Creating an MMO, a living breathing world of quests, side quests, Easter eggs, beautiful locations and sprawling dungeons for your fans to enjoy is a feat a scant few developers can speak to as being up to the task. Some developers live and die within just the creation of one game, trying to get that MMO just right to challenge the titan that is World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy XIV was heavily criticised for its creation. It was poorly handled and very brutally disliked. So, Square Enix made a decision most people either couldn’t afford to, or didn’t want to risk, they completely destroyed the game world, to recreate it in the phoenix’ flames and unleash upon our PS4’s A Realm Reborn, and my god is it gorgeous!

I want to break this review down into some basic areas within which I will go into detail for the PS4 controller’s use in terms of controls where applicable. First though let’s have a look at the games story. During the opening war sequence shown in the game if you leave it for a few seconds you literally witness the destruction of the original Final Fantasy XIV during a war with the Garlean Empire. Halfway through the toe to toe massacre, Bahamut is summoned and completely decimates the battlefield with his final technique Mega Flare. Just before the battle ends the Scions of the Seventh Dawn all pray to cast down Bahamut with a giant sealing spell, unfortunately it fails, leaving the elder of the Scions Louisoix Leveilleur to face wrath incarnate after teleporting the few strongest warriors left to Limsa Lominsa, a huge city on the edge of the world.

The game then starts with you, creating your character from the many races in the game, Hyur, Elezen, Lalafell, Miqo’te and Roegadyn. These races range from Elves to tiny humanoids, giant beast like men and women to cats, yes cats, with a tail and everything. Dreams will be fulfilled, for good or ill. After choosing your starting race, creating a look that suits your fancy, you will begin the process of class choices. There are 2 disciplines in the game, War & Magic, within which you will choose your classes.

Each class can be broken down by what their functions are, within the DPS range in War & Magic there is:

• Paladin(Lancer)
• Monk(Pugulist)
• Bard(archer)
• Black Mage(Thumaturge)
• Summoner(Arcanist)

There are also two Tank classes:

• Maruader(Warrior)
• Paladin(Gladiator)

Two healing classes round out the first classes:

• White Mage(Conjurer)
• Scholar(Arcanist)

These classes are you battlefield choices, the mainstay of what you will be doing on the field supporting and fighting with your allies, this choice isn’t permanent or singular, but it is advised by both myself and the game itself that you finish one class first. I advise this on a personal level because it is much easier to level up a second class with 1 class already at Level 50, because the level difference in-game increases XP gained by the next class used.
Once created, you will begin your story as the “Hero” of everything in the world, like ever, seriously you are in fact the bomb!

The world of Eorzea is massive, both in size and scope, soaring across the world will take you into deep jungles, huge deserts, gigantic snow capped mountains and right down into the depths of darkness. There are of course generic “plains” filled to the brim with enough enemies to shake a stick at, or a fist or maybe even a spear.  The game has a great way of making it not a boring task to run across the huge expansive plains. After a certain way through the game there is an opportunity to gain access to a Chocobo, the single most consistent companion of the Final Fantasy series outside of the Phoenix Down or the Moogle. These giant yellow chicken mounts allow fast traversal at sprint level speed across the plains, meaning that escaping from battles you do not want to fight is made much easier.

If of course you choose to avoid fast travelling across the many plains of the game, you can run it alongside your companions, be they controlled or player based, into live instances called FATES. These FATES are live battles that take place at random during the course of wandering the world. They contain set level enemies of varying types, super powered types or masses of powerful enemies that you must slaughter in order to finish the FATE. Some are timed, with collecting items being the primary objective, handing it over to the specified requester. FATES are not the only thing available in the field to pass the time however, there are all kinds of quest style systems in place, Leve’s for example are a system of various quests throughout the game world, filling certain objectives will net you XP, gold and special items that you use for various things later on.

In the early sections of the game, you will spend a large portion of time running around the main city, and subsequent settlements outside the city attuning yourself to the various Crystals across the world. The series of Final Fantasy of late seem to have a huge obsession with Crystals and this one is of no exception, Crystals are everywhere, you travel with them, you attune them, you cast them, you create some (apart from Materia) and then using these Crystals to your advantage.

It’s too huge a world to manually run around everywhere, which is why attuning with all the crystals you find allows you for fast travel speeds across the world frequently. When you finally get access to the Airship as part of the main story quest, you will be able to travel to other areas of Eorzea and tackle new quests and challenges as well as finding new enemies for various purposes.
At around level 20 you will gain access to your Grand Company, which gives you access to a large variety of new items, exclusive armour, weapons and items and finally your Chocobo!

There are so many activities to undertake in the field, the Hunting Log is one such a task, offering XP for the killing of monsters, certain areas, and certain types sometimes and always a certain number of them required. There are many systems like this built in that allow for XP gain, especially useful when levelling more than one class. Partying up is another huge factor that spans across multiple areas of the game. It could be as simple as FATE-grinding in the fields with your pals, or some random players and gather XP together in a group. The more people in the group the more XP is earned as a unit because of the overall party kills gained, this works across FATES, levels and Dungeons as well, especially at the end game scenario dungeons.

