Summary: Brief final thoughts on Final Fantasy XI.
Note: due to the sheer number of stories and characters I played I won’t touch on everything. Just some highlights that come to mind!
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Protagonists
Lion (RoZ): Gilgamesh’s daughter. Her sacrifice at the end of “Rise of the Zilart” was poignant and powerful – I’m just sad she was gone so soon. I loved her combat style – blasting lasers, hurling bombs (“Pirate Pummel”), etc.
Prishe (CoP): HELL YES. Aggressive, domineering, noble, and far from one-note.
Nashmeira/Aphmau (ToAU): I love how playful she was, and how she was able to balance being basically a street puppetmaster with her lil buddy Ovjang
Naja Salaheem (ToAU): Look. I know she wasn’t the protagonist – she was more of a side character. But I couldn’t couldn’t COULDN’T leave her out. Her feline violence and greed gives me so much life.
Lilisette (WotG): The better half of Future Fabulous. My favorite part of her character was how sympathetic and empathetic she felt towards Lilith. She knew how easily she could have become Lilith, and acted accordingly.
Arciela (SoA): A personal favorite. Her arc was just so BRILLIANT! Her skill as peacemaker, her appreciation for the nuance in Adoulin’s debates, her suffering and how non-impervious she was, and ultimately her growth into a queen.
Iroha (RoV): A pious, straight-edged priestess. So cool how she morphed into Phoenix form during the final fight.
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Antagonists
Shadow Lord: Good starter villain with sympathetic backstory, intricately tied to Bastok’s racial problems.
Eald’narche and Kam’lanaut (RoZ): Perhaps the most typical JRPG villains, who wanted to find Paradise regardless of it wiping out literally everyone.
Promathia (CoP): The Vana’devil himself. His faceless design was pretty awesome, though I liked him more for the reactions he elicited than for his character.
Lilith (WotG): SO GREAT. I’m a sucker for sympathetic villains, and she was as sympathetic as any. She literally was just the hero of the expansion who had gone through exceptionally tough times and paid the price to rise above it. My favorite villain in FFXI.
Shantotto: I loved her. I love her mind. I love her shoes. I love her gleeful, sugary sadism, condescension, ambition, hunger for power, joy in destruction.
Ohohohoho!
Uncle Riko (Kupo d’Etat): KEEPER OF THE KUPOCALYPSE! MOGMAGEDDON!
Hades (SoA): Much as I loved Seekers of Adoulin, Hades violated the “show, not tell” principle a bit much. Everyone talked about him, and we only saw him briefly. A bit meh. I’m also angry at how he tricked and killed a big cat WORST VILLAIN EVER.
Cloud of Darkness (RoV): More a force of nature than a villain with conscious motivations. Much like Promathia, her strength comes from the reactions she elicits in others.
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Story
A surprising strength. The most surprising. I expected the game to be pure grinding like EverQuest, and yet the stories had consistently cool arcs, surprising twists, rich character development, solid humor, the works.
(I just wish it didn’t always feel so punishing to reach the story.)
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Gameplay/Mechanics
I need to start with context here. This game was created as an MMO, intended for groups who played across years. I did not play this way – I played at the end of FFXI’s lifespan, with only a couple of people, so mechanics I disliked in this context might well be fine in a different era, a different time.
Job system: I liked this a lot! I expected to be locked into one particular job at character creation. The breadth and flexibility of this job system was super cool.
Grinding: The problem for me came in trying to get jobs beyond the first one. It was quick enough given all the quality-of-life improvements, but just “go places and kill lots of enemies until you reach level 99” was not exciting gameplay for me. That’s why I only got Dragoon to 99.
This is to say nothing of shit like the mythic weapons, or the Abyssea system.
Questing: a.k.a. “WHERE THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO GO NEXT?” a.k.a. “HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT I HAD TO GET THAT RARE DROP FROM THAT RARE ENEMY WHO ONLY SPAWNS BETWEEN 2AM AND 4AM EVERY THURSDAY?”
I haaaated that progression required me toglue myself to ffxiclopedia.wikia.com. The clues given in quests were so obtuse, confusing, poorly guided. And I get that this is part of the old MMO model. Every player posts shit they drop on a forum or in zone chat, and they solve the puzzle as a community.
This one of the main reasons I’m looking forward to FFXIV.
Trust NPCs: Not only did trust NPCs make the game doable mechanically as a solo player; they also made the NPCs I came across feel more alive, since I got to see them and use them outside cutscenes. A+.
UI: Super clunky. Especially the macro system.
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Music
-I liked a lot of the music, but to be honest, I don’t remember lots of the tracks. There were just so many! Usually I’ll go back after playing and listen to pieces of all of the tracks… but there are just SO MANY! Some favorites:
-The track when you fight the Seed Crystal:
-Wail of the Void, for the Cloud of Darkness fight
-The Shantotto Ascension final boss music:
-The Tavnazia music:
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Art/Graphics
My favorite part was the various armor set designs for each job. Like, the dragoon armor looked so dragoony. Same with the geomancer sets, black mage sets, etc.
I also liked how much the art defined each expansion. Some personal favorites were the desert city of Aht Urhgan, the alien feel of Al’Taieu, and
I’m impressed also that a game that included so many core female characters was able to avoid what I call the Shalua Effect. (Google her if you haven’t played “Dirge of Cerberus.”) Their clothing was interesting, unique, badass, and fit their roles well.
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Length
491 hours.
I’ll… I’ll just let that number sit there.
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Replayability
I break down replayability into two categories:
1) On a new character: zero. I have no interest in redoing all the story missions. The story itself was great, but it was just so brutal and time-consuming to get through the story.
2) On Detolilla: moderate. I played mostly as dragoon, so there’s a ton of unexplored territory on building up warrior, beastmaster, blue mage, geomancer, bard… literally everything else. Plus, there’s a whole endgame scene I haven’t tried.
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A Brief Ranking of the Main FF Games I’ve Played It’s Just One Small Opinion Please Don’t Kill Me
1. FFIX
2. FFX
3. FFVI
4. Chrono Trigger
5. FFVIII
6. FFV
7. [TIE] FFVII and FFIV. I like the FFIV story more and FFVII gameplay more.
9. FFIII
10. FFXI
11. FFII
12. FFI
This is hard to rank because I feel a disconnect between mechanics and story. The story itself is top notch, up there in the top four in my opinion. But the mechanics are so punishing. The cost of seeing the story was just too high for me to rank it higher.
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I’m just so glad I got to experience this game. It was far from perfect, and a product of a bygone era of MMOs, but the story was frequently – if not always (*side-eyes “A Crystalline Prophecy”*) - top tier. Not sure if I can recommend it, but I enjoyed it. And any game that makes me enjoy it for almost 500 hours has succeeded imo.
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Next time: Starting Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and later this week Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age!
