FINAL FANTASY XIV Online
Square Enix released FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, an MMORPG where you play through the story and fight bosses alongside other players, twice. The 2010 version was panned almost across the board, and the company's president publicly apologized.
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Naoki Yoshida was brought in to save it. His team patched the old version while secretly building a new one from scratch. According to Yoshida, the old team had been too focused on graphics and didn't know modern MMORPGs well. They should have played World of Warcraft for a year.
The old world went out with a bang. Before the servers shut down in November 2012, the story built up to a catastrophe in which the dragon Bahamut broke out of an ancient prison. The new version, A Realm Reborn, is set five years later, and old players' characters carried over.
Critics praised the new version's mechanics and character progression, and credited Yoshida with an unexpected recovery. By October 2021 the game had more than 24 million registered players and had become the most profitable game in the series. On Steam, players give it 86% positive across 79,011 reviews. On our Recommended Score it ranks 4,050 of 4,736 games.
Liked it? Try The Elder Scrolls Online, which also turned things around with a relaunch after a lukewarm start, and STAR WARS: The Old Republic, where each of the eight classes has its own voiced story.
Major updates
Patch 7.5 is live! · Apr 2026All 5
System requirements
Minimum GTX 970 · 8 GB RAM · 140 GBiSteam Deck PlayableMin & recommended
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows® 11 64 bit | Windows® 11 64 bit |
| Processor | Intel® Core™i5-8400 or higher | Intel® Core™i7-9700 or higher |
| Memory | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or higher, AMD Radeon RX 480 or higher | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or higher, AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT or higher |
| DirectX | 11 | 11 |
| Storage | 140 GB | 140 GB |
From the game’s Steam store page.
