And thus...it begins.
So, after a long patching process I finally got into the game. Saw a cutscene, blah blah blah, got into character creation. Choices were between a human, elf, some...small thing, a cat girl and a....big thing.
Since I only liked how the human and elf looked, I went with the elf dude and had my choices. So I decided to start off as a Red Mage. I have a love for classes that are a "Jack of All Trades". Makes me feel that I'm a little useful for every part.
So, another cutscene and OFF I GO!
....Well not really.
I had no idea how to move my character. Tried the WASD keys like in WoW, nope. Tried directional keys. Nope. Then for some reason, remembering the good old days of FF7 on the PC, I tried the keypad directional keys and I moved (Took me about 15 minutes to figure this out, I was so surprised I literally shouted out "HOLY SHIT!! THAT'S HOW YOU MOVE?!!!"
So, I got something called an "Adventurer's Coupon", gave it to some NPC and I got 50 Gil, woohoo. Lots of tutorial shit and finally I was out of the city, ready to kick some ass!
Some giant wasp thing was flying around, so that looked pretty easy. Started off by casting some damage over time stuff and then took a few whacks at it with my dagger and it died.
Now, something I must say. I really get a sort of nostalgic feeling from the battle system in this game. When you fight, the camera angle changed to a sort of "Over-the-shoulder" style and some battle music came up with a menu. "Ah..." I said to myself, "Just like good ol' classic Final Fantasy." While there isn't a victory fanfare when you win, you do hear the classic chime when you level up.
So, after a few wasps are dead, I have my character sit down to heal. FOR FUCKS SAKE, IT TAKES FOREVER TO REGENERATE YOUR HEALTH AND MAGIC/MANA/WHATEVERYOUWANTTOCALLIT!
Also, FF11 is MUCH harder and more complicated then WoW. Unlike WoW, which is very user friendly, FF11 does barely any hand holding and kicks you in the ass from the get go. Levelling from 1-2 also takes more time (at least maybe 10 minutes of constant battle, unlike WoW which only took like...2 minutes @_@), but ultimately, it is much more rewarding.
And speaking of levels, this is the one thing in the game that I REALLY...REALLY...LIKE.
There are no character levels. Instead, there are Job Levels. You level each job seperately instead of a character. And better yet...you can change your Job at ANY TIME when you go to your house. After hitting level 3 on Red Mage, I ran back to my house and immediately job changed to Monk, and thus, I ran off to go kick some ass! There is NO need to create another character at all. This to me is the shining point of the game.
While I have only played it for one day so far, at first, I was shocked and overwhelmed at how complicated it first was. After getting used to it though, I'm really starting to like this.
More on the way.
Oh and....
You can also change the .wav files in the game too. So if your like me, and you love the FF5 battle theme, you can replace FF11's battle theme with any song you like! ^_^
Unfortunately though, there is no addon support like in WoW though.