 Welcome back to Character Creator Critique, sorry about the delay, Christmas break was hectic, and I had to wrestle with some crazy maniac and a wiggler outfit to get my computer back. But today, we're gonna be looking at Final Fantasy XIV. It's a subscription-based MMO based on, you guessed it, the Final Fantasy franchise. And as being an MMO, the character creator is very important. You're going to be running around in this fantasy world where there will be thousands of other players, so you wanna be sure that each player has ample tools to set themselves apart. So how does Final Fantasy XIV do it? To start out, you have this very pretty background with some iconic Final Fantasy music playing. If you so wish, you can view the character in various different other locations via the different environments you can select to down here at the bottom right. You also get the choice to preview them wearing underwear or typical class gear once you select one if you so wish, and some posing to see how they look like in motion. One constant you will notice throughout the character creator is, in the top left, there is a paragraph or so lore entry for whatever respective selection you're making. And it's nice for lore nerds who want to read up about all the different types of races, cultures, etc. in this world, they are about to spend a copious amount of time in. You have 5 races to choose from, the Hure, which are basically humans, the Elisen, which are basically elves, the Lalafel, which are potatoes, the Mikote, which are furries, and the Rogadin, which are absolute units. And one additional race, the Aura, that is included in the 4.0 Stormblood expansion. And you can either be male or female for each of them, no gender locks here. And for each race you also have an additional choice of subrace, which aside from the Hure, which you can see here, it's a very slight difference in build, for the other races are, for the most part, a slight reskin with different lore behind them. Like for the Rogadin, if you prefer not to have green skin, you can be red and have this weird Disney animal nose. This gives you a few more options to change up the flavor of your character. For example, I prefer to be a Mikote of the Moon, because I really like the moon aesthetically, symbolically, whatever, and I also like the more dull and cold colors for my character, because I never grew out of my edgy teenager years. From there you have a plethora of more fine-tuning options complete with sliders, presets, colors, all that stuff. And if you're lazy, there's a randomize button, so kudos there. And of course this game also has the problem of previewing items before you select them. But you know what, I think I'm gonna have to get over it, because it's more of a minor thing, and it's more common in character creators than I would like. So it's really not worth whining about. I'll not bother complaining about the Insta previewing anymore, but I will still praise it when it isn't there. I will say that this game does have the benefit of if you play with a mouse and keyboard, you can hover over the specific options instead of having to select through them all the time. Something that if you were playing with a controller, you would have to do, unfortunately. You do have the option to save your appearance as a preset, which is a nice quality of life there if you want to make another character with the same settings for whatever reason. We're just gonna call you Chungus, there we go, there we go. Now I have the Chungus preset. From there you can select an in-universe birthday for some extra flavor, and the game will give you a real world equivalent down here conveniently enough. And also a guardian deity that your character is a patient of just for a little bit more minor lore and flavor stuff. And after all that, you can select your starting class of which there are eight. There are additional classes, both combat and non-combat focus, once you start to get further in the game, but for now you start with these. I think it's worth pointing out that this game does have a transmogification system for customizing your character's gear called Glamour, which allows you to transmog whatever gear you like the look of on top of the gear you like the stats of. And also, additionally, you can change your character's entire race and appearance with the use of an item called a Fantasia, which a single one can be earned for free by completing a specific in-game quest. And additional Fantasias can be purchased with real world cash at the Mog Station store. Let's go over what's bad about this character creator. So the first negative is more of a nitpick because it's kind of minor and subjective, but I still think it's worth pointing out as a negative because I think it's an aspect of character creators and character design in general that the video games industry could do a better job at. Now although the races are fairly similar in terms of anatomy and body size and shape, there is some pretty unfortunately bad sexual dimorphism with the Alra race. The Rogadin you could say suffers as well, but I don't think at the same degree because especially considering the female Rogadin are still the tallest and buffest out of all the races, which falls in line with the male Rogadin as well. But the Alra, boy there are some differences, aren't there? Now I want to be clear that sexual dimorphism is not an inherently bad thing. For those not in the know, sexual dimorphism is the difference between two genders of a particular species like how lions have manes and lionesses don't. Divinity is a game that shows you that you can have proper sexual dimorphism that