Product Description: Lose yourself inside the legendary Final Fantasy saga with this massive collection. The Final Fantasy XI: The Vana'diel Collection 2008 is a stunning assortment that includes the original Final Fantasy XI game, plus four expansion packs: Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan and Wings of the Goddess. Start with Final Fantasy XI, where you'll be able to assume the role of a variety of unique characters. Customize your character's appearance and decide which abilities you find most important. Then develop your in-game persona to become more effective in battle. In the four expansion packs you'll encounter new personalities, take on new jobs and explore new areas. As you continue to master weapons, skills and magics, you'll become a bigger part of this amazing world. In Chains of Promathia, learn more about the fabled God of Twilight as well as the Emptiness, a sinister force that is gnawing away at the world. In Rise of the Zilart, assume the role of Samurai, Ninja or Dragoon and trek through 40 new areas. In Treasures of Aht Urhgan, test your skill as a Blue Mage, Corsair or Puppetmaster, and embark on new missions that will reveal the secrets of this mysterious land. Wings of the Goddess takes you to Vana'diel's rewritten history, where you'll participate in three intense campaigns. In the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion pack, become a Blue Mage, Corsair or Puppetmaster, and explore 40 new areas
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - I just keep comming back to this MMO
I started this game in 03, JP release, quit in 06 for WoW, then quit WoW in 07, came back to this, then recently I started Age of Conan... and I think I'll go back to FFXI again.
Let me explain,
This game gives you everything EXCEPT open world ganking and glowing weapons. I'll break this down even further;
PVP COMBAT -
Not really much of it. There is a few PVP scenarios you can get into, but for some reason they arent very popular. If you get into a Ballista or Brenner or something of that nature its a scheduled thing, unless you start one yourself... then its even harder to people to go with you. But if you find a good group of people who want to do this, the rewards can be great!
PVE COMBAT -
Open world is HUGE. There are tons of different monsters and beastmen you can battle against. Unlike many other MMOs out there, the mobs dont all look the same here! Higher level ones with challange you with more abilities, and that makes for interesting game play for sure. Oh, and this game is not really Gear Oriented, but in most cases, skill oriented (Ninja tanking, for example).
QUESTS -
Holy Cr@p there are a Sh!!ton of quests in this game! Down side to them is they dont give you experience points. They do, however give you a fame rating for the city/town you do these quests for... and fame sticks with your character (toon for you WoW fans) for the life of it. As you can see, I have been playing this game for a very long time, and I have yet to repeat 1 single quest (unless I want to help someone else do it). Massive content that no other game EVER has came even remotely close to being able to match.
CRAFTING -
Some people like it. It takes a lot of time, as do most things in this game. You can make probably 60% of the items in the game through crafting. Personally, I'm big on this games Fishing. You actually have to fight the fish and wear it down to get it up out of the water. Good stuff!
CHARATER CREATION -
As far as looks go, theres not a big difference in anything other than race selection and hair color that anyone will notice much. Hume = Male or Female Human, Elvaan = A tall elf (compared to Santa Style or WoW) either Male or Female, Tarutaru = A very small pudgy (sometimes refered to as Cute) Male or Female humanoid, Mithra = a Female only cat that walks on 2 legs, and Galkan = a Massive Non-gender (refered to as male though) Hulking Dinosaur looking thing. Each race has thier own strengths and weaknesses associated with job selection.
JOB SELECTION -
Fisrt off, theres a ton, and patcheds keep adding more! Heres the list:
Warrior, Depending on the way you pla, can be a tank or a damage dealer
White Mage, A caster of healing magic
Red Mage, the jack of all things magical, the master of enfeebaling
Black Mage, Master of the Dark Magic
Blue Mage, Learns the abilitys of what its fights and uses them against your opponenets
Monk, The Master of Martial Arts with Hand and Foot
Thief, Steal Items and Money, Stab enemeys in their backs and run away fun!
Dragoon, Calls and controls his/her own dragon and wields a deadly spear
Paladin, A very Heavily Armored Tank with magic to heal themselfs
Dark Knight, A very Heavily Armed Dealer of Death
Beast Master, Charm enemys and force them to fight others for you
Puppet Master, Controls a puppet to do its bidding for them
Ninja, Master of Deception!
Samauri, Wields a Giant Katana and uses it to inflict many skills quickly
Dancer, Uses the power of Dance to change to do various abilities
Bard, Sing or Play an intrument to give your group various power boosts
Scholor, Can instantly switch between Black and White magic
Corsair, uses a deck of cards (and a gun) to give boosts to your group
Ranger, Pretty much like any ranger in any game
Summoner, call upon the mightiest of all creatures the History of FFXI has offered to fight for or with you
More, I'm sure there is, but theres just so many I forget about them all!
