The Lorerunner

FF11

Final Fantasy 11

What an insane game to cover. Problematic, awkward, clunky, janky as hell, with terrible overworld design, combat design, enemy design, quest design, traversal, backtracking galore, and remember to wait a day to progress! And yet all of that is in a game with a lot of fascinating attempts at design, unique approach to combat and classes and most especially of all equipment. And all of this is wrapped around a story that keeps getting better the further in it goes, with increasing quality in dialogue, plot, storyboarding, animation, visuals, and characters. I cannot possibly recommend this game in the traditional sense of the word, but I don’t regret the 250 some odd hours I burnt on it either.


Total Story Score: +119
Total Gameplay Score: -292
Golden Number: -409.71
Cheats: No
Total Play Time: 20 Days // 144.52 Hours
Time Reviewed: 7-22-2026

Spoiler Story Positives+
  1. Spritework: Enemies, in general. The lower texture quality and reusage hurts it a bit but there’s still a lot of cool and interesting designs which help sell the various areas and biomes…
  2. Spritework: …so that’s…
  3. Spritework: …a triple
  4. Spritework: Armor. I’ve seen so… so much better, even in earlier games, but there’s still enough quality here that I think the entire game deserves…
  5. Spritework:…a solid…
  6. Spritework: …triple
  7. Animation: It’s actually semi rare you see this but each race / gender combo has their own animations for attacks. Mithra are more precise but clearly weaker, Galka are big and bulky in their movements, Elvaan try to be more elegant, et cetera. I’ve seen better of course…
  8. Animation: …but this is pretty impressive, especially for the time
  9. Cutscene: The opening cinematic is actually pretty solid for what it is (even though it’s… barely relevant to the vanilla MSQ). We see the threat of the Beastmen, we see it’s been a while since the major war of the past, and we see that survivors of it are still endeavoring to progress and return to whence they were. And of course the big shot of all the adventurers of the different races…
  10. Cutscene: …solid, especially for the time
  11. NPC Set Dressing: I will actually give the vanilla cities this; they have quite a bit of a population of NPCs just hanging out doing their things. Some of them are even engaging in regular emotes to indicate they’re doing something
  12. Spritework: NPCs in Zilart
  13. Storyboarding: Zilart has surprisingly solid cutscene design and general storyboarding
  14. MSQ: Zilart in general. There’s still some issues here but for honestly the first time I rather like the story. The ancient civilization, the origination of the modern species, the two madmen and what they’re willing to do even in the face of having already failed, the obsession with the crystal
  15. Brickwork: Ru’Aun Gardens. The first decent brickwork in the entire game, with foliage and cracks and absent bridges showcasing the ruins and each segment having slightly different style relative to the species represented
  16. Cutscene: The opening to Chains of Promathia is honestly decent. It’s very in medias res (which the FF series always loves) but there’s enough of a hook to get me legitimately interested in what’s going on. Bahamut is here, there’s an experiment, the dukedom is evil, crystals are shattering, and a magic child gives us an amulet. It all screams ‘adventure hook’
  17. Brickwork: The Emptiness zones of the three spires. Half there half not, dessicated, and floating in pieces in the void
  18. Storyboarding: As with before, the cutscene construction and general storyboarding of Promathia is a noticeable improvement, especially on…
  19. Animation: …Prishe, who is weirdly better animated than every other character in the game to-date. And it’s not just quality animation, she also conveys a decent chunk of her personality in how she moves
  20. Spritework: NPCs in Promathia are even better designed and more distinct than they were back in Zilart…
  21. Spritework: …calling that a double
  22. Cutscene: Twitface and Tenzen. I don’t actually remember her name, forgive me, but she is acting as the head of Jeuno (after we killed the previous leadership, hah) and meeting with Tenzen who is here as a representative from the east. And it’s a nice little scene as the two dance around each other a bit, offer each other a few freebies, and get nicely political. It’s also the first scene which legitimately establishes…
  23. World Building: …the state of the world. Up until now the city states have been… there. Jeuno is also just… there. But now we see how they interact with each other, how Jeuno has maintained the balance of power, how things have sort of settled into this state after the Great War against the Shadow Lord, all sorts of cool stuff
  24. Character: Ulmia is just kind of a generally good character. She feels the most ‘main character’ of the party in Promathia and they do some decent stuff with her
  25. Character: Tenzen is the other person jockeying for that position. The paladin (samurai) who’s just trying to do what is right in the absence of information
  26. Moment: Ulmia by the shore. A good moment for her, a good moment for Prishe (also great moment to convey to US, the players, that Prishe doesn’t age while the character still doesn’t know), and helps to further develop Ulmia
  27. MSQ: I’ve been chewing on this for a bit. One of the things I rather DO like about Promathia is how it doesn’t actually have a central plot in the traditional sense of the word. Rather there are multiple plot threads going simultaneously. Tenzen and his focus on the Emptiness, Jackass and his desire to understand what Celsius is up to. Celsius who remains a mystery, who’s working with or alongside Prishe. The elves in general who are still seeking the gates of paradise. Bahamut who just wants to burn it all. There’s a lot of moving parts and as it slowly builds you can see how the threads connect…
  28. MSQ: …good stuff
  29. MSQ: Jabbos and the gobbos. He’s weirdly interesting for what he is, and the gobbos and their unique voices are the tataru done properly (what!)
  30. Moment: Monberaux and Wolfgang outside Jeuno. This is a simple down to earth characterization scene for two major characters that they both desperately needed (up until now Wolfgang was just a dick and Monberaux was just a doctor)
  31. Theme: Ignorance. Everyone is acting with misinformation or lack of information and so all the threads I mentioned a couple of positives ago keep colliding with each other. Even the more villainous individuals do NOT know what’s going on. And nowhere is this more true…
  32. Character: …than with Nag’molada. This man knows NOTHING and constantly strives to learn more and yet every single time he learns something new he doesn’t sit and process it, instead he just instantly adapts and bumbles forward anew. He’s not even stupid, he’s just someone who thinks he is ENTIRELY more important than he is, and his ramblings and idiocies are at the core of the entire work…
  33. Character: …and I love it
  34. Brickwork: Al’Taieu and the empty, semi dream-like, fantasy nature of the ‘water’ you walk on, the terrain below, the partial pathways…
  35. Brickwork: …it’s great stuff
  36. MSQ: Nag’molada being the final key to waking up Promathia makes way too much sense in way too many directions and it’s a perfect encapsulation of his arc and the theme of the work in general. I like to think he dies in ignorance or, worse, finally realizing how little he knew
  37. Plot: For what it’s worth I do like the final few plot beats of Promathia. The revelation that people are both light and dark, the final dissolution of the Emptiness, it’s all solid and marks a turning point in the setting
  38. Brickwork: The jungles of Aht Urghan are actually pretty legit looking, certainly better than almost every zone prior
  39. Prime Opt: Sandoria second chain is worthy of… a positive. It’s like baby’s first story, with just enough character and political intrigue and world building to be kind of interesting but not really. It is also interesting in the light of the rest of the story (which I technically did before this) in Promathia
  40. MSQ: The early Bastok quests aren’t… great. But they’re easily the best launch story in the game so that counts for something
  41. Prime Opt: The initial arc of Bastok 2 (post Shadow) continues to be generally better written than most of the stuff. More background lore on the Galka, more intrigue on the Talekeeper, more political entanglements, all while individuals are trying to deal with it
  42. Character: The Bastok chain has some surprisingly good supporting cast, from the Mythril Musketeers (especially Iron Eater, who just DOES not give a crap) to Kharst, the politician who feels worn down by the job
  43. Prime Opt: Gumbah, Cornelia, and Kharst all form an interesting dynamic in the continued Bastok 2 chain. Gumbah is struggling with his destiny and regretting the potential loss of his friend, Cornelia is struggling with what to do and how to use her political position, and Kharst is still trying to do what’s best despite everything
  44. Moment: Werei reciting the bloody history of his people and their fall to the Anticans as the camera slowly pans down from the flashback of him to the present of us reading his message
  45. Moment: Gumbah manning up and telling the rabble rousers to sit down and shut up is great, well written, and relevant
  46. MSQ: Bastok 2 finale. The actual tie in of the Shadow Lord and Roagrimm, the culmination of themes across the work, the flawed but working viewpoint of Bastok, great stuff
  47. Cutscene: Several of the Promathia epilogue cutscenes are nice denouements. I’m especially fond of Jabbos and the gobbos, but all of them are nice
  48. Moment: Prishe messing with us, Ulmia calling her out on it, all to the Shadowlord boss theme. What more need be said
  49. Character: Prishe. I chewed on this for quite a while but I do think she deserves it in the end
  50. Outro: I don’t have much to add here honestly. It’s a nice song over a nice series of scenes that showcase all that’s happened to date…
  51. Outro: …good stuff
  52. World Building: The ruins and their construction, from the plasma bubbles to the ornate floors to the self maintenance
  53. Cutscene: A lot of the intrigue cutscenes with the imperial court are actually pretty good. We can see actual mystery and politics building and get a taste of what’s really going on (and hopefully it’ll even pay off!)
  54. Brickwork: Bhaflau Thicket is another good example of how the later zones have substantially improved visuals. More varied trees, better doodad usage, better terrain design, better sight lines
  55. Animation: The animation quality of Treasures is, once again, noticeably improved. Some really good custom scripts and rigging that really add to a lot of scenes…
  56. Animation: …easy double territory
  57. Storyboarding: Also the general storyboarding has been improving alongside it. Lots of in engine cutscenes with good usage of camera and presentation of people…
  58. Storyboarding: …another double
  59. Cutscene: There’s an extended cutscene where Luzuf, Razfahd, Ashmau, and… I guess us… confront each other on the cliffs. It’s a GREAT scene. We finally see her motives, we see how Razfahd isn’t just mustache twirlingly evil, we learn about how AWFUL their father was (the son was fighting in a war FOR HIS FATHER, was injured and required a blood transfusion, and so his father literally disinherited him), and it’s just generally well written and well presented…
  60. Cutscene: …this also marks the moment I started giving a damn about the story, for what that’s worth…
  61. Cutscene: …but ignoring my opinion, this is a really solid scene
  62. Character: Razfahd. The villain who is motivated by cynicism and mistrust, who nevertheless IS well intentioned and ultimately lays down his own life to give us a shot at stopping Ragnarok
  63. Character: Ashmau. The brat who grows out of it and just wants to have a better life and a better world
  64. Character: Luzuf. The vengeful ghost who realizes his vengeance is long since sated and now he wants satisfaction instead
  65. Character: Gessho. The ninja spy who grows to respect us and works with us to help further both our causes
  66. Character: King. He’s mostly just funny, but he still gets a nod
  67. Cutscene: Luzuf and Ashmau on the ship. Another solid scene, this one far more character focused and helps flesh out exactly why everyone is so afraid of Odin and Alexander fighting each other again
  68. Cutscene: Everyone colliding alongside Odin. And for I do believe the first time we’re actually relevant, holy crap
  69. Plot: So the general plot of Treasures (once it finally starts about two thirds in, more on that in the negatives) is actually pretty interesting. We have an old and frankly out-dated empire which is barely holding on and also in direct competition with ANOTHER empire (FF12 vibes much?) and an ancient superweapon they’re trying to unearth. But not out of muwa ha ha, but to secure themselves from the CONSTANT issues they’re having (because like any old empire, keeping things together is a daily hassle). In the middle of this is the young empress who does NOT want to be, and several foreign entities who all have their own wants and needs in this mess (who are basically all making things worse)
  70. Cutscene: The planning for war scene is already intriguing (pun intended) but Naji interrupting with a simple plea that war should be the last resort (while offering a viable alternative) is great. Good usage of the down to earth character too
  71. Cutscene: The finale with Alexander and Odin, the immovable object versus the unstoppable force, and both were defeated by people. Razfahd defying Alexander and Luzuf defying Odin, stopping Ragnarok before it even got started
  72. Cutscene: And a genuinely touching scene after with Luzuf giving what’s left of his life to bring Aphmau back is more well done than it has any right to…
  73. Cutscene: …for a solid double
  74. Outro: With one small exception (noted later in the negatives) the ending for Treasures is really sweet. The movement towards peace, the final moments with the party members from across the expansion, the acknowledgement of the sacrifices that led to this opportunity, the simple grounded storytelling that makes it believable, it’s all great stuff…
  75. Outro: …consider me…
  76. Outro: …quite impressed
  77. Animation: The animation in Wings is yet another noticeable step up in quality. They have seriously found their groove here, from big sweeping action shots to tiny things like moving a chess piece accurately. This is damned good…
  78. Animation: …easily deserving…
  79. Animation: …of a triple
  80. Character: Robel-Akbel is immediately interesting. Pragmatic (possibly too much so) and definitely hiding things, but he’s also very results oriented and positively inclined, does not give a damn about racism (in fact he goes out of his way to praise and rely on the Mithra repeatedly, as well as reaching out to the Elvaan when everyone else didn’t even want to try), and he’s a capable enough leader to point out when the battle is swaying their way in order to bolster morale
  81. MSQ: Windurst initial. The tone and vibe actually legitimately sell the war in a way literally nothing else in the game has managed thusfar. The actual usage of logistics, tactics, multi-national efforts, racism, efforts AGAINST racism, it’s all solid
  82. Cutscene: The battle of Fort Karugo-Narugo is actually really, really good. The excellent animation (mentioned earlier) helps, but the entire construction of this just pops. The Yagudo charging, the archers smattering, the squad charging out, the mages immediately redirecting their efforts to support, the pull back off the walls, the San Dorian cavalry showing up to save the day, us charging to attack the enemy’s rear. It’s…
  83. Cutscene: …absolute…
  84. Cutscene: …gold
  85. Cutscene: I would be remiss if I did not continue to praise the execution of cutscenes throughout the early MSQ stuff…
  86. Storyboarding: …especially the ‘battle’ scenes, such as the charge on not-yet-Davoi or the Windurst defense of Jeuno
  87. MSQ: Several small but critical moments of good storytelling in the Windurst arc. I call this kind of thing ‘peeking through the window’ storytelling and it’s hard to pull off right. The idea is we, the audience, are only getting a relatively small glimpse of the metaphorical scene through the window, but that scene has to be fully fleshed out with its own history and backstory and characters. Thus we get implication and inference without bogging it down with specifics. Little details like the Sin Hunters being after Lehko, or the one Cheetah sergeant completely crumbling once she’s in a real combat scenario, share a lot with a little
