Hey guys I worked on this last night - just put the finishing touches up on it and uploaded it. The review goes into detail about the past, current, and future states of Final Fantasy XIV. Hopefully it comes across as unbiased and informative.

Final Fantasy XIV 2012 Video Review

Enjoy!

TEXT VERSION:

Welcome to the Final Fantasy XIV 2012 Video Review. Fasten your seat belts. It has been nearly a year and a half since FFXIV retail was launched. As many may know, the game was initially met with negative reception from many players and reviewers a like. Square Enix quickly re-organized the development team and began fixing the game immediately. All of the work is leading up to the launch FFXIV 2.0. Having said this, let's start the review by noting the previous complaints about FFXIV.
    
Going down the list, the most notorious issue was probably the slow, poorly designed, user interface. The lack of auto attack. The lack of content between story and leve quests, leaving players looking for something to do besides grinding over and over. A mind boggling, boring crafting system. The in game economy which features Player Bazaars and Market Wards, opposed to a typical auction house. The leveling fatigue system. The inability to jump, leaving players stuck running all the way around small obstacles. Large, bland, empty, monotonous outside areas. In some cases, high level monsters were far to close to low level areas, or rather, directly in them. One second you could be feeling good, crushing through a 4x XP chain, just to have a notorious monster thirty levels higher than the current player level cap, come up and eat your face...
    
Well times have changed friends. Square Enix has finally implemented pay to play. I feel at this point they have earned it, and it is a more than fair time to do so. They need funds to continue down their road map to what will become FFXIV 2.0, which we will now start touching up on as well as go down the list of things that have been fixed in the game so far.
    
Let's get started. Measures have not only been taken to speed up the reaction time of the User Interface, but individual menu windows can now be bound to specific keys. Auto attack has been implemented. The leveling fatigue system has been removed. They will be redesigning the world map, and breaking up the seamless open areas into more interesting, unique zones. A new feature called a Free Company will be implemented in 2.0, allowing players from different Grand Company factions to quest together. 2.0 will also be introducing player housing, player versus player, and a new server structure for a more lag free environment. Players will be able to find and create parties for cross server dungeons. Furthermore, many more things will also be introduced in 2.0. Note that 2.0 is not an entirely different game, although it will be built on a more optimized game engine. None the less, FFXIV will always be FFXIV. So if you enjoy the way the game is now, don't be alarmed. I will now review the game based upon what FFXIV is today, as of patch 1.20a.
    
The down sides: The multi language community, is still quiet outside of linkshells. Parties are nearly impossible to come by, if you are lower than say, mid thirties. So aside from unspoken silence rules and the awkwardness within the player community, there are many good things about FFXIV today.
    
The game's graphics are absolutely vibrant and gorgeous. If you have the hardware to do it, it is a very rewarding experience. The cut scenes and story are simply amazing and engulfing. I really enjoy the gathering system. Behests, now every thirty minutes instead of one hour, are a great way to continue making progress and an effective way to form parties. They are like battlecraft guildleves, except you can always do them. Also, I now enjoy not only buying, but selling things in the new market wards.
    
The game gets better with more content and features as you level up, such as player companions and Grand Company quests, which open up faction quests. The task board in the adventure's guild also has fun content. The combat has become a lot of fun, and as always the interchangeable class system is very cool. Mixing and matching abilities from different classes is awesome, and unlike any other game experience. The sound track is composed by returning legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, and it's awesome.
    
Now, last but not least, I will score the game.

Graphics - 10
As mentioned before, the graphics are truly monumental.

Sound - 9
The soundtrack is excellent and the sound effects aren't bad on the ears.

Story - 9
The story lines are excellent, while the cut-scenes do a beautiful job in telling them.

Gameplay - 7
The combat may still  be a little rough around the edges, but it has come a long way since launch. Unique elements in the game such as the guildleves, Behests and gathering system all make the game stand out as enjoyable.

Replay Value - 7
The current level cap is 50 and while that's not particulary high, the game is very young. The extra $3 a month for an extra character slot provides an annoyance for anyone wanting a variety of characters, although with the interchangeable class system one could essentially be anything ( just stuck with the same physical character ).

FINAL SCORE: 8.4 ( based on average )
    
I would recommend FFXIV, especially because of what it's all leading up to, FFXIV 2.0.
Thanks for reading my FFXIV 2012 Review. Feel free to share your thoughts in the replies.

Dude, that's not a video review. Try actually creating a video review. Text-To-Speech without any kind of gameplay footage to emphasis your review isn't how it's done, and this is pretty much considering a 'Troll' post.

Originally posted by Bulwarkz

Hopefully it comes across as unbiased and informative.

Well, it didn't.