isn't simply for the sake of just making sexualized humanoid fantasy races with their lizards, which I will go into more detail once I make a CCC for that game. But meanwhile in Eorzea, the Alra men are nearly as tall as the Rogadin, fairly built and intimidating, but the women are half their size, dainty and not nearly as demonic looking. For the first few weeks of playing this game, I actually mistook Mikote and Alra girls for each other because they look so similar. Like I said, sexual dimorphism is not an inherently bad thing. You can either do it well or you can do it poorly. And this in my opinion is bad sexual dimorphism because of the crazy juxtaposition between the two genders. And I personally believe that it'd feel less so if they were closer in design to one another, either with the females being tall, toned and riddled with cranial projections like the males, or the males being small, cute and dainty anime characters like the females. And yes, it's acknowledged and justified in the lore, but just because it is doesn't make it any less silly. Making a justification for how a character looks is easy. Making a good justification, however, is hard. Or you could go the Yokotaro route and just admit that you wanted to make sexy characters. Because then, at least it'll be honest. On the bright side, it is only apparent with this one race as the others don't suffer the same issue. The Rogan could use a little work though. The next unfortunate mark is that the options for a lot of your selection is limited. The kinds of options that you do get vary somewhat between races like how Mikote get to choose their tails or how Alra get to choose their draconic growths, but you still only get a handful of very similar looking options. So face shape wise, it's a lot of very subtle changes that you're not really going to notice unless you look really really close and make some comparisons. And just like Dragon's Dogma, those are my only two gripes with this character creator. A single negative and a nitpick. So what's good? Right off the bat, the first thing you'll notice is this character creator looks very nice. This is a great looking character aesthetically, which is a marvel considering it's an MMO where there has to be a lot of sacrifices made in order to make it actually freaking work. In fact, you can still tell there are some corners being cut to save on resources with how low resolution some of the textures are, but it's not the hugest deal when the art style can push past it so well. And that may just be because I'm biased. I do personally like the pseudo anime art style of the characters, which I know some people it's not going to be their cup of tea. I like how many colors you have for the options that allow it. I like that the options are not obnoxiously overly designed as tends to be sometimes with fantasy games. I love the hairstyles in this game. I love how many there are and how many of them look fantastic. I like how the Rogadin, this world's equivalent of orcs, doesn't come across as a savage monstrous creature. Now I like gross discussing and horrifying and ugly character designs as much as the next nerd, but I can still appreciate that everyone, everyone in this game looks beautiful, which may have been their goal with giving you such limited options. Speaking of, yes, though how much you can change each selection may be limited, you still have a lot of things to go through. This is still a crazy amount of options you can change, even if you can only change them very slightly. I know plenty of people who will still appreciate being able to change something as subtle as, say, iris size, or even look in freaking, look at this, highlights, look at that. And hey, it even has a height slider, so that's nice. And the sexual dimorphism of a single race aside, just like while the character races and classes are distinct and unique enough that in their designs that your individuality will come more from that and your selection of gear to wear than most of the face options. I mean aside from the Mikote looking a lot more like a here cosplayer, but like I said, I'm biased and it's part of my long term plot to take over the world by becoming a national phenomenon anime cat boy idol. But in any case, the general uniqueness between the races and classes you have to choose from are still very, very nice. And one final thing I'm sure gets overlooked all the time, which is a good sign, is the UI and menus, which are fantastic. It's clear as day, never gets in the way of creating your character. Everything is laid out perfectly and it's easy to navigate. No nonsensical graphics or animations here, just a well contrasted legible typeface and a slight vignette. That means it will never be lost or mixed in with the background. You can look up, down, all around and even rotate your character in reference to the environment in addition to just looking at them at different angles. Navigating and adjusting and just generally using this character creator is smooth as silk. And I don't think the UI designers who made these slick as hell menus get enough credit, so props to them there. Conclusionado, a bunch of options that don't go much deeper than subtle changes, but a bunch of options nonetheless. Everything is gorgeous, including the characters and the menus. And I can be a cute anime catboy in a male bunny soup. Oh, yeah, that's some nice equality right there. This has been character creator critique. Be sure to vote for which character creator you'd like to see next. And if you'll excuse me, I have to try my best to fight the urge to sink an entire month back into this game now that I'm subbed again. Bye.