Recent reviews by Mr. Ninja

Great game to just chill and play with some friends. Feels very familiar while at the same time adding new mechanics to keep things new and engaging with mounts, some automation and music puzzles.

Great game. I've never wanted to strangle three of my friends with a chain more in my life.

Hilarious game to play with a group of friends. Game play loop is super simple but not always easily done.

It's fun if you can get around the constant "Contacting Destiny 2 Servers" issues and random disconnects that ruin flawless dungeon runs or make PvP almost unplayable.

Other than that, good game...

The Goons sent me, was not disappointed

This game actually took me by surprise. So there I am, flipping through my discovery queue when I come upon this polygonal DayZ looking game. I take a look at the screen shots and I see one with a dude wearing a Mandalorian helmet and decided that "This is the way" so I tossed 10 bucks at the dev and I wasn't disappointed.
I have a rule when it comes to buying games on steam, if I get more hours out of playing the game then I spent on it then it was money well spent and with three times more time invested than I put in with my cash then this game is a win for me. Seriously though, this game has potential, it has a lot of fun elements like goofy weapons/armor/accessories to enjoyable base building. Game also has vehicles, but they're new and buggy, but in a fun way.
I do have a few gripes that are just a few quality of life type requests like when looting things or sending things in to storage that they would stack in items of the same type, like wood stacking with more wood instead of making 10 different piles of 13/20/54. Aiming melee weapons is a bit rough at times, especially when it comes to fighting crawling zombies or when fighting things on stairs. Also, the map is very rough, it's literally just a PGN you can zoom in on and move around, you can't mark on it and there's no names so unless you know kinda where you are there's no real point in using it.
With all that said I do have faith that the dev will fix/add to these features in due time since the mad lad puts out updates quite frequently and randomly adds new stuff like helmets and whatnot. If you've got 10 bucks to spare then toss it at this game and give it a shot.

This game started off pretty rough but since release, AGS has put in the time to fix a lot of those issues.

--PROS--

- The game is buy once and play with no sub.
- One character can have all professions, no real need to make more than one character.
- The combat feels clean and rewarding.
- It looks amazing
- AGS (devs) is actually making the game better by making QOL updates and squashing bugs.
- There is zero pay to win. Everything in the shop is cosmetic.
- Player housing is nice and serves a purpose.
- The community is full of great people no matter what side you're on.

--CONS--

- The grind is a bit rough at times
- PvP is not welcoming to newer players
- Wars can be a bit one sided depending on your server
- It does tend to get repetitive
- The player driven economy is really horrible on some servers
- Some server populations are heavily titled to one faction or two. There's a lot of times you will see tons of yellow or purple but zero green territories or visa versa.

This is just my personal evaluation of the current state of this game. I honestly think this game is headed to a good place, Brimstone showed that AGS is at least listening to the issues that the community is having with the game and they are actively moving the game in those directions. We've got mounts coming, raids coming and much more.

Pros:
* The community is amazing. Out of all of the interactions I've had with players of this game, at least 9 out of 10 have all been positive. The players are very helpful in content you don't understand and are quick with helpful tips to help you with your class if you just let people know that you're new to something or don't understand something.

* The story is great and actually matters. There's epic moments, there's sad moments and everything in between, and all of it helps drag you into the world and it's people.

* Hours of content. There are LOADS of things to do in this game. For example, I'm (at the time of writing this) 231 hours deep in this game and I've mainly only done the main scenario quests (the story content) but there are tones of other quest content to do.

* Customization. While this game doesn't really offer much in the way of appearance customization (though is actually quite good) it more than makes up for it with their Glam system. With this system you can take old gear of any type that you can wear and turn it into a glam that you can then apply to anything that you are currently wearing. The system allows for some nice combinations of armor and weapons.

* One character can be every job and have all of the crafting/gathering professions in the game, no need for multiple characters!

* You get you own chocobo and you can have it help you in combat and you can customize it with different armors as well as set up as a tank, healer or dps companion.

* Dungeons are all great. There are a few that are pretty plain but most are amazing in design and mechanics.

* The music in this game is top notch. Take the time to look up a song called Scions and Sinners by The Elementals and keep in mind that it's in a dungeon later in game.

Cons:

* While the story is great there are many times where it really slows down and becomes kind of a slog to get through, base game story content (ARR) is very slow to start but picks up towards the end and just keeps going up. Just stick with it!

* This is just a personal con, unlocking some content. Some dungeons and extra content (like armor dying and the glam system) are marked as special blue quest markers and are all over the place in the games many areas, I personally had no idea that I had to go unlock my chocobo mount with one of these blue quests until a buddy of mine asked where I was in the MSQs and said I should have had my mount by now. I thought it would have been in a quest in the MSQ line but I was wrong and had to go unlock it way after I should have already had it done. Some of this content should be placed along the MSQ line since there are filler quests in the line anyways.

This is just one mans take on FF14. I honestly believe this is one of if not the best MMO I've played in years, my biggest gripe is that it took me this long to play this game for the first time.

Let me just start this off by saying that this game is a great building game and is fantastic for RP and PvP, this game actually got me into the whole idea of RP, so if you enjoy that type of environment then give it a shot.
I will have to point out that this game is not a fun game to play alone so either make a server or find a good one and join it.
The settings on the servers will play a huge part in how you get to enjoy the game too. Some servers will have the settings for certain things way to high and it'll take no time at all to get things together to make things and some will be more reasonable with how long it takes to make things, and some will be a massive grind fest.
The company has also stopped all support for the game so for the most part it's dead in the water, they mainly used this game as a test bed for the MMO and then dropped everyone on this game when they put out the MMO.
The UI and some features in game are very annoying at times too, there are mods that make it a lot more manageable.
Over all, I recommend this game to anyone who likes medieval RP or PvP but I wouldn't buy it at full price, catch it on sale or ask a friend to get it for you.

Hold on to your dookie, it's about to get spooky!