  88. Character: Cait Sith (all nine of them) are engaging almost immediately. A nice verbal tick (really well written dialogue), enough variety that you can tell between them, and enough mystery without being too much
  89. Cutscene: The animation alone deserves a positive when Lilisette just kind of owns a bunch of orcs (including that amazing dolphin kick)…
  90. Cutscene: …but seeing the various groups coming together and fighting against the Orcs is always enjoyable. It’s a great ‘unified we stand’ kind of moment
  91. Cutscene: Once again the Second Battle of Karugo-Narugo is legit, but what really sells it is…
  92. Moment: …Mihl’s final moments of total badassery as she takes down several demons by herself with grenades…
  93. Moment: …and the two variances of grief at her loss. Tihl and her outright sobbing, Roma and her collapsing from the weight of it
  94. Character: Ragelise. My goodness. What a tragic person. Better suited to adventurer life than that of a knight, but legit for the most part and a stalwart through and through… until his faith fails him
  95. Character: Lilisette. She took a while to grow on me I’ll admit but she’s a good example of the exuberant and… slightly stupid protagonist. Sora when he’s done well, in other words. And she manages to stay both loyal and friendly enough that I’m with it. Plus you can REALLY feel her pain at the loss she’s suffered
  96. Moment: The Cait Sith cat fight. Probably the second thing in the entire game that got a real laugh out of me
  97. Tone: War. This is actually mostly on the Windurst chain believe it or not but it’s still there and it’s still consistently good
  98. Plot: Lilisette is someone who lost her parents in her past. She has pretty clear abandonment issues, as anybody would. She freaks out completely when her friends forget about her, but when her own father forgets her it crashes into her, stopping her dead in her tracks. This is how you make a plot about an eldritch abomination that eats time personable and relatable. The very zoomed in horror of Lilisette’s trauma make this work way better than it ought to
  99. Moment: Further into the Wingsdurst chain there’s a moment where Karaha is going off to what he knows is his death, and Sibyl knows it too. He asks her to command it of him and she just breaks down, sobbing. It is such a quiet and powerful moment. She is buckled over, weeping, and when he kneels beside her she just takes his hand…
  100. Moment: …incredible moment
  101. Cutscene: I’ll give you this game. Fenrir (literally) stomping the crap out of the Yagudo army was a hell of a spectacle
  102. MSQ: Lehko immediately, without hesitation, changes the siege of Castle Birdbrain into a rescue mission. Even when called on it he just changes it to a small task force. This then leads to us charging into the fortress to rescue everyone (and a TERRIBLE mission, more on that in the gameplay negatives)…
  103. MSQ: …but is overall a really solid sequence
  104. Moment: Culminating in Evil McEvilson deciding to murder a child for the crime of being sad (I THINK he’s the bad guy) but Fenrir leaps in the way, which leads to the kit petting Fenrir’s nose. The whole thing’s adorable and great
  105. MSQ: The Windurst Outro in general is solid. The sacrifices, the moments with our characters, the conclusion with Lehko being given one last chance to say goodbye, the consequences (which continue into the present)…
  106. MSQ: …very solid stuff
  107. Character: Lehko. I was torn on him for a while, truthfully, but he’s… interesting. He’s a liar and a cheat who made a devil’s bargain with an angel and learned to care in his quest for revenge, all the while being shockingly weak (for a major character in an RPG) who makes things work with his mind and his words instead of magic and fists. Again, a fascinating character
  108. Character: A general cast positive for Wingsurst. We see quite a few and they get some good stuff throughout
  109. MSQ: So the Bastok initial chain is interesting. We start off with a fair smattering of political intrigue with the good Senator (and Chairman, and President) and then bam, assassination. This immediately twists into a mystery plot, but the politics never leaves the forefront
  110. MSQ: What I think really works here is we get a bit of world building if you’re unfamiliar with some of this stuff (racial tensions, Galkan as a people, the very nature of the Anticans and their history with them) and then this all escalates even more. Plus the ‘evil senator’ who was plotting to use the Anticans? He was misguided perhaps but his motive was quite clear; Bastok was screwed and he was trying to create more forces
  111. Character: Also can I just jot down a character positive for the Bastok stuff in general? Volker is legit, Zeid has an AMAZING line I wanted to write down (“I have pride in what I do, not who I am” in response to a galkan supremacist), all the various political heads are interesting (special mention to Karst, a statesman with a brain)
  112. MSQ: Consider this a pretty generic positive for all of the Sandorian Winds campaign. The kids are well written enough to not be frustrating, there’s some interesting twists they don’t hold onto for too long (the orc comes to mind immediately), there’s some actual stakes, and it retains a relatively low key and low tier look at things without devolving into nonsense or being too kiddy…
  113. MSQ: …so we’ll call that a solid double
  114. Moment: I love the 999th meeting of Goblin Information Tycoons. The humor, the uniquely goblin way of looking at things, the fact that they’re information brokers for ANYone (no preference on sides)
  115. Cutscene: Ragelise’s speech, stupid as it may be, is actually quite well written. And you can see how these Odin-drunk idiots think and why they’re doing what they do. And it is immensely satisfying to kill their asses
  116. Brickwork: Walk of Echoes. Mystical, horrifying, appropriate for what’s left of swallowed time
  117. MSQ: Abyssea. This is a bit of an aggregate since it’s a fairly threadbare expansion, but the overall mood of gloom and the retread of Promathia, showcasing what would happen if we had failed back then, as well as giving us a chance to save a SECOND world from a rampant god is always nice
  118. Outro: Abyssea and Prishe. Mostly the ending, as the category indicates. Her staying behind to watch over the world, alone and lonely but determined. And of course we go to meet her periodically. Just to keep her company
  119. Brickwork: Adoulin itself (the city) is probably the best looking city in the game to date. And considering that, near as I can tell, it’s the LAST main city hub in the game I suppose that’s appropriate
  120. Dialogue: The quality of the dialogue writing in FFXI in general is good (except for those damned Tataru) but holy crap, Adoulin just cranks it up to 11. You can really feel the effort and care put in here. Individuals sound distinct from each other, great word choice, great structure…
  121. Dialogue: …this is like a huge step up even from Wings…
  122. Dialogue: …so take that triple
  123. Animation: The animation continues to improve each expansion. I’ll be noting, uh, noteworthy scenes as we go…
  124. Animation: …but consider this…
  125. Animation: …a solid triple aggregate
  126. Storyboarding: And as before, the storyboarding is top notch. I will be granting exceptional cutscenes their own positives but every scene in Adoulin…
  127. Storyboarding: …is…
  128. Storyboarding: …very well thought out
  129. Spritework: Not a ton of new characters in Adoulin interestingly enough. But enough that it gets a nod
  130. MSQ: Immediate politicking and intrigue about the colonization of the frontier. I won’t even try to summarize, it’s all good stuff
  131. Architecture: Bastok, Kazham, and Jeuno. Yeah I know that’s a hell of an aggregate but each of these zones does it both well and poorly. Bastok has the residential quarters… then the giant empty swath of the auction house. Jeuno has the docks… and then the palace. Et cetera
  132. Architecture: Western Adoulin, by contrast, deserves one all on its own. Great sightlines, the rest of the city visible in the distance, and plenty of NPCs roaming around. Great town design
  133. Architecture: Eastern Adoulin is just as good. In fact I would go so far as to say these two zones are better than all the ARR cities
  134. Cutscene: Adoulin likes to do this style of cutscene where the camera pans over a (low texture) JPG… that is to say, a tapestry. This works better than you’d think and the design of the tapestries themselves lends towards this
  135. Brickwork: Yorcia Weald. The forest zones keep getting better as we get further in and I admit I’m actually quite impressed with this one. They don’t even have ‘tree walls’ anymore to block vision
  136. Cutscene: The mother Rosulatia scene. I think what works best here for me is the care put into Rosulatia’s dialogue, which is appropriately ‘dryad’ without being too ‘fey’. Some good world building too
  137. Cutscene: A very well animated and choreographed fight scene between representatives of the two factions…
  138. Writing: …and some proper work done to establish that both sides have a point. It’s VERY easy for the colonizers here to just be the bad guys but they’re legitimately interested in increasing harvests and trade for the purposes of survival and prosperity, and meanwhile the ‘let’s not piss off the forest’ crowd would be easy to make too much the good guys but a lot of THEIR mentality comes from adherence to centuries old dogma…
  139. Writing: …it’s a nice balance and I’m already down
  140. MSQ: There’s an entire story arc where Arciela’s brother is cursed. Naturally she wants to fix this. Naturally we want to fix this. Naturally everyone else is only using this to further their own agendas. It’s… SO obvious and it’s wonderful. There’s even a great scene where two people are straight arguing and Arciela is literally looking between them, confused at what the hell they’re on about while the very real issue of her brother is literally right behind her…
  141. MSQ: …this is fantastic
  142. MSQ: This continues in the next quest arc, which does the same thing even better. You have a woman who’s being possessed to wander into the woods and, once again, Arciela and we are focused on fixing the situation as quickly as possible, while the two representatives of their respective guilds are trying to twist the situation to their own ends…
  143. MSQ: …and naturally we go actually fix the situation and the reaction of the two politicians is telling. One is dismissive, one is actively UPSET we fixed the situation
  144. Writing: It’s wonderfully overt. At no point do these people properly politic, instead they just flail overtly and wildly at each other like it’s theatre…
  145. World Building: …which makes perfect sense when you consider how isolated and unthreatened these politicians have been for decades, if not centuries
  146. Cutscene: Love the animation (again!) on the tiger as it more or less literally bodies Ingrid and her thugs
  147. Character: Supporting Adoulin cast. The crazy maid, the idiot porter, the amateur politicians, the legends of old…
  148. Character: …it’s a strong supporting cast…
  149. Character: …easily worthy of a triple
  150. Character: Arciela. Almost every Expansion Girl has gotten a positive thusfar and Arciela is no exception. Naive, ernest, kind, helpful, thoughtful, developing her perspective on the world around her as she does the best she can
  151. Brickwork: Ra’Kaznar is appropriately creepy, alien, and horrifying just to traverse. Very harsh angles, very geometric, and all cold stone. And for once the absolute absence of doodads works in its favor
  152. Music Direction: Some really good usage of music in Adoulin. Sometimes for comedy, sometimes for serious
  153. Tone: This is a weird one. Adoulin is… a children’s story, but I don’t in any way mean that as an insult. Even the politics back in the city are more in line with what you’d expect from a somewhat simpler view on things, and there’s concepts and ideas like larger than life heroes, helpful fairies, brave dragons, and a dude who’s just a millennia old for no explained reason. It’s not quite whimsy, it’s more like we’re living one of the old epic ballads
  154. Cutscene: The initial ward scene (and kicking the tataru) is really solid. It’s a good exposition scene while still retaining some characterization and world building
  155. Moment: Arciela finally just yelling ENOUGH at everyone was honestly such a good moment. It’s a shame it’s so thoroughly ruined immediately after
  156. Character: Teodor. I was torn on him for a while but he’s consistently interesting enough that he qualifies for his own positive
  157. Cutscene: The cruelty of Hades. Dude murders Morimar in cold blood, then taunts poor Darrcuiln with love and affection before murdering him too. I’m not doing a good job of conveying how well done and MESSED UP this scene is. This is on top of the visuals of how we see the illusion starting and fading…
  158. Cutscene: …it’s properly horrifying
  159. Character: I want to mention Ingrid here too as she was weirdly memorable for all her horribleness, especially since she ended up being one of our biggest advocates
  160. Cutscene: The final politics scene of Adoulin is… fine. Like it’s a good scene in a vacuum but it has construction and build up issues. Still nice to see overall
  161. Cutscene: The actual ending scene for Adoulin is a nice fairytale denouement, with great slides and characters and the occasional scene…
  162. Storytelling Mechanic: …and a bonus for those slides
  163. Animation: Honestly the animation has taken a step down since Adoulin, but it’s still pretty solid…
  164. Animation: …and still worthy of a double
  165. Storyboarding: Ditto on the storyboarding…
  166. Storyboarding: …still pretty solid
  167. Dialogue: And, I feel like I’m repeating myself, the dialogue is still good but it just doesn’t pop the way it did back in Adoulin
  168. Cutscene: The ‘avengers assemble’ scene in Rhapsodies is clearly where all the budget went. The group of heroes assembled, the incredible significance of all of them and how they coordinate…
  169. Cutscene: …gets a BASELINE…
  170. Cutscene: …of a triple…
  171. Animation: …a bonus for the animation…
  172. Storyboarding: …the incredible choreography…
  173. Theme: …and the significance of it. All the main characters giving us our shot at the Cloud of Darkness
  174. Plot: So it took until the very end but Rhapsodies’ story finally got interesting. The idea that there’s this entropic entity that eats worlds unless light and dark create enough backlash to push it away is interesting, and explains why Vanadiel has endured so long
  175. Cutscene: The SECOND big fight scene, with the expansion girls all working together, isn’t QUITE as good as the previous one…
  176. Storyboarding: …with the same excellent design…
  177. Animation: …and fantastic animation
  178. Outro: Simple and sweet. The expansion girls all gathered together, the thank you for the 14 years of the game’s existence, the hope that it will continue on into the future
  179. Outro: Similarly to before, the actual ending with all the screenshots showing what the principal cast is up to after the game’s credits have rolled, while actual players of FFXI sing, is just kind of…
  180. Outro: …badass…
  181. Outro: …and deserving a triple
Spoiler Story Negatives+
  1. Brickwork: I’m not going to be TOO mean here but I didn’t pull punches with early WoW stuff, and that looked better than this (and came out 2 years later). Some of these zones just look legitimately awful. Giant slabs of grey, incredibly blurry brown mush, or exactly two shades of green…
  2. Brickwork: …not…
  3. Brickwork: …impressed
  4. Brickwork: I changed my mind. After spending literal days doing the rest of the Nations quests (damn you Mr. Red) I’ve decided these are absolutely abysmal and deserve more negatives. Everything in vanilla looks like crap. Like that particular blend of not-quite-PS2 era, late PS1 graphics that were trying but failing…
  5. Brickwork: …it’s…
  6. Brickwork: …really bad
  7. Architecture: Windurst is… not great looking. Big open swaths of nothing with a couple of huts lying around. This does the opposite of making it feel like a large town or city
  8. Architecture: Jeuno commits a weird sin of having some of the hallmarks of good game town design but missing all the others. Because you see NOTHING beyond the too-high walls which just makes you feel like you’re out in the abyss, and the gigantic streets don’t help anything
  9. Architecture: Norg (and Taznavia) are just caves. They’re just dirt caves
