It was with hesitation and skepticism that I decided to purchase the new FFXI add-on "A Crystalline Prophecy". My reservations proved well founded after having completed the scenario this weekend. Overall I was underwhelmed and initially incredibly frustrated.

Knowing that add-ons are small by their very nature I knew not to expect a ton of content, however I had hoped it would at least be as long as the Serpent General line of quests. In case you've never done those, the Generals quests are very entertaining although perhaps a little easy, but if it came down to it I'd say it'd be worth a $10 purchase.

ACP on the other hand, is quite brief and terse. The story barely begins as it's ending. It's not so much a healthy dose of missions as it is a clump of arbitrary tasks. Upon it's release excitement turned into misery as several hundred players competed for the same small pool of enemies. This was such a poor decision it soured the entire experience.

For a comparison let's take a similar task. Pretend the Summoner job was just released yesterday. Now also pretend that the carbuncle's ruby can only be obtained from goblins in Rollanberry Feilds. No sane person would design a quest like that because the resulting cluster-fuck is obvious. Appropriately then, the solution too would have been obvious. Disperse the required item to entire main regions and zilart instead of one single area. As it stands now every leech in the game can drop a carbuncle's ruby, the same idea should've been applied.

Beating up on a cavalry of mandragora was at least unique and amusing, however it was plagued with glitches and errors that caused players to be hassled. True, updates will always have some glitches, and I don't expect their programmers to be omniscient working with a 7 year old cross-platform game. But this was really exacerbated by the original terrible decision to make farming items such a pain.

I understand why they required the items to be farmed the way they did. It is because the add-on scenarios will be using a new system where you can "cash in", so to speak, your mission progress for a chance at a nice item or equipment. This is not a bad idea honestly. It adds some replay value to the content, and allows for a vast pool of possible rewards. Yet the original problem of flooded competition made this an awful ordeal. I hope they change their specific goals for the next 2 add-ons to make this seem like a better idea.

Now we come to my favorite part, the story. Crystalline Prophecy takes all (and I do mean *all*) the elements of the opening movie and stitches them together into one narrative. The result is quite a stretch, even for a fantasy game. That lovely twirly crystal you've come to know and love over the years suddenly appears out of nowhere, making ominous bossy threats. I had a hard time swallowing this and truthfully I couldn't help but be reminded of the Brainspawn from Futurama ("I am the greetest! Now I am leaving Earth forever, for no raisin!").

After you finish all your tasks, you'll be treated to a very long ending (if you think it's over, it isn't). The end has a very wistful universal nostalgic feeling about it I rather liked despite the short and frustrating missions. Finishing rewards you with some unique items and equipment, which is really the saving grace of this add-on The graphics and music are well crafted as usual, but unfortunately the implementation is terrible... as usual. I'll be scrutinizing the next two scenarios more carefully and probably will wait until after the original release if I get them at all.