I loaded up FF14 and played through the first dungeon.
While FF14 is an MMO, i would argue that it is very single player friendly. Mechanically, its much faster paced than FF11 and works similar to other MMOs of its era, like world of warcraft. It keeps the job system from FF11, though so you can level any number of jobs on one character and the game is pretty generous with inventory space, so there's not a need to have "alts" or "mules" at a casual level of play. You pick your starting race and job and that determines your starting city and the opening quest line. The game divides all jobs into 3 roles: Tank, Healer, and DPS. In a dungeon, you're expected to be in a party of one tank, one healer, and 2 dps. So unlike FF11, party size is smaller. Technically its more rigid in its construction, but for all intents and purposes, FF11 had the same structural requirement for forming parties. Because of the smaller party size, and the requirement to do everything else solo, all jobs have capable damage dealing abilities, so in a party setting, everyone is expected to do some damage. Outside of the dungeons, the game expects you to play solo. Quests give exp and cash and gear rewards and is the primary method of leveling your first job. Oh, and you can change your job by changing your main hand weapon, so you don't have to go to town to change jobs. Everyone gets a Warp and Teleport type ability, and the world is significantly less dangerous. Basically, the game world doesn't require you to level jobs for utility abilities or pay other players for those abilities like FF11 did.
The game world feels to me like a bit of a mashup of FF11 and FF12. There's 3 starting cities, just like FF11. none are repeats, but they fill similar vibes. Like FF11, there are other continents, but those are just distant lands (aka expansion potential) with different cultures. The main exception is the Garlean Empire, which is on another continent, but tried to invade Eorzea (our game world) in FF14 1.0 and is also involved in the plot of 2.0. the Garlean Empire is pretty similar to the Archadian Empire from FF12 with maybe a nod to FF6 too. They use Magitech weapons and often are talking through helmets so they have the same muffled voices as the FF12 judges.
Similar to FF11, each city has a corresponding beastmen tribe that is fighting over the land around that city. Each beastmen tribe is connected to a particular Primal that they can summon and the early game plot mostly revolves around trying to stop that from happening and when it does, defeating those primals. as you go, these masked and black robed figures keep showing up (because they are pulling the strings obviously). Since you don't have a party to interact with, the game introduces you to the various members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and each city has notable NPCs that have reoccuring roles. The main story treats your character as the chosen one though and all the other players are just regular adventurers that might assist you.
The early quests for each starting city have you visiting the two starting zones, progressing deeper into each zone at various little outposts and solving local problems. Or at least it used to. Now the game uses the bare bones version, cutting as much lore as possible to get you from the opening cutscene to your first group dungeon with minimal fuss. So in Ul'dah, you will almost immediately rescue the Sultana, then jump to helping the sultana's personal guards recover her stolen crown. In a couple of hours, you are the hero of the city. From there, you get an airship pass, visit the other two starting cities, meet their leaders and then go straight to your first dungeon. Tonally, what i just described fits right in line with the FF storybook. In FF7, you don't spend 30 hours rising through the ranks of AVALANCHE, you jump right in to bombing a reactor and you're chatting with President Shinra a few hours later.
Dungeon number 1 is Sastasha. You go through a sea cave, fighting some wildlife, then open a secret door into a pirate hideout. You get keys and fight to the pirate boss, who runs away like a coward, deeper into the cave where it turns out the pirates have trespassed into Sahagin territory and you fight a Sahagin boss. The boss starts off solo, but there's trap doors in the floor that can summon more minions. A ranged role can stand on the trap doors and click them to keep the door shut and prevent the extra minions from spawning. With even moderately good damage, you can finish the encounter by just killing the boss before the added minions get out of control. But if damage is below expected, the minions will quickly overwhelm the party as more and more spawn. Its a nice introduction to group content. However, i think its too easy for a new player to get carried through this dungeon and miss the lessons you're supposed to learn. Only one player gets to engage with unlocking the secret door and the boss mechanic is irrelevant unless the whole party doesn't know what they are doing.
every time a fan swears up and down the story is amazing. Full disclosure I haven't played since ARR, so my frame of reference is very out of date. But I really doubt the core way the player interacts with the game has fundamentally changed all that much since games are games. If I'm going to play a game that throws endless levels of prose -- prose that the pov character barely even gets to interact with, so it's just people talking at you endlessly -- then I'd rather just cut out the cruft of dailies and killing 12 rats, and go play a visual novel. Or hell, just pick up a book. I am also however, the kind of person for whom play as a self-insert is intensely uninteresting, and I'd rather play as a fully formed character with their own agency.