  10. MSQ: 2-3 is a really dumb plot moment. The big reveal that the Shadow Lord is coming back is handled pretty badly, with multiple characters repeating the same facts over and over, and everyone just sort of instantly accepting it as truth despite the wonkiness of the situation
  11. MSQ: I’m going to let most of the… humor of the Limit Break quests go unmentioned, but I have to call attention to the fact that the entire reason Degenhard is here to KILL him is because of a pointless misunderstanding which goes away the second it’s explained (after Maat kicks his ass of course). It’s just Fake Drama Central
  12. Pacing: All of vanilla is simultaneously paced way too fast and way too slowly. Everything is turbo stretched by design to have huge swaths of leveling, gearing, and padding in between plot beats, but those plot beats themselves absolutely FLY by to the point where if you JUST do the quests you race through the entire vanilla story in an afternoon
  13. Dialogue: Vanilla. It’s a very flat translation (which I’ll note in a minute) but worse than that, the dialogue is just… not good. A lot of on the nose writing, a lot of as you know, and a lot of repeat dialogue…
  14. Dialogue: …it gets better later (I swear!)…
  15. Dialogue: …but in vanilla it’s just bad
  16. Localization: It is in fact the only part of the game I feel is worthy of a localization negative (sorry Fox)
  17. Dialogue: Bonus negative for the Tataru. I hate their stupid vocal ticks
  18. MSQ: Dumb twist on the Shadow Lord. I won’t even mention it here. In fact we barely establish it IN GAME because we see one cutscene that’s like ‘hey here’s this dude’ which is almost immediately followed by ‘hey he’s actually the ultimate evil’
  19. MSQ: Dumb ending. Seriously it just kind of stops. Like hey we beat the ultimate evil now… we’re done. Go home…
  20. MSQ: …what a terrible ending
  21. Story Sequencing: So Rhapsodies of Vana’diel has this huge problem where it’s meant to be done ‘alongside’ a large chunk of the rest of the game. This is a neat idea but in practice what it means is as you’re roaming around doing a quest you’ll suddenly see cutscenes from Rhapsodies, aka the friggin’ FUTURE, and you will see them insanely out of order and with completely indeterminate gaps between said cutscenes. This is insanely disorienting and, worse, more or less prevents the player from actually experiencing the friggin’ story at all…
  22. Story Sequencing: …FFIV has got nothin’ on this…
  23. Story Sequencing: …so enjoy that triple
  24. Pacing: So Zilart’s story is definitely more interesting and has more going on but there’s also some… weird pacing issues. It is a VERY rushed story which has some surprisingly solid scenes but they kind of fall flatter than they should
  25. Dialogue: Zilart’s dialogue isn’t… terrible, but it’s still pretty flat
  26. Character: The three brats. Yes I know they’re kids I just do not care. They’re irritating in literally every scene they’re in…
  27. Character: …and good lord they will NOT stop showing up…
  28. Character: …to the point where they keep being plot relevant! Christ
  29. MSQ: The three brats in Windurst chain. This is an entire, multi hour quest chain of HELL but most of that’s on the gameplay side. What makes this so atrocious on the story axis is it’s all so frustrating, while being cruelty disguised as comedy, while also being entirely for nothing. We see these brats ruin people’s reputations, run around trying to salvage the situation like it’s a side quest, fail because they move on anyways, and at the end? We learn NOTHING. This was all for nothing. TWICE…
  30. MSQ: …screw…
  31. MSQ: …this chain. This might legitimately be the worst part of the game thusfar
  32. Dialogue: Promathia continues the trend of flat, too literal localization
  33. Cutscene Incompetence: So it seems FF14 did not invent the concept of the player character just standing there while plot happens around them
  34. Plot: The game will NOT stop trying to make the brats plot relevant. And it never stops being irritating. These ASSHOLES even show up DURING THE FINAL BATTLE
  35. MSQ: Of all the Nation quests, the initial Windurst chain is easily the worst. There’s a lot of interesting threads set up here, absolutely none of which have ANYthing done with them. In fact I made a list; the Cardians (intelligent slave race), the Yaguda (marauders who extract tribute), politics of the Ministries (duh), the main arc around the rogue Minister held back by red tape (obvious story arc is obvious), and the Fenrir stuff at the end. NONE of this has any usage, development, or pay off
  36. Story Sequencing: Also across all the Windurst stuff things just… happen. There’s plenty of examples of this but my personal favorite is that immediately after having the big confrontation with Joker and the Cardians we’re informed the Yagudo have rather suddenly decided to invade but only on a timer but then we bring back Fenrir and then the problem just goes away. You know how Promathia is several disparate threads woven together into a singular plot? This is… NOT that…
  37. Pacing: …and it takes entirely too long to do nothing and then crams everything relevant into literally the last two quests
  38. Prime Opt: Speaking of which the Windurst 2 quests are actually worse if you can believe it. Like it’s all the MSQ stuff but even worse somehow…
  39. Prime Opt: …I’m just going to double up on this and move on
  40. Plot: So hey. Y’know those awful kids? Who are consistently awful in literally every scene they’re in? There’s NO catharsis moment. They NEVER get any kind of comeuppance or humble moment or humiliation or even straight up vengeance. They get away with everything scott free, get everything they ever wanted, and make fun of us to their final lines. Screw them
  41. Character: Naja Salaheem is yet another example of a character that’s just irritating and abusive and should get a comeuppance and doesn’t and she gets away with everything because tee hee abuse is funny…
  42. Character: …worse, the game constantly treats her like she’s hot stuff. Like she’s this big dick swinging super amazing person. She’s straight up a Sister of T’Kuuvma situation
  43. Cutscene: Also EVERY cutscene she’s in just reinforces this nonsense and makes it even worse
  44. Character: Also Shantotto literally praises her. The meme ‘I’m super god tier’ character praising her is just cheating
  45. Character: Early Aphmau is… not a good character. She isn’t even properly characterized at first (honestly I thought she was mute at first), when she finally does start talking it’s just to be a brat. There’s also the fact that she keeps getting inserted into scenes for seemingly no reason. And all of that is ignoring the fact that she’s abrasive and frustrating
  46. Humor: At multiple points in the story we act completely cowed by twitface. Having her being ridiculous and awful and overbearing is, frankly, already enough. Us going along with it is borderline. Us COMPLETELY BUYING INTO IT is unacceptable
  47. Tone: So this only really applies to the first part of Treasures but the problem is the ‘first part’ is almost two thirds of the entire story (more on that in a minute). So for a huge swath of the game the expansion is treating you, the player, like dung. And it gets old
  48. Pacing: So I’ve alluded to this several times. The first two thirds or so of Treasures DRAGS. Like, almost nothing happens story wise (good AND bad) and as a result the pacing is completely off. It’s almost entirely why I’m so pissed at Naja Salaheem… because not only do we go along with all her crap, we do so for HOURS and HOURS of gameplay and story
  49. Outro: One last screw you from Naja. Sigh
  50. Intro: So hey, FF11’s intros have been, shall we say, of mixed quality. But for the most part they’ve been passable. Wings’ Intro is… total nonsense. We happen across a ‘cavernous maw’ which eats us then doesn’t then does, we end up in a floating island with a hole in the sky, get knocked into the abyss, hear people talking about getting help, and see Cait Sith. This is Grade A nonsense and immediately de-invests. As we talked about during Promathia’s intro, starting with a mystery is fine but you need to have hints and development, not… whatever this is. We then get thrust pretty much immediately into an unrelated story…
  51. Intro: …making this even more standout in how weird it is
  52. Cutscene Incompetence: It’s been here the whole game really but in Wings we… REALLY just stand there and gawp while stuff happens
  53. Pacing: The Nation storylines (which I remind you, are mandatory) constantly interrupts the MSQ of Wings…
  54. Pacing: …and amusingly enough it goes the other way too! The MSQ interrupts the Nation stories! Forcing these to dovetail like this does a disservice to both
  55. Writing: Stop treating us like we’re stupid, game. The game took two quest CHAINS to sloooowly drag out the blindingly obvious fact that we’re after the sword, and then in order to proceed the game slams us over the head with the obvious solution. And it REALLY drags this out
  56. Cutscene: Pointless padding in the SECOND ward scene. LITERALLY repeating the exact same dialogue and motives as the previous (good) scene
  57. Cutscene: So right before Arciela just yells at the idiots the scene is… weird. Disjointed and off. I honestly thought it was a dream sequence at first. Then she yells (good moment), but then they… yell back. None of the politicians back down, they all reframe it as her fault, passively blame her for the murders, and generally act like… real life politicians. Now I need to explain this because this one scene is the worst, ugliest scene in the entire game for me personally because it is SO like how real life politicians have gotten in the last 20 or so years. Absolute refusal to take ownership or responsibility, responding to any comment with a verbal attack, constant pushing of unrelated agendas, refusal to admit wrong. Now this is… ‘fine’ if this was done to some point or purpose, but it was not. And in fiction there are rules. Things need to have a point or purpose to them, even if it’s just a setup for some catharsis. To use an example IN this expansion, Ingrid starts off as this twat who insults you constantly but as you work through her quests she develops more as a character and has genuine humbling moments. That’s good. This, by contrast… is not
  58. Pacing: The first two acts of Adoulin are pretty solid. The third act is INSANELY rushed. Entire swaths of story are clearly just ripped out wholesale, and it just skips right to the ending. It’s like an episode of a television show where everything wraps up in the last 5 minutes
  59. MSQ: The entire first swath of Rhapsodies is… boring. I don’t know how else to describe it. Stuff happens but most of it is just ‘hey remember these characters?’ and nothing of interest happens
  60. MSQ: Rhapsodies really wants to be happening alongside existing expansions or after them which… either of these would work, both COULD work if done really well, but as is this… doesn’t work. The two approaches just make the story feel inconsistent
  61. Padding: So hey, Rhapsodies is way, way, WAY too padded. It is a mildly interesting story that takes hours upon hours to go absolutely nowhere as people constantly repeat information or say nothing at all…
  62. Empty Text: …I do believe this is the first time we’ve had this type and level of empty text throughout this game
Spoiler Gameplay Positives+
  1. QoL: Auto translate. It not only has an auto-complete feature to help you with spelling but translates certain relevant words into a universal translator for anybody to pick up on regardless of their region settings…
  2. QoL: …easy double
  3. Map: The map itself… sucks. No, seriously, it sucks. Y’know what doesn’t suck? The Scan feature to help you find specific NPCs or enemies
  4. Difficulty: Trusts. The mere existence of Trusts, their relative use and scaling to you, and their ease of access, the fact that they drag the frustration rate down…
  5. Padding: …the extent to which they reduce combat problems…
  6. Party AI: …and their relative intelligence in combat is all probably the single best feature the entire game has. I have seen better of this concept before (in TWO other MMOs now) but this still deserves credit. I should also mention that not only this Run but most modern playthroughs of this game would probably be straight impossible without Trusts so they deserve that nod too
  7. Kit: There’s also a lot of Trusts. Like, a LOT of Trusts. More to the point each one is designed differently, meaning they can fulfill a lot of different roles and there’s a bit of design into how they work together (and with the player)
  8. Power Progression Curve: Furthermore they also frontload quite a few very useful Trusts early on, but you consistently get new ones as you go through the stories and thus can set up even better builds as you go
  9. Options: Weirdly, yeah. There are quite a few options for such an old MMO. Just… good luck finding them
  10. Traversal: Okay so we have Home Points (crystals) and we have Guidebooks (the bouncing floating ones) and they allow travel between similar points. And these are scattered all friggin’ over. And honestly, that’s a decent waypoint system… but I will give the game one more credit…
  11. QoL: …when you select a place to go to, if you sit there for a second it will load a map of that area under the menu and then pan to the point you have selected, showing you exactly which one you’re going to. (There’s also some labeling of them like E and M but I’ll admit I don’t have all that memorized yet and frankly I didn’t realize it was even deliberate until it was pointed out to me)
  12. Traversal: Also the fact that mounts just straight up ignore enemies, aggro, and combat is a really great thing
  13. Traversal: So there’s a Warp Ring you get VERY early now and it lets you recall to a Home Point with about a 9 minute cooldown and that’s exactly as useful as it sounds
  14. Itemization: Gear. There’s actually some decent design to gear in this game, such that it actually surpasses its successor (FF14) in this regard. There’s different suits with different modifiers and mutators that can benefit specific setups or situations…
  15. Itemization: …and that’s…
  16. Itemization: …consistent across multiple expansions
  17. Itemization: Procurement, too, is reasonable. There’s gear all over the place and ways to get certain buffs (usually) from multiple sources
  18. Interface: Pursuant to this, there’s also almost no penalty or detriment for swapping gear at will. Which means that you can pretty seamlessly maintain multiple suits to transfer between depending on the needs of the situation
  19. Guidance: Records of Eminence. So these are a (relatively) new feature that give you tasks you can accomplish for quite a variety of rewards, most of which are useful. This is utterly invaluable for a new player (and the game DOES indicate that it exists and that you should use it right at the start). This gives immensely useful guidance on where to start chains, events, unlocks, etc
  20. Power Progression Curve: This also gives a nice bit of bonus progression in terms of resources and experience as you do the Records
  21. Core Mechanic: Housing. It’s VERY basic, worse than things like Asheron’s Call and the like, but it’s there
  22. Inventory: Mog storage is also nice. Lots of different storage options
  23. Inventory: Mobile mog storage, however, is the really good thing. Some of the mog ‘banks’ you can access anywhere, meaning expanded inventory on the fly…
  24. Inventory: …which also helps with equipment, as mentioned above
  25. Kit: Warrior. So this class is shockingly similar to the Fighter all the way back in Final Fantasy 1 (probably on purpose) but still has solid design to back that up. Extremely basic in moment to moment interactions (you basically auto attack, use weapon skills every now and again, and stack buffs and cooldowns when relevant) but the class gains a lot of passives to help them do basically anything they need to. Two handers, sword and board, dual wielding (with the right sub job set up), resistance to debuffs, increase shield potency, all of it means that if you want to do something physical related (tank or damage) Warrior can do it. Also pairs well with several sub jobs
  26. Kit: Monk. Another similar class (try to be shocked… all six base classes are like this by the way). Monk does good white damage and low yellow damage, has some shockingly good cooldowns to handle things (Dodge, Accuracy, a heal, a ranged nuke, increased crit) as well as the classic Counter, and several others I will not bore you with but most of which serve as buffs. If you’re paying attention this is very similar to Warrior overall, but with some interesting passives and a very solid damage throughput, and good live buttons to make them better at soloing (or just general surviving).
