15 minutes of Final Fantasy XIV Alpha gameplay
Well, I had 15 minutes to experience it, I played a so-called warrior and I could tell that I were super-buffed, having equipment far superior to the monsters I later engaged. My character started out in a small encampment. One of the first things I noticed was the graphics and the smooth movement system and animations. I could tell that Square Enix has worked hard on this game and there was a lot of polish present, not to mention the graphics were quite breathtaking beautiful!
One of the Square Enix employees wanted to group up with me to participate in a quest together, so I joined his party (he was sitting at the PC at the right side of me). Also I had issues on my version of FFXIV, since the monsters were invisible to me, we fixed that by switching me to another PC.
On with the quest, it was a simple kill 6 monsters quest, we were instructed to kill ten peacock-like creatures and by following the compass it pointed us in the right direction. We managed to kill them all, but I never returned back (if I were suppose to?) to turn the quest back in. As for the combat, it felt a bit slow, but I enjoyed it. I think it felt very polished and the animations were synced well with how the creatures took the blows. They went down way fast though, due to us being buffed. Questing is a bit like in WoW.
Having only 15 minutes makes it hard to say a lot about the game, but overall Im very impressed, I noticed a lot of clipping plane, so Im guessing theyre still working on optimizing the graphics engine and didnt want us to lag.
I explored the map as much as possible and went into a couple of invisible walls. A giant white castle was found after some poking and exploring around, but I couldnt find a way to reach it.
The camera was a bit strange to me, you could adjustit with the arrow keys or the mouse, but it didnt feel properly tuned yet. Maybe Im just not used to it, though. Thats what the SE guy at the side of me said, youre doing great for just having played for a few minutes, when you get used to it, its really great.
Several elements of the UI could be resized and moved around/customized this made me happy and Im wondering if there perhaps even will be space for some addons, like in other MMOs. But its not a necessity IMO either way.
More on the combat, you target a creature with TAB, lock on it with X and bring out your weapon with F. Then you attack using your different abilities on the hotbar, they were set to 1, 2, 3 etc. The stronger abilities required certain rage (its called something else but I forgot what its called now). After building up enough rage I had certain AOE abilities that I could used which destroyed the monsters we were fighting really fast, then again we were slightly overpowered for the mobs we fought.
All in all Im very pleased with my short experience of playing the game and watching other people play. The game felt extremely polished for being in alpha. You don't often hear this, but for a game being a year away from release things are looking very good for FFXIV, I'm impressed. Theres obviously more to tell, but instead Ill leave that to future news posts on our site. Keep checking, well keep you updated twenty-four seven.
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