When you thought three add-ons were too much for you and your hard-drive, Square Enix extends the franchise even more by adding another expansion pack to the series, this time by the name of ‘Wings of the Goddess’. Wings of the Goddess can be bought separately as a separate disc to the original game, or, it can be bought in a collection box including the original and all of the previous add-ons; Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia & Treasures of Aht Urhgan. Wings of the Goddess is the only expansion pack you can buy separately to the rest of the game, this implies that this is more of an expansion pack rather than a collection of additions, the fact that the game had an 18 month break also implies this. I’m afraid, this is not exactly true.

Gameplay:

The game’s setting has changed making a nice ‘twist’ to the world of Vana’Diel. You remember that quite lengthy and promising introduction to Final Fantasy XI when installing the game? Well that’s where it’s set now. This means the world around you has changed significantly and the people around you have changed, seeing as they are all now young adults. That is probably the most noticeable change you’ll find in the Wings of the Goddess, but even then that doesn’t impact the initial gameplay, which you may or may not be glad to hear. There seems to be a nice pattern emerging with these “Expansion Packs” coming from Square Enix, as again I’m struggling to find anything new to say about specific gameplay mechanics of the Wings of the Goddess. What Wings of the Goddess changed, that seemed apparent when looking carefully, was things which should have been included, or tweaked should I say, when the original was released. Things such as making it possible to participate properly in campaign battles, which was introduced into Aht Urhgan, and unlocking new content areas. There are a number of new areas included in this addition to the series, some of these are campaign areas, others are open leveling areas, but what was startling to find out was that some of the areas promised to be in the game by now (since the last expansion) haven’t been integrated into the game yet. It’s almost like the game wasn’t finished. Other than the 20 year jump backwards, the biggest additions were the two new jobs, sounds familiar. The jobs included this time around though are the Dancer and the Scholar; The Dancer’s job is to support the party by damaging/hindering nearby enemies and healing/providing for its current party. So if you weren’t joining parties as much last time you will definitely need to join one with this class, although the problem persists in the expansion of it being almost impossible to find a party or, at most, a suitable party to join early on in the game. The Scholar’s job is the manipulation of Black & White magic and allowing the player concentrate on one or the other, the difference between this and the main job mages are the fact that the Scholar also acts as much as a support rather than attack, so again you’ll need a party to use this job effectively. These two new job classes consolidate that idea of teamwork, but I struggle to see how any player who isn’t experienced is going to use these, which a lot of Xbox 360 players still aren’t.

Graphics:

Nothing graphically has changed, which is to be expected, sadly, from Square Enix’s expansions. This game is really feeling outdated visually now, although the change of surroundings is refreshing at first and of course the new areas are interesting, this only lasts so long and the game still looks very ‘stale’. Not an important element of improvement of MMORPG’s, but Final Fantasy XI is lacking any improvement to suffice.

Sound:

The sound department of this game stays very much the same to the original, but please PlayOnline get rid of that irritating in menu music, it’s enough to make you not want to play the game.

Longevity:

This is something Final Fantasy, or any MMORG for that matter, never lacks in. There is a good amount of quests to fulfill your characters needs for a long while and this time, like it should, they are concentrated on the higher characters. Having two new jobs which you can experiment and level up with also drastically lengthens the game time here.

Overall:

As expected Square Enix has produced something lack of what a standard expansion would expect, in this case Square Enix has produced its own standard of expansions, ones which lack creativity and stream out repeated content. Giving Wings of the Goddess its due though it has managed to create an interesting world within the context of Final Fantasy and making a prequel in anything always offers a whole new potential, the next problem though is fulfilling it. Instead, what Square Enix has done was made a game with an interesting front cover but forgot to be innovative with its content, by again adding some classes and a large amount of unlocked areas.