Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn

love this mmo

a very solid, if uneven, start to one of the greatest narratives ever told. it lays the foundations for so much with incredibly slow pacing and trite storytelling, however the 2.x patch series is full of complex political intrigue and sociological commentary to make up for it.

Good music!

While FFXIV: A Realm Reborn eventually leads into one of the coolest video game stories in Shadowbringers, ARR tells a fairly interesting story in a remarkably uninteresting way. Even if you skim and skip your way through large parts of the useless filler fetch quests, which have no place in a main story, getting through this can take 100 hours, easily. But a global pandemic is an apt time to start FFXIV, and it eventually becomes very worth it in the expansions.

Not a huge MMO fan due to the fact I don't really care for things like raids and meeting randoms. But I will generally play through the story with a friend and do social events when needed. I just won't come back to it after that. With that said, this is probably one of my favourites of the genre because while it has some shortcomings, the Final Fantasy charm is incredibly endearing.