 All right, this is born from one dot TV and today I want to talk about Final Fantasy 14 I want to have a little discussion with you while I'm doing my Palace of the Dead leveling of my Wonderful wonderful machinist, which I'm enjoying like crazy And the topic I want to talk about is should new people Know get into Final Fantasy 14 right now. I get this question a lot on my live stream. Hey, Buena I'm a new player to this series. Is it too late to get into it? There's been a lot of people Covering this topic and saying, you know, I even saw an article on PC gamer discussing whether It's worth recommended it Recommending the game to a new player and that's what I want to kind of focus on because I do it all the time I'll talk to people my live stream while I'm streaming it and playing and stuff And it is an MMO RPG and if you've been part of MMO RPGs for I don't know as long as I have Then you probably know and you probably can guess That the initial leveling process and getting to max level is not always peaches and cream in the past, you know, a lot of MMOs focus mainly on in-game or group raid activity and Final Fantasy 14 focuses on Story first that's like the first thing it focuses on and then once you're done with the story Then it starts throwing a lot of cool dungeons and in-game stuff at you, right? so the The word on the street and what everybody's saying again I'm gonna take that tack first to say what everybody else is saying is that the game is not worth the leveling grind That it's not worth going through the story the story is too slow the story is too to It's just it's a bunch of reading. There is no sense of rhyme to it. It's very slow paced It's poorly produced all kinds of negative stuff out there and while I do agree with some of the criticisms out there I do want to make it clear that it is It's an MMO RPG so if you've leveled up in WoW if you leveled up in Terra if you leveled up in Just about every MMO out there save a couple You skip the story. You just skip dialogues. You you you just hammer through quests you you click all of the Click all of the exclamation points and you just get them done as fast as possible to get the max level You know, you you basically speed level, you don't care about the story, right? And you know, like I said save for a couple of MMOs like maybe like elder scrolls online Maybe is an exception and also nice to the old Republic, you know Not nicely or Republic the The Star Wars MMO, you know, I'm talking about I'm getting old shut up the Star Wars MMO It had a good story, right? So those weren't those were story-based as well And you know people have different opinions on whether the story was great or whether it wasn't great The Final Fantasy 14 has kind of a unique history that these other MMOs don't have and this is kind of an excuse You really can't get anywhere. You really can't you really can't say anything else about it because Final Fantasy 1.0, I did a YouTube video review of it and I gave it like a 6.5 out of 10 This was the initial version which failed and I was very generous if you go back and watch that now You'd be like Buona you really gave this game a pass for a lot of the problems It had and I was really really generous. I looking back on that I was too generous, right? But it was in bad shape It was in really really bad shape and if you've watched all the documentaries and all the the stories, you know No clip has the documentary. There's some other good ones out there That are really really telling as to where this where this game came from, right? so it It helps you understand That the producers of Final Fantasy 14 2.0, which is a realm reborn, which is where you're gonna start if you play This game they had basically redo an MMO in two years and it shows if you look at the 2.0 content And you look at what people start with today. It was a it was a lot of stuff rough around the edges, right? And that's kind of an excuse I talk about all the time. I was like it's an excuse, but it's it's still valid The game came from a very very rough state and had to be redone in a short amount of time So the beginnings I like to call the beginnings like levels one through 30 are Really really really really slow. It's a disjointed kind of a tutorial character development phase That when you look back on it, you can kind of appreciate it and it makes sense But when you're going through it, it's pretty slow and boring. I Will not argue that point at all. That is the absolute truth the first 30 or so levels You know, you know, especially the levels before you you get into a dungeon, you know Especially those levels before you get into your first done just like one through 14 If you're in any kind of a rush, oh my goodness, it's gonna be a long haul for you because it is really really bad There's a lot of stuff that you can skip That you won't regret Which is why a lot of people suggest buying these skip books that are sold on the market Which didn't used to be there. They're you know, they weren't there at launch. So you had to I think they introduced them in heaven's word. I don't remember exactly when introduced them but they allow you to skip the first 50 levels and Essentially skip that story. So a lot of people recommend that because it's so rough But if if you compare this to like I'll compare it to like Final Fantasy 11, which is one of my favorite MMOs, right? The first 75 levels, whatever I forgot what level cap was 60 75 Took a really long time, right? The first time you do it just about every MMO the first time you max takes a really Long time and if you compare the time