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Final Fantasy XI is a subscription-based Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. You play as your own customized adventurer with the ability to play every single job on a single character, with a ton of challenging battle content spanning over fifteen years.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Most of the game is solo-friendly, especially while leveling up
If you'd rather not have to play with others all the time, Final Fantasy XI has you covered. It's perfectly possible to get to the max level of 99 on your own with a party of NPC companions. These companions, called Trusts, are alter-egos, or clones, of prominent NPCs throughout the game, each with their own assigned jobs. This means you can bring along a tank to soak up the damage, a healer to keep you alive, and some damage dealers to kill things faster. They're so strong that you can let them do the heavy-lifting, letting you level up fast in a few days.
Pro You can play every job on a single character
One of the most convenient parts of Final Fantasy XI is getting to play everything on one character. You have absolute freedom to switch things up whenever you want. It's easy to change jobs at any time, whether you're in the mood to level up something else or if your friends need you on a different job for battle content. Other than battle jobs, you can also level every crafter on your one character, like goldsmithing, alchemy, bonecraft, and more, so you can be self-sufficient enough to make all of your own crafted gear without having to buy any from vendors or other players. You don't need to make any "alts" at all unless you want to experience the story again or for some extra item storage.
Pro Rewarding and engaging gameplay that still holds up today
Every job is designed well enough to keep your attention for hundreds upon hundreds of hours for both solo play and partying with others. The game is balanced around the holy trinity -- tanks, healers, and damage dealers -- with support role jobs that enhance your party. All four roles play differently, but in a party, they synergize quite well together.
Playing as a physical damage dealer, you focus on building up Technical Points, or TP, while attacking, in between using job abilities to give you massive increases to your output. Once you gather enough TP, you can unleash powerful weapon skills for tons of damage. Your party members can then use their weapon skills after yours, creating a strong Skillchain that takes out even more of the monster's health. And then, a magical damage dealer can time the correct spell just right for a Magic Burst for a yet another satisfying chunk of HP.
Meanwhile, healers and support jobs focus more on keeping the group alive, enhancing everyone's abilities, and debilitating the enemies. These roles are busier with more variety, since healing, buffing, and debuffing requires keeping a close eye on the party's health, constantly, and applying and reapplying certain enhancements for any given situation. If you like staying busy and making sure that things run smoothly, then these jobs will definitely keep you on your toes.
All in all, partying with others in Final Fantasy XI and playing your job to its fullest potential can easily keep you hooked for a long time. The game still thrives years later because of just how fun it is to play and how well everything is balanced.
Pro Pretty welcoming to new players without much hand-holding
In more recent years, Final Fantasy XI added ways to help new players feel more welcome. The best one is the series of Rhapsody of Vana'diel quests and story missions that introduced systems to help you level up and to point you in the right direction for other content in the game. By completing tasks through the Records of Eminence, like killing a certain number of enemies, doing a set number of damage, and so on, you earn experience points and a certain type of currency that you can exchange for gear. Some of this gear can be sold to NPCs for a decent amount of in-game money to keep you afloat as well.
It's also easy to find groups of like-minded and/or more experienced players to chat with and ask questions. There are NPCs in town that let you see which Linkshells, or guilds, are recruiting new members. But it's up to you to look around a bit and discover these things on your own; the game doesn't hold your hand beyond offering these options. Not to mention, outside of the game, there are many in-depth Wikis with guides aimed at new players. So if you're worried about jumping into this game when it's been going on for such a long time, there are plenty of helpful systems to get you started.
Pro Many unique jobs to learn and master
There are over twenty jobs in Final Fantasy XI to choose from. You start off with six basic ones: warrior, monk, red mage, thief, black mage, and white mage. Once you get to level thirty, you can unlock advanced jobs like dark knight, samurai, dancer, bard, ninja, geomancer, paladin, and a bunch more. Even jobs in the same role all play differently from each other in some way.
