Final Fantasy Order - #12

12. Final Fantasy XI (PlayStation 2 - 2004)

Excuse me while I spend six months away from civilization.

Square's first Final Fantasy MMORPG (the sole other being Final Fantasy XIV), Final Fantasy XI is pretty good now (or so they say). I say now because it's launch was littered with annoyances. The main reason being Hiromichi Tanaka was in charge. But since it was his first foray into the MMO genre, I'll cut him some slack.

When the game was launched in North America, we were given the availability to play with Japanese players, which was pretty cool. What wasn't cool was that they had already been playing for two years. In MMO-time, that's an insanely big time difference, and most of them had already completed all the quests while we were turning the damn thing on for the first time. They fixed it eventually though, with more servers and additional quests.

I have to praise Square Enix for this game in terms of keeping it alive and well. Every year since 2002, we've gotten updates and expansions. If there's a problem (e.g. running the PS2 version on the early PS3), they fix it. And they do it consistently. Yoichi Wada, Square Enix's president, has stated that Final Fantasy XI is the most profitable Final Fantasy game to date. So it would make sense to keep that thing running smoothly for as long as possible, and I'd say 2002-2013 is a damn good run so far. The game is also able to run cross-console, meaning you can play from any Xbox 360, PC, or PS2/3 as long as you have your info handy.

The game takes place in Vana'diel, twenty years after the Crystal War, where three nations fought a bad guy and did some stuff and blah blah blah. The world has its own mythology and history, and it's really quite expansive. It's one of the most immersive MMO worlds I've experienced, which is its greatest strength and weakness all in one.

The game is a black hole of time. It's really a job. A job you have to pay money to do, and takes up more time than an actual, real-life job. MMOs can take up an insane amount of time if you want to lose yourself, and Final Fantasy XI is no different.

You absolutely have to be playing with a party to get any real work done. Every member is a cog in the machine, and must act and react accordingly. Fighting a battle? Well, I hope you don't die, because if you do, you lose a whopping 10% of your EXP. And EXP will seem more valuable than anything in real life. The game is a constant grind, and it takes forever. Even more so than the 8-bit installments. And it's not fun in the slightest.

Scenario: You get a party together, which takes a loooong time since no one is ever in the spirit of just "helping people out" for fear of death. There has to be definitive benefits to their being in the party. Otherwise, forget it, because they're risking a lot just by going into combat. Oh, and none of your real-life friends will ever play with you. You have to schedule everything around the game's timetable since there are so many time-sensitive factors, and your individual schedules will rarely match up. So once you have a party in order (after an hour), the fun can start, right? Nope. You do the same thing a billion times in a row, following the same routine over and over and over and over again just to kill rabbits. Repeat for three hours (or three days). Then by some fluke or poor preparation, you die. And you scream yourself hoarse, shut the damn thing off, unplug it for good measure, and storm off to do something else. But later that night, you sulk back over and start playing again, feeling nothing but simmering anger. This cycle repeats an insane amount of times.

Oh, and when you died, your party would have preferred you stayed with them after being revived (sans 10% of your EXP, and also would take a half hour), but since you were so blind with rage, you didn't even think about it. It took them another forty minutes to find a replacement. The whole scenerio is very commonplace. Death in the game is roughly equivalent to death in real life. Nobody wants to sit there grinding for days on end, but there's no other way to get ahead, so everyone grumbles and mindlessly repeats the same actions day in and day out. You don't know what I mean until you experience it yourself, but trust me, you don't want to waste months of your life to know that it's not worth it. Think about how much real life sucks sometimes, then imagine you're playing a video game that does only that. How can you possibly say no?

It would be way better if everything didn't take a million years. And I mean everything. Walking to a new location, fighting a battle, waiting for shops to open, waiting for an airship in order to travel, waiting for a phase of the moon to arrive, waiting for a certain day of the week (in real time). There is a lot lot lot to do in this game, it just takes forever to do any of it. And it's not fun. I don't even know why I played it for as long as I did, even though I said repeatedly to myself, "THIS IS NOT FUN AND I DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING IT ANYMORE." It becomes an addiction, and even after you realize you are not having any fun whatsoever, for some reason you still play it. A lot. Why? I don't know why. The same reason people do heavy drugs even though they know it's not a good idea and they'll probably die. The game is another life. Another life you have to live while sacrificing your actual life. So many hours of playtime I will never get back, and will regret it for the rest of my life. Square Enix has created this virtual drug that is ruining people's real lives.

