(Played Master Collection version)
Man... everyone told me. Everyone told me this would be one of my favorite games of all time. And they were absolutely right.
It's extremely hard to make a game this perfect in every area. A game where the gameplay and the story are both this good is such a rare occurrence but this really is one of the most perfect games I have ever played.
So the gameplay is absolute fire, but the story... I have no idea how Kojima topped MGS2, but he did. This is easily one of the most complex games ever made, with such a crazy amount of character dynamics, psychologies, tons of intertwining and unique themes, parallels, and plot threads that all get thoroughly explored with nothing left even the least bit underdeveloped. And all with Kojima's patented Movie-Quality Directing™, Crazy Twists™ and Meta Video Game Elements™. There's also the badass action movie sequences and even the best soundtrack out of the trilogy, for what that's worth.
The word "masterpiece" shouldn't be overused, and can't be awarded to a lot of games, but this is one of them.

The fifth best Final Fantasy XIV expansion, a modern Final Fantasy IV: Final Fantasy XVI is a game that I understand why people like it, but I cannot really conceive of how somebody would love this game. And don't let me stop you from loving it if you truly do, there's certainly moments of beauty within FFXVI that feel meant for somebody with much different sensibilities than I, it just remains a pretty thoroughly underwhelming affair to me personally -- both in what the game promises and in what it fails to deliver.

Mechanically adequate, systemically superfluous, and structurally mundane, but where Final Fantasy XVI really fucks up is with its thoughtlessly derivative narrative and dull characters. The way CBU3 have plucked concepts, backstories, and characterizations from popular shows like Game of Thrones isn't necessarily the worst thing they could do on the face of it, it's just how little those aspects end up mattering outside of being familiar tropes that the player can quickly identify. The same could be said for the game's attempt at a more serious tone with a focus on geopolitical affairs. The game starts off with two sequences that are almost identical to ASOIAF/GoT's Winterfell introduction, which is then followed by a Red Wedding-esque event to make sure you understand how fucked up this world really is. Except, that's kinda where everything stops being like that, they copied GRRM's homework, now it's time to be Final Fantasy!

Which like, if they wanted to copy Game of Thrones, you'd think they'd be a little more confident about it. Like, the way Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI cop shit from Star Wars (and I guess a bit of Dune and LotR) feels like expert craftsmanship in comparison, because they also fairly accurately replicate the tone of space operas (just, you know, in the form of pseudo-sci-fi medieval fantasy). They sort of try to keep up with the underlying geopolitics aspect throughout the game, but it mostly falls apart by the end and Valisthea never really ends up feeling like a real place to me. So post-GoT-esque intro, the first third of the game's tone plays out like a more linear, bootleg Witcher 3, in a kind of unflattering way.

The remaining two-thirds of the game do feel pretty distinctly Final Fantasy (with a pretty weak undercurrent of half-baked Matsuno-isms) with structure identical to a Final Fantasy XIV expansion. The latter aspect was comforting at first since I kinda enjoy the simplicity of a fresh FF14 expansion, but it's easily the worst part about the moment-to-moment experience of Final Fantasy XVI, making the game much more prolonged -- and much of it being coated with the tasteless grey sludge of live service content creation habits -- than it really needed to be during its most important narrative escalations. The former aspect is what keeps the experience feeling adequate, but it really just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from most of the series in terms of character dynamics, overarching themes, and fantasy elements. Really feel like most people who aren't allergic to turn-based combat are better off playing Final Fantasy IX or VI for most of the stuff XVI is trying to pull off. There's even this point where the characters decide to embark on this Final Fantasy V/Final Fantasy VII-esque quest to save the environment, and that also just kind of goes nowhere as the game buckles under concept bloat and is wordlessly replaced with a different thing later on.

The funniest part is the last third of the game is so clearly bogged down in its own bullshit that they had to add this NPC that feels like she was ripped out of Dragon Age Inquisition or something to explain the plot to the player because there isn't actually enough deliverable gameplay moments or constructive skits to bookend all the threads the game has set up by this point. I guess it's more disappointing than funny in the end, there were moments in FFXVI that made me wanna feel that it's all somehow worth it, but so much of it is just unearned or passively malicious in what it's conveying to the player.

The thing that almost makes the whole experience worth it -- a pretty common opinion -- is def the eikon fights, though I can understand if they're too spread apart and too mechanically fluffy for somebody who wants more substantial action gameplay to sink their teeth into. They're carried by their presentation and spectacle, as the gameplay interaction ends up feeling pretty junk food-y, but fuck they rule. Even the one towards the end that everybody I hates, I love that one too! Though maybe it's because I'm permanently a sucker for CBU3's boss encounter design, even if it's gotten a little stale in Final Fantasy XIV itself lately.

The combat design might be another story unfortunately, like, it's not bad, I actually kind like it because I have the issue with my brain where I enjoy performing class rotations in MMOs, but slapping that kinda shit onto DMC5-lite was not the move I think. There's just not enough going on here to be having a cooldown-based system integrated with kinda barebones action gameplay, and I don't think the individual eikon abilities themselves are interesting or cohesive enough to make up for the lack of both strategy and truly engaging action. Glad to see the stagger system here, but I kind of almost would've preferred if CBU3 had copied even more from the FF13/FF7R dev team's combat ideas.