Among healers, white mages are perfect for when you need stronger, burst heals, while scholars tend to focus more on their powerful dark magic with healing as a secondary role. With tanks, there's the traditional sword-and-shield paladin that soaks up damage and uses magic to heal, while ninja use their ninjutsu spells to keep up shadows to outright evade enemy attacks. There are all sorts of damage dealers with their own specialties, like dark knights and samurai who wield two-handed weapons to put out some serious damage. And then there are the hybrid, jack-of-all-trades jobs like dancer, who uses their TP to heal, buff, and debuff, and red mage who uses both black and white magic with plenty of enfeebling and enhancing spells.
Mastering your job(s) takes a lot of time and dedication as you improve your skills and earn better gear through endgame progression, but it pays off in the end.
Pro Memorable music and atmosphere, set in an incredible world
The world of Vana'diel pulls you in with its amazing music, atmosphere, and the sense of adventure you get simply from going to place to place. The songs in each zone and cutscene never manage to get old, even after hearing them hundreds of times, just from how catchy and melodic they are. They really make the story that much better, making up for the lack of voice acting with some downright touching songs like "Recollection", "A New Morning", and "Grav'iton".
The game's atmosphere is something else as well. It's mythical without feeling exaggerated, with just enough realism to keep you grounded. Certain areas like the snowy, demon-filled fields of Xarcabard have an unforgettable sense of loneliness from the music that plays, and the visuals of the glowing auroras against the stark contrast of the snow everywhere. Traveling from places like Xarcabard to the intimidating depths of Castle Zvahl nearby gives you a tangible sense of danger, no matter how strong your character is. And it helps a lot that the graphics still hold up quite well today, even if the graphics aren't as impressive anymore.
Pro Near-endless amount of story and battle content spread out across several expansions
Final Fantasy XI has so much to experience, not just with leveling up, but with the story and all the amazing boss battles it has to offer.
The expansions -- Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, Wings of the Goddess, and Seekers of Adoulin -- and the handful of add-ons, all introduced lengthy story missions filled with incredible lore about the world of Vana'diel, opening up unique areas to explore, like the top of the sky and the bottom of the sea, filled with challenging monsters and gods to take down. Chains of Promathia in particular is a stand-out, with a dark and intriguing narrative and atmosphere, great characters, and a satisfying end boss and conclusion. You can get some pretty great rewards for getting through all of the story missions, so they're worth checking out.
Cons
Con Except for servers like Asura, player population isn't as high as it used to be
Though Final Fantasy XI is still going strong as of 2018, there are some noticeable signs that the game isn't as populated as before. Some of the servers are a ghost town with only a few hundred concurrent players logged in at any given time. There are more popular servers that have about the same amount of players as the old days -- about two thousand or so. Asura is pretty much the go-to server these days if you're looking for a healthy population.
Con Some of the systems can feel slow and unresponsive
Since this is an MMO from the early-2000s, things are much slower-paced than most modern games. Battles aren't that fast at all, with a lot of your time spent auto-attacking as you gain enough TP to use a weapon skill. There are also more general things that can feel sluggish, even just with interacting with the various menus, and how it sometimes takes a few seconds for the game to respond to your inputs. But it's not so bad once you get used to it.
Con Character creation is limited
While there are a good amount of unique-looking races to choose from -- regular humans, big hulking guys, elves, feline women, and a tiny, cute child-like race -- there aren't many customization options. You basically just pick your race and gender, and how tall your character is, and from there you select from a handful of hairstyles with their own pre-set face types, with only a couple of hair colors to choose from. It's quite common to run into another player that has your exact same character model, even though their job and gear may be completely different than yours.
Con Certain jobs can be too expensive for a new player to level up
Even though you can play any job you want, some of them cost a lot of in-game money to keep current as you gain levels. In particular, any jobs with magic are a no-go, because you have to buy every single one of your spells. They aren't that pricey on their own, but the costs add up over time, and can make you go broke if you're still new and learning your way around. This means all of the mages (except blue mage, and to a lesser extent, summoner), ninja with their ninjutsu, dark knights with their dark magic, bards with their songs, and a few others may not be the best choices for newcomers.
Ranged attackers like corsair and ranger also fall under this category, since all of their bullets and arrows are consumables that cost money, though you can purchase these from certain NPC vendors.
While you can go after these jobs first if you really want to, these require you to have plenty of in-game money to be effective, so be sure to plan accordingly.