My Review of FFXIV. Because it was too long for Steam's review.

[The Blue Moon]

7.5/10

TL;DR: I liked the game, but it takes too much of your time to get to the actual good stuff. Plus, personal preferences made the game worse for me. I played till 6.0. Which is the ending of End Walker but didn’t play more after.
Play the game with Friends but don’t come here expecting a fast way to get a good story. Also, the community is great, I only met a few toxic players in my time there and don’t go with people’s taste in characters, either they are horny about them or they are biased due to some fact or etc, though there are some good characters.
The end game is great. Gameplay subpar. Customization is beyond great. Skill expression is non-existent. PVP is a joke but a fun joke. This is a single player set in a MMORPG, you can play to the end and barely have to talk or interact with people.

Story Review (Spoiler free part)
Although at the start you are literally killing bugs and rats, like any other RPG, you end-up killing some kind of all powerful entity at the end. To be honest though, the game’s story is fantastic. But it’s too bloated with side stuff and minor quest objectives, I have 500 hours and pretty sure 200 hours of it were side quests and objectives with 150 being the story and the rest being Queue times and me grinding other classes which I’ll talk about.
Although most games don’t even mention side story quest lines, FFXIV gives a small nod to the side quest lines and even brings characters from that questline. The Crystal tower Quest line which you get to at level 50 is the most “important” one, for spoiler-free reasons I won’t say why.
And I’m not saying I care too much about missing small nods to content I did before doing the rest of the Main Questline, but the side content is too big to be honest, the stories of the side quests go from 8/10 to 3/10 as you progress the game, imo. And I had little incentive to do them due to Queue timers and honestly boring questlines.
Thing is with the Main Questline is that it’s a good story, really, if you haven’t watched at least a few anime and played a few RPGs. And even then, the big highlights are a real treat. But honestly, I had a hard time to even invest myself in the characters. I liked them, but I wouldn’t care if they died. They have great characters and honestly, their developments are great to watch, but some developments were really strange to witness and barely have any consequences to their actions, the characters don’t disagree on anything and are easily convinced to do the “Right Thing for the Story”. I barely remember the times the characters fought if not for a major point in the plot. The maximum of character tension I saw wasn’t really ideals (Except the really obvious ones) but emotional tension, characters not talking with each other about their emotions, otherwise, they barely even raise their voices to anything else. I hope you know this but, people really fight for the dumbest things, for things they want, for things they think are right, and yes, I know there’s a small part of the Main questline where we deal with a character dealing with a thing they think they are right. But… it's really nothing noteworthy.
One of the warnings I’ll give you is that you can’t do anything to change an outcome, tell a character about something, tell them they are wrong on something or discuss something IF, BIG IF, the story tells that character they are wrong, then you’ll just give them a slap in the wrist but by that time, you’ll just affirm their doubts about their idea being wrong. Forget it if you came from any DnD inspired games. There’s only the illusion of choice, even if you pick the “Bad” Choice, the characters won’t go farther than talk about it on two speech bubbles. Which is really annoying to be honest. Also, there’s really awesome moments in the story where you realize something and then the characters do the same, but here's the really annoying part, the smart character or the character who realized the same as you won’t really talk about it until it’s about to pay-off. At the end of the story, even though the game was throwing confetti at my face to tell me how awesome I was, I really only felt like an errand boy and a sellsword and sometimes a spectator.
One thing I’ll tell you, I really reaaaaaalllyyy dislike culture masturbation, like I get it Japan, your culture is really neat, yes, yukata. Wow. so pretty. You are so much better than any other country (Insert factual stab here). Did you really need to make half of an expansion about your culture?
I want to tell you to skip Stormblood, really. I do. But various characters are a call back to their time there. But honestly, I can barely remember Stormblood other than characters which come back for a nod or two. And don’t let anyone convince you ARR is bad, they are just pampered by the later points of the story, ARR-Post is really even better. It’s great. I would play ARR over StormBlood.
To be real here, my main problem with StormBlood is the point already made, it really drags it and I’m not kidding. The other expansions are really great, End Walker being the highest point I had in the story like everyone tells it will be.

