FINAL FANTASY XIV Online

Two years in, and Final Fantasy XIV remains one of the most distinctive MMORPGs on the market—but not always for the reasons it aspires to be. At its heart, FFXIV is still a game that thrives on patience, experimentation, and camaraderie. For players willing to go off the beaten path, some of the game’s most rewarding experiences aren’t found in the latest Savage tier or Ultimate clear, but in older content approached under minimum item level conditions, or blind runs of current dungeons. These unscripted moments of challenge and discovery revive the communal sense of wonder that defined Eorzea’s early years. Unfortunately, that spark has been steadily dulled by the very community that once nurtured it. The endgame scene, once a mythical proving ground for teamwork and perseverance, now bows to the grind of “World First” races and an ever-expanding library of guides and walkthroughs. Rather than feeling like an epic conquest, raid progression often resembles cramming for a high-stakes exam—where a single mistake can lead to Discord scoldings and group disbandments. In this hyper-optimized culture, mastery isn’t learned. It’s downloaded. The obsession with parse numbers, two-minute burst windows, and performance meters has created a suffocating atmosphere that favors efficiency over enjoyment. Ironically, many of the players who rush to clear content do so only to immediately disengage, citing burnout or boredom. It’s the MMO equivalent of scarfing down a five-star meal just to brag about it on social media. This tunnel-visioned pursuit of progression has led to an ironic neglect of FFXIV's greatest strength: its sheer breadth of content. Entire zones, dungeons, and trials—brimming with lore and design—go untouched because they’re not "current." Players who cleared a fight years ago now treat it as beneath them, missing the fact that mastery without memory is hollow. Even midcore content, which once promised a relaxed but meaningful path of progression, has devolved. The most recent relic weapon system introduced Demiatma farming—a one-time grind that generously unlocked weapons across all jobs. Yet within days, players were mass-optimizing routes, burning out, and posting that there was “nothing left to do.” When even the low-pressure content becomes a chore, it’s clear something has broken. Dawntrail, the latest expansion, was supposed to be a tonal shift—a vacation arc, a light-hearted breather for the Warrior of Light. Instead, it feels more like an off-brand detour. The player, once the narrative center, is shoved into the back seat of their own story, watching events unfold with little agency. While there are flashes of charm, the core 80% of the main scenario is plodding, filled with recycled themes and a lack of narrative urgency. What’s worse, the payoff never comes. The afterstory focuses on characters introduced late and lacking relevance, making the final act feel detached—an epilogue stapled onto a tale that never quite knew what it wanted to say. There’s no denying that writer Megumi Onozuka’s influence brought tribal narratives into sharper focus, but her style clashes with Dawntrail's intended pacing. What might have worked in a side arc dominates the main narrative, leaving long stretches of the expansion feeling like filler—an unearned breather in a game that had already slowed to a crawl. Verdict: A Realm Reborn Again... and Again At its best, Final Fantasy XIV is a masterclass in worldbuilding and cooperative storytelling. It offers a rich, living world where players can forge bonds and find purpose in their shared adventures. But increasingly, it feels like that world is being filtered through spreadsheets and speedruns. The community that once gave the game its soul is now, at times, its own worst enemy—trading passion for performance and discovery for disposability. The content is still there. The world is still there. The magic is still there. But increasingly, it feels like the players aren’t. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you’re often left sitting AFK in Party Finder, staring at an empty recruitment board, gambling on whether your group will even fill before someone ragequits after three pulls—or lies about their prog point just to squeeze into a clear group. It’s a system that punishes patience and rewards deception, undermining the very collaborative spirit the game so proudly markets. FFXIV encourages you to play multiple classes—a feature that once felt revolutionary. But the shine wears off quickly. Instead of enabling flexible builds or personalized GCD tuning through materia, you’re shackled by the game’s inventory and gear limitations. You can’t store duplicate gearsets you already own, and there’s no alternate materia page to let you tailor your stats across jobs. Want to optimize your dragoon and your ninja separately? Too bad—hope you enjoy unmelding and remelding every time you switch. Loot, meanwhile, is still bottlenecked by archaic weekly lockouts. Gear drops are tied to RNG-laden chests, with “books” offered as a pity system. In theory, it’s a fair catch-up mechanic. In practice, it leaves you praying that your progression isn’t stunted by bad luck—especially when your teammates are walking into clears with better gear from sheer fortune alone. Balancing, too, feels increasingly misguided. The game dulls class identities under the guise of "accessibility," while simultaneously claiming that certain jobs are stronger because they’re “harder to play.” It’s a hollow excuse. In reality, most classes have been boiled down to a 1-2-3 rotation, followed by strict adherence to the two-minute burst window—a design philosophy that’s turned once-distinct jobs into rhythm games with identical BPMs. Originally, this shift toward uniformity was seen as a positive—a way to focus on mechanics instead of juggling complex rotations. But now, it’s gone too far. “Weaker” jobs are dismissed not because they’re unplayable, but because they’re easier—as if simplicity were inherently shameful. The truth? Even “complex” classes have been reduced to flowcharts, with every decision mapped out in advance. The idea that giving up a global cooldown to play it safe is a mistake, rather than a tactical choice, reflects a community obsessed with spreadsheets over situational awareness. The one refuge left is in the healer role, where there’s still a glimmer of reactive gameplay—resurrections, triage healing, and role-based mitigation. But even there, the pressure to optimize overrides the joy of playing in the moment. FFXIV has always tried to be a game for everyone. But in trying to please every kind of player, it’s steadily lost the flavor that made each class—and each choice—feel meaningful. What’s left is a game that still looks beautiful, still has depth, still has heart—but increasingly demands that you engage with it in only one very narrow, very optimized way. And for a game once defined by freedom, that’s perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

