I got into it for the first time back around this last December/January. I was amazed how active the community still is. I didn’t even play on the most populated English server, and chat was always active. Sidenote: There’s only a quasi-global chat thru Yelling while in cities, you have to join Linkshells for more consistent chatting (that game’s version of guilds, and yes you can have more than one linkshell at a time).
As for the gameplay itself: It’s a very clunky game, and it’s very slow. But, that’s part of the charm when compared to today’s MMOs where everything is designed for instant gratification. Fortunately, there are tons of add-ons the community has made to enable some Quality of Life features, such as updated HD textures, a minimap, auto-inventory manager and sorter, etc. I got to around level 70 after about 6sh weeks/120 hours of game time, until my annual MMO interest dried up. I might dive back into it again next year whenever the MMO itch hits again.
Supposedly Square was working on a remaster of the game back around 2018, but it got scrapped a couple of years into development. Which is a shame, because the game with some modern UI sensibilities and graphics would be really nice (as long as they didn’t change hardly anything of the core gameplay).
Overall, it was nice/kind of sad to see it still had a lot more depth than FF14, which I consider to be very watered down nowadays even compared to its 2.0 re-release. But again, for anyone considering trying it out: It is a slow game, and it has alllll the jank of a 2003-era MMO. Just getting it installed and your account setup is janky, so make sure you watch a video before even attempting it.
Yeah, I played it for the first time in the last couple of years, too.
And I enjoyed the game more than I expected to. It’s a lot slower, like you said, than FFXIV for example, but that’s OK.
I agree that I’d love a bit of a remake that just made a few things more streamlined like linking up attacks with my trust party - which I found to be often nearly impossible to do, even with mods.
I got into it for the first time back around this last December/January. I was amazed how active the community still is. I didn’t even play on the most populated English server, and chat was always active. Sidenote: There’s only a quasi-global chat thru Yelling while in cities, you have to join Linkshells for more consistent chatting (that game’s version of guilds, and yes you can have more than one linkshell at a time).
As for the gameplay itself: It’s a very clunky game, and it’s very slow. But, that’s part of the charm when compared to today’s MMOs where everything is designed for instant gratification. Fortunately, there are tons of add-ons the community has made to enable some Quality of Life features, such as updated HD textures, a minimap, auto-inventory manager and sorter, etc. I got to around level 70 after about 6sh weeks/120 hours of game time, until my annual MMO interest dried up. I might dive back into it again next year whenever the MMO itch hits again.
Supposedly Square was working on a remaster of the game back around 2018, but it got scrapped a couple of years into development. Which is a shame, because the game with some modern UI sensibilities and graphics would be really nice (as long as they didn’t change hardly anything of the core gameplay).
Overall, it was nice/kind of sad to see it still had a lot more depth than FF14, which I consider to be very watered down nowadays even compared to its 2.0 re-release. But again, for anyone considering trying it out: It is a slow game, and it has alllll the jank of a 2003-era MMO. Just getting it installed and your account setup is janky, so make sure you watch a video before even attempting it.
Yeah, I played it for the first time in the last couple of years, too.
And I enjoyed the game more than I expected to. It’s a lot slower, like you said, than FFXIV for example, but that’s OK.
I agree that I’d love a bit of a remake that just made a few things more streamlined like linking up attacks with my trust party - which I found to be often nearly impossible to do, even with mods.
In many ways the jankiness is part of the charm and why so many of us love it. :)