  27. Kit: White Mage. I will spare you details as there are several but this is the healer, no really style. It’s good at healing. In fact it’s GREAT at healing. Faster MP recovery, reduced aggro, debuff removal quickly, increase potency of some of its cures, and an auto regen. This is on top of access to some great single target and AOE heals. This is exactly what you’d expect a White Mage to be; a straight up healer, and basically invaluable
  28. Kit: Black Mage. A bit higher skill ceiling than the previous ones so far, really benefiting from skillchaining and staggering buffs, but also with access to AOEs and DOTs which really help. This can do absolutely stupid damage, especially in a group… but like many mage types in many MMOs they are basically artillery. Amazing and useful but need to be used very carefully and heavily reliant upon their party to make them work
  29. Kit: Red Mage. This is probably our first class that’s noticeably changed from the FFI crew. While it can still barely melee and cast and heal, where it really excels is in the debuff and buff game. Lots of VERY good buffs (including chain stunning!), personal cooldowns to massively increase the value and accuracy of said buffs and debuffs, En-spells, the ability to give elemental damage to melees… it’s a fantastic job and very well useful for a group. It also probably involves even more skill to use (especially solo) than the Black Mage…
  30. Kit: …and earns our first double
  31. Kit: Paladin. The catch all tank, with multiple cooldowns to rotate between reducing physical or magical damage, as well as a big aggro generator that also can blind (reducing damage taken potentially), and obviously a few heals and buffs to increase durability. A fairly good example of ‘simple but solid’, probably useful in any non specific setup
  32. Kit: Dark Knight. A good class on paper, with drains and the ability to use its health to boost damage or just do damage directly, and several fun and mean long term cooldowns. Sadly changes in the game have narrowed its usefulness. Then there’s Beastmaster. Honestly this sounds like too much work to be useful (and is effectively invalided by the very existence of Trusts) but it’s… there. You have a whole system of recruiting a given animal to help against another specific type of animal which can help with difficult bosses or just punching above your weight class, and quite a few abilities that heal or command your pet. Ultimately I put both of these classes here because their design is enough to warrant a nod but they’re both just kind of falling to the wayside in more modern FFXI
  33. Kit: Bard. It’s always shocking to me how few MMOs (MMO or Game style) offer full support jobs, but here we are. Bards have absolutely crazy buffs AND debuffs, arguably even better than Red Mage, able to keep up two songs at a time as well as some buffs to said songs. They’re honestly kind of simple but also invaluable, go figure
  34. Kit: Samurai. Similar to its FF14 counterpart, Samurais bring the damage. Unlike their FF14 counterparts this is based in large part on their high TP generation, good access to good weaponskills, and fantastic ability to set up (and, uh, accidentally interrupt) Skillchains. This means they’re good damage and good at setting up OTHER damage too, plus there’s a higher skill ceiling to make sure they don’t screw up their own chains…
  35. Kit: …useful, fun, good output, and skill relevant
  36. Kit: Ninja. Ninja is a bit of a positive and a negative class. The playstyle is interesting and being okay at everything means you always have a role to fill, but lagging behind in execution and a few other things I’ll mention down in the negatives drags it down. Still interesting
  37. Kit: Dragoon. Another class that’s more interesting than outright good. Relies a bit too much on ability use (the various Jumps) and its dragon, buuut also that dragon rawks and can do several things depending on your setup. Further you have lots of abilities to reduce aggro, and can control your own TP generation a bit more than other classes. And who doesn’t want to play a dragoon!?
  38. Kit: Blue Mage. Try to be shocked that one of the best and most unique classes the FFs have added to RPGdom is a good class here too. Slotting spells give passives which can fundamentally change how you play (meaning a properly set up Blue Mage can be basically any role, and good at it too). And that’s on top of the amazing spell list itself, ways to control their own TP usage, and benefit from multiple sub job combinations…
  39. Kit: …call this our second solid class….
  40. Kit: …but there is ONE asterisk here, and I’ll mention it down in the negatives
  41. Kit: Puppetmaster. This is yet ANOTHER class that’s more interesting than actually good, but the concept of being able to fully customize your automaton’s role and ability list is legit, and true to form you are ALL about your pet (a ton of your abilities specifically buff, heal, summon, etc. your pet). We’ll be talking about this class again down in the negatives though
  42. Kit: Dancer. Dancer is in many ways a weaker Bard, fulfilling the same general role but just not excelling in any of them. There’s some interesting skill going on here though, where doing dances lets you access Finishing Moves which can do all kinds of fun things. They also come with good passives and, I mean, I’m a bit biased because I’ve been sub job Dancer this entire time to GREAT effect so
  43. Kit: Scholar. Yet another hybrid class that just kind of falls short, but with interesting enough gameplay to qualify for the nod. Using abilities and cooldowns to push heals, damage, or buffs/debuffs depending on the needs of the moment and having good Skillchain starters helps
  44. Kit: Geomancer. This is a weird one. It’s basically a buffer debuffer but with a large focus on positioning and AOE, adding some nice skill to the mix. It can also buff outside of the immediate party, which is nice (though limited)
  45. Kit: Rune Fencer. Runes are cool and buffing melees with magic is cool. I could stop right there, but the Rune Fencer’s ability to be a mage tank is by itself useful (apparently more so in recent content, but it’s a good use in general). Also the way the runes work (buff damage and resistance to opposite), cooldowns to buff even MORE (sometimes consuming a rune to do so, sometimes all runes), and all with a great set of passives and a generally cool fantasy…
  46. Kit: …make for a solid double
  47. Kit: Corsair. I saved this one last for a reason. Fun story, we were (seriously) debating which class setup I’d play for the Run that would be consistently useful, soloable, and viable the entire way through. We ended up on Warrior (survival and damage output thanks to gearing and passives) with Dancer subjob (stealth alone is worth its weight in gold). But the reason I bring this up is the class that came in second was Corsair. It was ultimately decided it was, ironically, TOO involved of a class for the Run, but that says a lot. So Corsairs can buff quite a bit, but randomly these will be worse OR better than Bard’s. They roll the dice (more or less literally), and there’s the initial roll sure but then you gain a few abilities to have a degree of luck protection and control. You also have several abilities which give you decent ranged attacks and some solid damage output. I’m failing at explaining this but I’ve done more of a deep dive on this class than any other except the one I actually played, so please trust me when I say…
  48. Kit: …this is the best designed class…
  49. Kit: …in the game
  50. Build: There’s not TOO much here that isn’t covered by the equipment (as listed above) but you can still mix and match jobs and subjobs as well as focus on a few different things with job points and merit points to customize your playstyle…
  51. Build: …and there’s some cool combos you can come up with
  52. Viscerality: So here’s the thing. It’s legitimately hard to gauge the viscerality of the game all told. So we’re going to do this a little bit differently than usual. I’ve spent some time perusing videos and paying attention to my own people and I’ve decided that the Impact is not great and the Sound is not great either, but the Visuals deserve mention. Several cool attacks, a few interesting spells, some great buff animations, and a lot of generally cool stuff…
  53. Viscerality: …earn…
  54. Viscerality: …a solid triple Visual
  55. Log: There’s a built in chat log which also tracks dialogue in case you miss it, which is always nice
  56. Music: Believe it or not Zilart (finally) has some solid music
  57. Music: Chains of Promathia continues the Zilart trend of having some solid songs
  58. Core Mechanic: So there are 99 refights you can do which get you nice gear (and cool looking gear) which are not only nice progression but keep older content relevant. It’s not quite the Roulette system but it’s still something
  59. Music: A generic positive for Treasures. Honestly nothing super great here, but enough that it qualifies for the single
  60. MSQ: I am in abject shock. We are two thirds of the way through Wings of the Goddess and we have found our very first content-related gameplay positive. The quest Dungeons and Dancers is an interesting two step maze where you can use bombs to open pathways and set Firesand and switches to open other paths. The enemies here are just restocks (and they respawn!) and so you’re actually fighting the timer more than anything else. So what this means is you have to think about which routes you open (those respawns aren’t instant, and you are on a timer) and try to map out a route, while keeping track of the switch to use that further in. It’s… I’ma be honest… not much. But it IS interesting and actually fun, so credit where credit is due
  61. MSQ: So, the penalty for failure for the ‘run around and talk to the bombs’ quest (Storm’s Crescendo) is… honestly pretty inventive and legitimately engaging. If not for the penalty problem it’d be a universal positive instead of a positive and a negative. Still, two content positives in one expansion, not too shabby
  62. Music: Wings is a weird one. There’s the obvious music issue (see the negatives for this, with the Campaign music) but the REST of the music is solid. The soundfont holds it back from being truly great but it’s still good
  63. Song: The FFXI version of the Prelude is honestly a really good rendition of the song, and is used very well
  64. Music: Adoulin has, honestly, some of the best music in the game. Good songs, good usage, no irritants…
  65. Music: …just solid music overall
  66. QoL: Quest triggers just happen now based on proximity or access instead of requiring tedious interactions or zoning
  67. Guidance: For literally the first time in the ENTIRE game the quests actually give honest to goodness guidance on where to go. Sometimes it’s telling you exact tiles on the map, sometimes it’s telling you who to talk to and where, sometimes it’s more vague like ‘west end of the forest’, but it’s THERE dammit
  68. Level: Ra’Kaznar. It’s probably the single best level in the game (which is sort of sad actually). Seemingly open but actually reasonably linear, with a few distinct choices in paths which will put you through one way areas, but not in a way that completely screws you over. This is on top of balancing the two floors (you can go up at the elevator, and fall down at the roots) and some interesting and mean enemies (spread out enough to not be frustrating). It has its issues (mentioned in the Negatives) but it’s SOMEthing
Spoiler Gameplay Negatives+
  1. Launch: For once this doesn’t mean the launch of the game, but rather your installation of the game. I could go into detail about how much of a colossal pain this is but instead I’m going to be blunt; This game more or less mandates a walkthrough for getting the game playable. And I think that speaks for itself…
  2. Launch: …oh also…
  3. Launch: …it takes forever too
  4. MTX: You have to pay for alts. I don’t know what to add to that
  5. Controls: Trusts only attack what you have already attacked. Let me say that again. If you’re fighting, random example, a boss and that boss stays at range and roots you, you have not attacked the boss and your Trusts will stand around gormlessly doing nothing. They will not heal you, fight the boss, or dispel you. This is AWFUL situationally and aggravating constantly as it’s distressingly evil to only be fighting one of the 4 enemies nearby because of how FFXI combat works…
  6. Controls: …and it really drags the Trust system down
  7. Graphics: FOV issues. It’s hard to explain but the game handles the camera zoom by adjusting the FOV rather than traditional zooming in and out. This means that in normal gameplay the FOV is changing near-constantly, and that creates a fairly large amount of eye strain…
  8. Graphics: …especially for a game as meaty as this one
  9. Music: So hey, the songs are all MP3s. This means they restart every single time they start to play. This is a problem we solved in the SNES era for goodness sakes
  10. Map: So the map itself is… not bad. I mean it’s not great and the lines are literally inaccurate at times but no the real problem is actually accessing said map, which requires finding the right NPC (and different NPCs sell different maps so that’s basically a recurring walkthroughitis) and then actually buying the damned things and early on gil is NOT easy to come by
  11. Graphics: So Rax hooked me up with an addon to overcome this but there’s this wonderful fog over everything that… sucks and just makes it even harder to navigate than it already is in samey areas
  12. Character Creation: Not only are there few options (which would just be a wash) but they’re actively a lie. Your character does NOT look like that in game, not even in cutscenes
  13. Interface: Hokay, where do I even begin. I’m aware of the fact that the game was designed around the PS2, made by people emulating a bad MMO, by people who had no idea what they were doing, but all that does is explain the why for this absolutely awful interface. So let’s start with some basics; The interface itself is not very clearly laid out or indicative. What this means is it’s relatively easy to ‘miss’ that you can scroll more, or that there’s a second page of options
  14. Interface: Then there’s the fact that years and years of patches have just crudely bolted on new menu options to existing menus which, combined with some very strange localization choices, means it is not uncommon to have to look up WHERE exactly the option is that you’re looking for
  15. Interface: There’s also some menu ‘nesting’ issues where it’s actually possible to have multiple menus up simultaneously but, since this isn’t a PC game which barely has mouse support (more on that in a sec), you’re kind of ‘stuck’ in the furthest down menu before you can tunnel back up to the previous one
  16. Controls: While I’m here, the mouse support in this game is legitimately awful. I actually trained myself to just not use the mouse except when selecting items, and even then sometimes it just does not want to acknowledge that I’m clicking a thing. Heaven help you if you try to use the mouse to actually navigate the menus
  17. Interface: After some thought I’m going to double down on that mis-labeling negative. There are a… LOT of options, which is good actually, but they are so difficult to understand at times that, once again, require looking up where the actual option you want is. Some of them are straight up misleading in what they say
  18. Info In Game: This… for the second time today I find myself thinking ‘where do I even start’. Okay so there’s not very good tooltips in this game and while some of it is something you can pick up on relatively quickly there is a lot of stuff that the game just absolutely flat out does NOT tell you. I talk about this a lot; The player can only solve a puzzle if they know the puzzle exists. And there’s… just so, so, so many mechanics, concepts, and methods that exist in the game that the game either doesn’t indicate exists at ALL or requires talking to a very specific NPC to find (Trusts comes to mind immediately)…
  19. Info In Game: …so that’s…