that you put into those other MMOs Versus the time you have to put into this one It could be roughly the same or even less in some cases, right? Depending on if you get onto a server with double XP because there's servers with double XP out there Preferred servers because they want you to go to those servers because they aren't as populated So it depends it depends on whether you go to those but still it doesn't take an extreme amount of time It's just that the first 30 to 40 levels is a really slow-paced story You're setting up the world. You're setting up the characters the different nations Little bit of spoiler alert coming talking about I'm not gonna talk about too much, but You send up the the plight of the main antagonists and the main protagonists So there's a lot of setup in those first 30 levels and there's a lot of mundane redundant quests Which like I said can get old and boring and looking back on it, you know something that I've gone through a lot of other MMOs too. I mean, there's been a lot of useless quests. I've gone through another MMOs This it hasn't always I don't I don't have happy memories of leveling another MMOs You know Final Fantasy 11. I really enjoyed the experiences of going to a camp and you know just grinding mobs That's a that was a different experience. That was like a that was that was like an old-school MMO experience really and I Can't really say these these these quest-based MMOs. You know like Like World of Warcraft is a good example is these quest-based MMOs It's really not a happy go lucky experience is something that you want to get through like fairly quickly, right? So that's my point about this first thing is that Final Fantasy 14 has a slow start but it is Comparable to other MMO slow starts. It's just this is very story-driven and That was this is what leads me to a very important point And this is probably what is why people are so adamant about the slowness of the story. You can't skip it You can't skip the process or the progress Main story quest progression is required to unlock a lot of things in Final Fantasy 14 You have to go through the story to get to certain dungeons You have to go through the story to get to certain raids You have to go through the dungeons to do anything. Are you I'm sorry. You have to go through the story to do anything That is a problem People who are used to skipping story can't anymore So you've got all these people who don't like story-based MMOs Even people that do like story-based MMOs, but they don't like that as it gates you or holds you back from doing content So that's a good reason to be To be concerned or a good reason to be upset or whatever you want to call it about the state of the game, right? but Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy and they make it very clear that To their fans not necessarily in the marketing material of old They make it clear That is a story game first in MMO second, right They've mostly just recently started saying that in the in the marketing messages that they have That is a JRPG type game first With a rich storyline and an MMO second. Oh, this mimic. Oh my gosh And It's true. It's a story-based MMO and I really I Really applaud them for doing that So when you talk to Final Fantasy 14 people, they always tell you oh, yeah If you get that once you get to heaven sword it gets a lot better once you get to the storm blood It gets a lot better the story gets a lot better But my rebuttal to that You know to those people who constantly say that is that the people who hate the game Because the story holds you back aren't gonna change their minds because the story is actually better because in all retrospect. I mean It all truth The realm reborn 2.0 story wasn't super terrible. It just started out slow But once it picked up it was really good. It got really good once it picked up Heavens war was better obviously Which is the second expansion of this heavens war was better, but it was still good those people Who are mad that they can't do the story aren't gonna change their minds? Because the story is better because the framework is still there you still have to go through the story to get to anything and That's the problem. That's why people don't like The structure of Final Fantasy if you got a friend if you got a loved one if you got a friend of a friend who just Won't get on board the Final Fantasy 14 train. That's probably why So going back to the original statement of should you recommend this to a friend? It depends on how that friend feels about story-based games So if someone asks you or even if you're listening to this trying to get an inkling of whether you should play Ask yourself this can you play a Single-player story in an MMO environment Because that's essentially what Final Fantasy 14 is It has a single-player story in an MMO environment And a lot of the things in the MMO environment aren't accessible until you finish that story Nope, I'm taking this. Oh well A lot of these things aren't accessible till you finish the story. So it's it's kind of a huge thing For someone new coming to the game Someone new trying to do something with Final Fantasy 14. They got to know that the story is going to be there They ain't going nowhere, right? They got to know that and one of the things that I tell people all the time is that The game has a lot of content all right and This is a problem for some people and it's kind of a weird problem because How often do you complain that a game has too much to do? But Final Fantasy is one of those games where it actually has a Lot of content even if you consider like what