that it kinda fell on its face, to the point where Square was giving away subscription

time for free to those stalwart souls who braved that tumultuous era. And then they

broke the world. Dropped a moon on it. Wrecked everything. Took the entire game down for

a period of about nine months, during which they more or less rebuilt the entire thing

- and added that PS3 support they'd talked about however long ago. That's all I'm going

to say about the troubles of version 1.0, as I wasn't actually there. But I'm here in

Eorzea now, have been for several days (On a Japanese server, thus sidestepping the much-publicized

connection woes others have faced), and I can say: I don't wanna go home. I like it

here. And not just because I'm rockin' it Red XIII-style.

So after the world got more or less ruined five years (read: nine months) ago - involving

blowing up a moon and Bahamut going on a tear like he never got to in Chains of Promathia

- Life has kinda returned to normal in Eorzea, for some definition of "Normal." The three

nations are friendly toward each other but fear uprisings from the beast tribes scattered

throughout the lands, as well as the Garlean Imperial forces, who mill about on the periphery

with their magitek weaponry and their gunblades and other elements pulled from Final Fantasies

past. But that's some high-level stuff. First and foremost, you've gotta get your feet wet

by learning your starting class - which also determines which chunk of the world you arrive

in after creation - by ruthlessly and violently slaughtering the innocent wildlife outside

the city gates, as is standard. Fortunately, the game lends itself to giving you heaps

and piles of EXP, if you're willing to do a bit of legwork, be it for a quest or filling

out the Hunting Log that gives out massive experience bonuses for tracking down and slaughtering

specific species of monsters. Generally speaking, much of the content in FFXIV is designed to

get you out and exploring, rather than cooped up in parties like XI's early days. And with

a world this pretty, that's a good thing.

The interface for this PS3 version is designed to be as intuitive as possible, with most

of your commands, attacks and menus available from a customizable system of hotbars accessed

by holding L2 or R2 and pressing a face button. Playing through XI's PS2 and 360 versions,

I could never imagine making those work without a keyboard, but I can only think of two occasions

where I've had to type something outside of the PS3's standard text-entry window. And

even then, that's just because I had the keyboard hooked up at the time. Perhaps it's because

so much of the content is solo-friendly, even for your squishier classes like mages and

lancers and whatnot. Larger-scale battles in the field called FATEs - for Full Active

Time Event, but it might as well mean Frantic Ad-Hoc Team Excitement - pit everyone in the

general vicinity against waves upon waves of monsters, or just one really freakin' big

one, for mutual benefit and piles of EXP. You really only need parties for the instanced

raids that pop up later in the storyline, and even then you don't have to sit and shout

for a party and hope there's someone who speaks your language and has the job you need. By

activating the Duty Finder and selecting the raids you're interested in joining, you enter

a queue to be matched with teammates once the right combination of roles is filled out.

Once your number's up, you can jump right into the mission from any point in the world,

and once it's over you wind up right where you were. Immersion-breaking? Just a bit.

Convenient? Hells yes.

One of FFXIV ver. 1.0's selling points was a new take on the classic Final Fantasy jobs

system, where simply changing one's weapon changed one's class - and level, for that

matter. This system returns, bolstered by a "Gear Set" system that allows you to change

all your clothes - and your class - in just a couple button presses, and an Armory Chest

that allows you to hold 25 items per gear slot in hammerspace outside your actual inventory.

As in the original version, each crafting and harvesting discipline from Armorer to

Miner to Alchemist is considered its own class, with EXP progression, a guild, and optional

bonus missions called Guildleves just like any of those monster-killing classes.

You'll notice I haven't had much to say against this game, and that's because... well, I haven't

had any issues, really. Sure, the servers are a bit congested, which can affect largescale

events, and once I've played for some 10 hours at a shot the sound goes all wonky and then

completely dies. But that's about it. Pretty much everything I've laid my hands on has

worked well, the storyline's engaging (especially by MMORPG standards), and... well, there's

a hell of a lot of content here. So I'm gonna come back a bit later and fill in some of

the holes in Part 2, once I've fiddled with the Materia system and continued to train

Level Divisible By Four the All-purpose Combat Chocobo and put some more levels into fishing

and improved my Maelstrom rank and...