The very first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (phew!), or MMORPG, has hit the Xbox 360. At last, fans of this console have the opportunity, via Xbox Live, to go online with thousands of others and experiences strange far off lands with even stranger far off creatures. After experiencing such great games of a similar ilk, such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, I was keen to see what our new console on the block had to offer. Unfortunately, it seemed to be taking three steps back.

For those unfamiliar with the term MMORPG, let me fill you in. If you to play games that take one guy on a quest, maybe picking up a few other characters on the way, maybe not, exploring dungeons and towns and cities, travelling across diverse terrain, then you've probably experienced an RPG or role-playing game. However, since the advent of the Internet, the MMORPG has come as a breath of fresh air into the role-playing genre. This is basically because instead of sharing your adventures with a bunch of computer controlled sprites, you're actually sharing it with a bunch of real people. A massive amount of real people! Final Fantasy XI does just that; takes the familiar solo feel of the previous Final Fantasy outings, but chucks you in there with a whole bunch of other folk from around the world, to hopefully get together and heroically claim the lands as your own.

However, while I have to admit you can do this in Final Fantasy XI, I really have to compare this game to World of Warcraft (WoW), which has set the standard for such titles lately, as I've found during my months playing it. WoW and Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) have a lot in common, but there are also a lot of significant differences.

The first problem, which both WoW and FFXI share, is an enormous installation time. Both games have been out for a while and both have resulted in patches and updates being added on willy-nilly. Developers rarely get it right first time these days, especially with MMO games, so these are a necessary evil. I ground my teeth a great deal after two hours of waiting for the next part of FFXI to install, and it's no wonder it took so long, considering it ate over 8GB of my Xbox 360 hard drive once complete.

Unfortunately, my grinding of teeth didn't end there. I had to register first on the online viewer device, and then again on the game. This process, with an Xbox 360 controller and an onscreen typing interface, took at least 2 hours, mostly due to the data that needed to be entered; name, address, card details, email address and so on. Since doing this I read some hints and tips online and found you can use a USB keyboard on the 360. I've stripped the wireless keyboard and receiver from my PC and am tapping away here on a keyboard I used five years ago, but at least now I can type on the 360, essential to get anywhere in this game. So be warned, if you haven't got a USB keyboard already you're going to be further out of pocket if you want to play this game. [Most USB keyboards plug and play on Xbox 360, I picked one up for a tenner so I could organise my ripped soundtracks without it taking all day! Ed].

It's already costly to play, without having to pop out for new keyboards. The game itself will cost you at least £25.00, then a further £8.99 a month to play once the 30-day trial period is over. However, it stings you again; you have to pay for each additional character you create! Okay, so it's only a couple of quid per character, but I still found that absolutely ridiculous. With WoW you can create as many characters across as many servers as you please. Don't like hunters? Don't worry, create a mage as well. Want to run a Rogue and a Warrior alongside each other? Sure, be WoW's guest - in fact run them on both Alliance and Horde factions whydoncha? So already, compared to present day successful MMORPGs, we're looking at something most gamers would probably frown upon.

Once I'd gotten through all the registering and cooled down enough to make just one character, I rubbed my hands with glee in anticipation of entering a whole new world, with new creatures, new places to see and loads of opportunity for up and coming adventurers like myself. This hand rubbing unfortunately soon turned into a slack jawed and heavy lidded gaming experience. It's not that I want to be led by the hand when it comes to games like these, but some help would be appreciated. I had no idea where I was, what I was doing or who I should be speaking to and nothing on the landscape in front of me that indicated any of the above. The manual was pretty much worth squat too. In WoW you're guided quite quickly through the opening questions on most young explorers' minds and told where to get new goods and weapons, and the guys with big exclamation marks above their heads tell you there is a quest available and for what reward.

Finding quests in FFXI is nightmarish. For bog-standard quests you have to speak to every single blinking NPC in town. The quests are there, but they sure don't want you to know about them! There's no system of showing if someone has a quest and if you're the right level for it in this game, no sirree. It's all pot luck and grinding through several hours of pointless conversation with NPCs. Missions are the alternative to quests, handed out by the guards and other civic members of whatever territory you're fighting for. I'd pledged my allegiance to Windhurst and its Burroughs, so was given missions related to raising my reputation with these territories from some rather dodgy looking guards. These give reputation points as rewards, instead of anything immediately useful like weapons or armour.

I was really keen to try out the attack powers of my new character, but before I could, I had to struggle not only with my city location (a maze that I thought had no entrance or exit) but also with how my character hung together. The statistics on your character, and also other bits and bobs, like the map, which guild you are in, inviting players to a party and so on, are all gained by pressing X on your controller, which brings up a kind of drop down menu affair. Pushing left or right gets you yet more options. You look at them and your mind boggles. I wanted to cry. Why wasn't the interface as easy as on WoW, with just a few easily clickable boxes laid across the bottom of the screen?

If it wasn't for Sblonde, an experienced player, and the Linkshell he gave me, I may have thrown my hands up in despair and given up on it all! Thankfully, Sblonde and her crew saved me, and then some. The Linkshell I mentioned is a communications device, kind of like the guild channel on WoW. When you type /l and then any text afterwards, anyone with the same flavour linkshell gets your message and can then reply. This means that a group of likeminded individuals can chat even if they're spread across the four corners of this vast world, and invite new members to their group by handing over a similar shell to people like myself.