was in the 2.0 patch, which was the the base game To 3.0 with Heaven's Ward to 4.0 with Stormblood There was a lot of content So now if you're joining today, which is you know the kind of purpose of this video if you're joining today You've got not only You know the first games content to get through the 2.0 content to get through But you've also got all the Heaven's Ward content and all the optional side stuff in the patch content And then you got all the Stormblood And then you got all the Stormblood content on top of that and all the side patch content And now that that Shadowbringers is out. You've got all of that content to go through So if you're one of those people that asks, okay, what do I have to do to get to the latest content? Well, you've got five four or how many years. I don't know how many years a lot of years worth of content to get through That's not necessarily a problem in most MMOs because a lot of that stuff Like I said before a lot of that stuff Can be skipped and you can still get to the other stuff as long as you level up well In Final Fantasy 14 as I said earlier, you can't you have to go through The 2.0 story a realm reborn story. You have to go through the Heaven's Ward story You have to go through the Stormblood story before you even get to Shadowbringers story. That's a lot of content. That is a lot of content. I'm not even counting I'm not even counting all the optional dungeons and quests and raids and minigames and stuff that you can do in crafting Crafting is a whole nother thing whole nother set of jobs Plus the fact that you can level every job under one character it really really Really really asked the content So you hear complaints that people say It's it's it's not good for new people because they have to do so much They have to go through so much content and I say to myself It's kind of weird that that's a problem, you know That too much content in the MMO is bad And we get new content every three months because a subscription based MMO and they keep throwing more content at us And it's not bad content. It's actually good content So It's a unique situation It's a unique situation that there's too much content that you have to go through and Some people see that as a detriment as a problem like oh I have to buy these skip books No, you don't have to buy the skip books. It's just that the game's been out for so long There's so much stuff to do and there's so much story. I think I made a parallel to somebody It's not completely accurate, but it's close. It's like Imagine if you were required to play Kingdom Hearts 1 In order to play Kingdom Hearts 2 like required it wouldn't let you even boot up a game It's it's a similar parallel To what's going on in this game you can't play heaven sword Unless you play the base game or if you buy one of these skip books for 25 dollars higher in much cost I don't know how much cost I've never bought one I'm kind of glad that I haven't bought one because you know people say this as well This is another side tangent Topic on this is that It's like I really wish I would have got on this game Got into this game when it came out because it must be fun You know to be on top of all this content, you know you guys who have been through all the content You get the experience everything as soon as it comes out and you know that's that's true You know But it's not like we just sat back and played other games and then it just It's just was there we were playing this game all this time You know and there's a lot of stuff to do so the things that you've got to do to get to this point we did as well and in and in some cases actually in a lot of cases it took more time and it was harder so We've been through that you haven't been through that if you're a new player But I can tell you this this is probably this game has a Time-reward balance that I can't like Eve online is like the more time you put into this game The more you get back. So if you put three years into this game, you're I mean you're you really really Invested and you you're getting a lot back out of the game, especially if you've been playing a lot during that time, right? No, having three three machine. This is kind of crazy. Everything's just being deleted. This is nuts So you you you you got to go through all that stuff, too I've finished. I've already finished shallow bringers This is why I'm kind of showing you Palace of the Dead, which is like old content So I don't drop any spoilers about shallow bringers and anything and I'm playing an old class So you're not I think I don't think we've seen any new classes in here either So if your question Just to answer that question, you know if you're a new player Should you get into this game? My answer is if you like MMOs, you should at least download the free trial Which is 1 through 35, right? And it ain't the best part of the game 1 through 35 is not the best part of the game. It actually just gives you an introduction to the controls Whether you can run the game. You can get a sense for how controllers work It's it's akin to a demo, right? It's a long demo because you can you can play you don't there's no time limit But you just limit it to how far you can level You'll get a sense of the dungeons You'll be able to play through a few dungeons by doing that and this is absolutely free There's no obligation at all to do anything after that And if you feel like you want to keep going if you feel like Turn it to a frog man If you feel like you want to keep going then that's where the investment comes in Well, you have to buy the base game and then buy the expansions