What makes Vana'diel special to me
So, in my earlier blog post I talked at moderate length about how I adore early era 3D games and how they just feel nice to me. Combine that with the fact that I've been a huge Final Fantasy fan ever since getting Final Fantasy XII for Christmas and my love for MMORPGs, it would be easy to assume that I have played Final Fantasy XI Online. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
My family was lower middle-class, not exactly poor but also not exactly rich. I have three siblings, so a six-headed family with 1-3 dogs needed plenty of feeding and my parents were not exactly happy with any kind of subscription. Even the newspaper was bought individually, if it was bought at all, so a subscription for a video-game was not in the cards, especially considering that 13€/month was a lot more money back then than it is now, but I don't want to digress into an economics debate. I had a PS2, I would've been able to buy the game, but even if I had spent my allowance on FF11, it would've taken most of it. Plus, I wasn't sure whether I would've stuck with it.
My infatuation with MMOs wouldn't have started for another few years, and even then it started on F2P grindfests like FlyFF and Cabal Online. Most people in my school that played MMOs played either 4Story or Metin2, but neither interested me much. I had always loved the concept of MMOs - becoming stronger with your friends, having an alter ego to express yourself with, immerse yourself in an unfamiliar world. I had to deal with puberty+ at the time - normal puberty combined with unchecked gender dysphoria, so having a form of escapism where I could live out who I truly were inside was just mesmerizing. MMOs played a massive part in helping me cope with all of that, even if my mother did not like seeing me play them. Eventually, I would move onto World of Warcraft right around its Mists of Pandaria release when I finally got a side job after school that paid decently well for me not to mind a subscription much.
So why Final Fantasy XI Online this year of all things? Well, it had been on my mind for quite a while ever since going to Distant Worlds, the official Final Fantasy concert, and hearing the titular theme from FFXI. Then Final Fantasy XIV, my second home and one true MMO love, had begun a collaboration with it and I simply figured it was time. I had no other game to play, my roommate was addicted to WoW Classic Hardcore I wanted no part in and FFXIV was in a bit of a lull. I had turned my back from WoW once more after the Midnight expansion completely gutted my favorite specs and classes, so why not take a trip to Vana'diel?
Boy, Vana'diel did not welcome me kindly. It is so different from any other MMO - going in blindly with no guide is sheer insanity as the game lives off of player-to-player communication. If you don't talk to others, read the Wiki or follow are guide you are making things much, much harder on yourself. It was something I wasn't used to anymore - I was so pampered by quest markers, blinking UI elements telling me what to click on and leveling up to max without speaking to a single person. Luckily, a helpful player, Zansho, was able to point me in the right direction. Level to 18, grab a subjob, do your missions, get your shins kicked in. Simple on paper, but not knowing where it is appropriate for me to level, how to use trusts (think NPC party) or how horrible my first choice was to level a Black Mage definitely put a wrench in my gears. Determined to see what the game has to offer, I begin following the story.
At first, I wasn't quite hooked. I was very much reminded of Final Fantasy XIV's base story of A Realm Reborn which was a lot of world building with not much meat to chew on. It laid the groundwork on what other expansions would build upon, perhaps save for the latest expansion, Seekers of Adoulin. 20 years ago we were at war with the Shadow Lord and he threatens to rise again because somebody didn't do a very good job of bopping him. Okay gotcha, done that. Like ARR did, the base game story of FFXI would serve to give you, the player, the necessary lore that your character would have simply by existing in Vana'diel. IMO, there isn't really a great way to go about transmitting this information to the player. For example, Final Fantasy XV tried to cut to the chase by release a feature-length film that is supposed to lay the groundwork for the game proper. It did a good job at it, but it also meant that not watching it would leave you a bit confused as to why certain events would transpire or what weight they actually had. FFXI chose to do it in-game at the risk of coming off as a bit generic. I still enjoyed it, mind you, but compared to what was ahead of me at that point it pales in comparison.
