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The Fight to Preserve a Mainline Final Fantasy Game

This Final Fantasy game is in danger of its fantasy truly being final.

By Em TurnerPublished 3 years ago 11 min read
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The Fight to Preserve a Mainline Final Fantasy Game
Photo by Yosef Ariel on Unsplash

If I told you I wanted to fight to preserve the history of a mainline Final Fantasy game, you might insist that they've all been wonderfully preserved, remastered, or been made accessible on newer consoles. But there's one game in Final Fantasy's storied history that is overlooked, or willingly forgotten; a title that is truly in danger of being lost to time if we do nothing. It is a title with a strong and original story, and I argue that it is one of the most compelling titles in the series: Final Fantasy XI.

As soon as I say Final Fantasy XI, you probably had one of two reactions: apathy ("That game is still around? Isn't is just like WoW?") or animosity ("FFXI sucks; it's an MMO; it's too grindy; why should I care about it?"). Perhaps you had a third reaction - agreement - and if so, I hope you'll join me in the fight for its preservation.

But if you fell into one of the first two categories, I want you to know that I previously sympathized with you. A few years ago, when I started on my journey to play all the mainline Final Fantasy games, my caveat was always "but not FFXI." I had absolutely never played it, but my partner did, and what I heard from him was enough to make my blood run cold. Hundreds of hours of grinding, levelling down if you died, an absurd combat system utilizing the classic Final Fantasy command menu, complicated macros to go around said combat system, and no content to speak of besides hanging out in parties and camping notorious monster spawns. I felt that I had been spoiled by the amazing MMO that Final Fantasy XIV is, and that there could be no more room in my heart for another Final Fantasy MMO. But I was wrong.

As I learned more about Final Fantasy by playing through the games, and some of the offshoot games, I became interested in FFXI's characters. The diminutive Tarutaru Shantotto is often used as FFXI's representative character in games like Dissidia and World of Final Fantasy. She speaks in rhyme, often cutting insults or threats to those she addresses. I couldn't help but wonder if she was also a villain until Dissidia announced Kam'lanaut - an actual FFXI villain - as a new playable character. In the realm of the FFTCG, the card for the cute, purple-haired Elvaan girl Prishe lists her job as "Abhorrent One." What on earth could that even mean?!

And so as the pandemic wore on, my partner got the random urge to play FFXI again - this time starting a fresh character and experiencing the story. Despite my hesitation from his previous horror stories about FFXI, I saw that this might be my only chance to get to play the story; that this was a now-or-never crossroads that I might regret not taking. And so, perhaps out of a feverish boredom brought on by the pandemic as well, I joined my partner in playing FFXI anew.

But of course my journey to enjoying FFXI could not be so easy. It was here I met with my first roadblock to Final Fantasy XI: the dreaded PlayOnline viewer.

The Abhorrent One(s)

If there is an "Abhorrent One" in FFXI, it is definitely the PlayOnline viewer. This awful program is a Square Enix proprietary game launcher. Reading the Wikipedia page for it, you can tell they had unrealistic, mid-00's anime ideals for what they wanted it to be. But in the end, players took to the PlayOnline viewer like oil to water, and now PlayOnline's only use is launching FFXI; yet another barrier to entry to play FFXI.

Once I logged in to the game, the next roadblock became apparent: the 18 year old user interface has not aged well, and likely was never good to begin with. Everything is in menus. And I mean EVERYTHING. And not only is it in menus, it's absolutely BURIED in there. Want to teleport somewhere? Talk to the Crystal > Pick the larger zone you want to go to (sure hope you remember what it's called) > Pick the city you want to go to > Pick the sub area you want to go to > Pick the warp point in that sub area you want to go to > You sure you want to go there? Yes. OK, now you've warped. Dear goddess Altana, that is 5 steps too many! For reference, in FFXIV this same workflow is 2-3 steps deep, depending on whether you're teleporting to a larger zone or within the city - and I thought THAT was excessive.

FFXI's UI also does not guide you in any way to the next story quest, point out where sidequests are, or mark point of interests in any way. So you made a character and wound up in Bastok? Now what? Big shrug! Even World of Warcraft had quest markers over questgivers heads at launch. XI's story takes you all over the world, but you might get stuck by an unclear directive in the story if you were trying to play the game without a guide. To be clear, this game would be absolutely unplayable without the help of the BlueGarter Wiki, a resource developed by players that outlines where you go and what you do - which surprisingly often in the story is sit and wait for a new Vana'diel day.

Controlling the game is not so straightforward either. Because FFXI came out for PS2 as well, it had to be fully playable with a controller. Usually, PC games seem to be designed for keyboard and mouse, with controller layouts an afterthought. FFXI went the opposite way, so the controller is the only control scheme that seems to make any sense right away. (I play with controller, but still to this day have no clue how to play FFXI with a keyboard and mouse. That is bizzare to me.)

Becoming used to the 18-year-old UI and sometimes awkward controller controls took a long time, and I was definitely the otter eating the watermelon for my first 10 or so hours of the game. Even the story at first was dreadfully boring; dragging me around different dungeons that had absolutely no music, grinding random items off mobs, and playing fetch for my starting town's NPCs. Then, eventually, I was allowed to fight the Shadow Lord and won, completing the base game and propelling my character into herodom.

