In a nutshell: The Final Fantasy XIV Closed Beta

• The GuildLeve system makes Solo play possible and, more important, fun.
  Changing weapons and classes on the fly rather than having to return to the city is far easier, quicker and more fun.


• The game is very, very pretty.


• The world of Eorza seems to be very well fleshed out – perhaps better so than Vana’diel was at launch.


• Despite splitting levels down into two different types (physical and weapon rank) the game retains the addictive ‘ding’ level up feeling.


• The attempts to make crafting more viable as in-game ‘careers’ seems to have succeeded.


• The addition of your ‘retainer’ who can hold or even sell items for you is something of a stroke of genius.


• Nobuo Uematsu is back! The soundtrack is superb.


• Cutsecnes are very well choreographed and directed for an MMO, proving story is an important area of focus for the team.

• Very little voice acting for cutscenes.


• Getting quests of a crystal is kind of boring – there’s no ‘personal’ aspect to any of the quests from the quest giver.


• The menus and UI feel sluggish, unresponsive and rather archaic.


• The servers were pretty broken throughout the beta, ranging from suffering crippling lag or not being up at all.


• The game being designed for controller is fine, but putting more thought for the PC keyboard and mouse control scheme wouldn’t go amiss.


• Quest marks failing to spawn mid-quest. Most frustrating thing ever!


• The complete and utter lack of tutorials on some aspects of the game. I hope they’re in the final version, or parts of this game could be completely unpenetrable to someone who hasn’t played FFXI.