The main game, realm reborn story, is pretty boring tbh. Once you get into the expansions though, its gets really good. And i could wait to get through the story.

My game time speaks for itself. Slow start that can be hard to get past but extremely rewarding if you do.

I can't use my existing account for this, and they don't tell you that until you dig for the information. $20 unrefundable, down the drain! Don't waste your time.

This game is boring and mechanically very outdated. The story is initially good, but gradually becomes tiresome due to its slowness and ends up not being engaging.

I have been playing this game for around 4 and a half years at the making of this review. I started playing on PS4 and then switched to PC after acquiring a computer. This is one of the best MMO's I have played, gives me much more enjoyment and I really love its play-style and its more centered on PVE. With the current Dawntrail patch, however, I will admit the game isn't as fun as it was when i first started playing. The Re-use of content instead of implementing more fresh, difficult content given the level cap being 100 now. Even so, I do still find enjoyment in the social aspect of the game, with helping my Free Company members or new players in general, going around and doing maps with friends, or any other things. I really wish that they'd make more new things instead of recycling old content and increasing the difficulty, but i digress. I still really love and really enjoy this game.

It's the best MMORPG out in the market. If u pay attention to shadowbringers and endwalker story, you're in for one of the best stories in gaming, but it's kinda hard to endure getting there or paying attention while you're at it because the story comes in the form of MMO quests (sucks). Overall, you're bound to make friends, live wholesome moments, be part of a community, enjoy the story, and enjoy boss fights. I'll say this tho: if you don't have at least 400 hours to commit to this game, then don't bother.

Nice Game - Slow with New Content. But its beautiful and the people are also really nice

These devs are pretty damn lazy. They basically dont ever meaningfully update the game because "game old". They are NOW adding hats for hrothgars after thats been a thing with modding since like yr 1 when they came out. There are so many dps that queues are inflated to an insane degree, 4 tanks and 4 healers? Why? Any class below lvl 70 is very boring, the combat actually gets fun after lvl 80 and up, mostly into shadow bringers. Which shouldnt be okay, thats hundreds of hours of AAR to shadowbringers, its nuts they expect people to stick around to play through it to that point with lackluster combat. Yes the writing is good, but AAR is a slog it made me just end up skipping through. Dont get this game