And on top of that, just because you chose 1 job at the beginning dont mean you have to start a new character to start a new job. Simply go into your house and talk to your Moogle, viola, change your job. You keep all the levels you have earned and all the experience and everything as you progress through the game. And thats not all with job selection, after lvl 18 you can do a quest to get a support job to your main job. For example, you are a lvl 18 warrior, and want to be able to cure yourself... well warrior does not have magic, so you go talk to your moogle and select white mage as a support job (I dont really reccomend doing this, but its a good example), now, you are a Warrior/White Mage. Your support job can be = to or less than your current main jobs level. Example again, 18warrior/9white mage. Max level in this game is 75, and that point you have the merrit system to make you even more powerful, which also carry on to other jobs if you chose to play a different one.
CUSTOMIZATION -
You pretty much choose the way you want to play the game. Although there are strong notions as to the way you should play a particular class, mainly because the game has been out for so long, but really theres nothing to stop you from doing things the way you want.
WoW bored me after a year, well, long before that, but I had a lvl 70 and wanted to see what endgame had to offer... that was a dead end for sure. I was also tired of how one-sided the PvP system was... IE; Rogues stun lock you, kill you, and theres nothing you can do about it while the swirly junk is over your head. This is not the case with FFXI, as EVERY job is perfectly ballanced. Your Human Skill, really does make the difference.
Theres never any lag issue. At all. Ever. The servers run like a finely tuned sports car.
This game is for PS2, Xbox360, and PC, so youll see a TON of people still playing this game today, and all day every day.
There really is almost TOO much to this game, and can be quite overwhelming, especially for the new player. The game helps out with that though, as it does start out slow, and gets faster and faster as you progess.
If you are a new player, and end up on the Titan Server, look myself or my wife up and one of us can help you out! I am Robotchicken, my wife is Shadowsith.
Basiclly, if you have come to the point of reading this review, just stop what your doing, buy this game, and get hooked like the rest of us. Sure you wont see glowy weapons or floating skulls off your shoulders like WoW, but you also wont see any of the cartoony kids stuff either. This is just purely a great game with tons of social interaction.
Rating: - Get a gamepad. Seriously!
The mouse controls for this game are horrid and the keyboard controls (both versions) are frustrating at best. It really is meant to be played on a gamepad, I highly recommend Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 with Vibration Feedback (Black). Everything you need at the click of a button or thumbstick. Not using a gamepad for this has the potential of becoming so obnoxious you'll drop the game even though it has otherwise good entertainment value.
Beyond that, the graphics appear a little dated to today's gamer, but you can increase texture quality and such things via the configuration panel (it can be found in the Start Menu game folder, I have no idea why they didn't make it more accessable via the actual game).
More difficult classes like Black and White Mage are a trial of patience, but that's pretty much the case in most MMOs. You will notice a lot of downtime with weaker characters, but the trick is to kill weak creatures instead of stronger ones until you get the hang of things. Heck, non-stop killing of critters that give 40-50 xp per kill with a few staff swings is much more economical than killing one creature for 90xp and then having to rest annoyingly long for most of your MP/HP to come back. And the risk of death with a truly weak low-level class is quite high for even a "decent challenge" fight at times. (I solo a lot so this advice is obviously tailored to those who aren't looking to party a lot.)
Rating: - Addicting!
Really tough game but I love the challenge compared to WoW. This game is def. not for the faint of heart as it will take up a lot of your time and make you really work for every accomplishment. Also squaresoft seems to be constantly updating the software with new fun stuff to do!
Rating: - Excellent
I have been playing (read: addicted) to this game for over 2 years now and all i can say is, i want more! I have read a lot of flak aimed at the controls, especially on PC, and honestly i don't see it. Controls are standard WASD movement of almost every PC game in existence, i think people that complain about it are just too used to xbox/ps2 controllers. And to say that nothing can be done solo in this game is just admitting that you are lazy. I'll admit that its not like WoW in as far as soloing is super easy, but it is still far from impossible. Basically this is an MMO geared toward a more mature audience, and believe me if you spend the time you will be rewarded accordingly.
Rating: - Product was fine; Customer Service is not.
I recently purchased this product for a friend fo mine. I have had no problems with Amazon in the past, but this time for some odd reason they double charged my checking account. Well have just enough to get the game it put my account into an overdrawn status. tried to get a hold of someone at CS but was on the hold for three to four hours. Will not shop at amazon anymore.
- I just keep comming back to this MMO