What it lacked in depth and excellency was paid back a hundred fold with the expansions. Not wanting to go into much detail to avoid spoilers, but the story of all of FFXI expansions - Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urgan, Wings of the Goddess and Seekers of Adoulin - were simply amazing and rank very highly not only among the best story in MMOs proper, but in RPGs as a whole. And what's most important, they all do so for different reasons. With every expansion comes a heroine that serves as a deuteragonist to the player. Someone called them "bond girls" but I don't think it quite serves their status well. All of them are different personalities - I expected damsels in distress or six not-so-different flavours of feisty tsundere. I was pleasantly surprised for them to have quite a lot of depth and their own motivations (Prishe my beloved) without coming off as too strong. While some of the storylines overstayed their welcome a bit due to different reasons (having to wait an in-game day to progress or travelling unreasonable amounts of distance between objectives for example), I shed many a tear reading the unvoiced dialogue, especially during the overarching content that is Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, a storyline that ties the otherwise unrelated expansions together (somewhat).
While the story definitely made me hold my breath on numerous occasions, the gameplay... certainly did not. The gameplay is very party- and equipment focused, so playing solo while leveling up letting myself be carried by my trusts big time did not get my heart rate up. The gameplay left much to be desired especially for a new player as there isn't really much to do while leveling from 1 to 99 apart from doing your limit break quests. Your trusts are much stronger than you but basically have a mind of their own. There is some rhyme and reason to their actions, but it's poorly researched, especially the less popular ones. The gameplay only really starts to shine once you have started progressing into endgame when you have to party up with other players and even then it very much depends on your role and job. You have to cooperate with your party to succeed and be able to fulfill a certain role. Whether that is up your alley is something I cannot gauge, but I enjoyed much of it as a White Mage. It is difficult to explain in words, but I would suggest you try your hand at party gameplay before you judge the gameplay as a whole. I also very much liked the horizontal progression over a vertical progression and the fact that even if my thief was geared quite well, the world of Vana'diel continued to stay dangerous.
The community in Vana'diel has had very high highs, but also very low lows. Since it is difficult to achieve much of anything without a party in the endgame, you'll start to party up a lot and eventually join linkshells, some that may have existed since the servers first booted up. Many players are very eager to give advice, for better or for worse. I found that especially veteran players tend to have a sour note to anything that have changed since the "good old days" a.k.a. anything pre-Wings of the Goddess. That is not to say that all veteran players I've met were like that, but as for me personally I've had one too many "during the 75 era" story for my liking. While advice and getting pointers in the right direction was easy enough to come by, getting actual help for content I could not solo on my own proved to be a little bit difficult. People were not very eager to party up when it came down to it, and even then it felt more like they "had to" rather than they were happy to help a newer player. Of course, there's also exceptions to this, but it's something that stuck with me.
In summary, if you combine my infatuation for MMOs and early 3D era RPGs with Final Fantasy XI, it's easy to see why the game was something I personally very much enjoyed. Even if the graphics were much simpler than they were for example in FFXIV, the atmosphere was simply something else. I cannot count the hours I've spent afking in Misareaux Coast listening to the BGM while working, taking it all in like looking through a window. Naturally, I also understand why it might not be for everyone: There is little in-game guidance (no matter what the Records of Eminence were trying to achieve) and the gameplay doesn't pick up until you actively go out searching for it. Not having voiced cutscenes mean it may get tiring or even difficult for people to follow the story that are not used to reading as much and the objectives of the missions may also be a dealbreaker to some. I for one have much enjoyed the 250h I have resided in Vana'diel and I will very much visit again in the future, though for now there are loose ende I want to tie up in other games. If you at all value a game that doesn't hold your hand very much even with community guides that offers a unique (albeit dated) combat system and a strong story, I highly suggest giving FFXI a shot. I still think that a €30 remaster that simply re-releases the story in singleplayer could do SquareEnix some good.