Final Fantasy XIV is an action adventure JRPG MMO first released by Square Enix around August 2013. This 12 year old behemoth of its genre shows its age more than many other games from its time, and while a lumbering beast for sure, the behemoth lacks in lung capacity, haste or sharpness of claw, ultimately, and tragically, affecting its poignancy. The story of FF14 consists hitherto of the base game and five expansions, of which the base game and first four expansions cover the first, highly praised arc of the game. The oh so lauded tale of heroism starts out with a 50-60 hour chore of a quality so abysmal, that it is baffling. A Realm Reborn (the game’s original story, after the failure of its 1.0. launch) is a hastily cobbled together mess, which is supposed to get you not only somehow interested to continue, but actually get you to care about even a single character in the story, which it fails at in terrible fashion. But okay… what’s next, oh Heavensward! Oh, the story of the tragic 1000 year war betwixt man and dragon… and oh, your character, a blank self-insert Mary Sue, on the level of the average teenage boy’s OC, who has every single power their favorite comic book hero has, and the personality of drywall, just so happens to solve the entire conflict in the in-game span of a few days. Also, the areas of this expansion are some of the worst and least traversable of the entire game, and the whole story loses any semblance of steam halfway through, after the level 55 dungeon, and any semblance of effort once you chart your course for its final area. Stormblood, an expansion, which, some filler – typical for the quantity over quality philosophy Square Enix employed in every square inch of this title – notwithstanding, is the only expansion where the stakes feel truly real, where your identity as “super space jesus” (or “Warrior of Light” as the game says) is never relevant, and brought up maybe a grand total of two times. It is a realistic and brutal story of displacement, war and imperial occupation and it is, for the most part, beautifully executed. Shadowbringers is fine, not the best story of its kind, but certainly a much stronger and more philosophically and morally rich offering than anything from the menagerie of padding that is ARR and Heavensward. It features some strange filler in it, at the weirdest of times, and often where it doesn’t make sense. To experience the entirety of the story you have to experience some of the worst side content in the game, where they make you watch an annoying whiny brat be annoying and whiny, before randomly dropping crucial information at the end of a series of pointless, unvoiced cutscenes. You also are asked to level up four different kinds of jobs (this game’s name for classes) up to level 80, which takes weeks of unimaginative grind. Sometimes the story makes you go “huh?”, sometimes it bores you, but it isn’t quite bad enough to outstay its welcome too much. What does however go against it, is that every enemy and boss – from the main story to the side content – is incredibly spongy and thus boring, and overly long to fight, because the developers rebalanced things poorly, broke the balance for the entirety of Shadowbringers, fixed it in Endwalker, and then never bothered to fix it back in ShB. Are you mayhap noticing a pattern here? A throughline of quantity over quality? Filler, neglect, poor decisions and even poorer resource management, grindy, prosaic side content, horrendously greedy monetization schemes, poor rewards for your time (partially because the best looking cosmetics and mounts are often the ones that they put up on their poorly designed real money store, after already making you pay a ludicrously high subscription and full AAA price for the base game and every subsequent expansion). This is the reason why I ultimately ended up quitting Final Fantasy XIV. Its mechanical difficulty is non-existent, a large chunk of its playerbase so bad at the game that you would’ve been better off queuing for the content with NPCs, its tutorialization is broken, not mandatory, and teaches genuinely bad practices for some of the game’s many jobs. Leveling is a slog, and every new job they add starts 10 levels below the newest content, so you can’t even enjoy the expansion with something fresh, because you’d have to spend a week grinding to do something halfway interesting (the main story). There are four tanks who are functionally the same, four healers who fit into one of two categories, and 12 DPS jobs, who are the most varied and fun amongst each other, but if you play DPS, good luck getting through a queue before your hair goes gray, because everyone wants to play them and only them; this ended up forcing me into tanking and healing for the entirety of my time with the MSQ (other than ARR) so that I could be a slight bit less frustrated about FF14’s terrible queues for older content. On top of all of these boring, grindy mechanics, resources fed into subpar, unvoiced side content and pointless grinds, to keep the addicts addicted and the whales spending their hard earned cash, they couldn’t even bother to fix most of the main story or main content. ARR is just as bad as it was 12 years ago, only being made a few merciful hours shorter. The English voice acting for most of the game is subpar, but for ARR it’s been atrocious and has remained atrocious for 12 years. Side content is unvoiced, main story cutscenes are voiced once every blue moon, and sometimes it’s only half the cutscene that ends up getting voice acted, before you’re inevitably launched into another, comically stiff unvoiced sequence, where the characters don’t even try to look alive or conjure up any illusion of being actually living, breathing things that you should be immersed in. They just flap their arms around, like stiff action figures, and mime along generic lip movements, looking worse than any amature SFM animation. Go play literally any respected story-based indie game released in the last ten years and you will find a more tight, more interesting, more experimental and less predictable story, with often good, or hassle-free gameplay, which will not ask you to slog your way through 100 hours of story ranging from abysmal to just about passable before it actually goes anywhere and remembers to give its characters flaws and personalities and arcs… and hey, if it's bad, at least it will likely be bad in interesting ways, unlike this game, which, while laughable in its greed and mixed bag of quality, commits literally all of the typical sins that sound-minded adults have come to expect from the AAA games industry for the past decade or two (at least). There’s a million more things to complain about and criticize this game for, but not only is this review probably already hard to read through, but I’m wasting my breath, since it won’t ever be fixed anyways, and the sunk cost fallacy fanboys and fangirls, who have probably not played a single other, better game to be able to compare this money sink to will defend it to its dying breath. At least I might be able to buy an emote from some actually good indie games points shop for any jester emojis the sycophants decide to send my way. P.S. If you want to find content that you have to plugin your keyboard for... you'll be waiting for hours in the game's Party Finder, which literally prohibits you from doing basically anything interesting that isn't just siting there AFK and waiting... and then you need to watch guides, cause the difficulty is never mechanical, never reaction time based, just based on how well you can memorize what comes next and how easily you can discern piss poor excuses for telegraphs on random things like vulnerabilities and instant death casts. Nobody wants to do any older content synched, because 99% of the community hears the words "challenging" or "engaging" and vanishes until SE adds the newest "turn your brain off" grind extravaganza!