-Spoiler part-
Honestly, the part where Alphinaud gets his ♥♥♥♥ kicked in and as a player, we feel the loss of characters from ARR to Heavensward is great. Nanamo dying should’ve been a permanent, she’s the few characters who was with the player from the beginning (if you start at Ul’dah). But alas, can’t have a cute favorite character dying, somehow she survives even though the Crystal Brave’s take over, Teledji and Lolorito both can’t make a move otherwise the Crystal Brave’s would think they were betraying them but they save her anyway. The thing with Main Cast characters dying is that I never ever felt worried about them. Like Y’shtola, she ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dies every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expansion. It’s not even funny at that point, she turns into Kenny from South park at some point. Either characters who are briefly introduced die too early or they place more death flags that you can’t see their faces. You won’t get invested into the Characters, because you can see they will die, either they have the most generic looking faces or they are a bit too plain ‘unique’. It’s annoying.

Also, what the ^!#!?@^% did they do to Alisaie’s character? When you get into ShadowBringers, she’s basically the stock crying character. The ending’s area quest line is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ funny too. Every time a character is about to sacrifice themselves, even though it’s obvious as ♥♥♥♥, “NOOOOOOOOOO!!! *Cry stock Alisae soundbite*”. Also, it puts me off how the sound is of her crying with her mouth blocked, but she’s not putting her hands in front of her face, which would be in character. Alisaie is a proud type character, she wouldn’t want anyone to see her crying but everyone who knew her would know she’s doing so. Yet, she lays her grief to everyone to see, even to people she doesn’t know.
The lack of affection shown in actions is also off-putting. Characters don’t really hug each other too often even though the situation calls for it. (I swear, I was screaming at the top of my lungs for Ryne to hug Thancred when he finally opened up while she’s crying). Maybe the model of them hugging was a hassle to program in cause when the characters do hug, there’s a cut and they don’t really stop hugging until the cutscene cuts to black. But it’s frustrating how little affection the characters show each other with action even in private, sure, they say stuff like “I really respect you and really like you.” in a roundabout way or not, but it’s frustrating to see characters not letting go of their serious posture for not even for a moment.
Talking about characters, Y’shtola, I dislike her character. She went from the ones who try to figure things out into exposure dump type character. Like annoyingly-so, Hydaelyn’s dying, but here’s Y’shtola to ruin the moment with her extremely-detailed-question-so-the-player-who-didn’t-pay-attention-or-doesn’t-remember kind of moment and Funny enough, Hydaelyn just goes “Yes” with a look that she didn’t pay any attention to what was said to her. And it goes back to the sad moment, can this character give it a break? Also, everyone’s so damn thirsty for this character that even the dev’s give options to call her mommy. Even though she barely shows any care about the player other than worry. Urianger, or Uryangerrrrr, is a character rushed for development in the end, as the devs realized he went through two expansions without much involvement except with Shiva, a close friend of his dies but he still doesn’t even show a moment of grief, hell, he and Alisaie only get development in the Bahamut side quests of ARR.
Thancred is okay, his development is steady, nothing surprising about him. He goes through, basically, depression and learns to let himself out a bit to his friends. Estinien is great, he takes no ♥♥♥♥♥ but is also goofy, which is nice since he was a Hard-ass in the beginning. But he doesn’t go through much development but just reminding that he can trust Alphinaud and the WOL. I find it strange that even though he specifically states he only trusts these two, nobody takes issue with it. Alisie mentions it but is quickly shot down by Urianger and Tataru.
Krile is strange, because for me the game tried to pass her as this character we should be sympathetic to due to her losing her echo. But I really had a hard time since she seemed to be doing well on her own. Tataru is the same, she wants to be fighting with us but with her being unable to be good at fighting, she gives up and resolves herself to set herself at the backline.
Alphinaud is the main character, you can’t tell me otherwise, he goes through things more than you. He does more than you, he’s mostly involved with most quests. But he doesn’t rob you of your highlight (If it doesn’t involve fighting the Primal or God. Or whatever). I really hate how the game keeps repeating the point that he grew up by talking with the people instead at them. They repeat this point like it’s a badge of honor, you don’t see people point out that someone grew up for more than one time or two. But the game makes this point five times and more if I paid attention to the side questlines
Also, the Warrior of light barely even touches the characters, they don't touch them at all. And I know, it’s because of how customizable the characters are, also the difference of races, that these kinds of scenes don’t happen, except for the ending due to it being mo-cap and it delayed the expansion. Also, the characters don’t really touch you, so I guess it goes both ways. The WoL goes through development (?) but honestly, it’s self interpreted, they just get comfortable with the Scions.
Do I even need to tell you how great Hydaelyn’s story is? Or how good Emet-selch is? No, of course not.