It's this willingness to help and coach along newbies to the game that gave me the strength to persevere. These guys had been through the same incredibly steep learning curve as myself and realised how daunting it must be for me to start. Having enjoyed the game themselves, they did not want to see someone drop at the first hurdle. I have to thank them for that, as I wouldn't be here typing this review otherwise; Sblonde, Djg, Sav and all the other guys, take a bow! Although means of communication are limited (WoW has chat channels coming out of its ears), almost everyone online is friendly and ready to help, a real bonus in games like these.

Anyway, there are several creatures you can choose; my personal choice was a cat humanoid who apparently only shows up in female form. I decided to choose a thief character who lacked armour and strength but made up for it in the ability to dodge attacks, deal high critical hits and steal items from his adversaries. I wanted to go head to head as soon as possible, so Djg took me out on my first hunt. Outside of the town, miles and miles and miles of land stretches ahead, filled with stalking, flying and running beasts, on air, land, water and in caves, towers and ruined cities, across vast tundras and icy peaks.

Before too long I was engaged in combat, but found that unfortunately it really was just like previous Final Fantasy titles, mired down in a patience-sucking turn-based affair. That you can move around your opponent or run away from it still didn't keep your eye away from the combat log in the bottom left of the screen. It kind of went like this: Shevibye hits Bumblebee for 7 points. Bumblebee hits Shevivbye for 3 points. Dave's head hits keyboard as he falls asleep.

Besides the tedium, I also found that my special abilities had a cooldown. Fair enough, as it would be an unbalanced game if super-duper abilities could be used over and over. However, unlike in WoW there's no cooldown meter at all; there's no way of knowing if your special ability is going to be ready for use again in a minute, an hour, a day or a week. This is a major pitfall and means your special abilities cannot be relied on to get you out of trouble, therefore it could be argued that they're a bit pointless and naff.

For anyone really into these kind of games, this may not seem so bad, particularly as there's loads to do outside of combat, such as joining a guild (like a tailoring guild) and using items found to make weapons, armour, spells, potions and so on. Again, as with all the interfaces up to this point, it's excruciatingly difficult and cumbersome to find your way around. However, persevere and you can make items that are much sought after in the auction house. As in WoW, the auction house is one of the first places a person checks when hitting town, pockets weighed down with the gold from recent quests. Unfortunately, while it may be organised into common sense groups, such as different classes of weapons, potions and so on, what it doesn't do is list it in order of level. I found myself scanning through several different types of weapon for my character, only finding a suitable one 100+ items later, underneath a sword suitable for a level 57. What is that all about? WoW has it right, laying it in order of whether your level can use it or not, which makes for a much more refined auction house experience.

So far then it seems we have an aging and rather clunky way of doing things, as if no upgrades or changes have been made since the original PC release of this title about three years ago. Of course, things have moved on since then, and one such thing are graphics. You can very often smell a port from its graphics, and boy, this game stinks. There was me thinking I was going to experience an MMORPG on a next-gen console with all the bells, whistles and CGI of a standard not far from Oblivion, and what I actually got were graphics my computer could have walked all over two years ago.

It's not the variety that's an issue; far from it; there's so much to see in this game that any notes I make of it won't do it any justice at all. If you've come here for views, you're probably going to be seeing new stuff for months, if not years; the landscapes vary wildly in style and temperament, as exemplified by the three major starting points. While I experienced fairly low-end dungeons, the graphics in each were fairly varied and my travelling companions told me of many other vistas I would see should I persevere with the game. Unfortunately, I was left wondering if it couldn't have all been held together on the original Xbox, albeit at a push. The landscapes are fairly uniform and the trick of repeating textures over and over is evident. While the adversaries are nicely drawn, rounded and shaded well, there isn't an awful lot of detail and the same character models were used over and over again in the dungeons I visited.

I found similar issues with the sound too. It is as if there is a handbook of special effects to be used, which the developers follow religiously and they are really uninspiring. Similarly, while there is variety within the music from place to place, it is on a loop. This means that if you're stuck trying to wade through a particular dungeon you're going to hear the same tune over and over and over again. It's not great either, though fans of the original series will doubtless recognise and enjoy the music. But since when was even the music supposed to be a grind?

It's been really hard to give an overall judgement of Final Fantasy XI, as although in my eyes it's quite inferior to World of Warcraft, in the eyes of people used to older style MMORPGs, this is undoubtedly seen as a reasonable game. Unfortunately, what has really painted my decision is the lack of 'next-gen' feel on this game, both graphically and in the gameplay. One thing you are guaranteed with this game is that it is HUGE, and once you have gotten into it you could be playing it for years to come. There are vast continents out there, many that won't be discovered until you spent hours levelling up and getting all the weapons and armour you need to survive. This isn't going to sit well with today's gamers, who feel games should be play and not work. Hardcore RPGers though will probably get a lot more out of this than anyone else. However, hardcore RPGers have probably already got this game installed on their PCs...

Reviewed by Dave Wynn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).