I have been playing through the main Final Fantasy series-every single one for the first time. I have beaten Final Fantasy I all the way through 9 and am currently working on 10.

One of my biggest questions of the series has been Final Fantasy 11 (and to some degree 14). After all it isn’t just an MMORPG (I’m not the biggest fan of the genre. World of Warcraft to me is the gold standard of the genre and even that game, I’d say is just good) but an old one. It’s getting a mobile reboot but I don’t want to play an MMORPG on my iPad.

Even though I am still playing through 10, I decided to start playing 11 on my free time. A couple days ago, downloaded and installed the game (should have waited until today). Man, getting into this game was a nightmare. For some reason, the Square Enix store wouldn’t take my credit card so I went through Paypal but I had to wait for this multibillion dollar company to verify the purchase for some reason.

Once it was verified (took like 15 minutes?), I installed the game which brought back good memories of when installers would take up the whole screen. But then...PlayOnline. It really wasn’t clear what I had to do to get my account up and running because there’s no real guide. The SquareEnix manual took me to a link that is now dead, I had no idea what PlayOnline ID was. Eventually I figured I had to go to the account site SquareEnix has, put in my activation code, and then tell the client all this. Why even though I bought the game directly from Square, they didn’t automatically put in the activation code for me and just tell me the information I needed is beyond me.

So I finally logged in to get some kind of portal I didn’t care about. I clicked “Play” and of course the game updates. Luckily it didn’t take 7 hours to update as it initially told me but 3 hours. No idea why it didn’t update before the sign-in drama. AND THEN after the update, after struggling to sign-in, I clicked play...and it told me I didn’t have Content ID or some nonsense. So naturally I slammed my head on the desk (metaphorically) and eventually figured out I needed to subscribe first. WHY NOT JUST TELL ME THAT OR WHEN I WAS CREATING THE PLAYONLINE ID EARLIER SQUARE!???

Anyways, once I get in….I couldn’t figure out a way to make the screen go full-screen as the setting to change the aspect ratio didn’t do anything. (?)

But my goal was to play the main story and the expansion stories and any big side quest along the way then move on. I’m not sure yet if that goal will be met. For one thing, the gameplay is weird? I’m not sure I like how dependent it is on the keyboard to navigate through battle menus and clicking +/- to go the menu is just odd. Even for an old game, the gameplay is pretty hard to adjust to. Also the user interface is not pretty.

Then I was struck with how large the city (Bastok) I was in...and how empty and lifeless it looked. Maybe in the heyday when the city was full of players, it was vibrant and exciting. But traveling large amount of vast spaces while most of the NPCs stand there like creeps, it didn’t feel immersive. Some of the NPCs do move in the city...so slowly, you’d think someone cast Slow on them. Compare this to the previous entries where even when the NPCs stood still, the cities were laid out and they were placed in such a way that the world still came life...and a lot of the NPCs moved at a decent speed!

Okay, fine. The maps are too big, the world didn’t feel real, and the gameplay is bad. The starting guide is helpful so I got some sense of what to do but even then...I’m still having to figure stuff out on my own. I think modern-day MMORPGs may hand hold too much but I actually appreciate a game telling me how it works and giving me SOME idea of what’s going on and such and the tutorial (even with the guide’s help) here just doesn’t do a good job.

Anyways, I decided it was a smart idea to go and start killing level one bees right outside Bastok. Only to die. Because I didn’t realize the game didn’t equip my starting weapon for some reason. Okay. Really? Soon I did kill some stuff and even started getting Trust. Which is nice because I’m anti-social. And I have started doing the story missions.

Man. After the first game, every Final Fantasy game up to his one has exciting beginnings. Heck, even the first one had you go rescue a Princess! The second one you have to run away from a battle and then prove your worth to the rebellion by undergoing a dangerous mission! The third one...well I kinda forgot but early on there was a scary ghost town and crystals giving you a destiny! The fourth one, you accidentally destroy a whole village! The fifth one I also kinda forget but I think there was a crash site you investigate/survive? The sixth one has Terra leading a charge on a town before waking up with amnesia. The seventh one you are literally bombing a reactor. The eighth one you are going to a cave to prove your worth and get a fire demon to help you. The ninth one you kidnap a princess!

In this one, I have to...walk a lot to deliver a report from one guy to another. Walking across lifeless boring maps is why I didn’t stick with KOTOR. But I did it. The second mission...was going to the wilderness so I could stand on a geiser so some test could go from blue to red. For some reason. Oh wow guys. Yeah very exciting way to begin a story. Not.

Now I’m kinda stuck because I’ve been asked to get the heads, arms, legs, and torso of some creatures. Ignoring how dark this is (like seriously, the guy who asked me should get charged with a war crime...and I guess me too for carrying it out), I went to the mines and after an hour...they didn’t drop. Not a single one of them dropped. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So I quit to get a smoothie. I’ll probably die when I log-in unless I can get my trusts in to help or my level 15 red mage can handle whatever monster is spawned there.

I managed to beat Final Fantasy 9 despite despising how the battles are paced on the Steam version of the game (they are either sooo slow each random encounter takes forever or I turn on the speed boost and they go by too fast for me to know what’s going on). I’ve farmed for stuff in Final Fantasy IV. I can get the grind and I can live past bad gameplay for good story. But right now?

The gameplay is bad, the grind (and farming) seems to be too extreme, and the story is so far just bland MMORPG questing.