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Character Creation: To Limsa Lominsa!
All races except Miqo’te are present in the character creation. A few of the gender/tribe combinations were also unplayable, but you could give your character a first and last name, along with a great number of options available for:
- Height
- Voice
- Skin color
- Hair style
- Hair color
- Hair highlights
- Face type
- Eye color
Finally, choose your birthday and guardian deity, followed by your starting point. The only one available for play in the alpha test was Limsa Lominsa.
By the way, Limsa Lominsa and its surrounding areas only make up about a fifth of the final product area.
After you make your character, there’s a cut scene. It appears you’re on a boat, and it pans across the scene to show other people lounging around the ship. I thought at first it was a prerendered opening, by my character showed up in the cut scene! These amazing graphics are created real-time by the in-game graphics engine.
All the cut scenes in-game were done in real time rendering at 1280x720 resolution with English voices and Japanese subtitles. It’s much more realistic-looking than FFXI, and, along with the on-a-boat opening, reminded me of the opening to EverQuest II. The story also changes along with your starting point, apparently.
When the cut-scene finished, I was presented with the user interface and was given control of my characters. I looked across the room and noticed many things.
- The boat is an instance
- NPC names were in Japanese (In FFXI, names were in English even in the Japanese version –Manly)
- The minimap was in the top-right
- The parts of the UI were widgets and could be moved by dragging them with the mouse
After a bit, there was another cut-scene. The storm that the boat was engulfed it seemed unnatural, as if caused by some force… My character went up onto the deck to check things out, and I was brought into a battle.
This battle was my first experience with FFXIV’s battle system. When you take out your weapon, the action gauge fills up. When it’s filled, you can activate a command from your action menu.
For example, as a gladiator, you have “slash” and “stab” in your action menu. It takes about four seconds for the action gauge to fill. After that, you attack the monster with stab or slash. You must choose a command every time you want to attack a monster.
You can put not just attacks, but magic and other special abilities, and even potions into your action menu.
You can fight by just pressing slash and stab, but if you leave the action gauge where it is, you can start charging the effect gauge. The effect gauge has three levels, and the higher the effect gauge, the more powerful your action will be. Timing will be very important.
This is the basic flow of battle. Of course, the timing of the action gauge will change depending on battle style and weapon.
FFXIV’s battle will feel fresh, even to MMORPG veterans. It’s not all that hard when you actually play it, and it feels like some of it is a little difficult to put into words. I’m sure battle will eventually make it into the YouTube FFXIV Channel eventually, so be sure to check that out.
Limsa Lominsa and Guildleves
After cleaning up the monsters, the ship arrives safely in Limsa Lominsa. This is where the instance ended and plopped me into the MMO part of the RPG. Even though it was the first day of testing, there were so many people in the city. It was quite a lively experience that I don’t think I could ever get tired of.
Here, adventurers go to the adventurers’ guild to get their guildleves and head out on their own adventures.
The things I was able to play through on my first try of this test was pretty limited, but these are just my first impressions of the alpha. Even so, there were so many things to see! I have a feeling FFXIV is going to become quite a fine, polished product through the help of test feedback, and I’m glad I get to be a part of it.
The way you have to wait for your gauge to fill up before you actually attack or do some skill or spell. Might be just me.
