monsters, the towns, everything feels generic, out of some fantasy game that you DIDN'T play, not from a SquareEnix game, definitely not a final fantasy game.
Talk about a let down. I haven't been able to think of much else than this demo on the game front. Bummer.
The Final Fantasy RPG games have always been close to my heart. My first experience with with Final Fantasy II on the Super Nintendo (Really it was FFIV...don't get me started.) with it's very non-traditional story. You don't realize it until a bit into the game...but your character, Cecil the Dark Knight...wasn't a nice guy. This kinda threw me for a loop, and I've been hooked on the series ever since.
All the FF games have been extremely story-driven, character driven endeavuers. Needless to say, the idea of our beloved series being 'hacked' into a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game like 'Evercrack' made more than a few people worry.
I know I did.
I was never very impressed with the visuals. Except for Moogles, chocobos, and airships...little was taken from the original games. I was younger at the time, and steered clear of the game. Now that I'm older, I've heard some pretty hardcore fans of the game, and have decided to pick the game up, at least the demo on the 360, to see where it's been and where it's going.
...
After playing the demo, the best word I can come up to describe my first experience with FFXI is...well...dismal. The game took me somewhere in the vicinity of three and a half hours to even get IN IT. (After strugling with activation codes and whatnot) Apparantly, if you play it in 720p or 1080i, it also runs the TEXT in higher resolutions, making it truly microscopic. So after struggling with Playonline's faqs (Play online is squareEnix's online service. Also under DISMAL.) and chatting in real time with a tech who was clearly not listening to what I had to say, I bumped it down to 480p and proceeded to 'grind' to level 2.
Thrilling.
Everything is counter-intuitive. Everything is the hardest, most complicated, most grueling experience possible. Did they play test this before releasing this? I'm downright scared to see EverQuest...if this was the step UP. I can see dozens of design flaws, things that have been put RIGHT by other MMORPGs years ago. Course, maybe it took FFXI to do that.
Nothing has been optimized for the 360. In any way. Even the character design, the monsters, the towns, everything feels generic, out of some fantasy game that you DIDN'T play, not from a SquareEnix game, definitely not a final fantasy game.
Talk about a let down. I haven't been able to think of much else than this demo on the game front. Bummer.