I can't really summarize the whole experience and mindset of this game exactly. Just thinking about it is getting me all worked up. Awesome things like the fact that Final Fantasy XI is very closely related to Final Fantasy III (which is a cool concept even if I didn't really like III all that much), or that the world is huge with a million things to do mean nothing if the game is too much to bear by itself. I gave Final Fantasy XI a good chance, but I'm not a huge MMO person. Maybe that's the problem. I guess there are over a million people who would disagree with me. Or maybe they're just too far gone to ever come back. Who knows? I just hope Final Fantasy XIV is an improvement in terms of enjoying the game.

Final Fantasy Order - #14

Favorites from bottom to top.

Even people who don't play video games know that Final Fantasy exists. Though the series has in part turned to a money-grubbing, lazy mess, there are still (very) high points in its history.

Not that the games are bad. Quite the opposite, almost all of them are damn good and definitely worth playing. This is a list of my order worst to best, with attempted justification. I should point out that I'm only referring to the main numbered titles (I - XIV). Some of the spin-offs/sequels are brilliant in their own right (e.g. Tactics, Chocobo, etc.), but there's way too many of those to add to this list. Ports are also given lower priority, since at times they change the core gameplay drastically and create an entirely different experience (for better or worse).



14. Final Fantasy XIV (Microsoft Windows - 2010)

[UPDATE: This refers to the original release of Final Fantasy XIV, not the 2013 release Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.]

I can't even give this one a proper evaluation because the game has so many bugs and unfinished crap in it. The whole thing is unplayable (it was so bad that this past November the original game version was shut down). The low quality of this release is inexcusable, and this is one of Square Enix's top franchises. I would guess that deadlines and money had something to do with the premature release, but if it's not even done, then don't release it. It would be like buying a Mario platformer and going through a level with no enemies, or reaching World 3 when the map just cuts off, or not being able to climb a ladder because they hadn't programmed that action yet, so you're stuck. Oh well! Guess the joke's on me! No hard feelings! Yeah, right. Hopefully the "relaunch" of Final Fantasy XIV (mid-2013) will contain an actual game that people can actually play (as absurd as that sounds), but I am almost pissed off enough to not even try it. The fact that Square Enix sent out not one, but two apologies and offered a bunch of compensation goodies to people that bought the initial release says it all. I wouldn't need your damn compensation gifts if you just gave me a game that had all of its parts when I bought it. And MMOs aren't new, they aren't hard to figure out, and if you're freaking Square Enix, you can give some money to people that know what they're doing, because you're not limited by a small budget. Plus, Final Fantasy XI (also an MMORPG that you made) came out over five years prior to this. Even though that game also had some rocky development, it's come a long way. So that means you have over half a decade of facts, figures, data, and details to work from, plus the years of development experience. Final Fantasy XI is also the most profitable Final Fantasy ever. Why on earth would you not want to do everything in your power for a repeat performance? There is no excuse for XIV's failure.

Naoki Yoshida, the game's current director and producer, has stated that he feels another mistake like Final Fantasy XIV would end up destroying Square Enix, and I agree. When one of (if not the) flagship title of your company is so incredibly mishandled and thrown out like yesterday's trash, your entire reputation is irreversibly damaged. I should point out that I said Yoshida is the game's current producer, because from day one to the initial release it was Hiromichi Tanaka. After the disaster of XIV's release, he left the company due to "health reasons". Yeah, XIV sucked so bad it made me sick too. Tanaka was also responsible for Final Fantasy XI, the only other MMO in the series. The initial bumbling and "unanticipated difficulties" of that game's release should have sent up a million red flags for the rest of the higher-ups at the company. HEY, THIS GUY IS DOING ANOTHER FINAL FANTASY MMORPG AND IS IN THE SAME POSITION AS LAST TIME. DIDN'T SOMETHING SCREWY HAPPEN LAST TIME? WHATEVER, LET'S JUST PUSH THE PROJECT FORWARD WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT. I'm not saying Tanaka sucked at his entire job, but in terms of certain aspects, absolutely. How hard would it be to say, "Okay, you've done a great job creating and bringing about this whole game, Tanaka, and it's pretty slick. Now I'm going to give it to another person (or persons) who are capable to look it over, and they'll launch it without a hitch."

