I’m begining to consider what is a bigger time sink: playing Final Fantasy XIV Online, or writing the full title out for this review.

Let me be honest with you – I’m not the biggest fan of Japanese role-playing games. They seem to run for significantly longer than their western alternatives, require more grinding, and don’t contain that instant gratification that I rather enjoy. Another thing on the list of stuff that I’m not overly keen on is other people. So an MMOJRPG seems right out the window…

But my brother asked me nicely, so I installed Final Fantasy XIV.

FFXIV (which is much easier to type out) lets you pick your race and class, like you’d expect from any RPG. Your class determines which of the three major cities you start in. If you’re a lancer like me, you’ll start in foresty Gridania because that’s where the Lancer’s Guild is. This makes sense. But it does mean if you’re playing with a group, you might start in different areas – which is what happened to my brother and I. No fear, you can join up with each other pretty quickly.

The guild quests start off a bit repetetively. Go to place, hit a thing, tell the leader that you’ve done it. This is a step up from the main story quests which have large portions of “Go to the next town over to take this letter for me, then tell me you’ve done it”. No matter how powerful you are, no matter how special, you’ll always be somebody’s overpowered courier service.

Not enjoying your class, but made a fair chunk of progress in the story and side quests? No trouble. Go to another guild and jump ship! It’s a nice feature even if you are enjoying your class to give you a taste of another playstyle. I went for lancer (a melee DPS role) to Arcanist (a magic DPS with healing) to Marauder (one of the tank classes). It’s nice to mix it up.

Bored of fighting? That’s fine. Time to put the RP into this MMORPG! You can choose Disciple of the Hand (crafting role) or Disciple of the Land (gathering role) jobs too. These let you make equipment, and have their own crafting or gathering quests, and give you a break from the chaos of the fighting… Usually.

But maybe you want to just relax online with friends. You could chill in by the central teleportation crystals with many other players, browse the town’s shopping district, or head to the bar. Or, if you’re up for something a little different, hit The Gold Saucer – the casino. There you can compete in games against NPCs or in the GATE events against other players.

I’m not sure if GATE stands for anything, or if it is a play on the game’s FATE events – which are big player vs. environment quests. This can be kill a number of enemies in the time frame, or to fell a boss. And let me tell you, these big bosses do not mess around. But it really does bring players together, with clapping emotes all around when the deed is done.

The game itself plays quite easily. The combos are given to you, are there’s no having to pick which spells you take, only what makes it to the hotbar. You get certain skills and abilities at particular levels; and levelling up isn’t difficult between the story quests, guild quests, guild hunting logs, Grand Company (pretty arbitrary factions) hunting logs, side quests, and dungeons which you can repeat.

But here is where I’ll be really honest with you. I never got on with MMOs for a few reasons – mostly the dependency on other people, and the pay models. Now, FFXIV is a subscription-based game, where you pay for the subscription, the game, and the expansions. This is a commitment, especially when you’re not sure how much you’ll like it, and you can’t even really sell it on because you’ve used the codes.

So, it’s like £45 for the game and expansions (which I’ll talk more on later), plus £10 a month for the active subscription. I’m not sure about you, but that’s a lot for me.

But if you want to check the game out, there is a free-trial until level 60. But that’s level 60 in one job/class – they level up independently of one another. This would take you through the base game to the end of the first of the soon-to-be four expansions, which is also included in the free trial. There are no time limits. Just free until you hit level 60 – which is a point I haven’t hit quite yet myself. The current maximum level is 80, though I expect it to raise to 90 with Endwalkers being released sometime in the autumn.

The consequence of the free trial is most quality of life stuff. The player marketboard, trading, the housing aspect of the game, and the ability to be party-leader/form parties – things like that. None of this was a big deal for me, personally, as my brother had a full subscription.

More classes become available when you hit level 50 but these will require some of the other expansions – this is something to consider. But if you’re enjoying the game to this point, it might be worth picking up the full version.

All things considered? For a game I have spent no money on, I’m certainly enjoying it. Will I be picking up the full version? Probably, time depending. I’ve not exhausted the free trial just yet so I’m not in a rush, and I’ll probably wait until the full game goes on sale (which it seems to do fairly regularly).

It definitely feels like it was made with PC in mind, which makes sense when you think that MMOs tend to be more a PC thing. While this isn’t a huge issue for me despite playing on PS4 but I did buy a bluetooth keyboard for dungeon reasons. You might be thinking that the player base would be smaller on PS4, or why would I need a keyboard if people don’t really use them on console? Nah, cross-play. There’s some issues with servers centres not being compatible, so keep that in mind, but the game is cross-play and not severly affected by it.

Wow, this one sounded like a REAL review!

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Affiliated is only worth 17 points in Scrabble

If you would like to try out Final Fantasy XIV Online, you can! The game is available on PlayStations 3 & 4, with a release coming to PS5 in autumn, as well as PC and Mac. The PC code below takes you to Humble Bundle, because I’m a Humble Partner. You won’t pay anything extra, but I do get a teensy little thanks from them if you buy the game using the link.

PC Complete Edition | PC Starter Edition | Mac | PlayStation