[The Blue Moon]

Alas, I love the story, I give it a 7/10. Too much padding with the quests and explaining. There’s also too much repetition of explanations, the options for dialogue is Bethesda levels of writing.
Yes, Yes but with sarcasm, Yes but edgy and the rare Yes but funny. It also doesn’t matter if you answer a question correctly, the dialogue goes as following:

-[Character] Hey, Did you know there’s a fruit that people are putting in a salty thing?
-[You] Yes, it’s pineapple, people put it with pizza because they like the sour salty taste. Or something along those lines.
-[Character] Yes, that’s right! You got it! Sounds like you got a good grasp on that info!
-[Character] Anyway, It’s pineapple! People really like the contrast of sour and salty taste it has with pizza! It’s really a topic of discussion!
-[You] …

Combat/Mechanics/Content Interaction

You get a hold of your abilities through leveling, which is good and all. But some classes are a complete pain to level up without the catch-up zone. Also, talking about it, It’s a complete pain to find. After you complete a certain quest in the main quest line, you unlock by doing various side questlines (I had to look for a guide to get it, I tried to level all tank jobs and try to find a job . But if you stick to a main job, after you hit level 60 or 70 you’ll pretty much have your main rotation through the rest of the content with a few more skills and effects sprinkled in. For example, Warrior at the pre-level 50 is basically a normal tank, but after he gets various heals and abilities which completely sell his individuality. But after you get hold of a rotation, the rest of the skill is just about your ability to dodge mechanics, doesn’t matter if you use a really short skill to evade/parry an attack from a boss, you’ll get a debuff or you lose DPS because you could’ve just dodged and kept doing damage to the boss with other low cd skills. That’s basically it. Other than that, the most fun I had was dungeon runs, because I always pulled the entire dungeon with the Healers permission. More than that, I really disliked having to queue with other people for trials, it really just bogs down to following the group to dodge most of the stuff. It gets boring after the third time when you realize you can just be a sheep to get through most Trials. This needs to be said though, I had a really kind group who knew I was from Brazil and had constant 200~300 ping and tried to let me do Savage content for a few tries. It was absolutely fun and frustrating, this group had me promise to not look up a guide and just try to figure out the fight on my own, together with them because it was ARR content and they didn’t remember stuff, lmao. Alas, due to my ping, there were mechanics which weren’t possible for me to do, do it too early, kill the entire party, do it too late, you die, but I still had fun. Which in turn let me get an idea of the PvE Content on the end game together with that, my most satisfying moment was finally being able to do an Extreme Trial with a duty group, I’ll never forget Ramuh (Extreme).

Ah, by the way, you can skip learning a rotation by making an optimized Macro system and modding the game to chain Macros together and end-up just focusing on dodging and fight’s mechanics. But honestly, pressing the buttons is more fun than just pressing a button and the character ending up just playing for you.

