Steam Community :: RedMage :: Review for FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Free Trial

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910 people found this review helpful
14 people found this review funny

Recommended

0.0 hrs last two weeks / 80.1 hrs on record

Posted: 19 Jul, 2015 @ 11:50am
Updated: 11 May, 2020 @ 6:57pm

1. Make sure you know what platform(s) you'll be playing this on for the future. Licenses on console, PC, and steam are all separate, confusing, and unnecessarily restrictive.

- If you buy the base game from Steam, you have to buy the expansion from Steam.
- If you buy the base game for PC (non-steam), you have to buy the expansion for PC (non-steam).
- If you buy the base game for a console, you have to buy the expansion for the same console.
- If you want to play on multiple platforms, you must buy the base game+expansions again for those other platforms. Otherwise you won't be able to login through those platforms with the same account.

2. Know the trial limitations. These change once in a while.
http://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&kid=70929

- 1 character per server, 8 characters total. Not a big deal since you can play every class on a single character.
- level cap of 35 for each class. This gives you the space to try every class up to their job advancements.
- lowered gil cap. Unless you are going crazy in crafting/gathering, it's very unlikely you'll ever reach this cap anyway.
- Cannot use /yell, /tell, /shout, form a party, use marketboard, use retainers, trade, or join free companies (guilds). These are all put in place to restrict gold spammers and bot farming. But it also heavily restricts normal players from making friends, helping others (or requesting help), managing their inventory, or even just checking the value of stuff to see whats worth keeping/trashing.

3. Learn about enmity/aggro management before joining a party. The game has a Hall of Novice tutorial around lvl 15 that tries to teach you about these mechanics, but I find it inadequate and it is a core mechanic to all party content. tl;dr tank should have all the aggro, dps should always focus whatever the tank is hitting, and healer should avoid overhealing players. Unless you are the tank, you should avoid using aoe skills until much later in the game as they create a ton of enmity quickly. Breaking these will usually mean the enemies aggro the dps/healer, you all die one by one, and everyone gets salty.

4. The game is very story driven, combat is really slow and forgiving early on, and the trial stops long before things get interesting. If you are a familiar fan of Final Fantasy lore then this will be fantastic for you. If you are new, this might easily bore you until later expansions. You do not need to know anything about the final fantasy franchise to enjoy this.

5. This is an mmo. While this is one of the most casual friendly mmo's out there, expect some grinding.

1. Make sure you know what platform(s) you'll be playing this on for the future. Licenses on console, PC, and steam are all separate, confusing, and unnecessarily restrictive.

- If you buy the base game from Steam, you have to buy the expansion from Steam.
- If you buy the base game for PC (non-steam), you have to buy the expansion for PC (non-steam).
- If you buy the base game for a console, you have to buy the expansion for the same console.
- If you want to play on multiple platforms, you must buy the base game+expansions again for those other platforms. Otherwise you won't be able to login through those platforms with the same account.

2. Know the trial limitations. These change once in a while.
http://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&kid=70929

- 1 character per server, 8 characters total. Not a big deal since you can play every class on a single character.
- level cap of 35 for each class. This gives you the space to try every class up to their job advancements.
- lowered gil cap. Unless you are going crazy in crafting/gathering, it's very unlikely you'll ever reach this cap anyway.
- Cannot use /yell, /tell, /shout, form a party, use marketboard, use retainers, trade, or join free companies (guilds). These are all put in place to restrict gold spammers and bot farming. But it also heavily restricts normal players from making friends, helping others (or requesting help), managing their inventory, or even just checking the value of stuff to see whats worth keeping/trashing.

3. Learn about enmity/aggro management before joining a party. The game has a Hall of Novice tutorial around lvl 15 that tries to teach you about these mechanics, but I find it inadequate and it is a core mechanic to all party content. tl;dr tank should have all the aggro, dps should always focus whatever the tank is hitting, and healer should avoid overhealing players. Unless you are the tank, you should avoid using aoe skills until much later in the game as they create a ton of enmity quickly. Breaking these will usually mean the enemies aggro the dps/healer, you all die one by one, and everyone gets salty.

4. The game is very story driven, combat is really slow and forgiving early on, and the trial stops long before things get interesting. If you are a familiar fan of Final Fantasy lore then this will be fantastic for you. If you are new, this might easily bore you until later expansions. You do not need to know anything about the final fantasy franchise to enjoy this.

5. This is an mmo. While this is one of the most casual friendly mmo's out there, expect some grinding.

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28 Comments

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Streifer 6 May, 2024 @ 6:22am

i can only pay for the game using steam but other than the free trial it seems this game inst available in the Philippines will using the free trial help with that?

Christo 30 Apr, 2022 @ 6:23am

Thanks for the review. I'm excited to try it out.

RedMage 24 May, 2021 @ 8:51pm

Then don't play with such elitists?

People don't expect you to have multiple classes or roles or be "meta minmax". I've cleared all content with just blackmage which is not a "meta minmax" or "op dps" class. You can certainly clear all content with all classes, with multiple deaths and mistakes, even for Ultimate difficulty content.

Difficult content is optional to begin with, like 90% of players don't touch this stuff even on wow.

Greenchilistudioz 19 May, 2021 @ 4:50am

I don't like idea having all classes on one character, it encourages elitsts to expect to change classes on fly cause they are impatient for healer, tank or op dps to clear said content, I am not fan to change specs with warcraft classic meta min max every fun that it barely had and this game seems to be no different, I give it fat no!

RedMage 2 Aug, 2020 @ 9:46am

you're welcome! They actually announced pretty recently that they will be expanding the free trial to include the heavensward expansion, extending the level cap to 60. This is about 100-200 hrs of playtime depending if you skip cutscenes and do sidequests, and better represents what the game, story, and pacing is like today.

Jay_Ox 2 Aug, 2020 @ 9:23am

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I was trying to decide on the free trial VS taking advantage of the sale right now and the information you provided really helped.

Neras 7 May, 2020 @ 11:54am

loved the review, but, one thing tickled me, and I thought to point out one thing, the 3rd quote of yours, about the whole aggro system, it has a place where you can learn hot-to, the smiths, thing is, no one does a tutorial/read about such,hence why people can get scared of tanking in this game, overall awesome review

RedMage 5 Aug, 2019 @ 12:48pm

this review is very old. Long ago, your characters would be deleted after 90 days past the trial period. The free trial does not have a time limit anymore and as such there's no longer any risk of deletion.

Kinzo 4 Aug, 2019 @ 6:29am

" after the trial ends, you have 90 days to upgrade or risk losing all your progress"
This is kind of alarming, what will happen if you don't upgrade?

RedMage 26 Jun, 2019 @ 9:14pm

1. make sure the store page says [DOWNLOAD], where they'll immediately send you a code to be used.

2. buying the BASE game will give you 1 free month subscription. you will still have to pay the monthly sub afterwards.

3. You can choose to play in any server at any location you want, but you will have severe latency/lag if the server is too far, so ideally you should play in the servers closest to you. Characters are locked to the regional servers they were made unless you pay for a transfer.

4. you must buy from the same platform you played for the free trial account if you want to keep your character's progress. Check your mogstation account to see what type of account it is to make sure.

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