  20. Info In Game: …just getting its own triple
  21. Walkthroughitis: Then there’s… this thing. Let me tell you a story. When I logged in for the first time I tried talking to a few NPCs nearby and that… lead nowhere. After several minutes I was capable of finding my way outside, at which point I aggroed my first enemy and promptly died (more on that later). Shortly thereafter I was linked a ‘new player walkthrough’ and that experience was much more smooth. Whiiich is sort of my point. Records of Eminence was something I didn’t even know existed (this is covered under Info In Game earlier), talking to specific NPCs to get a buff called a Signet, getting EXP booster items, oh and how exactly to actually fight (more on THAT in a bit), Field Manuals, all of that is just the basics to walk in the door so to speak. This I think deserves special mention because…
  22. Early Game: …this is a colossal Quit Point for this MMO. I would not be shocked if a huge percentage of new FFXI players put the game down somewhere before level 5. This is getting into later stuff as well but your early game options… aren’t. You have one class skill which may or may not be useful…
  23. HUD: …and good luck reading what it does or where its cooldown is…
  24. Early Game: …and that’s… it. Go out and auto attack. That’s… that’s early game. It is precisely as dull and boring as it sounds. It took me somewhere around two and a half hours to hit level 5 from word go, and that’s counting from getting the game running to character creation to navigating town to dying the first time to walkthrough to finally hitting 5. This is just awful
  25. Info In Game: Good luck parsing the gear in this game. It’s a lot of stat spam without a lot of explanation for… basically any of it
  26. Controls: Okay so hear me out. I’ve been told core combat eventually becomes interesting. I might even believe it. But until you, uh, get to the good stuff, core combat is legitimately one of the worst combat systems I’ve seen and that’s including EARLIER MMOs in real life history. Let’s go down the list. First is, of course, targeting. F8 targets next enemy visible in what I believe is a 180 degree wedge in front of you, which… is already nonsense. You CAN use Enter (or ‘confirm’ on the controller) but that’s finicky and might select a party member, NPC, pet, item, or Trust instead (there are ways to not target Trusts or Pets but those require a command and good luck knowing that’s even an option). So quite literally just ENTERING combat involves something that’s frustrating. I won’t give this too many more negatives because objectively it’s not ‘that’ bad but I do want to stress that this is, by far, THE biggest irritant in the game to me. I feel like I’m trying to control the game through barbed wire the entire time. I can do it! If I’m careful. And if I’m not, all those little nicks and cuts make the whole thing irritating. Constantly
  27. Core Combat: Okay, we’ve targeted an enemy. Let’s attack! Wait they’re too far away. Yeah so I’m giving this its own negative because, again, games that pre-date FFXI had what’s called sticky targeting (Asheron’s Call even had two different modes of sticky combat!) This meant that you target something, hit attack, and your character then ‘sticks’ to it by trying to run to it and… attack it. There’s some nuance to the specifics here but it existed as an option years before FFXI came out. Here? Go walk up manually, and heaven help you if…
  28. Bug: …they’re slooowly walking away from you. Yes I understand it’s a netcode problem and yes I know there’s a way around it but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly frustrating to deal with watching an enemy very, very slowly walking along and they’re ‘out of range’ as you’re mashing into their butt. Oh there’s actually a related bug here…
  29. Bug: …see, you need to be in line of sight to attack an enemy. I know that sounds like a ‘duh’ but no, what I mean is if ANYthing interrupts your line of sight (like a slight slope on the ground), even if you’re right in their face… you cannot hit them
  30. Core Combat: So! We’ve targeted an enemy, we’ve successfully navigated the netcode and the line of sight, and we are attacking. ……..now what? Yes that’s right… nothing. This is technically an Early Game problem as well but just like so many other RPGs I’ve played the early game combat is incredibly boring. It’s ‘set up auto attack and go back to watching the movie’ combat (or in my case, getting work done on the side, like this very document… as of right now I’m leveling Dancer in Ronfaure). I won’t be too mean on this and instead will just give it…
  31. Core Combat: …three…
  32. Core Combat: …negatives for doldrums and move on
  33. Kit: Thief. So if you’ll forgive me an indulgence. Rogues (whatever you call them) have always had issues in MMOs because in traditional RPGs they’re primarily there for the utility… and most MMOs just don’t HAVE utility to speak of. This means in a lot of MMOs they drift into other concepts to keep the class alive (two examples; in FF14 rogues are actually Ninjas with pseudo magic, and over in WoW they’re either gun-toting poirates or shadowblades). FF11 is, by all accounts, no exception. The Thief is invaluable for getting items to drop and… that’s… really it. They’re subpar in EVERY other respect. Even Dancers are better stealthers than them
  34. Kit: Ranger. Whoo boy. I’m so glad I didn’t end up playing Ranger. This feels a lot like several other Bronze or Silver era MMOs I could name, where the combat engine couldn’t QUITE handle ranged combat so they compromised. Apparently the damage Rangers can do is quite high but that’s your benefit right there. No auto attacking (this is ALREADY a deal breaker, to be frank, especially in a game like FF11), having to carry your own ammunition (of the right type, don’t forget!) clogging your limited inventory, and with damage scaling terrible. And don’t forget you’re a turret so you must stay still the entire fight. Meanwhile their skills kind of suck. So that’s… uh…
  35. Kit: …that’s pretty bad…
  36. Kit: …in fact that’s REALLY bad
  37. Kit: Summoner. I’m sad at putting this down here. Fun fact, when I was VERY first trying FF11 (when it had first come out) this was the class I wanted to be. I’ve always liked pet classes. But this… is a Silver era MMO pet class and… I mean that says everything doesn’t it? Your only real functionality is controlling and ordering the pets (which require beating them to acquire of course), and that’s… I mean. Pets are jank as hell and don’t scale well so this class underperforms AND feels bad to play as
  38. Kit: Ninja. As mentioned, this class has issues. Enemies that bypass your primary evasion ability, using tools instead of mana to cast (which runs into grind/currency AND inventory space issues), and just kind of having bad output across the board
  39. Kit: Blue Mage. It’s an amazing class, but learning spells SUCKS. First, it’s very walkthroughy (as honestly every Blue Mage is in every FF). Second, the enemy needs to generate TP to cast it, which means you can actually level yourself out of viability if you didn’t plan this out well. Third, once the enemy casts a viable spell it’s a CHANCE to learn it. This… uh…
  40. Kit: …this sucks
  41. Kit: Puppetmaster. The first and most obvious problem here is the same issue Summoners have; It’s a Silver age MMO pet class. Your pets are just always going to have issues and jank. But second of all, and I did some additional looking here, it’s apparently really grindy to actually get going because of how leveling your automaton works, so…
  42. Kit: …that sucks
  43. Grind: Good time to mention that getting spells for ANY spellcaster just sucks. I mean Blue Mage especially sucks but everyone gets hit with the grind stick here. And I sure hope you have a guide on where to find them!
  44. Prime Opt: So I’ve decided I’m going to be nice here and just ding all the class unlock quests together because these quests are not good. No I’m not talking about how I have to have access to expansion content I haven’t done the story for yet, that’s a separate thing. No I just mean the quests themselves. The overwhelming majority of the class unlock quests involve either going through a specific dungeon (good luck finding said dungeon without a guide) and looting an INVISIBLE item on the ground…
  45. QoL: …I’m sorry really quick I need to circle back to that, there are several quest items that are straight up INVISIBLE. They can be targeted, but unless you know they’re there nothing indicates that they are… THERE. They… gah!
  46. Prime Opt: …anyways, loot an invisible item, or farm mobs to get a specific drop off them. The drop rate on these enemies is not super good. Then you run around in zones where you can’t mount, so enjoy that walking, and finally a cutscene or two or three and you’re done…
  47. Prime Opt: …screw these quests
  48. Traversal: This is probably a good time to bring up traversal. I really, really hope you enjoy walking, because you will be doing so much of it. Let’s just start with base walking, which is mandated in towns and dungeons. I actually have a specific term for this type of negative, I call it Walk Walk Walk, because that is ALL it is. Holding forward (or autorun). For HOURS…
  49. Traversal: …so, uh…
  50. Traversal: …walk walk walk
  51. Secondary: But wait! You can get a mount! At level 20, if you talk to the right person, if you already have the item to give him (I STILL don’t know where to get this, people gave me several and I’m pretty sure THEY got it from the auction house), and then you have to do this stupid race which is bizarrely unclear in its instructions and also gives you a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ map of where to go. As usual walkthroughs are your friend
  52. Controls: So how do you mount? Why I’m glad you asked, you just type in /mount and then the name of the mount you want. Make sure it’s in quotations! Why that’s so easy, I’ll just assign it is own macro and use that to dismount too! Wait it doesn’t work for dismounting. How do I dismount?! Oh right, all I have to do is type /dismount, it’s so obvious! (You can also select the universal menu and hit dismount there)
  53. Padding: Everything. Everything in this game has padding. If I see anything particularly egregious I’ll call it out but otherwise consider this…
  54. Padding: …a full…
  55. Padding: …triple. This is a good as time to any to mention, in relation to the above, that while ON STREAM at one point we were going from Point A to Point B and it took an hour and 7 minutes to get there. While mounted. While knowing where we were going
  56. Seconds In Minutes: This is… hard to quantify. There are so many examples of Seconds In Minutes in this game it is unjokingly easier to point to things that don’t involve it. So I’m going to be boring and just go down the list. First there’s ‘interacting with NPCs’ which there’s just… so many micro pauses in doing so
  57. Seconds In Minutes: Then we have looting. Good lord, looting. Most loot is auto teleported to you (good thing), but casting lots involves menuing and some related issues I just realized I haven’t mentioned, but then…
  58. Seconds In Minutes: …there’s opening things in your inventory. This is not only a menu action and a button press per, but you have a frickin’ cast bar each time. Do note you can get plenty of these things piling up in your inventory…
  59. Seconds In Minutes: …so I’m going to double down on this one
  60. Seconds In Minutes: Loading. Yes I know it’s a weird one but stuff does not load in immediately, and when I say ‘stuff’ I include things like home points, elevator buttons, and NPCs, meaning you can get to an area and then just have to stand there waiting
  61. Seconds In Minutes: Y’know while I’m at it, combat. The delay in doing virtually anything is yet another point against early game combat
  62. Interface: This feels like a good time to talk about feedback. I talk a lot about feedback (in fact the two games I played right before this both had various feedback issues). Feedback, for the unaware, is when the game does something to indicate to you that something has happened. This is usually audio, visual, or both and usually falls under ‘a good’ or ‘a bad’. You heal, a flash of light happens and you hear a light ding. You get hit, your character blinks or is knocked back and you hear an ‘oof’. This is feedback. There is… almost NO feedback in this game. Everything gets dumped into the…
  63. Interface: …hard to parse…
  64. Interface: …text box at the bottom. Otherwise good luck on figuring out things. There are many, many instances where I wasn’t sure if I’d done something right because absolutely nothing happened in reaction to me doing it. Sometimes there’s a line of text (see above), but other times there’s literally nothing unless you do it wrong, at which point it’ll tell you EHH you did that wrong. Playing this game feels like playing with a blindfold on but the cloth is a bit thin so you can ALMOST see through it if you squint
  65. Overworld: Following general stream of consciousness, let’s talk overworld design. I’ve covered a lot of good overworlds in my time, and a lot of bad ones, and there’s two universally accepted things that make a bad overworld. First is you have it be entirely too large with entirely too little in it. All this does is create a commute as you’re roaming around. Now this CAN work on the story axis if there’s something interesting to take in (Bioware games do this a lot actually, with NPC chatter or changing backgrounds). Hell even FFXIV has this problem in ARR, but those zones always have some visual element going on to do a bit of story lifting. But here there is nothing…
  66. Overworld: …just giant…
  67. Overworld: …empty zones. I’m going to be nice and merely give a triple negative for the starting zones big emptiness and move on to…
  68. Overworld: Point two; irritating layout. This one varies a bit but tight corridors or one-way cliffs with no convenient way back up or walls that just block your path so you have to go around, these kinds of irritants can build up if nothing is done with them. And that last point is critical, because if you make there be a gameplay reason to guide a player on a specific path that can work. Nothing of the sort is done here. Instead you just have to navigate a mess of weeds, tunnels, walls, and canyons for absolutely no reason…
  69. Overworld: …so once again…
  70. Overworld: …a triple. I should mention that these are just six negatives for the basic vanilla zones. The stuff surrounding the four major cities. We’ll talk about later zones later
  71. Difficulty Curve: Since we’re into actual content now let’s talk about the difficulty curve. Obviously that first whoomph is a doozy but then you get Trusts and it’s totally fine! Unless you go a little bit too far, or to the wrong zone. I’d call this WoW Vanilla Syndrome if it didn’t pre-date WoW’s existence by several years. You know the old joke; “Ha I’ll just fight two mobs at once!” and then you die. The problem is, at least in early game content (up to say about level 20ish) this is incredibly binary. You are either absolutely destroying the enemy, or dying with no hope of victory. Trusts help but even then nothing can overcome the stat wall
  72. Grind: …okay so, this is a weird one but hear me out. The actual leveling, even if done solo (with Trusts), is massively sped up from how it used to be. There are also periodic events (and Eminence Records) that help speed it along even faster. So why put this here? Simple. It’s definitely a lot faster leveling than it used to be (and faster than other MMOs even) but it’s still incredibly dull, boring grind. This is the same negative I’d give Asheron’s Call after they added Tusker Isle. Yes they massively sped up leveling, and yes it’s still amazingly dull
  73. Prime Opt: BUT WAIT, there’s more! Once you hit level 50 you have to do a Limit Break quest to gain access to leveling… 5 more levels. These quests suck, but they have variable suckitude so I’ll try to keep track as I go. First we have In Defiant Challenge; Go find three items that are rare drops from specific mobs in specific dungeons. Enjoy that walkthrough!
