The streamer Preach has ventured into Final Fantasy XIV. He has received a lot of criticism but still had a lot of fun and praises the MMORPG.
Over the past weeks and months, more and more major streamers have turned their backs on World of Warcraft and turned to other games. Among them was the streamer “Preach,” who, after a certain break, has now given Final Fantasy XIV a try. After about 8 hours of gameplay, he shares his first impressions. He has many kind words – but also harsh criticism.
Who is Preach? Preach has been one of the larger content creators on YouTube and Twitch for many years. He has dealt extensively with World of Warcraft for a long time and was a point of contact for many players for boss guides or analyses. Occasionally, he even had developers on stream who faced his critical questions, with his videos often reaching the hundreds of thousands of views.
For a while, Preach has turned away from World of Warcraft and is now venturing into other realms – such as Final Fantasy.
What has he done now? After a bit of MMO abstinence, he has finally ventured into the world of Final Fantasy XIV. He has accumulated around 8 hours of gameplay, spending quite an extended evening in the game world. In a small video, he summarizes his impressions and experiences so far:
The positive aspects – What Preach likes
The story is praised: Preach has received a lot of praise for the story. He had expected this in advance but was pleasantly surprised. Thanks to the cutscenes, he feels like part of a story and his actions have consequences. In every area, he understands exactly what is going on and what the situation is. This is a clear plus point for him.
I really enjoyed the story. I knew who the characters were. I know that some of them will become more important later. I could meet someone who is kind of a loser or someone you wouldn’t care about, but later they become an important person. But because you experience these scenarios with them and they have dialogues and you get to know their names… you understand what’s going on. And I really enjoyed that.
Mixed opinions – Good and bad
Character creation: Preach describes character creation as “okay.” It is indeed much better than that of World of Warcraft, but it does not meet current standards anymore. While you can create a somewhat fitting avatar, your own face appears particularly wooden in cutscenes compared to the NPCs. Thus, your character often seems a bit like an oddball compared to the much prettier – and more emotionally expressive – NPCs.
The type of quests: Most players are tired of missions like “Bring me 5x bear meat” or “Deliver this message from A to B.” This type of quest also exists in Final Fantasy XIV, even if they are often packaged more beautifully. Preach found this annoying and in some cases even silly when a quest with trivial content was presented very epic.
They are still trapped in this antiquated world of “It’s a grand story – and now kill 4 things, deliver a message.” […]
That’s just how it is: “Hey, this is really important. Strange things are happening underground and we need to take care of it. And you know that something terrible is about to happen.” And you think, “Oh, yes! This is going to be really cool!” But then comes: “Bring this message to Billy. And tell him we need a pumpkin for the festival.”
The gameplay is sometimes really odd compared to the story.
However, he felt much more positive about the “Fates” and the hunt logs. These are small events that pop up in the game world or particularly marked enemies that you have to defeat several times to earn extra XP. Preach found this refreshing, as it took him away from the standard leveling route. Especially the random events brought together players who would otherwise never have encountered each other while questing.
These events [Fates] create [the feeling] of a world. They create places where players gather and don’t just follow their standard quest route. […] It pulls you away from your current part of the map to do something else elsewhere. And I would love to see that in many other MMOs.
The negative aspects – What Preach dislikes
The gameplay is slow: The long global cooldown of 2.5 seconds is a struggle for Preach. At first, this wasn’t so bad because, as a caster, he hardly noticed it, and spells took so long that it didn’t matter. However, when he received his first instant cast spell, he realized how debilitating the long cooldown is. Preach says:
The gameplay is really damn terrible. I mean really damn terrible. […] It makes no sense for me to use instant spells because they do so little damage that I’d rather move and just recast the [original] spell. I expect that this will change later – or maybe not. I don’t know.
Terrible voice acting: Preach has nothing good to say about the English voice acting of the game, especially at the beginning. The voice acting is absolutely terrible and in many places unintentionally funny. He already knows from videos that it gets better in later areas of the game, but the voice acting in the first hours significantly reduced his enjoyment and made seemingly serious quests appear silly.
The voice acting is horribly bad. So bad that it’s almost funny. […] It feels like very, very old voice acting. I’ll let that slide, but it’s still a big “Yikes.”
However, he expects that the voice acting has significantly improved in the newer expansions, which is indeed the case. Square Enix has brought in stars from the Game of Thrones TV series like Joe Dempsie and Michael McElhatton for some characters from Shadowbringers.
The map is chaotic: One of the worst points of the game that Preach mentions is the map. He finds it hard to navigate and complicated to deal with. From his perspective, it desperately needs a revision to be more user-friendly.
You can get used to it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s terrible. […] For a new player – and you know I have 30 years of experience with in-game maps – this thing is actually bad. Dealing with it was exhausting, especially when it comes to verticality. It’s getting better slowly and you can work with it, but God, this thing needs an update.
Absurd tutorials: Preach also has nothing good to say about the game’s tutorials, which are presented in a strange way. Tutorials seem to only appear for him after he has played or found the learnable element himself. He believes that there shouldn’t be a tutorial after that, but rather before a corresponding mission – not after it.
This is very strange and could easily be fixed by having the tutorial appear when you enter the corresponding area, not after you have found the solution yourself to have it explained again. That’s just odd.
Keep in mind that Preach has only seen about 8 hours of Final Fantasy XIV. He emphasizes that he expects some of his negative experiences – such as the slow gameplay – will change later. However, in his first impression, he has to be honest, and at the start, Final Fantasy XIV simply doesn’t fare well.
He is looking forward to content like dungeons, raids, and boss mechanics. Only then can he form a comprehensive image of Final Fantasy. And so far, the verdict is: He’s having fun, even though the pure gameplay can’t convince just yet.
Can you relate to Preach’s opinion? Have you also tried Final Fantasy XIV? What do you think of the positive and negative aspects?