PVP wise, I tried Frontline and Cristaline. Frontline I had no idea what I was doing, what to do to win and if my abilities was hitting people and it never felt fun because you were required to stay with that one guild group that coordinated the entire company lobby, otherwise you would be running from spawn all the time. Cristaline is pretty fun, more objective-wise Pvp, There’s also Wolf’s den which was just an arena for those hard-line Players but I don’t like 1v1’s.

Leveling Experience

The absolute worst game with the leveling experience Imo. It’s practically obligatory for you to do your job’s questline to unlock skills. So, if you are doing content which lets you level up quickly, you’ll have to stop your leveling because a pretty vital skill for your kit is locked behind a class job quest with the exception of the Catch up zone, which you only unlock really later on, in a sidequest line WHICH YOU CAN IGNORE BY ACCIDENT . It’s a side content behind another side quest line, unlocked AFTER an expansion quest line which doesn’t even bring you to the area where you can see this quest line giver.
The quest locked skills are true except for Crafting/Gathering jobs, they are pretty much just quests for story and gear rewards. Ended up with a high level Cook Job level and still haven’t done the level 25 quest for it and still could use a lot of my skills. Alas, the game doesn’t let you repeat a process with a system, so you are forced to learn about the in-game Macro to level up those jobs, so at best, you gather 500 of the ingredients of a craft and press a macro, go watch a video, comeback to press the macro, and so forth. Which made me completely hate the Crafting Jobs. Gathering was Mind numbing too. You just run in circles gathering a single thing and level up the job that way. Nothing special. Just a few skills to let you gather materials better. So, you just do a certain content for hours on end, and end up with a max level gatherer/Crafter in the matter of minutes.

Community

A few of you would expect me to ♥♥♥♥ on this game’s community. But honestly, I had few interactions and even fewer bad interactions with players. One was a literal toxic player and the rest was just passive-aggressive positive behavior but other than that, you aren’t really forced to interact with the other players, the Economy is just UI interaction, Side 4 Fun content is just Isolated and Guilds are just something to fill your chat box and get buffs for. Honestly, barely any interactions at all. I had people whisper to me that they liked my Character’s outfit and I myself asked for people to let me take screenshots with them which was met with silence because they were AFK or just with “Sure” which then led to a getting Characters Aligned for the screen shot dance. People are really helpful but you’re just better off googling stuff because they just say the same thing as the wiki which is fine, but I think having a GPS rather than directions in a paper is better. Although people say ERP’er’s and RolePlayers are the bane of the FFXIV community, I barely had to interact with them, people really keep to themselves unless you interact with them and the general banter between someone trying to RP in the main lobby of Limnsa Lominsa with Say is pretty funny.

Character/Game Customization

It’s great, the Customization, you can have that outfit you found level 30 to level 80 and there’s a system where it won’t affect your stats for free. Although Fantasia, a Character Race customization item that lets you alter your body being a Cash Item, you can still do so much with your character and there’s a free Fantasia after completing ARR. The only problem with it is that you can’t even alter your face specifics without Fantasia.
“Oh, you used your Fantasia but now that you look at in the cutscene you noticed that the cheekbones and nose of the character are incredibly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and now you can’t unsee it? Too bad, you can’t change it without paying up.”
That’s my main problem with the Character Customization screen. Too little options for lighting. The only problem I had with my Character was how fat their cheeks were together with my outfit, it looked strangely fat but I couldn’t change it due to having to pay for Fantasia. Which is incredibly expensive for me.
Another problem is the Class specific equipment requirement for putting it in a glamour plate, the system for using equipment for looks. They say they have to keep that way so people wouldn’t look like healers while being a tanker. But honestly, I don’t believe it because most people looked like modernized RPG Characters which made them look the same as the other classes. Also, I had people confuse me for a Healer because of how I looked in a Cutscene, they only knew I was a tank because Dark Knights carry a Longsword for a weapon. I had multiple people confirm this. So I put Gauntlets and Greaves to make myself distinct from the healers. Also, don’t ever use Level 50 gear or below as a Glamour, they are barely well modeled. The outfit I had didn’t have the inside of the shoulder pads properly modeled and you will notice something wrong with your outfit through the cutscenes. Either the low resolution or how something got badly scaled to your character’s size. I had a flat chested character, how did my tits keep looking like a balloon in open chested outfits? I’m trying to pay attention to the story but the resolution of my outfit compared to the other character’s is distracting me. I look like Pixel Art next to new characters.
UI/Hotkey wise the game is completely open to it. You can resize with percentages, change all the keys to all the hotkeys with a few exceptions. And there’s always easy to install mods that let you change the Ui even more, but it’s controversial because people abused that fact and created cheats. But it won’t probably affect you, unless you go out of your way to cheat.