  74. Prime Opt: Then there’s Atop The Highest Mountains; Go to three zones, find an invisible (sigh) spot, and loot it. Again, walkthroughland
  75. Guidance: This is a good time as any to mention the near total lack of Guidance in layout and zone design. The maps can help… if you have them (or an addon) but that’s it
  76. Hub: Every single town sucks from a gameplay perspective. Everything is entirely too spread apart, with little indicator of what’s where and little logic to what is placed where. So let’s just give a negative for San d’Oria…
  77. Hub: …Bastok…
  78. Hub: …Windurst…
  79. Hub: …and Jeuno. Actually I’m going to double down on Jeuno because the map there (if you have it!) is actively unhelpful in navigation and the layout is just bizarre…
  80. Hub: …so enjoy that double
  81. Inventory: I’ve seen worse… but I’ve seen a lot better too
  82. Secondary: Also the quests for raising inventory size mean going and finding specific items in the world (walkthrouuugh) to turn into a dude who nothing indicates he’s the dude to raise your inventory space (info in game)
  83. Unskippable Cutscenes: Depends, actually. Sometimes you can Bioware-style mash your way through, sometimes you’re just stuck…
  84. Unskippable Cutscenes: …but even at this point in time, with very little actual content experienced, it was already a major problem
  85. Visual Distinction: A small but common repeated problem is being able to tell what kinds of things you can interact with because nothing indicates it’s… a thing. I’ll just use one example here; the elevator button in Jeuno
  86. QoL: I know I said I wouldn’t be too harsh about the requirements for requirements thing FFXI has but good lord I hated it in XIV and it’s even worse here. I’m not even talking about skipping story stuff, I mean the amount of steps required to accomplish a simple basic frickin’ task is just aggravating. But what’s really weird and I don’t honestly have a category to put this in so we’re going to put this under…
  87. Level: …generic level design, but like… what is with the absolutely BIZARRE decisions in gameplay that plague everything? Again, even with the little content I’ve experienced at this point, there’s at least two asterisks to every quest, or there’s a ‘hey make sure you do this or else you’re screwed’ or ‘make sure you DON’T do this or else you’re screwed’. The way this game handles scripting and triggers is mind boggling…
  88. Level: …and deserves its own…
  89. Level: …triple for general and constant aggravation
  90. Prime Opt: Whence Blows The Wind. Let’s get this out of the way; Walkthroughitis…
  91. Prime Opt: …pretty badly, actually, considering how friggin’ lost these items are in the depths of some fairly lengthy dungeons which nothing even indicates that these are the correct dungeons…
  92. Prime Opt: …but THEN there’s the dungeons themselves. Tightly congested mobs in tight corridors with camera issues on top of having regular debuffs that lower your max HP while also being absolutely gargantuan? This is an awful quest…
  93. Level: …an awful dungeon…
  94. Padding: …and way too damned long
  95. Prime Opt: Okay so I had to do some research on this because these God awful dungeons I just mentioned? They require specific key items to either access, progress, or hit the right area of. Now if someone else has that item you’re good, but for review purposes that super does not count. And there are many of them, and they are all their own nonsense hell…
  96. Prime Opt: …of…
  97. Prime Opt: …triple negativeville
  98. Music: There’s some really bad No Music problems in vanilla. Like, really bad. Almost every overworld and dungeon zone has no music and it’s aggravating…
  99. Music: …so that’s…
  100. Music: …a triple
  101. Level: And then there’s the absolute nonsense that is Castle Oztroja. Let’s just start by saying that the level layout is awful…
  102. Level: …and the enemy density is terrible (by the way quick aside; You might be wondering why I’m dinging enemy density here whereas there are dozens of other games where I don’t. The answer is; This is a game where fighting more than one thing at a time is a big deal, even in a group and with a dedicated healer. And in that environment you throw groups at us? That’s a combination of padding AND bullcrap)…
  103. Level: …also you can fall pretty easily at multiple points and the corridors are tight, camera-killing corridors
  104. Level: But then there’s the password… thing. Now again in another game this might have been a wash, or even a positive, but let’s think about this for a second. You have to wander around getting three passwords to then be able to progress through the final door. This giant, labyrinthine dungeon, with tons of enemies, and multiple enemies per group, and all the other hallmarks we’ve talked about. And now think about how much this stupid password ‘quest’ magnifies all of these…
  105. Padding: …leading to my favorite thing in a video game. Wasting my time
  106. Prime Opt: Riding On The Clouds. Okay so you have to talk to a dude who gives you hints of NPCs in the major towns (and minor towns) and you have to figure out who they are to give them items to progress. Cool idea at the start, but it falls into three conjoining issues. First, these towns have dozens upon dozens of NPCs, and unless you actually talk to every single frickin’ one good luck figuring out which one a hint is pointing at. Second, when you turn in to someone there’s almost NO feedback that you’ve even found the right person. Instead you’re just given a key item with no text, sound, effect, or any kind of fanfare. Third and finally, even if you have a walkthrough to help you, this is a LOT of running around
  107. MSQ: San d’Oria, 1-2. I could talk about the lack of music dungeon, the vague directions to even reach it, the distance you travel to get there, the irritating enemies, the smaller hallways and caves, but honestly I can summarize why this quest sucks with one sentence; This one quest took me 21 minutes to do while I was level 70 with decent gear, a map, and a walkthrough
  108. MSQ: San d’Oria, 2-1. So let’s just START by saying this took me 29 minutes to do (once again; High level, geared, walkthrough, and a friggin’ map). But I need to punch down on this asshole quest for something other than the usual…
  109. Terrain: …the terrain design. Check this out. You have to go to a spot that essentially mandates going around mountains and a huge chasm to reach, and also involves having to navigate the game’s awful ‘ramp’ design to get up to. Okay there we are, talk to the guy, now go all the way down to the bottom of the chasm you just passed. No of course you can’t jump or fall down, find the ramp. Of COURSE the ramp is on the opposite side of the chasm from you, hard to see, AND hard to navigate. It’s okay you’ll get familiar with it because the very next step, and this is not a joke, is to go right back up to the guy you started at, at the very top of the chasm, on the opposite SIDE of the chasm… and then, check this out, the next step…
  110. Backtracking: …is to go ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN AGAIN. Then back up and talk to the guy. This… …almost gave me an aneurysm how frustrating and dull this was. I want to stress there was no actual navigation, puzzle design, or even basic combat in this quest
  111. Hub: Bastok sucks to navigate. Actually sucks, just in general, with a guide, with a map, still sucks
  112. MSQ: Hope you enjoy nice, narrow, linear corridors filled with enemies
  113. Hub: Windurst sucks almost as much as Bastok to navigate, but what’s really bizarre is its waypoint placement. Who in the world sat down and decided on the locations for these friggin’ things?
  114. MSQ: Okay so most of 2-3 is just one long walk, which is boring…
  115. MSQ: But then! You get to go through a narrow corridor dungeon filled with boring enemies to fight a big (ready: boring) fight
  116. Padding: I’m adding a padding negative for how long all of the above took me to do. Literal hours spent doing what should’ve taken 20 minutes, barring travel time
  117. Interface: So there’s a quest log in the game. There’s even a ‘completed quest’ tab. But for basically every Rhapsodies quest I could not figure out which quests I had already done because they’re either not listed there or are listed in some insane non-intuitive way…
  118. Interface: …did I mention it tracks Missions and Quests separately? And NO there’s no clear indicator of which is which
  119. Walkthroughitis: The Rhapsodies quest chain has issues on several levels but my personal favorite is how the quest itself, both in the cutscenes and the log, do not indicate ANYthing about where to go next at several points in time. This happens repeatedly but my favorite instance is when we’re inside Escha (y’know, an alternate dimension of the future or whatever) and she’s like “We should follow her!” so we go to a totally unrelated spot in a completely different zone in another dimension to progress. Even WITH a guide I had trouble with this particular step…
  120. Walkthroughitis: …so enjoy that
  121. MSQ: So. As part of the Limit Break chain you have to fight a death doom fight. We’ll cover THAT quest later, I’m still in the prep work for it. No see, every class needs a specific item to even be able to access it. These items drop from absolutely all over the place, from reasonably high level enemies (67 range). These enemies are so spread out (and only very specific types of enemies drop the one YOU personally care about) and respawn slowly AND have a rare drop rate. So…
  122. Padding: …yeah it’s another boring farm quest
  123. MSQ: So hey, back to the Limit Break quests. Which is your favorite, the one that involves grinding, or the other one that involves grinding? Honestly these are pretty good by FFXI’s standards… which makes them merely an aggregate negative. At least until you reach…
  124. MSQ: …the quest Beyond The Stars. This quest involves doing Rock Paper Scissors. I want to give this quest more negatives but they actually have a bad luck protection mechanism in place; Each round you lose you can try again at no cost (other than time of course) and the opponent’s HP is lowered. He starts at 5. It took me FOUR rounds to manage this. In other words he had 2 health by the time I managed it because, and I did my research on this, there are NO tells and there is NO pattern to it. There is no strategy whatsoever. Pick things randomly
  125. QoL: So uh. This one is going to take some explanation but here’s the summary; You CANNOT interact with enemies that you don’t have a tag on, either you or your party. Here’s the thing. Most (read; almost all) older MMOs of this style, aka the types of games where roaming and grinding and hunting and socializing are a huge aspect of the gameplay loop have a thing where you can join others in fights. How much credit or reward you get for that varies (I won’t list examples, almost every MMO does it a little bit differently) but one way or the other you can at least, if you so choose, help someone else fight something for no benefit to yourself. FFXI DISALLOWS this completely. I understand that it’s near-mandatory thanks to how FFXI’s combat works but… maybe someone somewhere should have noticed that’s a huge friggin’ problem? This is socializing and player interaction hostile
  126. Controls: I know controls are actually a part of Interface, and I thought about just putting this under interface, but good God I absolutely hate how you ‘do’ things in this game. Want to turn in a quest? Target the person, open the menu, go to trade, manually trade the items, hope you picked the right items or start over. Also it’s easy to accidentally unselect the person in the process
  127. QoL: I’m putting this under quality of life cuz this is just a dick move. So at a certain point you go into the past (spoilers) and you do so by going into a Cavernous Maw. No not the Abyssea Cavernous Maws, the time traveling Cavernous Maws. If you walk up to one and go back that serves as your first Maw and now you can use that one going forward. Okay, that makes sense. Here’s the thing; Each of these Maws serves as a warp point back and forth between the past and present. Makes sense. But these unlock from the PAST versions. So obviously they make an exception for your first warp, but that’s the only exception. So I REALLY hope you either got some Survival Guides or Home Points in the past because otherwise your only method of getting there is via the ONE Maw you went through. What’s that, you don’t remember which one you used? Sucks to be you. NOTHING indicates which one you used. Just try each one until you figure it out. Screw you
  128. Overworld: Hokay so I said I’d cover these as we run into them. And I just have to say that Jugner Forest S can go DIRECTLY to hell. You know Blade’s Edge Mountains, one of the worst designed zones over in WoW? One of the main reasons that zone sucked in terms of overworld design is that it mandated going aaaall the way up and down the mountain cliffs for each quest. Imagine that, but also nothing on the map indicates you have to do that, or where the ramps are, or that the ramps even exist. Then combine that with an absolute mess of doodads which interrupt movement everywhere thanks to how the ‘physics’ works. I don’t mean like fallen trees, I mean rocks and bushes and twigs, and you’ll run into each of them interrupting movement. The zone is also SMEARED with enemies. Just absolutely littered. This zone, by itself…
  129. Overworld: …deserves…
  130. Overworld: …a triple just for overworld design
  131. Map: But then we get to talk about map design. The maps in this game vary in overall quality, but the ones for both S zones (naturally the S stands for paSt… no I’m kidding it’s for Shadowreign, because screw readability) are actively unhelpful. As in if you try to us the map it will mislead you on what you can interact with. At one particular point I was going through and ran into a wall. Said wall was not on the map. Said wall was about 30 feet in front of a river, also not on the map. No way to cross the river by the way. And the local layout was very narrow. To explain that, what I mean is we were effectively in a narrow corridor (even if it looked open, the navigable area was this tiny corridor). But the map showed a nice big open field. So…
  132. Graphics: Render radius. I actually noticed this much earlier but it’s horrific in this game. Now I know what you’re thinking. Normally I don’t ding issues like because it’s down to coding issues and hardware/server limitations, but this is absolutely awful. The render radius is maybe 20 feet, maybe 30. Which is obviously super short (especially given how large zones are) but becomes much worse when you realize that it also contributes to getting lost. Imagine, if you will, you’re following someone and a server lag spike hits, or you go the wrong way for about 3 seconds, or you look away for a moment. Congrats, you have lost the person you were with. And there’s no real good way to re-find that person. This is people IN your party, to be clear. This is antagonistic at best…
  133. HUD: …also I should ding the fact that there’s no real way to find party members outside of talking, luck, or being right next to them
  134. Music: No Music in Delkfutt (and many other dungeons)
  135. Level: Delkfutt. Screeeew this place. Swarmed with enemies, some of which aggro on magic usage as an extra screw you, ten floors of ‘go the long way’ nonsense, boring dull textures, and the stupid staircase at the end (alongside other padding)…
  136. Level: …is…
  137. Level: …just bleh
  138. Level: Guidance: Also good luck figuring ANY of this place out
  139. Level: Gotcha: Castle Oztroja trap. Pick the right lever, otherwise get dumped at the bottom of the dungeon with a HUGE walkback. NOTHING indicates this is here, and which lever is correct rotates every in game day
  140. MSQ: Magicite. Screw this stupid goddamned quest. On the face of it it’s simple; Go to three dungeons and traverse them. But the sheer quantity of steps you have to do to reach these dungeons, then access them, and how many ways it can go wrong, means you literally have to go do several other quests in order to do the quests in order to go through doors and it’s all just…
  141. MSQ: …so…
  142. MSQ: …arduous
  143. Walkthroughitis: Also GOOD LUCK figuring out which exact NPCs to talk to to trigger the right quests for all of this
  144. Music: Zilart continues the lack of music problem
  145. Level: Castle Zvahl is long, boring, and… honestly it’s the same as every other dungeon in vanilla. No seriously, they’re all functionally identical, so rather than bore you with repeating the same points…
  146. Level: …let’s just give the negatives and move on
  147. QoL: So there’s this wonderful feature the game has. Rhapsodies of Vana’diel (the expansion) is supposed to be done kind of ‘alongside’ a lot of the game. Thing is the triggers for these are all over the place AND these cutscenes have highest priority, meaning they interrupt you as you’re doing other things CONSTANTLY
