Something a bit different this time: instead of reviewing a whole game, I’ll be reviewing a new dungeon in an MMO which was released in 2013 (well, 2010, but the original was a mess that’s a story for another time).
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Heavensward (that’s actually the full name) is a HUGE game that’s far too complicated, and has way, WAY too much content for someone like me to review properly, and I haven’t even seen most of the end-game raids yet anyway. Needless to say though, it’s probably the best MMORPG out at the moment, and it reminds me of WoW back in its glory days, with modern graphics and a lot more polish, flare (literally), and content to distract yourself with; if you enjoy MMO’s, I highly encourage you to give it a try.
Patch 3.35 is a very interesting one for not only FFXIV, but MMO’s in general, as it added a new dungeon I don’t think I’ve seen the likes of before in an MMO. Palace of the Dead is that dungeon, and to everyone’s surprise, it’s actually a roguelike. Yes. Like Binding of Isaac.
Let’s quickly summarise this thing, because like I said, it’s certainly an odd and unique concept for this genre.
Palace of the Dead (PoTD as players and I will be calling it) is accessible after an hour or so of play – once you’ve gotten at least one combat class to level 16. This is already unique, as it’s immediately made clear PoTD is accessible VERY early on, and is NOT an end-game dungeon, which is what most patches usually add. Rather, PoTD has become the new way people level their classes, as it gives hefty EXP and lets you test out certain classes at max level far earlier than you normally would. You enter PoTD one of three ways: As a fixed party you can’t change, designed for people with at least 3 other friends, a matched party you can change but doesn’t record certain parts of progression, and by yourself. Which is suicide. Don’t do it. Why it’s even an option continues to baffle me.
PoTD is simple enough in design, and that’s really the major problem. There are 50 floors, you can move down a floor by slaying enough enemies on your current floor. Every 10 floors you fight a small boss, and it records your progress for those 10 floors in case you die in the next set of 10. You can enter as whatever class you feel like, and the traditional party composition of Tank-2 DPS-Healer doesn’t apply even for random groups. Which is another problem. Progress is saved for each individual class; if you go through floors 20-30 as a Black Mage and decide you want to enter next time as a Dragoon, you’ll have to start from floor 1 as a Dragoon. If you then get to floor 40 on your Dragoon and decide you want to go back to Black Mage, you’ll start back at 20. Armour and weapons are completely nullified, instead you’re given an “aetherpool” weapon and an “aetherpool” armour (yes, just 1 piece of armour). These are static, you can’t change them at all, and they’re exclusive to PoTD. Every now and then, you’ll come across one of 3 kinds of chests. Gold chests contain Pomanders, which I’ll get to in a minute, Bronze chests contain items, and the rarest, silver chests, upgrade your aetherpool gear. These upgrades are VERY basic, they’re literally just +1’s added to either your armour or weapon. Which it picks is random, and whether you get an upgrade and by how many points is random as well. +30 is the highest both your armour and weapon can get, and maxing them is necessary for the big reward of PoTD, which again, I’ll get to soon. Silver chests might also explode, so there’s that too. No way to tell either, just dumb luck.
Speaking of dumb luck, typical of a roguelike, some floors in PoTD will trigger enchantments, positive and negative. They can range from a simple increase in health or disabling sprinting, all the way to making you unable to use abilities on that floor. Yes, that really is a thing for some reason. Traps are also prevalent, but they’re actually visible and you can avoid them. Both of these can be removed however, with Pomanders. Pomanders are your cards from The Binding of Isaac. Little spheres you can hold in your unique PoTD inventory and use to activate bonuses. They drop from Gold chests like I mentioned, and have….bland effects.