Even if your scores were somewhat accurate,

A) The servers suck no matter how you look at it

B) The engine blows

and those two issues alone make this game a 6.0 at best. They are the core components of any MMO, and if they are not working up to standard the whole package suffers tremendously.

It won't be anywhere close to 8.0 before those two components are replaced in 2.0. Nothing is as important.

OP:

Don't forget, you cannot enjoy a morpg on this website.  You will be flamed for it.

i'm one of the somewhats.

it really has come very very far as the OP points out well.

i just am not sure if i'm ready to "forgive&forget" just yet.  though i am sure the time will come when i have ff14 in my now playing list again.

Originally posted by OrleanKnight

Dude, that's not a video review. Try actually creating a video review. Text-To-Speech without any kind of gameplay footage to emphasis your review isn't how it's done, and this is pretty much considering a 'Troll' post.

I addressed something like this on the video page. Plus there's a ton of popular FFXIV rants using Text-To-Speech, so it was very suitable and that's exactly why I chose to do it. To the last part of what you said...

You should pretty much considering a not being asinine like you did; emphasis a 'non-Troll' post and how it's done.

Originally posted by BrooksTech

OP:

Don't forget, you cannot enjoy a morpg on this website.  You will be flamed for it.

Yeah, well atleast it hasn't been everyone and the poll's been productive.

The game definitely needs a bit more work.

But on a side note,

I hate it when people make reviews in a fake simulated voice with a crapy avatar and expect others to take them seriously.

No offence but this is the worst video review i've ever seen in my life

Are the controls for using mouse/keyboard still bonked in combat?

Originally posted by channel84

No offence but this is the worst video review i've ever seen in my life

Same here and I've done some terrible reviews in my day, but at least it was my own voice, over the some actual content. None of this text-to-speech BS. As for the actual written review, I just stopped reading it when you kept going on about 2.0 and how the game is going to be. Also when did auto-attack become a huge improvement? Funny how there seems to be a trend now of games removing auto-attack and FF XIV is being praised for adding it in.

Originally posted by Master10K

Originally posted by channel84

No offence but this is the worst video review i've ever seen in my life

Same here and I've done some terrible reviews in my day, but at least it was my own voice, over the some actual content. None of this text-to-speech BS. As for the actual written review, I just stopped reading it when you kept going on about 2.0 and how the game is going to be. Also when did auto-attack become a huge improvement? Funny how there seems to be a trend now of games removing auto-attack and FF XIV is being praised for adding it in.

Agreed.

I think removing auto attack was a step in the right direction. However, it was incomplete. For it to have been 20% cooler, they needed to remove targetting altogether, and have it play like an action MMO.

I still can't play as a Taru.....so the gamee is a complete failure.

That aside I played FFXI for 3.5 years so I am completely unable to wrap my head around the retarded need for SE to change everything people have grown accustomed to in FFXI.

All the monsters have the same look and names.....it is the same world no matter what SE says. the races should follow suit.

Originally posted by grndzro

I still can't play as a Taru.....so the gamee is a complete failure.

That aside I played FFXI for 3.5 years so I am completely unable to wrap my head around the retarded need for SE to change everything people have grown accustomed to in FFXI.

All the monsters have the same look and names.....it is the same world no matter what SE says. the races should follow suit.

I think they were trying to actually make a different game as opposed to a FFXI-2.

Yes, they have some similarities, but if you really look at it, and the story and such, it's completely different. Even the world itself is different.

This video review accurately represents the amount of excitement that FFXIV generated for me.  Robotic and monotone.  All joking aside, I'm just as curious as anyone to see what 2.0 will do.

Yeah the game is nothing like XI. Which is remarkable considering a lot was carried over from that game at the end of the day. The game feels a lot more mature thanks to some of the nuances in the world (you'd notice if you read what the Ul'dah NPC's have to say). It also feels a lot less "medieval" and more renaissance-like with the stylized hot-air balloons and such. It all gives a classy vibe (especially the fact that women aren't equipped with humongous boobs and bikini-armor, and that SE isn't scared of showing off some male beauty from time to time).

In the end you could sum it up as the difference between vanilla/RotZ XI vs. Aht Urhgan XI.

That said the art direction has seen several changes after Yoshida came at the helm so it's hard to say what the new world is going to be like in comparison. More extreme fantasy (overstylized) is probably the name of the game.

This review clearly BIASED AGAINST XIV!!!  Tell me, pls, how u can post review with/out EVEN MENTIONING the chocos?!?!?  Did u INTENTIONALLY LEAVE OUT THE CHOCO SO THAT PPL WOULDNT KNOW U CAN HAVE THEM?!?!? 

SRS tell  me: how can u not give XiV 10, 10, 10,  10 unless ur a h8r??

I so suck of the h8ers, think ppl should just try xiv for theirself and know that it is great game!!!