  148. MSQ: Headstone Pilgrimage. Go find seven, SEVEN, macguffins across the known world. These are absolutely all over the place in older content hidden in tiny little nooks and crannies which require either walking through endless dungeons of lower level content or, worse, slogging through at-level enemies while searching for them. Even if you know what you’re doing and are high level AND have a guide this is an insanely padded quest…
  149. MSQ: …so that’s…
  150. MSQ: …a triple
  151. Walkthroughitis: Headstone Pilgrimage is also supreme walkthroughitis. There is, and I checked, ZERO indication of where any of these are. This was intended back in the day for people to just go scouting… everywhere and through sheer numbers and brute force find these things. Even WITH a guide some of these are total nonsense to find…
  152. Walkthroughitis: …so that’s…
  153. Walkthroughitis: …another triple
  154. Padding: Good lord it took us over two HOURS to do this quest and that’s at level 99 with stealth with a walkthrough WITH a guide WITH teleports everywhere
  155. Backtracking: Way, way too much ‘go to a spot, use the door (twice!), go back to town, go BACK to the dungeon’ kind of stuff
  156. Guidance: Promathia early quests. In general each quest of this segment can either be intuited or requires talking to every single person in town, but first of all that’s long and arduous and second of all there’s also sections where NOTHING indicates where to go or what to do
  157. Level: The Tavnazian Sewers is fine for what it is but you need a Bronze Key (or a thief) to progress. Period, no way around it. Keys are one use and drop rarely off a specific mob and nothing tells you that. Also there’s a trap later which sets you back wasting said key
  158. Encounter: So there’s a puzzle in the Tavnazian Sewers that is bonkers. It’s a hallway with several torches, and if you use one it tells you what element it is WHILE using it. That’s it. Absolutely nothing else to indicate that there is a puzzle here or what to do about it. The SOLUTION is to look up what day it is (in game) and use two elements corresponding to that day but like… this is one of those ‘you can’t solve a puzzle you don’t know exists’ situations…
  159. Encounter: …so, y’know, that sucks
  160. Music: Good time to mention the lack of music problem continues in Promathia
  161. MSQ: Climbing up the mountain. Climbing up the god damned mountain. Where do I even begin? Nothing even indicates there’s a proper path, the actual path is barely visible, the miasma blocks your way for no damned reason (both on the ground and on the paths), it is SILLY easy to just slide off the path as you go by accident, if at any point in time you disconnect or crash you’re screwed, any restart means going all the way back to the start, any path back to start is a huge ass maze in and of itself (it took me, no joke, about 15 minutes just to FIND the path back), there’s no map to speak of (even online guides are barely worthwhile here), there are plenty of dead ends, oh and my personal favorite part? The jewel breaks if you teleport or mount. Please realize that this means some ASSHOLE took the extra time and effort to code in this JUST to spit in the player’s face. This entire quest…
  162. MSQ: …is fully…
  163. MSQ: …player hostile
  164. Gotcha: Also the vents that spawn and despawn because screw you
  165. Padding: Also almost ANY failure means starting all over
  166. Backtracking: And there’s no easy way back to the start either, even if you’re mounted
  167. MSQ: Did I mention this is MANDATORY? You CANNOT progress the expansion without doing this bullcrap
  168. Walkthroughitis: By the way the entire quest around this segment ALSO sucks and good luck figuring out who to talk to when because there is NO logic to it
  169. Backtracking: And involves a lot of pointless traipsing around Windurst, the worst town to navigate
  170. Backtracking: By the way the ENTIRE GAME likes to make you go to dungeon, come back, go back to dungeon but it gets pretty bad around the Pso’Xja section
  171. MSQ: Everything to do with Sacrarium. Go in, farm a random drop for a key, kill a nemesis who only spawns at night for another key, then either waste both (meaning you have to use them, then redo the farming to use them again because the quest MANDATES backtracking) or go do another totally unrelated quest to gain access to a permanent key
  172. Walkthroughitis: Also good luck figuring out any of this
  173. Walkthroughitis: Promyvion Vahzl. This one throws a curveball because you have to go do something totally new to progress and, as usual, NOTHING indicates this
  174. Backtracking: Having to enter the friggin’ Goblin mines only to have to exit only to have to go RIGHT back in is a special kind of asshole move. It’s literally the next step, no waiting
  175. Grind: Also have fun grinding that gold key up. Remember EACH person needs it
  176. Graphics: The game has the same problem FF12 has (in reverse, I suppose) where to showcase flashbacks or ‘mystical’ areas there’s this awful blur duplicate filter that’s just headache inducing…
  177. Graphics: …it’s used in every damned cutscene like this…
  178. Graphics: …which means an inordinate quantity of headache cutscenes
  179. Padding: The Three Paths is just too damned long. It also has some of the same issues most FFXI quests have (do a quest to do a quest) but really it’s the arduous length that drags it down
  180. Song: Ru’Lude Gardens. I’m sorry but it’s a song that gets very old very fast and we hear it a LOT (even if you’re not home point’d here)
  181. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out which, where, and what the very specific points you have to interact with to get the items to progress with fixing the C.I.D. during 7-4 Calm Before The Storm
  182. Overworld: Al’Taieu. God I honestly think I’m getting dulled to how awful these quests are but this zone needs special mention. It’s gigantic, you can’t mount here, and the enemies suck AND can aggro you in ways you can’t easily see
  183. Backtracking: Also the main quest involves walking across the aforementioned gigantic zone
  184. Level: Grand Palace of Hu’Xzoi can go directly to hell. It’s huge, has enemies that suck AND reraise (Life 3), and it’s one long extended escort quest which it’s relatively easy to fall behind on thanks to the doors only opening temporarily…
  185. Level: …what a miserable…
  186. MSQ: …quest
  187. Walkthroughitis: Just… everything about the finale, as per usual
  188. Level: Garden of Ru’Hmet… could be worse. But it’s still pretty bad. Point in fact I would say this is probably one of the best dungeons to date for earning a single negative
  189. Padding: Promathia time gating. Go wait one REAL LIFE day (set to Japan’s midnight, of course)
  190. Padding: Aht Urghan time gating (in game day… also an expensive item OR a crapton of money)
  191. MSQ: King Ranperre’s tomb can go directly to hell. It will not cross go. It will not collect two hundred dollars. Also Bleydtorvall is awesome
  192. Backtracking: Also as part of the Sandoria MSQ you have to literally go back through the tomb again. The exact same path and in the exact same way to the exact same destination, no changes
  193. Guidance: Also the quest LIES to you and says ‘clear the way’ but you don’t have to
  194. Prime Opt: Let me go ahead and just slather the remainder of the second half of Sandoria quests with an aggregate triple. This is all the same vanilla garbage I’ve been dealing with all along. Unclear directions, backtracking, quests in the middle of nowhere, dungeons of doom, it’s actually not terrible compared to the initial stuff…
  195. Prime Opt: …which is why it is only…
  196. Prime Opt: …a triple
  197. Backtracking: By the way you have to do the Ranperre tomb a THIRD TIME
  198. MSQ: The early Windurst quests are… bad. Merely bad, I mean. Compared to everything else it’s just the usual boring walks out to dungeons which are needlessly long and force you to go the long way around, waste your time with pointless backtracking, and give you barely any guidance on what to actually do…
  199. MSQ: …usual stuff really
  200. Level: Have I mentioned that the Windurst dungeons still suck? Particular mention to Palborough Mines which is confusing even WITH a map and, worse, long and boring
  201. MSQ: So hey, hi, we’re doing Windurst now. Most of these quests suck of course but honestly most of them just generically suck
  202. Padding: But here’s the kick in the teeth. You have to redo several long quests each time you do another nation. Now this is not as bad as it could be (isn’t that the watchword for FFXI in general?) because you retain key items and waypoints so a lot of this is just zipping to the end of places you’ve already done, but it’s still a slog and still takes hours to redo quests you’ve already done. We’ll be giving this negative again when we get to Bastok don’t worry
  203. QoL: So there’s something called the Three Mages Gate. It’s… gosh where do I begin. So it requires you to stand on three spots with a Red Mage, Black Mage, and White Mage. Three separate players, no alternate bypass method (more on that in a minute, there’s an asterisk). This means this is one of the most literal Group Walls in the history of MMO because there’s a damned wall we cannot bypass without a group. This is already, by itself, silly…
  204. Prime Opt: …but there’s another interesting niggle. An earlier (optional) quest requires going through this. Now this is the weird part, because it’s optional and skippable so who cares right? Thing is you cannot abandon quests in FFXI, and if you’re on a given quest chain you can’t just switch to another quest in said chain until you complete your current quest. So if you skip this there IS a possible point afterwards where you can bypass this (this is the aforementioned asterisk) thanks to something they patched in… but only if you do so at the right TIME. If you don’t do it correctly then you’re on another quest and can’t. Now hang on, it’s worse than that, because…
  205. QoL: …the inability to drop a quest means it’s relatively easy to reach another quest where you HAVE to go through this door (in fact it’s 6-1, the quest I’m on as I’m typing these negatives up). Now that I’m here I CANNOT go back and do the asterisk method to bypass this. I am locked in, absolutely, and now have NO method to get through this door that does not involve other players
  206. MSQ: Now here’s the real kicker. The main quest to get through here, minus the asterisk, requires you to go through here. The INTENDED method is to… you guessed it… use the damned three mages gate. Hang on, one last problem…
  207. MSQ: …because many quests require you to access this stupid canal. There is exactly ONE way into the canal. You HAVE to go through this gate. And if you don’t have players or skip the asterisk, you’re stuck, you cannot do any of them. This includes FIVE separate MSQ quests…
  208. MSQ: …this…
  209. MSQ: …is legitimately awful
  210. Level: Toraimarai Canal. This is in the running for one of the worst individual dungeons in the game, no joke. The map is incomplete and misleading, the pathways are byzantine and mandate going the long way around, and it’s stretched out across multiple zones which makes navigation even worse…
  211. Level: …screw…
  212. Level: …everything about this place
  213. MSQ: Also the quests (yes, plural) going through here are frequent
  214. Backtracking: Windurst tower. I’m sorry WHY do we have to CONSTANTLY walk up and down and up and down this stupid tower for half the main quests for Windurst…
  215. Padding: …it’s neverending!
  216. MSQ: The Cursed Key for Uggalepih which can’t be traded and doesn’t open the door
  217. Walkthroughitis: General walkthroughitis negative for all the Windurst quests…
  218. Walkthroughitis: …it’s…
  219. Walkthroughitis: …pretty bad. Not as bad as some stuff we’ve already seen but it’s pretty bad
  220. MSQ: 8-2 and having to retread several areas INCLUDING the dungeon we LITERALLY just did
  221. Backtracking: This is true across several dungeons in this stretch of content too
  222. Padding: 8-2 is enormous. Even with a guide and with high levels and with teleports it’s still like a two hour quest
  223. MSQ: 9-1 and in addition to the usual backtracking go farm an item with a rare drop rate off enemies of which there are only 13 with a 5 minute respawn. We were sitting here for quite some time while someone (WITH Treasure Hunter to increase drop rate, mind you) farmed it for us (thanks Bleydtorvall)
  224. Padding: I’m doubling up on the tower negative. The fact that you have to traipse up and down this stupid tower almost every single Windurst MSQ (sometimes more than once per quest) is just silly
  225. Walkthroughitis: Some general normal issues with Bastok 1 quests
  226. MSQ: Go kill 20 Copper Quadavs. No there aren’t 20 spawns so you HAVE to wait on respawns. Yes it takes forever even when you’re one shotting them
  227. Padding: And now we redo the same quests leading up to the Shadow Lord. Again. I wouldn’t be as harsh on these if they weren’t MANDATORY to access the second bundles of nation quests
  228. Prime Opt: The Final Image, Bastok 7-1, involves going to Ro’Maeve and finding a spot that moves every 15 minutes. On the dot. Using it also means spawning enemies which can take long enough to kill that it makes the spot move again. We got PISS lucky and got it in two spots but still
  229. Level: So the Quicksand Caves have another group wall. This one’s not nearly as bad as the Three Mages Gate but it’s still bad, requiring you to go traipsing off to do a quest to get a lodestone to use… or, y’know, having a group. Easier as a Galka of course (these ARE Galkan ruins)
  230. Boss: I totally forgot to give negatives to the Shadow Lord! …what, don’t look at me like that, it’s a crap fight. Even doing it un-legit like this he has the ability to just… go invulnerable to physical attacks. Forever. If your mage is dead or isn’t there at all you’re straight softlocked (or dead). Keep in mind just how many classes in this game specialize or ONLY do physical damage
  231. Padding: More time gating in the Zilart and Promathia epilogue quests. How much? Well I already mentioned the real life day wait, but then there’s three, count ‘em… THREE in game day waits, two of which are literally back to back…
  232. Padding: …so that’s…
  233. Padding: …wonderful
  234. Hub: Aht Urhgan Whitegate is, somehow, even worse than the other town hubs. Samey layout, confusing directions, misleading map, two stories, doors everywhere, bizarre spread of points to common interactions…
  235. Hub: …generally…
  236. Hub: …awful to navigate
  237. Seconds In Minutes: Bribing to access zones. It’s basically a key and door but with extra grind requirements and delay
  238. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out ANY of the initial quests by the way. Sometimes it’s pretty logical, sometimes it is… not
  239. Overworld: Wajaom Woodlands. It’s actually not as bad as it could be (most of it’s pretty linear and with a map you can navigate pretty well) but good LORD is it huge
  240. Level: Mamook is another ‘good lord what are they smoking’ dungeon map, this time with added verticality and bridges and all the usual fun…
  241. Level: …so it’s like a vanilla dungeon, but worse! The map will not save you here
  242. Level: Bhaflau Thickets is yet another dense zone of hellish proportions
  243. Padding: Another in game day mandatory wait
  244. MSQ: Wear the right kind of clothing to enter the palace. Why NO we won’t be telling you what works. There’s a giant list on the wiki so have fun with that
  245. Padding: …another in game day mandatory wait
  246. Choice: So, hey, we get a bunch of dialogue options in Treasures. Most of them boil down to ‘pick one thing to progress’ (with a couple of exceptions). This ties into the story negative in that we’re actually given ANTI choice gameplay here. Our options are to agree to progress by licking the boots of awful people, or to… not do the quests. And that’s it. Even FF14, which is not known for its Choice gameplay, has dialogue options that can convey a bit of tone and personality for the Warrior of Light (even if it’s limited). This is like the inverse of that. Seeming options that lock us in to this idiocy. It’s insulting
  247. Padding: Another in game wait
  248. Level: Arrapago Reef. This is just… wow. This is probably THE actually worst zone in the game. Massive, stretched across multiple maps which interconnect and have to be navigated, with MULTIPLE one-way lanes which completely impede progress. And hang on lemme talk about that one way thing because I spent some time perusing this map and looking at write ups for this place and holy crap. Often you’ll reach a one way stop the wrong way from another map. Meaning you couldn’t possibly have seen it coming to plan ahead (assuming you even HAVE a map). And when you go over one you often don’t know where it leads for the exact same reason…
  249. Level: …this all…
  250. Level: …sucks
  251. Traversal: By the way just literally navigating this place sucks. It’s a bunch of islands and planks which are easy to get stuck on and absolutely flooded with enemies