They’re really dull to be honest. They were clearly trying to make Pomanders something you have to use strategically, but the fact is that you’re usually just best served using one the second you get it. Pomander inventory is shared to an extent. When a chest is opened, everyone gets 1 of the same Pomander. If it’s a self buff, then only you lose the Pomander, for example if you open a chest and get a defence Pomander, everyone can use it once, and choose when to use it. Floor buffs are shared however, for example a Pomander that decreases the enemies on the next floor or Pomanders that transform you are used up for everyone when smashed. In addition, you can only hold 3 of each kind, and they all do the most dull things. Attack buff, defence buff, chest spawn buff, enemy decrease buff, turn nearby enemies into frogs, reveal the map, you get the idea. The only really interesting Pomanders are the ones that turn you into either a Succubus or Manticore, but they’re EXCEEDINGLY rare and only last 1 minute. Succubi can make enemies take more damage, and Manticores can instantly kill non-boss foes. As cool as it is to use one of these trans-formative Pomanders, you still only have ONE ability, and if you’re on a no ability floor, you’ve wasted a rare Pomander. In the end, they’re literal throwaway items most people use the instant they get them, and dickheads are free to waste everyone’s floor buffs as they see fit.
Dickheads are rewarded in general in-fact, as the deeper you go, the harder the enemies get, but the rarity of silver chests stays the same. This means that people have conflicting interests; if someone in the group wants, or NEEDS, to get to the end of PoTD, but even ONE person wants to reset the floors for more silver chests, he can just wipe the group and force a restart. This can be easily fixed by making silver chests more common in deeper floors, but no one knows if that’s going to happen. Like I said, random groups can be all DPS, all Tank, all Healer, no healer, no tank etc etc. Since everybody in the game is doing PoTD right now, Square Enix really should put the tradition party formation in place for random groups, as PoTD’s second biggest issue is that, like I said, it rewards people who just want to be selfish pricks.
But what is all this actually for? Well, doing PoTD does give a TON of EXP for the class you selected once you’ve beaten the floor 50 boss, and since you level differently while inside, starting from level 1 and ending up level 60 in the span of about 2 hours, you can try out classes fairly quickly and easily. Better yet, if you go in with a class you’ve already gotten to regular level 60 (not your level in PoTD), you’ll get a bunch of Esoterics Tomestones, used to buy high level gear. But the big reward is an ilvl 235 weapon for your class, a glowing sword/axe/book/whatever your class weapon is made of Aether. In addition to looking cool as hell, they’re pretty strong as well. You get them by having both your PoTD armour and weapon being at +30, and having beaten the whole place at least once. This takes A LOT longer than it sounds like it does, as silver chests do become rarer as your +’s go up. Also keeping in mind you have to do that all over again for each class.
Now let’s finally get to the elephant in the room: the PoTD is BORING.
From everything I just described, you probably think it’s just a mediocre time waster to get currency, EXP or a cool weapon, but it’s so much worse than that. Because you see, I haven’t actually told you what you do in the place yet, just how it works. So here’s what you do: kill shit. Repeat. again. Again.AGAIN. AGAIN. AGAIN. For 50 floors, that is ALL THAT YOU DO. There are no puzzles, no in-depth boss mechanics (excluding the final boss), no strange ways of moving around or even fun bonus rooms like The Binding of Isaac. You enter a floor, run around, try to get chests, kill a certain amount of things until the teleporter unlocks, then do that again for FIFTY FUCKING FLOORS. The scenery changes every 10 floors, but they chose the most boring and generic palettes and models, it basically goes: temple, cave, red cave, old temple, old red temple. The music, also only changes once every 10 levels, and it is the most mind-numbing and generic music in the game. This is Final Fantasy, the music is half the bloody reason I’m playing it, but no, generic dungeon music is all you get. The bosses are a joke, even the last one has simple mechanics and an un-interesting plot involving the hard mode of a previous dungeon.
PoTD is a fantastic idea, it’s unique for an MMO, and in theory it’s a much better way of levelling a class than just spamming dungeons over and over. But the problem comes from the fact that everyone is going in for completely different reasons, and most people won’t listen when you kick up a fuss. More importantly, it just isn’t fun. I would rather level by spamming dungeons I’ve done hundreds of times because at least those dungeons have interesting layouts and mechanics, doors to open and small puzzles to solve. PoTD is a great way to try a class, and the weapon does look nice, but unless you have a lot of patience and 3 guys to play with, it just isn’t entertaining enough to bother with.
I don’t really know if I can give a single dungeon a score, considering the base game is FANTASTIC. Points for being original, but if Pokemon GO has shown me anything, it’s that something exceedingly original can also be exceedingly boring and pointless.
5/10
Average.
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