It seems that, while trying to get back into this game after buying it, I can't get back into the game unless I buy a subscription. I think Steam is only selling subscriptions to this game; if this review is wrong, I'll delete, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not worth it.

this game gave me severe anxiety, and generally ruined the idea of online games for me. to be fair, this wasn't explicitly the game's fault, but this is not a game for people who don't like being at the bottom of a friend group.

If you are someone who troubles with addiction, I highly don't suggest this game, I have over 207k hours in this game, yes some of its afk time, and some of my playtime isn't even registered (You used to be able to start it without steam turned on) but 207k hours is too many. The game was great, when I started 7-8 years ago, its no longer great, things are too easy, loot drops are being given out like candy, there's no community to do stuff with because you can literally solo everything till you get to the hardest content if you wanted. Storys great, but thats all it'll ever be for me, addictions a terrible thing, if you have ever found yourself in this spot, and your reading this review, make some choices for yourself, MMOs aren't good for people who can't reign in addictions.

purchased game thru STEAM .... created Square ENIX ID, gave them my Email Address, And created a password for the game. Now they refuse to let me play the Game .... they clame my Enix ID doesn't exist, my password doesn't exist and my email address has nothing to do with the game. So i spent money for a game run by a Company which took my money and then tell me to F...K Off

it's an open world and you can take your time and lean how you want to play the game that's what its all about to play your own style everyone is different now i dislike that some people Mimic and try and find ways to take advantage of the system those players really don't need to be here it kills the game this is not COD..

Best game ever!!! I love the story lore and gameplay and content so far. Im looking foward to continuing the journey

Very fun, and amazing community!

I mean, the free trial lets you try out the first like 200 hours of this game, so there's not an aggressive reason for reviews.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Are there issues? Yes. But everyone has their own take on those issues. Give the free trial a try, get something to at least 50 (it's easier than it sounds) and then decide. But I've lost many hours to this game and will lose many many more.

Not a massive fan of MMO's, but FFXIV was able to really get me engaged with its world and story, and it's become one of my favorite games as a result.

just started the game and the gaming community in game was super helpful to new players. Give it a try.

I had an issue launching the game, i fixed my issue by closing steam all the way but don't exit ff14 launcher. The game will start, there's a conflict with steam and launcher somehow. Game runs fine.

I have put hundreds upon hundreds of hours into this game, mainly on Playstation, and I will put those same hours here on PC. When I play this game I feel so immersed into this game like the anime show Sword Art Online. This game is like my second life almost. Great game, great story, and you will feel things towards many characters. It's a journey I do not regret being a part of. It's been almost a decade for me and still so much content to be enjoyed.

A vibrant, heart-wrenching (at times) story line and immersible side quests! The NPC's show growth of character throughout; the villains are tragic and relatable; and the heroes all have their faults, making them believable and interesting. The best game I have ever played. I am an "older" game player, and I find this game challenging, frustratingly so, at times...but not so much to make me give up. I have my gamer sons around to help me. It's awesome!

Some interface and navigation that I think could be improved for those who aren't that familiar with these types of games, but overall fun to play. I skipped past all the story parts but im still having fun. I'd recommend if you like grinding games or have friends to play with

A game where you can be pretty and kill gods. 10/10 would spend another 2,200 hours playing it.

This game will REDEFINE YOUR LIFE; in a good way. THE BAD A Realm Reborn SUCKS, feels slow af, the plot isn't as interesting and nothing really game changing happens. The first 10-20 hours of this game, if you don't buy an ARR skip (mogstation expansion skip), you will more than likely only enjoy the game if you have other veteran player friends guiding you and helping you, otherwise you will not like how slow the gameplay and the leveling feels. THE GOOD LITERALLY EVERYTHING AFTER ARR IS GOD TIER STORYTELLING, GOD TIER GAMEPLAY, AND GOD TIER CHARACTERS. The game TRULY does begin in Heavensward.

Great MMO with an amazing story and fun gameplay.

Games Fun as heck and huge amount of game play for free trial definitrly recommend

Great game and great community

This game is the reason the most important people in my life are here. I've met hundreds of people through this game, and my most important OC to me is who I play as. I've never been a multiplayer, or MMO person, but this hooked me. Currently, my spark is dead, and I'm burned out, so I haven't played for a while. But I know eventually, I will come back and fall in love all over again.

