Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn

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 A couple years ago I did a the free trail of this mmo game here. Now I've finally decided to pay for the full game. I think my old character got deleted, but I forgot which server I was on so I didn't fully check so I id start over with a new character. I've purchased Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn on sale during the holiday season, and it includes 30 days of play. You will have to pay a monthly to continue to play. You can also pay with 60 day time cards also. Steam also has this game available too but please be in mind that you can't apply expansions to your Steam version of the game if you bought it from other places. If you want the expansions you will have to finish the main quest in the main base game in order to access the expansion areas so you don't have to buy it right away. There's a lot of stuff in this game that you can do which can be a bit overwhelming if you are new. You don't have to do everything, and you can be like me and just focus on doing main story quests with some side quests stuff.

 The community in the mmo have been rather nice. There weren't any jerks harassing me or bothering me. And during story dungeons, people were either quiet or would give you helpful tips. Even though I am new and bad while doing dungeons, I haven't had anyone make me feel bad about that. Well there was one time I kept dying to a boss which had upset someone in the party. Can't be helped since I'm mostly the only new one in the party, and everyone else knows what to do. If you have friends you could play them and avoid having to deal with strangers. I will say that looking up and reading guides on how play your role is very helpful. You can't go into dungeons solo so you need a party. Luckily the game can form a party for you automatically. When you start off you may get a number of invites to people's guilds or free companies as this game calls them. Joining them is not necessary.

 The main story quests are pretty long. I think there are about 100 quests in it in the main game? They do have you go back and forth quite a bit, so I have been trying to get through them as fast as I can though I don't think I can finish within the 30 days that came with the game. I may have to purchase another month of play, and maybe afterwards the Heavensward expansion. Once you've hit level 30, you can unlock new jobs but you need to level another class to level 15. Don't be like me who try to finish low level quests on your higher level class set. Save or do them with another class so you can level them up so you can unlock new jobs. When you run out of quests, you're kind of left with doing repeatable quests and grinding which can get boring fast. Another reason to want to level other classes to unlocking skills that you can use on your main class. Certain skills can be shared and used on other classes which is quite useful.

 The graphics still looks good, and music is still great. I haven't experienced any issues with the game so far. So I would definitely recommend this game if you got the time for it. As for prices, there's an entry subscription that give you one character per server for $12.99 a month. Then there's the standard subscription that gives you 8 characters per server. The standard subscription price depends on the subscription length: 30 days for $14.99, 90 days for $41.97 ($13.99 a month), or 180 for $77.94 ($12.99 a month). If you use Steam, you can use fund in your steam wallet to do a one time payment instead of auto-renewal. The subscription payments are done through Mogstation.

UPDATE:  This is an update as its been two years and some things have changed. I've been playing this again and was able to finally finish the story to the main base game. One of the main changes I've noticed is that you no longer can share skills from other classes, but not you have a seperate set of skills that this replaces. To illustrate this, before I played a warrior and was able to get a healer type skill but now I can no longer use that skill. Instead They gave me a different type of heal skill. There's 10 of them in total and you unlock them by leveling up to level 50.

 There is now a number of new classes you can play as but since they're from the expansions you do need to buy them in order to have access. You can't get them until you've reached level 50 as well, and some you will need to finish the main story in order to access the new expansion area where some of the new classes are in. 

 If you don't have the expansions you can't level past 50 and all the experience points you earn will be lost. Luckily with each new expansion it will include the previous ones. With Stormbringers coming soon, I have bought it and it included Heavensward and Stormblood expansions. If you're playing on Steam be sure to to buy the expansions on Steam as other versions will not work. Steam will give you a code which you need to add through Mog Station in order for it to work.

 I started this game as a tank classes which I learned from doing the dungeons as too much responsibility for me to handle especially in the base game dungeons where almost everybody you're with have run through numerous times. I advise starting out as a DPS class. The base game dungeons your party will mostly like breeze through them. But I will advise to still look up guides so that you can at least be able to follow along. Since the dungeons are required for the story it can be a cause for anxiety as I had experienced. But you gotta press that join button and so far as a DPS I've had zero bad experiences. Did I die sometimes? Yes, but I haven't been called names or made fun for it. I do my best to avoid enemy attacks and stay alive. Dungeons do get more complex and difficult as you progress through the story. There are a few story heavy dungeons that haev a lot of cutscenes. I've heard before you could skip them but that causes problems as those who didn't skip would get left behind. But now you can't skip them at all so no one gets left behind now. Party members will get bonuses if there's a party member who hasn't done the dungeon before.

 Since I finished the ARR story, I learned there's two parts: the story, and the epilogue. So I saw two sets of credits through the ARR story. This story is long and things actually does get interesting and spicy towards the end. In the Mogstation, you can purchase to skip the Realm Reborn and Heavensward story as well as purchase to get a character to level 60. If you're like me who want to go through the game the long way, there is a unique dungeon called Palace of the Dead that is the best and fastest way to level up. You will need to finish the level in order to get the experience. If your party fails you get no experience!

Overall if you're getting into this MMO game for the story please play through the base game. Of course if you don't have the time there are "movie" versions on youtube that you can watch if you plan on buying the story skip.