Final Fantasy XIV Part 2

I basically played this all weekend. I probably put 15 hours into it, if I had to guess. Maybe one or two less. I'm at level 17 right now, still Archer. I've made it to the second major hub in the game, which is a pirate area. It's a bit confusing to navigate, and certain areas being referred to by characters as one name while the map refers to them as others made me want to throw my controller at the wall, but I eventually figured it out and it's not too bad.

Anyway, the main point of this post was to discuss Sastasha Seagrot, my first instanced dungeon in an MMO. I received the mission, put the word out that I was looking for a party, and then went and did other single player quests while a party formed. This one took twenty minutes to form, despite the game telling me it might take thirty, so that's good.

Sastasha Seagrot requires a "tank," two "DPSs," and a healer. Healer being self-explanatory, I'll explain the other two: a "tank" gets the enemies' attention and attacks and defends and basically acts as a damage sponge, and a DPS is a damage dealer - which is the category I fall into since I'm an archer. So once the game found me a party of people to play with, I delved into a dungeon with three other humans and played for roughly an hour.

It was a blast, I have to say. The dungeon was pretty straightforward, but like everywhere else in the game, was gorgeous. It was a sea cavern, with rivers and rivulets flowing through it, and I fought mostly clams, their weird magic casting spawn, and pirates. The boss of the area was a Sahagin, one of those classic Final Fantasy water enemies. My favorite touch of the dungeon was the classic victory battle music playing when the boss went down, followed by the four of us doing a sort of victory pose all lined up like a regular Final Fantasy game. Good stuff!

But it was pretty fun seeing the other classes at work. The healer buffed us, healed, and occasionally attacked, while the tank got all the enemies to focus on him, while the melee guy and I threw everything we had at the enemies. Archer fits me well; I sometimes find myself surprised when my HP gets low when soloing, so not having to worry about it for the most part was fun, while I really got to stretch all my abilities. They mesh pretty well, and being able to poison or bind the enemies occasionally helped the other guys quite a bit.

As we progressed through the dungeon, there were a few minor bosses who would drop stuff we could grab. The game puts up a pop up and lets people say if they want it - and as near as I can tell, you get it, so long as A. no one else wants it or B. if they do want it, they don't roll higher than you. The first four items were all useless to me, so I passed on all of them, but the armor the boss dropped was really good so I grabbed it. I don't think anyone else tried for it, so it didn't really matter what I rolled, but I got it and my character is wearing it as of this post.

I was thinking about Monster Hunter while I played today, though, and how that game doesn't scratch the itch I'm looking for. I want to get cool new gear that makes my character look different when I equip it (which FFXIV does) and level up my character, too, while customizing some skills and stats and such (FFXIV does this too, while MH does not). I have been wanting to play a game like this for a long time now, and it really does seem like the MMO for me. I don't want to play WoW and be damned to have to play with people at certain times - I want to initiate a quest, wait for other people to join, and go off and play a dungeon, then be done. This works so well because I'm pretty sure the game gives bonuses to higher level players who help out low level people like myself, so there's always a reason to run old dungeons.

Depending on how burnt out I get on the game (and how tolerant my fiancee is of me hogging the TV), I could see myself paying a few monthly fees. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the quality of FFXIV.