Summary

Community : 8/10
Gameplay: 4/10
Story: 7/10
Customization : 9/10

All in all, the time I spent in this game paid off and I really liked my time here. But in all honesty, if anyone told me I had to play for a 100 hours or less to get to the good part of the game while also paying attention to the story, I wouldn’t give this game a try. Hopefully you aren’t discouraged by this review and still, try to give the game a try. It just didn’t strike all my cords, but a few still did. I hope it hits all of them for you.

Find your own way.

[tap and die]

I believe we all have a mediocre game that we would get addicted to. FF14 would be one of those.

[Jethro]

Still better than any alternative on the MMO market.

[Cyiel]

Originally posted by tap and die:

I believe we all have a mediocre game that we would get addicted to. FF14 would be one of those.

I wouldn't call a 7.5 mediocre by any extend or maybe it's time to rethink how you rate things.

[HolyGrail]

Originally posted by Cyiel:

Originally posted by tap and die:

I believe we all have a mediocre game that we would get addicted to. FF14 would be one of those.

I wouldn't call a 7.5 mediocre by any extend or maybe it's time to rethink how you rate things. :lunar2019grinningpig:

Yeah maybe I'd put flavor of the month games like Baldurs Gate 3 under mediocre but not FF14..

[tap and die]

Originally posted by Jethro:

Still better than any alternative on the MMO market.

Says more about MMO gameplay in general being kinda bad. Your experience moreso depends on the community you interact with, which heavily varies from person to person.

Originally posted by Cyiel:

Originally posted by tap and die:

I believe we all have a mediocre game that we would get addicted to. FF14 would be one of those.

I wouldn't call a 7.5 mediocre by any extend or maybe it's time to rethink how you rate things. :lunar2019grinningpig:

7.5 is mediocre if you look at how reviewers with the 10 point system rates their games. Perhaps it is you who should rethink how the rating system works because everyone else thinks so.

[Cyiel]

Originally posted by tap and die:

Originally posted by Jethro:

Still better than any alternative on the MMO market.

Says more about MMO gameplay in general being kinda bad. Your experience moreso depends on the community you interact with, which heavily varies from person to person.

Originally posted by Cyiel:

I wouldn't call a 7.5 mediocre by any extend or maybe it's time to rethink how you rate things.

7.5 is mediocre if you look at how reviewers with the 10 point system rates their games. Perhaps it is you who should rethink how the rating system works because everyone else thinks so.

Hoooo look the boring guy of the party who just can't think for two seconds about the stupidity of calling something mediocre and rating it 7.5. You know sometimes it can be great to rethink things and changing them. Introspection, calling into question, all those things you can do with your brain. It's not because some people do something dumb that you should do it too.

[Dadoosan]

Game gets in it's own way by forcing you through a 7/10 story with a 1/10 storytelling experience. They make the story the main part of the game but don't know the first thing about telling a story.