The game is clearly designed around the fact that you can only play as Clive, and it only adds to that dynamism that's sorely lacking from most of the characters; if you're not going to show me enough of who these characters are in the cutscenes themselves, you could at least communicate it through gameplay, like other games in the series do. Clive's solipsistic streak feels pretty fucking forced compared to protags like Zidane or Cloud, Clive is just way too fucking reasonable of a dude most of the time I don't really buy it! And that's fine, I like having nice protagonists sometimes, but they spend the entire game trying to convince he's this brooding lone wolf! It doesn't help that in the game's pursuit of copying and pasting elements from other FFs, it also steals their mistakes: like Clive's main motivating factor being resolved like 5 hours into the game just like Cecil in FF4 and forgetting to make any of the women actually characters, also like Final Fantasy IV.

Like, I wanna say on average Jill is better written than FF4 Rosa, but at least you get to play as Rosa! Sure, both Jill and Rosa are treated as fragile baby birds who are forced to stay at home while the men go fight, but at least Rosa gets to defy that notion when it counts. It's just kinda pathetic what's happened here, like, CBU3 doesn't have an amazing track record with women characters, but at least they do get to do things and have individual motivations for participating in the story in Final Fantasy XIV. Even compared to the FF14 expansion that preceded the start of FF16's development, Heavensward, it feels notably regressive.

It'd be bad enough if it stopped there, but the two other women in the main cast are probably treated even worse. The first one's whole characterization is how she manipulates men with sex to gain power, with the writers using threat of SA as a motivating factor for her transformation into an eikon. Actually fucking vile! They even just straight up copy a panel from Berserk! And the other one's main character trait is she's an evil mom (basically just Cersei Lannister without any of the actual interesting parts). There's one secondary woman character towards the back half of the narrative who's probs the only woman with a personality, which is a shame! Jill especially had a lot of potential as at least Clive's best friend and confidant, and it's just wasted on a character who sits there and placidly stares while bloodlessly agreeing with everything Clive says and does. They can't even make her interesting as an extension of Clive, let alone as a person with actual interiority.

I don't really hate Final Fantasy XVI as much as this review would make you believe: I love adventures and I love action RPGs, and it does a pretty decent job of both. It's "comfy", but it could've been so much more with the kind of talent that Square and CBU3 have on hand, but consistently have failed to utilize to their fullest, outside of maybe Shadowbringers. Like the soundtrack is the best microcosm of all of this; Soken has an insane pedigree, and while his work here is mostly high quality, it feels like his strengths are being misutilized to adhere to a specific vision that maybe should've gotten a few more complete redraftings. Final Fantasy XVI half-heartedly commits to aesthetic ideals and tropes that were already outdated years before it released, in a way that feels almost Final Fantasy, but is ultimately never really elevated into its own cohesive identity.

Anyways, play Asura's Wrath instead. It's got the same misogyny per capita, but it's basically like if you cut out all the rest of the bad parts of Final Fantasy XVI and then also made it way cooler at the same time. 'Star Wars x Fist of the North Star x Buddhism and Hinduism' clears 'Spark Notes of A Song of Ice and Fire books 1 thru 3 x Buzzfeed Article History of Final Fantasy Series' any day.

" Alright we're in charge of localizing this, what's the story like again? "

" The world in the near future reached such a stage of late unregulated liberalism that 2 companies have more power than every other nation combined, and they declare war against one another because they would rather destroy half the world than not have a total market monopoly. "

" Hmmm how about we change that so that capitalism is good actually and there's a shadow government manipulating those companies who are innocenet and don't know any better (also their leader is named Aurora, thats important), and when you beat them... you achieve eternal world peace? "

" Sure. "

Awesome idea. Cool environments. I really felt at times I was playing a SpongeBob Souls game. Kril is a good character. His enthusiasm for paying taxes makes him a bitch but I root for him anyway.

I got softlocked on the scenery, twice. And the music I find to be lacking for the good visual vibe going on here.

It's at the right price point for what you get.

For some reason IV was the only classic Final Fantasy I hadn't finish once in my lifetime yet despite numerous attempt at doing so over the last few decades.

I'm both impressed and underwhelmed by it.
The former because the narrative is as Final Fantasy as it gets, with a lot of unique setpieces that are impressive for a SNES RPG. Especially how every single character's personality shines through their body language. A lot of cutscenes contains absolutely no line of dialog whatsoever, yet you FEEL what's going on so clearly just by seeing these sprites eccentrically spin around, emote and jump.
The later because the game is so short and the pacing is so fast that the most pivotal moments in the story doesn't really hit you like it should. You really have to fill in the blank in your mind and assume these characters have been traveling together for weeks and got to know each other between every location you visit, otherwise it doesn't really make sense why they develop such a sense of camaraderie in the span of 30 minutes.

Despite the game being really short, including the extra optional content, I find it pretty insane that the final boss isn't really doable before reaching lvl 70. I was barely level 50 when I reached the final dungeon, and if it wasn't for the Pixel Remaster 4x exp boost option I would have been stuck mindlessly grinding for hours before I could see the end of it.

Out of all the Final Fantasy games, I think IV is the one that deserve a proper remake the most. It's a shame all the attention goes to VII when the original was already an amazing experience through and through. IV really needs more padding so you have time to build up a meaningful relationship with these characters and feel the weight of every sacrifice made along the way.

Also, I think that games that takes inspiration from Divine Comedy are awesome and we need more of them.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.