The so-called "relaunch" of Final Fantasy XIV will have a new server system, graphics engine, server and data structures, revamped interface, redesigning of all maps, a new interface, new playable characters, a reworked job system, more gameplay variations (1v1 and large scale player versus player), and additional story content. So basically, it will be a completely different and entirely new game. I find it hilarious that the explanation for the "radical alterations in game areas" is due to Dalamud, a giant meteor that was summoned and slammed into the planet. The whole game sucked so bad that they literally created something to demolish it in the game itself.

"Okay, so our story is that a meteor came and basically destroyed the planet. That's why it looks so different."

"Okay, just give me until tomorrow, and I'll have it done."

"What? Oh, we don't actually have to do it, we can just say that's what happened."

"You know what? I've worked on this piece of crap for over three years of my life, and what do I have to show for it? This games sucks. I want to destroy it. I am going to create a meteor, I am going to watch it plow into the world, and I am going to savor the moment for the rest of my life."

"You know we're shutting down this version next week, right? So no one will see it anyway?"

"GET AWAY FROM MY DESK AND LET ME WORK!"

TANAKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

How many countless man-hours and funds went into this piece of junk? Large-scale, high-quality, big-publisher AAA game development is astoundingly expensive, so why wouldn't you want to make sure that every single cent went towards making it as good as it can be? And now you're not doing it just once. Since you screwed up so bad, you have to do it again. Which means you have to spend almost double the initial amount of money and time to create this thing. And everybody is watching ever so closely, waiting for you to screw up again. Instead of waiting in anticipation to see how awesome this game will be, some people are now waiting in anticipation to see how many things they can find that are still wrong. What a successful marketing technique, Square Enix. Thankfully, Yoshida has created the Final Fantasy XIV forums, where users can give ideas, feedback, suggestions, and the like. This is a good move. But why should the fans have to pick up the slack where the company screwed up in the first place? If these forums were around at the beginning of the development, it wouldn't seem like such a plea, problems could be addressed as they came up, and the initial release would not have been such a nightmare. It wasn't that big of a surprise to the public that the initial release would be a disaster anyway. Many top-notch sources raised their eyebrows at the game's announced release date, because they had seen or heard things firsthand that showed that no, the game should not be released because it's not done.

And it's freaking Final Fantasy! Other games would give all of their pieces/parts to be regarded half as highly as this series. It's going to be near impossible to not compare the relaunch to the original piece of garbage. I'm sure I'll think, "Why couldn't they just do that in the first place?" six million times in the first week of playing (if that even happens), and just get super pissed all over again. So thank you, Square Enix, for spitting in our collective face.

The only good thing about this game is Nobuo Uematsu came back and did all the music himself, which hasn't happened since Final Fantasy IX. But since this is post-IX Uematsu, I'm not falling out of my chair in awe. And anyway, for the relaunch more people are coming on board, so the soundtrack will be quite different from the initial product. Hooray.

I feel bad for Yoshida, I really do. And through all this crap, he's managed to do a lot of great things for the relaunch (titled Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn). Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, personally picked Yoshida to run the relaunch because he knew Yoshida is "a hardcore MMORPG player and has a vast amount of experience and knowledge in the genre." Um, hello? Wouldn't it have made sense to make a decision like that from square one, before the entire project was botched? Yoshida also provides consistent updates on the progress of the game, so things aren't as hidden to players anymore. I applaud him for this. His current success in designing Dragon Quest X (also an MMORPG) is also a reassuring sign.

But the fact remains that he's part of the bigger picture that is Square Enix, and Square Enix dropped the ball. Then the ball broke. Then we stepped on the pieces and cut up our feet. Then our feet got infected. Then they amputated them, and now we're waiting for our new, improved feet to arrive in the mail. They keep telling us that they're way better and worth the wait, but we're concerned nonetheless.

The immense failure of this game doesn't just fall on one person, even though one person might take the blame. Everything had to be pushed past multiple, highly regarded professionals during the entire game's development for five years. And for whatever reason, from 2005 all the way to 2010, no one stood up and said, "Um, this thing is going to suck. We need to stop now and rethink how we're doing this." So the blame falls on all of them. What a disaster.