And you can't skip it unless you pay, and if you do pay, you might as well not play because the gameplay is not enough to keep you there. If you just want gameplay, there are plenty of other MMOs on the market that do it way better than this game.

There's my review. Good story, decent gameplay, godawful storytelling and it's just kind of a weird way to make a game.

[AH-1 Cobra]

IMO, the forced main story quest is the weakest part of the game. And that gets propped up by many in the community as being one of the game's best selling points.

I thought many of the dungeons and raids were decently done, so I'd argue that's stronger than the actual story is. Players who would prefer to do the dungeons and raids have to pay extra for a MSQ skip in order to play the game how they want, so I have to knock points off for that.

[galacticcorgi]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

IMO, the forced main story quest is the weakest part of the game. And that gets propped up by many in the community as being one of the game's best selling points.

I thought many of the dungeons and raids were decently done, so I'd argue that's stronger than the actual story is. Players who would prefer to do the dungeons and raids have to pay extra for a MSQ skip in order to play the game how they want, so I have to knock points off for that.

Or maybe go play a different game, because this isn't Dungeon Crawler 4000.

You don't play a JRPG and expect it to be a FPS.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by galacticcorgi:

Or maybe go play a different game, because this isn't Dungeon Crawler 4000.

You don't play a JRPG and expect it to be a FPS.

The story isn't told like a JRPG. They filter the story segments in minuscule bites weaved in through a monotonous amount of fetch and go-to => come back quests. JRPG storytelling is presented a lot better than they presented it in this game. Whether the story was actually good, I don't know, it was lost in its presentation with me. I blitzed it, skipped the cutscenes and watched a story summary on youtube. This game is a case and point for JRPG storytelling not translating well into MMORPG format.

[galacticcorgi]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

Originally posted by galacticcorgi:

Or maybe go play a different game, because this isn't Dungeon Crawler 4000.

You don't play a JRPG and expect it to be a FPS.

The story isn't told like a JRPG. They filter the story segments in minuscule bites weaved in through a monotonous amount of fetch and go-to => come back quests. JRPG storytelling is presented a lot better than they presented it in this game. Whether the story was actually good, I don't know, it was lost in its presentation with me. I blitzed it, skipped the cutscenes and watched a story summary on youtube. This game is a case and point for JRPG storytelling not translating well into MMORPG format.

"I skipped the cutscenes, but the story is totally not great."

And I'm skipping you because clearly you wouldn't know. A summary isn't the same as the actual story.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by galacticcorgi:

And I'm skipping you because clearly you wouldn't know. A summary isn't the same as the actual story.

A summary is more convenient and less of a slough. If the story wasn't a slough to be waded through that was tied to a bunch of monotonous other stuff I didn't care about, then maybe I'd have cared enough to not skip it and get a summary just to save time. That's a problem that's exclusive to storytelling in MMORPGs that doesn't occur in single player JRPGs. I can appreciate a decent story in a JRPG game, but I can't appreciate how the story was presented in this game.

The fact that they sell MSQ skips as a "service" really says it all.

[causality]

I'm surprised the usual crowd around here who jumps on the, "you can't criticize any part of my favorite game" bandwagon hasn't been able to parse this giant wall of text and the fact OP is criticizing their game. The lack of jester awards is alarming.

[GoreTiger]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

IMO, the forced main story quest is the weakest part of the game. And that gets propped up by many in the community as being one of the game's best selling points.

I thought many of the dungeons and raids were decently done, so I'd argue that's stronger than the actual story is. Players who would prefer to do the dungeons and raids have to pay extra for a MSQ skip in order to play the game how they want, so I have to knock points off for that.

YoshiP charges extra on purpose, because this game is not a dungeon crawler and they want you to experience the MSQ.
This is why I hate hardcore raiders in mmos. They would throw out 99% of what makes a game great just so they can endlessly grind that 1% of dungeon content.
I blame dark souls for this mentality tbh.