*I did my best to not include spoilers for Heavensward here.
I had a friend who first introduced me to this game back when Shadowbringers first released. I saw his gameplay, where he said Shadowbringers is one of his top most favorite games/expansions of all time, but due to the fact that the gameplay looked extremely complex, the game was extremely long, and took a while to get to it initially turned me off. I have never considered playing the free trial back then given how limited it is and how bad ARR was compared to everything else according to my friend. It was back when the trial level cap at level 35, and ARR was a huge slog with too much filler and boring crap I could care less about, so there wasn't much of a reason to try it out and I turned away from this game for a long time because I thought, "How is Shadowbringers worth going through all those boring expansions? Why do I want to subject myself to 3 bad expansions just to play Shadowbringers? I don't understand how this game is enjoyable."
I was proven extremely wrong.
Fast forward to when patch 5.3 came out, expanding the free trial to all of Heavensward, trimming down ARR, and increasing the level cap to 60. Now that there was more gameplay to get for free, I had no reason to not try it out, as I was looking for a new game to play at the time. Heavensward gave me something to look forward to while trudging through ARR. Don't get me wrong, ARR has some decent setup and its good moments and I'm glad it's been trimmed down a lot, but overall nothing was memorable about it except the important moments, which were all at the end of ARR (and ended up being basically thrown out the window after the start of Heavensward). The voice acting sucked ass (especially Minfilia's, her voice acting really irritated me), and I just wanted to get to Heavensward, which was my friend's second most favorite expansion after Shadowbringers. While I was playing through this game, I was extremely surprised at how friendly this community is. I don't know if the community is any different in different worlds, but on Siren, everyone was super friendly and constructive when I made mistakes or when I was unaware of certain mechanics, so that definitely helped me stick around a bit.
I continued going through ARR, passed the old level cap, and after 50 hours of gameplay, I finally reached Heavensward. I was immediately blown away by how nice Ishgard looked and how much better paced the story became over time, on top of the much better quality voice acting. I felt like the story kept one-upping itself at every turn and I found myself more and more engaged in the game. I became more attached to grinding and trying out a bunch of new classes. I'm not entirely sure what it is about me and RPGs, but I really enjoy the reward for grinding, so this definitely worked out for me. The story and cinematics were done so much better, everything looked much cooler even with the old game engine, and the music everywhere was so much more unforgettable. The dungeons were especially memorable, they had proper music unlike in pre level 50 ARR dungeons, and the bosses were among one of the best presented and best executed story bosses I've ever seen.
I recently completed Heavensward and I reflected on my gameplay. I spent about 200 hours on this game already, and I realized that I got all of this content, for free, and I didn't feel like the limits of free trial were hindering me at all. I partially feel like it's stealing, but at the same time, I'm extremely thankful to Square Enix for being super generous with the free trial now. If it weren't for the free trial expansion, I don't think I would've ever been aware of how good this game is for people craving a new mmorpg to try out. I'm definitely gonna buy this game once college calms down a bit and buy a long subscription. I'm happy to be a part of this very friendly community, and I look forward to Stormblood and Shadowbringers!
tl;dr: Thought ffxiv sucked at first, 5.3 came out, tried out the free trial on mac, was proven immediately wrong. Heavensward was fantastic, and I was mind-blown at how much content they just gave for free. Thank you SE and hello /r/ffxiv!
submitted by /u/chaNcharge
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
I had a friend who first introduced me to this game back when Shadowbringers first released. I saw his gameplay, where he said Shadowbringers is one of his top most favorite games/expansions of all time, but due to the fact that the gameplay looked extremely complex, the game was extremely long, and took a while to get to it initially turned me off. I have never considered playing the free trial back then given how limited it is and how bad ARR was compared to everything else according to my friend. It was back when the trial level cap at level 35, and ARR was a huge slog with too much filler and boring crap I could care less about, so there wasn't much of a reason to try it out and I turned away from this game for a long time because I thought, "How is Shadowbringers worth going through all those boring expansions? Why do I want to subject myself to 3 bad expansions just to play Shadowbringers? I don't understand how this game is enjoyable."
I was proven extremely wrong.
Fast forward to when patch 5.3 came out, expanding the free trial to all of Heavensward, trimming down ARR, and increasing the level cap to 60. Now that there was more gameplay to get for free, I had no reason to not try it out, as I was looking for a new game to play at the time. Heavensward gave me something to look forward to while trudging through ARR. Don't get me wrong, ARR has some decent setup and its good moments and I'm glad it's been trimmed down a lot, but overall nothing was memorable about it except the important moments, which were all at the end of ARR (and ended up being basically thrown out the window after the start of Heavensward). The voice acting sucked ass (especially Minfilia's, her voice acting really irritated me), and I just wanted to get to Heavensward, which was my friend's second most favorite expansion after Shadowbringers. While I was playing through this game, I was extremely surprised at how friendly this community is. I don't know if the community is any different in different worlds, but on Siren, everyone was super friendly and constructive when I made mistakes or when I was unaware of certain mechanics, so that definitely helped me stick around a bit.
I continued going through ARR, passed the old level cap, and after 50 hours of gameplay, I finally reached Heavensward. I was immediately blown away by how nice Ishgard looked and how much better paced the story became over time, on top of the much better quality voice acting. I felt like the story kept one-upping itself at every turn and I found myself more and more engaged in the game. I became more attached to grinding and trying out a bunch of new classes. I'm not entirely sure what it is about me and RPGs, but I really enjoy the reward for grinding, so this definitely worked out for me. The story and cinematics were done so much better, everything looked much cooler even with the old game engine, and the music everywhere was so much more unforgettable. The dungeons were especially memorable, they had proper music unlike in pre level 50 ARR dungeons, and the bosses were among one of the best presented and best executed story bosses I've ever seen.
I recently completed Heavensward and I reflected on my gameplay. I spent about 200 hours on this game already, and I realized that I got all of this content, for free, and I didn't feel like the limits of free trial were hindering me at all. I partially feel like it's stealing, but at the same time, I'm extremely thankful to Square Enix for being super generous with the free trial now. If it weren't for the free trial expansion, I don't think I would've ever been aware of how good this game is for people craving a new mmorpg to try out. I'm definitely gonna buy this game once college calms down a bit and buy a long subscription. I'm happy to be a part of this very friendly community, and I look forward to Stormblood and Shadowbringers!
tl;dr: Thought ffxiv sucked at first, 5.3 came out, tried out the free trial on mac, was proven immediately wrong. Heavensward was fantastic, and I was mind-blown at how much content they just gave for free. Thank you SE and hello /r/ffxiv!
submitted by /u/chaNcharge
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...