Final Fantasy XI Chains of Promathia Expansion Pack - PlayStation 2

Seems I never wrote a review for this game, the series stands amazing. However its not for the easily frustrated & those lacking patience.I get real tired of people knocking this game down because they lack the basic ability to "work toward a goal".It's a great game, seriously. As for this expansion, at first all new things take some time to adjust to, eventually this expansion got it'sown series of updates an it became better.Words don't do the game or its story line any justice, play it or don't say nothing bad about it.Additionally, glad the ps2 version is being phased out now, but for its time the ps2 was a great backup playing option.Software didn't disappoint.

Yay, what I wanted

FFXI has it's flaws. Well, okay, quite a few.I was sincerely hoping this would at least attempt to fix some of them. I have no idea what I was thinking. Not only did the customers who ordered the game as it came out have to run hours worth of upgrades to fix glitches in the expansion, most of the quests and items weren't available due to further problems. Which makes me wonder if Square-Enix just threw the game out as soon as possible, without actually putting any effort into it.So far, there's absolutely nothing I find useful from the expansion. It HAS introduced a few new items, but most can only be used by classes that already have a nice variety of items available to them. The expansion pack also introduced new areas, one of which is a new city. Wait, no, Square isn't just going to let you go to the new town after you bought the expansion, you'll have to undertake series of horribly tedious missions to unlock the passage. The missions are exactly the same; wait around a few hours to form an alliance then try and survive a trip to a boss fight, except each area looks *slightly* different.I will admit the new areas that can be accessed freely [...] were pretty fun to explore and introduced some fairly cool monsters, but haven't benefited me in a single way.NO new jobs were introduced with this expansion. The J&R Music review points out you can get Dark Knight, Summoner and Ninja, but all those jobs are available without Chains of Promathia.All in all, this expansion didn't introduce much of anything useful (with the exception of some interesting boss fights with familiar FF characters and new areas). Though, it's not horribly expensive so you might as well get it.

Chains of Promathia is a fairly solid expansion released by Square Enix for their Final Fantasy XI MMORPG. With this second major expansion (Rise of Zilart being the first expansion) for the series, SE (Square Enix) attempted to introduce several new missions and quests that may be attempted by low/mid-level players, increasing content and play for the more "casual" players. Note: There are no new job classes nor did the level cap change with this expansion (Currently at 75)In addition, several additional enhancements were added to the game, some of which are still being uncovered through scheduled patches that SE has implemented these past few months. The Adventuring Fellow quests and NPC were added to aid a player in their journeys across Vana'Diel and made possible for exploration in areas where soloing might not be a good idea. This feature and many others are currently under full support by SE with new quests and events being added almost on a monthly basis.Of course, with all the new content and additions, there's also the downside. Several job class balancing problems were not addressed in this expansion and subsequent patches still have not fixed them (Only the job classes of Rangers, Summoners and Dragoons saw major changes over the past 6 months from the date of this review) Furthermore, the missions have proven to be more difficult than first expected and many players did not believe the reward justified the horrendous amount of time (In terms of equipment procurement, gil and hunting of several key rare/ex items) This sentiment is still being echoed today even by veteran players who are just now getting into the higher level (Uncapped) areas of CoP and are encountering impossible to beat NMs (Notorious Monsters) and incredibly difficult missions.The expansion does warrant purchase that can greatly enhance a player's time spent in the game, however. Most notably is the inclusion of several new areas which can be accessed without the special missions (Bibiki Bay and Ulegrande Range to name a couple) Bibiki Bay in particular is an experience hunting ground that has become widely popular with many players and most players I know will suffer greatly if they do not have these areas installed to go to with other players.In short, the expansion is good fun with a group of trusty adventuring friends, but casual players might get turned off with the prospects of spending hours upon frustrating hours to put together a pick up group of strangers to accomplish many of the quests and missions in this expansion.If you're new to this game and looking for the PC version, I highly recommend the DVD edition of the game, in which is contained both the core game as well as both of the expansions in an affordably priced package. For continuing or returning players, the price is not prohibitive and while much of the content might go to waste on casual players, it is still recommended for the more routine experience outings.In my own experience, I did not find this expansion as entertaining and fun as Rise of Zilart. However, I rated this release at 4/5 out of consideration that while I may not have found it as enjoyable, that my situation is not entirely due to the fault of SE and that while this expansion certainly has its design flaws, for some players out there, especially for those "hard core" players, this expansion will no doubt provide them with many more hours of play and content to keep them busy until the next epansion (Due to be released sometime in April 2006)

I made a very big mistake when I purchased this game thinking it was a regular game like my other games. I have never bought an online game B4 so didn't realize what it was. I also found I needed an HDD to play to but I still don't have the answer to how I would hook all this up. I never could find this HDD in order to play it with the original FF XI game. I mean I have everything but the HDD and like I said can't find one with out buying it all over again at an unreal price. Never again will I buy an online game. Beware when buying games always look and see if they are online games ONLY unless this is what you want and you are already set up for online gaming. For all us newbies it may be a bad experience and turn you off to them.

awesome item condition & prize, fast delivery!! thank you!!

works great

Was not the right game. Wanted only to play on my play station two. This was an on line game.