now This is one of those games where it's hard to it's kind of hard to recommend Buying the latest expansion because like I said, there's so much you have to do There is so much you have to do before you even get to Shadowbringers God's a frog again. I've never seen this before. It's a three-timer boy You have to go through so much content to get to Shadowbringers, so It's hard to recommend to say hey just buy them all even though I love it That person that I'm recommended it to may not even get to all that content So it may just be worth to buy the base game, right? And then once you get to heaven's ward once you get the shadow to storm blood and the other expansions Maybe you'll have a better idea of what do you want to keep going? I thought he changed again chat. I called you guys chat. I I can't in good conscience recommend this all the expansions to everybody You know, it's like you really should evaluate it Especially since it has a monthly fee You're gonna be paying beyond that first month because you buy the base game You get the first 30 days included with that for that purchase and Then you have to pay as little as $12.99 a month to continue so to to To recommend all those expansions, which is hundreds and hundreds of hours hundreds of hours of content and ain't cheap either It's a pretty penny to get everything Because you have to buy the base game and then you have to buy a shadowbringers Which is I believe over $60 for all of that and then you got the monthly fee on top of that I think it's over $60 for all of that. So it's not cheap to buy everything But if you go with the base game only try it out get past the realm reborn Get a feel for the game level up the jobs and try to crafting and the gathering stuff because it's a really rich system Then it becomes easier to to make a decision whether you want to keep going or whether you want to buy a skip book and Then just you know by by the expansion then skip directly to a Certain expansion now If you're gonna skip something And this is a this is a personal opinion that is shared by others not just me If you're gonna skip something don't skip heaven sword You can skip storm blood all you want you can skip a realm reborn all you want this game Shined at heaven sword. It was to me. It was like one of the the high points a Really really high point of the game both story mechanics wise dungeons atmosphere character development voice acting It was running on all cylinders at this point. It was really really good really really good So if you're gonna skip something don't skip heaven sword, please No skip the realm we I think I recommend it to because I watched a bunch of streamers and I talked to some people that were that were running the game for the first time and they were They were contemplating buying a skipbook, but they didn't want to cheat themselves out of content, right? Which nobody does nobody wants to cheat so that content because that's what you're doing you're basically paying to skip you're basically paying to not do content and Some may see that as a value, but it can be a waste too um so Don't skip heaven sword and Just don't The recommended that the recommendation I would give people is that you know try the game to like level 30, right? You know see if you can get through the first 30 levels and And if you get to the first 30 levels and he's like all right, I can keep going, you know, I can keep going Then just keep going if you get to the first 30 levels, you've done some dungeons. You've got a feel for the job and You're like all right. I can't stand this anymore. I'm gonna I gotta I gotta get to the next expansion I can't take this anymore then by a skipbook at that point. I think that's fair If you can go through the first 30 levels and find that you you just can't work through that Skipping those next 20 levels is A respectable decision. I can't argue against that because it takes it takes a while It takes a while and then once you get to it once you do the skip you get to heaven sword and let me tell you the game It gets a lot better at that point We're going back to our initial point if you hate stories, you're not gonna care You're absolutely not gonna care you're gonna be like up Story, I can't do this until I do story now. There's some tips I have for people who are getting into this game And this was the biggest one because I've had at least four people come through my stream with This plight like hey one. I should I do the I've been doing the side quest I've been doing the side quest Buona and You know it it doesn't seem to be making too much of a difference on my levels or whatever I'm like and These are mostly people that came from Wow the Warcraft you did all the side quests, right? You guys and wow can attest to that You can let me know in the comments if that's not true, but I'm pretty sure that's true You just do all the side quests that you see you see an exclamation point. You do it just the way it is in Final Fantasy 14. That's not the case side quests are Mainly used. I don't know if they're designed for this But they're mainly used to level alternate jobs because in this game you pay for one character Right and there's certain limitations and stuff with that that you can get more than one character But you pay for one character that can do everything So this one character can do every job every craft and You're not permitted currently although you soon will be to repeat the main story You're not permitted to repeat the main story So to get XP you would have to grind dungeons do other types of leave quests Do what I'm doing right