14 DAY TRIAL // Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn is one of the biggest bets of the year for video game developer and publisher Square Enix, a title that can attract the attention of a huge number of fans of the franchise but also needs to dispense with the toxic legacy of its predecessor.
The character creation process is pretty solid and I spent quite a bit of time tweaking everything from tail length to the color of the various tattoos that my character had.
I then explored the game world of Erozea for a while, mostly in the starting city, looking for the various characters that gave out quests, trying to put together a bit of gears and finding out more about the core game mechanics.
One of the biggest problems with Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn is that so much of the game is foreign to most Western gamers and the team rarely manages to offer the explanations required to feel a part of the game world.
The team has also tried to cram all the usual MMO controls on the gamepad and while the system itself feels solid, it’s hard to move away from a keyboard and mouse setup for this genre.
A few hours are not enough to evaluate an MMO that seeks to re-invent itself after a catastrophic initial launch, but most fans writing on the forums seem to be satisfied with the overall progress of the game and are eagerly awaiting launch.
Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn will be out on the PlayStation 3 and PC in late August of this year and it should also be playable on the PS4, although without cross-platform play, at some point next year.
Check out the attached image gallery as at the moment, Square Enix is not allowing video from the game to be shown yet.
The graphics could use a little work but the game world of Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn sometimes looks impressive.
