Hi, I am currently playing this game atm. I've been playing it for about 3 years now. It is a great game if you enjoy hard challenges and the rewards that come with it. The battle system is in real time since you are playing an online game with others. This is probably by far the most difficult MMORPG I have played mainly because the End Game events require alot of people in your alliance to fight and defeat Gods / Notorious Monsters (which drop all the good stuff like armor and weapons). Some items/weapons are easier to obtain than others. To give you an idea of how hard some items can be a "Relic Weapon" for a specific class i.e a Great Axe for a Warrior class which unlocks that classes "Final Weapon Skill(Special attack that does alot of damage and looks amazning)" takes around 2-3 years of playing to obtain. Only a handful of people on each server have them. You could cheat of course and buy online currency to speed up the process but thats just lame. We do have problems online with RMT (real money traders) selling gil for real money to players. They monopolize certain monsters which drop valuable items which sell for a considerable profit. Square enix do get rid of these RMT when they can but there will always be RMT in any online gaming. Because alot of harder end game events require alot of organized players to beat. You rely so much on other people for assistance and you will be doing the same helping out others and making friends who will help you in return. You cant really do any fun events untill you max out your level which is level 75 in the game. That would usally take you 2-3 months including completing certain quests along the way. When i say fun Im talking about events i find fun. Square enix is always adding expansion and content I cant keep up to all the new things they've added. I guess you should just try it out for a month. You could find it fun and make some friends in there. during my playtime on my server there has been many friends i've made who quit because the game just takes too long. There are still new people joining still so I guess this game is still going to be around (active for a while).
