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Once upon a time a small company named Squaresoft released what was to be its final game.  The company was struggling in the fledgling video game industry and Final Fantasy was its last attempt at making it.  And make it it did.  Here we are on the verge of the franchise’s fourteenth release, an impressive streak itself.  Factor in all the spin-offs, pseudo sequels, and cameos, you have a franchise that dominates the North American mindset of what an RPG is.

Final Fantasy as a whole has a few defining features, huge worlds, deep characters, ultimate items, touching stories and pretty graphics.  Very pretty graphics.  In fact, Final Fantasy XI, the first attempt at a Final Fantasy MMOG, was graphically miles ahead of its competition.  This caused it to require a top-notch computer to run smoothly at the highest settings.  Prospective Final Fantasy XIV players expect demand the same attention to detail, something that Square Enix has been preparing us for.  Be it showcasing 3D technology, comparing Alpha and Beta graphical improvements to releasing a benchmark program, Squenix is not-so-subtley telling us that an upgrade from our WoW gear will be in order.

Today marks the first inkling of official system requirements.  What you see in the screenshot is only semi-official.  FFXIVCore stumbled upon, and posted, the minimum and recommended settings, but Square Enix requested that the recommended settings be taken down until the company officially announces the details.  My powers of deduction – Logic 101 elective class from five years ago – say that the minimum requirements are rock solid.

The minimum requirements are relatively lax, with a good computer in 2003 capable of meeting many recommended buzzwords – a 720p monitor, DirectX 9 capable video card, 15GB of HDD space, Windows XP SP3 (or beyond) and 1.5GB of RAM (or more depending on the OS).  For the love of god, that doesn’t mean that your Pentium M will run the game!  That’s just the small stuff.  Naturally, the game needs a newer processor (dual core) and graphics card (2006 models) to work the Final Fantasy magic at the bare minimum.

As for the recommended settings, well, let’s assume double the RAM, a mid-range GPU from the GeForce 300 or Radeon R700 families and a dual-core processor with a higher clock speed.  Still, system requirements are like pinning down your cell phone service’s taxes and fees.  It’s better to just assume they’ll be higher than you expect.

Now to figure out what all the asterisks mean.  Caveats to requirements are what makes pinning down the requirements so difficult in the first place.  If A, then B, but if B then GTFO!

[Update]

The recommended system specifics are now official (and my guess was pretty accurate).    Assuming you don’t mind running your game on high settings, but at 720p resolution (*cough* go play a console), then you’ll only need the following equipment:

Interesting, there’s no mention of AMD or Radeon equipment anymore.  I think it’s safe to say that running the game at 1920×1200 with max settings will require a beast of a computer.