here, which is a mode called palace of the dead Which is a deep dungeon grind kind of like a roguelite a very very light Randomization you see people getting trapped and you know, there's randomized loot and stuff like that But the the layouts are relatively the same. They're they're RNG base This is another way you can level and side quests side quests are used to To level up alternate jobs. So will you first come into the game? Don't Don't oh my gosh, I can't emphasize this enough do not do to all the side quests. It's okay to do a few of them But don't do them all Please don't do them all Please don't do them all And I think you'll be fine the game I'm not gonna I'm not gonna talk about shadow bringers too much because I'm planning on doing a video about that about my thoughts about shadow bringers and I Find that it's one of the best MMOs out right now And that's a heavily heavily biased opinion Heavily heavily biased opinion right It's one of the best MMOs out right now, and I'm not saying that lightly I mean, there's there's a few good MMOs out right now, but I really believe that this is the best MMO out right now And you can't go wrong with it and given that there's not really a lot of Western MMOs coming out soon Amazon just announced they're gonna do a Lord of Rings MMO We'll see how that goes because it's gonna be free to play. I really don't think MMOs are good for free to play It's just me They either got to be by the player a subscription Amazon is coming out with a free-to-play MMO and that's about the biggest news we've gotten this year We've got crowfall. We've got the Camelot Unchained those are two that are our old school Sandbox PVP based MMOs that are coming out, which is not for everybody. I like them, but they're not for everybody so You gotta you really got to be careful as To what you play today because a lot of these free-to-play MMOs. I'm looking at you black desert online and now these other ones There there's always there's always a catch there's always something and The people that that love these other MMOs they they can tolerate that something But you may not be able to like with this game. The something is it's a heavily story-based game everything revolves around the story you can't get around that and Honestly, I think it's worth it, but other people out there may not You see a lot of wow Diehards which will not touch this game because they think it's too anime and I think it's too slow And they think it's all these different things and then you got some other wow refugees that we call them that absolutely love it and can Appreciate the differences between it and wow. They won't call it. They won't necessarily call it better than wow They'll say it's different. It's different enough to get into it's different enough to play Personally, I think it's better than wow. That's why I don't play wow. You gotta play this instead. So that's that So I'm having a great time With this MMO RPG called Final Fantasy 14 You may have noticed that put up a lot of videos on my youtube channel about how the story I Took a lot of time and I'm still kind of working on that Putting up all the voiced cutscenes all of the voice cutscenes and it's important to denote that because there's other videos up there of a Final Fantasy story, but they have all those words that people like to skip, right? And I think that's a weird thing to put up on YouTube because you can you know You could go into the game and go into your in and do the same thing that we're doing, you know, it's not anything Hidden or anything anything Like a hidden game mode to do this you just go into your in and you can watch all the old cutscenes that you've already done, right? so I really Encourage people that if they are gonna skip, you know, they can come and watch my video or videos There's it's a lot of them. They're really long, but they're kind of I've got themselves in like a movie like format, right? To where you can just sit back and watch them and you don't have to read anything You just it's like watching a video game movie and You can go back and if you think a realm reborn was too much of a slog to get through you can watch that Two to three hour video. I put up. I think that's how long it is You'll see the story. You'll see how Everything comes together It's very plain. I mean you don't miss much I mean, there's some there's some story elements that aren't included because we don't have all of the cutscenes because they're not all voiced But you still got two to three hours of cutscenes, right? That was a mistake on my part. Sorry T. I am that guy. I pulled one. I should have You can still get a gist of what's going on and you can see why people are doing what and who these characters are Especially if you're gonna like I said, it's for people who brand skip books You can know who alpha no is you can know who Alice A is and you can know who you stole it is and Ria Jane and Thancred and Minfilia and all the science and and Papa Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Noodal day and Eda and all these other characters, you know people from Stormblood all these other people you can You can get a sense for who they are just by watching this video if you can't tolerate the story I'm gonna end it here. This is born from born.tv It's a really hot topic today, and I just wanted to just like just give you guys a laid-back Discussion as if I were streaming As to why I believe or just my opinion on the topic of whether you could recommend this game Final fantasy 14 to a new player or not. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time