Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV is a subscription online world with a story that its players will tell you, correctly, gets extraordinary somewhere around the fortieth hour. Before that it is a well-made but slow role-playing game with a lot of walking. The free trial covers the base game and two full expansions, up to level 70, with no time limit, which is the most generous trial of any game on this site and the reason it qualifies as “free to start”.

For a group, the shape is dungeons and raids. Four of you can run a dungeon in twenty or thirty minutes; eight can take on a raid that fills an evening. The class system lets one character learn every job, so a group never has to argue about who plays the healer permanently. Difficult content is optional, and the game’s duty finder fills any empty seats with strangers who are, by long reputation, patient with newcomers. The community’s manners are a feature.

It runs on PC, Mac, PlayStation and Xbox, all on the same servers, and a character belongs to an account rather than a platform: buy a licence for a second system and the same character is waiting. Voice chat is not built in, so the group uses its own call. The shop sells outfits, mounts and account services; it does not sell anything that changes play. The subscription is the cost, and it is stated plainly.

The honest notes: a trial account cannot start a party, send certain messages or use the market, so a paying friend needs to do the inviting. The first evenings are slow, and a group whose members progress at different speeds will drift apart, because the story gates what you can play together. Treat it as a long-distance commitment rather than a Tuesday night, and it is one of the best places online to keep a friendship going.