Honestly, a really great mmorpg. Great character customization, a lot of different wide open areas and monsters to level up and fight against. Just wish the creativity on monster idea's was a little better. Rather than just mushrooms and rodent like creatures for the most part in the beginning. Yeah you gotta pay every month to play as well, but i'd rather do that and have little to no bugs in the game it seems than otherwise. Just my opinion though <3

just started playing this, looks fine

It's a fun but grindy game that can fill time. I enjoy that about the game. Plus, it's final fantasy.

Not a great rpg but the social element makes it special. The main story is not very good and most quests are clearly padding. Build variety is pretty low. It is mostly limited to class. There are a great many number of classes and playstyles. Dungeons, crafting, fishing (really) etc. Many many dungeons, raids, gear sets, etc You should play the free trial before you pay for the full game

[h2] The best MMORPG I have ever played [/h2] Honestly, this game has the best story and original soundtrack out of all the games I have played so far, its worth trying for those alone. The latest expansion (Dawntrail) might be a personal disappointment story-wise, but if you're new to the game I cant recommend it to you enough, the story alone will absolutely change you. Also beware, this is a Subscription MMORPG, similar to World of Warcraft, you will need to pay monthly to continue playing after a certain period of time, it has a pretty generous free trial but installing it and creating an account can be a deterrent to some people, if you really want to try it, I recommend you checking a short guide online on how to create an account and installing the free trial.

Anime psychedelic cult fishing simulator. Have a hard time getting into the rest of the game but the fishing is stellar.

do you want a game that will drag you into it and then make you cry after saying it wont be that bad well final fantasy XIV will do that. from the start of ARR to Dawntrail I have never had a moment that i hated this even when it made me cry "i'm looking at you Endwalker". The story alone is worth the time to put into the game but the adventure with friends and other are what really make this game for me. so I say if your looking for a game that will make you cry, laugh, smile and more then this is the game.

i really enjoy this game as a life-sim style game. i also really enjoy this game for a lot of the reasons i enjoyed runescape. FF14 really makes an effort to immerse people and i appreciate a lot of the little things they add like being able to go first person or use auto run while walking to auto walk, its just really fun its also an mmo or whatever too

I really enjoy the community and have a great time with the multiplayer content. The story was surprisingly good as well. the combat is quite fun and the job system helps to have varied experiences.

Beautiful game-play and excellent mechanics. Also, there is an expansive world and a great story-line.

the ability to quickly switch jobs. the amazing what they've don the resource gathering ... all i can say is this is as close to perfect I've played on an mmorpg in a long time... plus their controller support is easy and seamless. 99% of the time. sometimes i find it easier to use a mouse but never anywhere important

Great game fell in love with it. very fun first game I've actually enjoyed since switching to pc from console.

Borderline addicted (scared to find out how many hours I've spent on this game based on the SE launcher). Too bad lots of players treat the game as Tinder :/

Overall good game .... A little like ESO ... UI is very changeable .... game play is grindy but doable

The game fell off HARD after stormblood. Haven't played since Endwalker but based on what I've checked in on there is no hope.

My favourite part of this game is when John Shadowbringer said "It's shadowbringing time" and bringed shadow all over the baddies, and then endwalked, whatever that means.

You have to fight three separate interfaces to log in, i.e., Steam, Final Fantasy, and Enix. Horrible design.

Ok. Setting this up with its plethora of error codes was a giant pain in the ass and YA CANT GET A REFUND so after buckling down and reading different forums i finally found a way that worked. Btw wtf man, literally no game has ever given me this issue. Also really wish i could change how my character stands and runs, i understand its June but like...pretty fufu The game itself is pretty fun though, I'm new to this so everything is all sunshine and lollipops (except for the fact that sprint is an ability with a cool down...fucking dumb) but I am absolutely not shelling out a monthly service fee every month to play this. Be lucky if you guys see me play this for a month or two at any given time. Once Human is dope af and its FREE. So I'll enjoy this game for a little and move onto bigger and better things but if theres a mmo hole in your heart this should fill it for at least a month or two.

It's amazing how this game went from a 10/10 to a 3-4/10 after 1 expansion. The game has gone shit and there's no going back. I used to recommend this game to people but since the new expansion Dawntrail came out, I can no longer recommend this game to anyone. The game has not gone "woke" it's just gone bad. the quality of the story is bad and the new content is poorly implemented compared to every other expansion and as long as Dawntrail exists my review will too. I wouldn't recommend starting a game you know is going to get bad later on.