The use of the controller has been managed brilliantly. When you are not fighting you use the touchpad as a virtual mouse, the touch pad button to access aspects of the on-screen HUD for quicker access. When you set up for battle, its dead easy to simply press down the R2 and L2 buttons for access to the Hotbar, moving around items by selecting their position with say L2 and the right arrow, switching it with R2 and Triangle for example. This can be done for anything from battle commands to Chocobo summoning! It is very important in battle to have these commands lined up comfortably with your class and play style.

During fights it is important to ensure that rotations of skills are used liberally. Rotating the skills is absolutely essential as a DPS character. My personal choice, because I do it in real life, was the Pugulist, the close combat martial arts class. As the levels rose I found that my skills were very specifically designed to compliment a string of attacks. Each move, changes the form(stance) that my character is in to create a string of combo’s to barrage my enemies with. Not only is form something I had to consider, based on what techniques I would use, but so also was location of the attacks, most of which did more damage either at the Flank or the Rear of my enemy. Taking all these things into consideration is necessary with my type of DPS, other DPS classes may require similar considerations like Lancer, where the Black Mage or Bard might sit back and attack with minimal worry from a distance.

Techniques use either TP or MP to be performed. TP is a constant 1000 and never increases, where MP changing over time as your character levels, class dependent on how much of a change that is, Mage based classes getting the primary lead in MP levels. The world of Eorzea does not stop at FATES however, there are also Guildhests, which are preset scenario quests that can be performed from the Duty Finder, an in game party creator that matches you up with random players that are also trying to do the quest at that time. If you are in a party however, it will fill in the members of the party for certain roles, 4 man dungeons consist of 1 healer, 1 Tank and 2 DPS classes, 8 man dungeons double each number. The Duty Finder will also be frequently used to get into dungeons, if you decide to stick with the random player game, a good way to meet players and exchange commendations for players who perform well in their respective roles.

When you don’t want to fight things in Final Fantasy it is possible to earn the ever so needed Gil, this can be earned by selling wares, creating items for the Market Board, where players put a price on items, and other plays can buy them. There are a few ways to do this, most prominent of which is to become a Disciple of the Hand by becoming one of many of the following classes: Alchemist, Armourer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker or a Weaver. These classes are using your skills to create items, weapons, armour, gold or clothing to sell for profit.
Alternatively you can become a Disciple of the Land, which involves the Miner, the Fisher or the Botanist, each of which is self explanatory.
Doing all of these individual classes increases XP gain and increases monetary gain as well, especially at later levels and even at earlier ones for the quick buck to get you that next bit of armour or weaponry.

Finally back with the story are Instances. These are in-game and specific to the main story quests and the class quests. These instances take you to a set piece in-game that must be finished as part of the story, usually consisting of dialogue that relates to the story/class quest and mostly involve killing or stopping someone or something. These instances also include battles against what are called Primals, more commonly known as Summons from previous Final Fantasy titles. These huge fights are done in a similar way as the duty finder dungeons, just only the fight is taken part in, almost always a huge challenge and with fantastically awesome music!

Overall there is a large amount of to do, changing classes at any time to start levelling a new character is possible on the fly, so the game stays fresh, collecting the end game weapons and armour which I won’t spoil will take the majority of your time while you are busy grinding dungeons for Myth Tokens and Soldiery tokens for that great looking armour! Now before I wrap up let’s talk about Social interaction. In-game there quite a few ways to talk to other players, from general chat to private conversations done all through the chat box. Unfortunately the interface is not easy to navigate without a keyboard in all truth. To type normally without one is a 3 step process just to get the keyboard up.

My advice is to grab simple keyboard from Amazon or any other relevant retailer, I found one for £6 and if you plan on investing in the game for a while I would highly recommend it! It makes chatting extremely easy and is extremely helpful when running a Free Company. Free Companies are player created groups much like a guild. To start one up it costs a fair amount, to get into a guild house it can cost a fair amount also, but they key is communicating with your members. It’s a fantastic system in-game and a great way to not only make and meet new friends, but also co-operates and air players in their own personal game, helping them level up and finish harder quests with more experience to guide them.

It has been announced by Square Enix that in update 2.3 there will be a whole slew of new things coming, 1 new race is being announced, and a new Primal in the form of Ramuh the god of Thunder in the Final Fantasy Universe has been confirmed. Two classes have come forward as well in the form of some kind of Thief/Rogue and a Gunner class that “Is not quite what we think”. Also announced is a Marriage option, yes MARRIAGE. Finally the Gold Saucer from Final Fantasy VII (7)has also been announced, meaning that potentially our world might be filled with an epic slew of Mini-games, Chocobo races and gambling like there is no tomorrow! If Reeve Tuesti or Cait Sith are not inside that Saucer I will be gravely disappointed!

My impression with the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn MMO experience has been a rich one. I have never been much for MMO titles, but this one is surely something to keep the attention of Final Fantasy fans and new comers alike. If you are a veteran MMO player or new to PS4 and want to try something quite different, this MMO JRPG combo might be right up your street.

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