  252. Padding: Two more…
  253. Padding: …in game day waits
  254. Padding: One more!
  255. Padding: So, hey! Did you know that Wings of the Goddess involves going to the past? This means almost all the zones are in Vanilla. Here’s the catch! You have NONE of your traversal options anymore cuz, y’know, they’re technically new zones. Meaning you have just lost all of those waypoints and books and have to get them again. Did I mention vanilla is enormous and involves lots of wandering around? We’ll ding individual zones that are noteworthily bad in a minute but for now just requiring the player to basically redo vanilla zones…
  256. Padding: …is already…
  257. Padding: …absolutely awful
  258. Overworld: Meriphataud Mountains and the chasms of irritation and long stretches of nothing
  259. Overworld: Sauromugue and the… …y’know what I’m not going to mention any more details as I do. They’re ALL the same. I’m just going to start listing the zones that suck as we run into them
  260. Overworld: Fort Karugo Narugo… is the worst so far. There’s a warp point that’s WAY outside the actual fort (where all the quests are) and involves an irritating trek through mislabeled terrain and some doors you can open and some you cannot and the whole thing is a colossal pain…
  261. Overworld: …more so because of the frequency of revisits
  262. Overworld: Rolanberry Fields
  263. Overworld: West Sarutabaruta
  264. Overworld: Vunkerl Inlet…
  265. Overworld: …is another of the worst ones. Lots of one way routes which mean going ALL the way around and no way of knowing that until you hit the dead end
  266. Overworld: Batallia Downs is noteworthy in that it LOOKS open but it’s NOT. There’s walls and mountains blocking obvious paths everywhere
  267. MSQ: Jank. There’s some… weird jank decisions in the Winds expansion, probably because it was SO experimental. You start the quests but then are just kind of lost in a giant open zone (see the above Overworld negatives), then have to zone BACK or else screw you (this is a separate negative I mentioned some time ago), then find one of the in the field outposts (NOTHING indicates where they are), then go join a nation, then do the nation for a while, but the MSQ requires the Nation AND the Nation requires the MSQ so you have to dovetail the two but it’s not clear when, also…
  268. Walkthroughitis: …good luck on figuring out ANY of this…
  269. Walkthroughitis: …without a guide
  270. Padding: The next Windurst quest literally involves traipsing out to a spot (nothing indicates where by the way), talking to him and finding out he’s hungry. Keep in mind BEFORE this point they flat out tell us the three fish we can bring. Naturally we then have to walk all the way back to town to find out we should feed him, then walk BACK out to the tower to do so
  271. Padding: Hey! Wait an in game day! Honestly this is our FIRST of these in Wings so that’s something at least
  272. Overworld: Passhow Marshlands
  273. MSQ: The Wings MSQ in between Dancers in Distress to Crossroads of Time is… really bad. Like, REALLY bad. Some of the worst quest design I’ve seen in the entire game. They have some of the usuals but it’s all just a bit worse than usual. Huge swaths of backtracking, mandatory wait periods, arduous treks into distant lands which have frustrations just navigating, everything takes five billion years dragging down the otherwise interesting story…
  274. MSQ: …it’s all…
  275. MSQ: …pretty terrible
  276. MSQ: Then you have to go to Bastok and Windurst from Sandoria. Lemme explain why this sucks. So when you start Wings you pick a Nation and do their quests, this is mandatory to progress (because this is Vanilla 2.0). Thing is the MSQ itself goes universally through only one location, Sandoria. Okay. So if you picked Sandoria as your nation you’re always here and that’s fine… until you get THIS quest to go to Bastok and Windurst. Two absolutely enormous, and I mean HOURS long treks across terrain (that’s with a mount and having an idea of where you’re going) to access the other two towns. If you’ve picked one of the other nations you’ve already done ONE of these treks but that still leaves the third
  277. Overworld: North Gustaberg
  278. Overworld: Beaucedine Glacier is one of the worse ones so far. This stupid place and its stupid cliffs and its stupid barriers…
  279. Overworld: …can go directly to hell
  280. Overworld: Xarcabard
  281. Guidance: Mislabeled teleports in the past. This isn’t just for like dungeon areas, it’s in general
  282. Padding: I really wish these wait a day quests would stop existing
  283. Music: So, hey, Campaigns. The music for these over-writes all other music, so you know it’s there. That’s neat. Y’know what’s also neat?
  284. Song: This song. It sucks. It gets old VERY quickly. I actually played it, no preface, for a few friends and they got tired of it inside of a minute. This song plays CONSTANTLY in Wings…
  285. Song: …and this is not a short expansion
  286. Overworld: Grauberg
  287. MSQ: Then we have to go get three items to progress the Windurst campaign. Everything about this sucks. Finding the right spots, finding the right items to trade, the fact that one of them is time sensitive (you can only do the turn in at a specific hour range), the fact that it requires farming…
  288. Padding: …and the fact that it ends in yet ANOTHER mandatory day wait
  289. MSQ: So… the first Cait Sith quest. Enjoy navigating a terrible zone while doing a minigame that, honestly, SHOULD be fun and isn’t due to the game cheating and also resetting all your progress if you screw up…
  290. MSQ: …seriously, what the hell game
  291. Padding: Yet another mandatory waiting period in the Windurst chain after the escort quest
  292. Padding: As part of the Windurst chain you have to do Magicite again. The exact same quest. Yes, literally. The ONLY thing that makes this not ATROCIOUSLY horrible is all the unlocks you got last time still apply but this is exceptionally bad…
  293. Padding: …even by FFXI’s standards
  294. MSQ: Defending the Windurst gate is far more irritating than it has any right to. It’s a hold the line mission with things that have very low health, against a lot of enemies, in a game where targeting is a huge hassle
  295. Traversal: Wings in particular has this weird new issue where cutscenes don’t trigger unless you specifically enter a zone FROM another, specific zone. Enter via the wrong zone (or via teleporting) and it doesn’t trigger. In addition to being just irritating this adds to the general walkthroughitis problem this entire GAME has because you’re trying to find a trigger that isn’t firing because you were supposed to enter from the east side or whatever…
  296. Traversal: …it’s very frustrating
  297. Penalty For Failure: So there’s this quest, Storm’s Crescendo, where you have to rush through a cave with a speed buff in order to talk to people to set off bombs, all while tigers chase you. It’s actually a pretty neat idea and reasonably fun and engaging except… any failure, at ALL, means starting all over. Too many failures means waiting an in game day to progress. And it’s VERY easy to make a mistake because the mission is pretty unforgiving in its routing and timer… and that’s the problem. It’s actually kind of fun for what it’s worth (in fact if you’re reading this linearly you’ve already seen the positive for it) but that penalty is BULLcrap. And it more or less mandates either having a route planned out in advance or just doing it over and over to memorize it
  298. Level: Castle Zvahl, past. It’s Zvahl again and it sucks again. No notes
  299. MSQ: So there’s a quest in the Wingsurst chain where you have to enter Castle Birdbrain, then go to the VERY top of the castle (which is a hell of a trek, mind). Then, literally the very next quest is to leave, go to the place outside, then go RIGHT BACK to the EXACT SAME SPOT. I get why this happens (the game, for whatever reasons, mandates zoning to advance quest scripts… this is pretty consistent, it’s why you have to leave a zone then return to advance) but that doesn’t change the fact that you have to do the entire dungeon…
  300. Padding: …twice…
  301. Padding: …in a ROW
  302. Walkthroughitis: Good friggin’ luck figuring out half the Bastok chain. Seriously…
  303. Walkthroughitis: …some of this stuff…
  304. Walkthroughitis: …is just silly
  305. Padding: So the Bastok chain is just LITTERED with ‘wait a day’ steps. Here’s our first one, just a couple of quests in at Fires of Discontent
  306. Padding: LITERALLY the next quest is another day wait (Light in the Darkness)
  307. Padding: This is getting silly. Next quest, again, is another wait (Burden of Suspicion)
  308. Padding: I’m… just going to start listing the quests with waits. So… Storm on the Horizon
  309. Padding: Quelling the Storm
  310. Padding: Beneath the Mask
  311. Padding: The Truth Lies Hid
  312. MSQ: Which, by the way, also involves going all the way into and through Castle Zvahl and dealing with a whole imp puzzle and it’s just… so frustrating
  313. Walkthroughitis: And then there’s the Sandorian quests. Y’know I’ve been doing my due diligence this entire time. Checking the quest ‘log’ (such as it is), seeing what the NPCs say. Sometimes they give hints, ideas of which items to bring or where to go. MOST of the time they… don’t. I get that this is an MMO MMO but the vibe is very much ‘figure it out, sucks to be you!’ This is like if you had to use the Scanner in every single room in Super Metroid, but also the game is 50 times larger. Anyways…
  314. Walkthroughitis: …screw…
  315. Walkthroughitis: …all this bullcrap. I legitimately detest and resent having to keep this stupid walkthrough up on the side the ENTIRE time I play this game
  316. Padding: Wow, even Sandoria has day wait quests
  317. Padding: Another one! Songbirds in a Snowstorm this time
  318. Padding: Sigh. Chasing Shadows
  319. Padding: Her Memories of Malign Maladies
  320. Padding: The quests to run around and get Lilisette’s memories are padded to hell and back. It took a little over two and a half HOURS just to do this quest
  321. MSQ: So speaking of these quests. One of them in particular (Operation Cupid) involves running all the way to the Bulwark in the end of Saruomugue Champaign. There is NO real good way to reach it, it’s just a slog in and out (hope your Warp Ring’s on cooldown!). Then you do it again immediately after
  322. MSQ: By the way an earlier quest involves doing the same trick. Going to the pond in the ass end of a zone, leaving, then going right back
  323. MSQ: So for the last memory you have to redo the first quest you did for your given Nation state. Yes, the exact same quest. Have fun!
  324. Padding: By the way you have to go back to the fey pond again. TWICE. IN A ROW
  325. Padding: AAGGHHH
  326. Padding: Also we then do this… AGAIN…
  327. Padding: …in just a few quests!
  328. Padding: So hey, Fork in the Road involves going back to major quest spots. It could be worse but it’s still tons and tons of just walking around, and your reward is watching the same cutscenes you’ve already seen
  329. Padding: Time sensitive quests which, once again, boil down to ‘wait a day’ (Meeting of the Minds, Adoulin)
  330. MSQ: So a huge portion of Adoulin’s MSQ involves rep gating. Let me be clear, if this was back in the day this would probably be dozens of negatives for grind and padding. This has been patched into acceptability so this is MERELY a double negative but let me tell you, this used to suuuck…
  331. MSQ: …anyways, double negative
  332. Overworld: The Abyssea zones all are technically dungeons. So no mounts. They’re also huge. Now they DO have waypoints periodically, which helps, but this still kinda sucks
  333. Prime Opt: I want you to know that I am holding myself back from giving this even more negatives but we had to do the Mountain. Again. Yes really. It is actually WORSE than before. The fact that it’s part of the Abyssia mandatory chain…
  334. Traversal: …the same awful, awful…
  335. Traversal: …navigation up the mountain itself…
  336. Guidance: …the unclear and frustrating guidance…
  337. Penalty For Failure: …and the same absolutely atrocious penalty for failure…
  338. Padding: …still all make this atrocious
  339. Padding: Lots… and I mean LOTS of real life time limited quests…
  340. Padding: …in…
  341. Padding: …Abyssea
  342. Bug: Having to zone to trigger scripts in older content
  343. Padding: Please, game… please stop having day waits
  344. Padding: Please?
  345. Padding: PLEASE DEAR GOD STOP DOING THIS AAHHH
  346. Padding: I’m just dead now
  347. Padding: Three in a row too, which means mathematically you HAVE to wait
  348. Padding: This is getting silly
  349. Padding: God damn it to hell
  350. Level: Ra’Kaznar. While it’s a decent dungeon for what it is it is way, way, WAY too long. If you cut it down by two thirds or four FIFTHS it’d be better
  351. Padding: Go wait a day, damn you
  352. Padding: Why am I not dead
  353. Padding: One last one. One LAST one. Surely this is it right? Surely there are no more. There’s one more expansion left so we’ll see
  354. Bug: Requiring you to do a quest chain that you can accidentally start in order to progress
  355. Level: Reisenjima. It could be worse, but this is still a narrow hallway with extremely powerful and mean enemies which are heavily clustered together, along with very spread out teleports making traversal (and losing progress) a pain. I should mention our first real death of the ENTIRE Run was here just to emphasize this…
  356. Level: …buuut there are mitigating factors (most enemies can’t see through stealth, only a few areas are severely clustered, etc.) so it’s merely two
  357. Crash: Infrequent but consistent crashes throughout
  358. Backtracking: Consider these some bonus points for all the quests in later expansions (looking at you, Adoulin and Rhapsodies) where the quest objective is literally just ‘go back to the place you were just at, okay now do that again five more times’…
  359. Backtracking: …so…
  360. Backtracking: …enjoy that