A few days ago, I started playing FFXIV on a free trial and have played through a few hours of the early game content. I haven’t explored too much of the content, but I’ll write about what I’ve experienced so far.
The game starts with a cutscene of the main story before you create a character and choose a starting job. Since the game originally came out in 2010, the graphics aren’t exactly the most cutting edge, but they’re still quite good for an MMO in my opinion. The character customization options are a lot more limited compared to something like Black Desert, but I think it’s also comparable to other games like Kurtzpel. After creating your character you can choose from multiple different starting jobs that you’d eventually convert into main jobs. The one I chose was Thaumaturge which later goes into Black Mage.
Most of the actual game content for me so far has been compeleting the main story quest which gives you a variety of different tasks and also showcases a few cutscenes. The quests in the main story can range from simply delivery items across a town or having to defeat enemies and retrieve an item. However, I’m finding the actual story part of the game to be really difficult to follow. Especially with the cutscenes not fully explaining a lot of the stuff that’s going on.
Some of the things that are a bit annoying when first starting was that the default HUD was really cluttered and takes up a lot of space on the screen, so it took a few video tutorials to get that cleaned up. Additionally, some of the quests require you to navigate buildings that have multiple different floor levels, and it isn’t always clear what path you have to take in order to reach the required endpoint. A few times I found myself going in circles for different quests in the exact same building.
Since I’m not that high of a level, most of the combat I’ve done hasn’t been to exciting. Personally, the early usage of the same three to five skills kind of reminds me of playing League of Legends, but I know that the combat does get more interesting later on in the game. However, comparing FFXIV to a more action combat system like Black Desert leaves FFXIV’s early game a bit lacking.
Overall, FFXIV has been a new experience for me, especially since I’m trying more to understand the story. Supposedly it gets much better later on, so I’ll see how I enjoy it. The free trial for the game has not time limit, and is only content restricted. However, the amount of free content that they have available is quite extensive, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get a lot of hours out of the game.