I would argue that everything got better immediately after that.

Breaking Ground

Perhaps it's because, by this point, I was used to the quirky controls, menu battle system, and odd limitations. Perhaps it's because I learned about macros and set common battle commands on them. Perhaps it's because I met Kam'lanaut and Prishe in the story. Perhaps it's because I fell in love with the music. But all of a sudden, I found myself having fun with FFXI in a way I didn't think was possible.

The longer I played, the more I realized that this is a game that some people will never play based on reputation alone - just like me at one point - and that became a fact that was unbearable for me.

To preserve the history of the Final Fantasy series, all Final Fantasy titles must be preserved. Final Fantasy XI, as a mainline, numbered title, deserves to be preserved as much as Final Fantasy VII or XII does. Because it is an MMO, I recognize that preservation is much harder, but it is possible and absolutely worthwhile to do.

What makes Final Fantasy XI so special that it deserves preservation? First, though it takes a while to find its legs, the story simply blew me away. The story is extremely good, and relies little on existing Final Fantasy tropes or nostalgia to hook me, unlike some modern Final Fantasy games. The accompanying lore is complex and deep - if you care to dig - and even if you ignore the surrounding lore, the world is immersive and interesting. The characters are well-developed and easy to love. Even for returning players, FFXI can feel like a new experience thanks to the abundance of gameplay improvements that have been slowly rolled out over 18 years. My partner and I got to level 99, but quality of life improvements meant that our time to 99 was much shorter - hours rather than days.

I was especially impressed at the 18 year old game's treatment of women: absolutely none of them are there just to be easy on the eyes. How many 18 year old games can you say that about? More than half of the important characters in the game are women, and they don't just exist to massage the male characters' egos either. They fight alongside you in jobs other then the female-standard White Mage; Prishe prefers to punch her prey with a bare fist, while her best friend forever Ulmia strums along as a Bard. Their clothes are far from the scanty fantasy fare seen often in the 90s and 2000s. Outfits are realistic and modest, while still attractive and eyecatching. Romance isn't even really a big part of the game until the second expansion, but the female character falling in love doesn't weaken or diminish her in any way. She's never damseled (actually, her love interest is), and she doesn't set aside her ambitions or obligations because she falls in love.

These are some of the strongest female characters I have ever seen in a video game; amazing role models I would have idolized as a child, and yet they are in danger of being lost to time in favor of milquetoast, simpering Final Fantasy heroines such as Tifa, Aerith, and Yuna.

If you're a long-time Final Fantasy fan, chances are good you also absolutely love the music of Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy XI soundtrack is stunning, and though not all of the tracks are composed by the incredible Nobuou Uematsu, you'll find yourself hooked all the same. The Vana'diel March uses the classic Final Fantasy Prelude in a new and interesting way, then gains a much deeper significance at the end of the game. The beautiful Distant Worlds, and accompanying variations (Memoro de la Stono) will haunt you for the rest of time. As you progress through Chains of Promathia, fighting vultures in the field becomes exciting when the background music is Onslaught - the song tactically picked by the FFXIV dev team for boss battles in Baldesion's Arsenal (which was intended to be a nod at FFXI, of sorts). Accompanied by emotional moments in the story, the music makes the game that much better.

In short, Final Fantasy XI is a true Final Fantasy experience from the riveting story, the iconic characters, to its beautiful music. So how do we preserve this piece of video game history?

Conflict: You Want to Live Forever?

Ideally, Square Enix should develop a single-player, offline version of Final Fantasy XI - without PlayOnline, of course - for people who just want to experience the story. With the addition of Trusts to Final Fantasy XI, which are NPCs you can summon to fight with you, my playthrough of the game was basically a single-player experience anyway. I actually was annoyed at others shouting for parties for end-game content that interrupted the flow of dialogue in my cutscenes, or stealing a key mob from me that I needed to progress a quest. An offline Final Fantasy XI could grant you more access to Trusts as you complete the story, almost like gaining new party members in a regular RPG.

I would be satisfied with just that change, but the barrier to entry would still be too high: something seriously must be done with the UI and combat system. It's here I'm sure Square Enix is stuck as well. I know there are plenty of FFXI purists who are fine with the UI and combat system as-is, but it's absolutely not conducive to impatient newcomers. I do also know, though, that overhauling a game's UI and combat system is no small task! While it's easy for me to say Square Enix should just copy and paste Final Fantasy XIV's UI into XI, they would also need to mark important NPCs in some way, add quest markers where there were none before, and much more to have the UI be actually helpful. Other quality of life improvements such as having a map for every zone automatically, rather than having to purchase one, would be quite welcome as well.

Another way FFXI could be more accessible is moving to a free-to-play model. However, the devs have acknowledged in the past that this wouldn't be feasible without reworking the game to give the player less free stuff - which again, may anger veteran players.

Years ago, Square Enix announced a Final Fantasy XI mobile port, and it seemed like Square Enix was somewhat in preserving Final Fantasy XI as well. However, there has been no news of the mobile port since it was announced, and more recently rumors flew around the port's cancellation. So now, what happens when the cost of maintaining the FFXI servers cost more they're earning from players?

The bottom line is that Final Fantasy XI is a part of video game history, and its legacy must be preserved in any way possible.

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About the Creator

Em Turner

Tech writer, Warrior of Light. (they/them)

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