By now, I'd already spent an hour setting things up. I must have been close to done, right? Wrong. Next, I still needed to install the game itself, along with all four expansions. This process took nearly an hour and a half more.

After both these processes, I was taken to the PlayOnline viewer automatically. Once there, I needed to set up a mailbox, complete with a user ID and password. This amounted to another 20 minutes of headache.

The next step was to purchase a Content ID. Since I entered my credit information in a previous step, this part went by fairly quickly. As I mentioned before, the first month is free, so if you have $2.47 in your checking account, you've got 30 days before you overdraw. After this, I was bumped back to the PlayOnline viewer again

Finally, I brought up FF XI's title screen and got ready to rock. It seemed that SquareEnix hates me, so before I got any further, I needed another two hours of update and expansion installation. This brought the grand total of time spent setting up to just under four hours. And I hadn't even created a character yet!

None of that was exaggerated. Final Fantasy XI really does take roughly four hours to set up. On top of that, the game and the PlayOnline system take up a MASSIVE amount of space on your 360's HDD. I had 13.8 GBs before the installation, and I was left with only 5.3 after. That is a ton of memory space for just one game. So, is it worth the wait, the memory and the cost? I mean, I get two days off a week; why should I spend my precious off time waiting for updates and instillation? Luckily, FX XI: Vana' Deil Chronicles 2008 is a fairly good MMORPG. While the installation and monthly fee may understandably keep some away, those who choose to endure can have a lot of fun in this world.

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