I think you could characterize me as a Final Fantasy fan in the same way you could as a Sonic fan. It's not that I dislike the modern series, which has now pushed from its turn-based roots to the point of abandonment, but I do have a preference. However, I have a friend who would wear Yoshi-P's flesh if given the opportunity, and while I wasn't willing to join him for Final Fantasy XIV due to my aversion of MMO's, I thought it'd be nice to at least play this alongside him. He has over 3,000 hours in Warframe, he's the quintessential "buy one game and play it for a whole year" guy, our purchases rarely converge.
My initial few hours in Valisthea left me a bit worried that Final Fantasy XVI would remain a linear experience, taking me from one dungeon to the next, beat-by-beat, until the credits rolled. Final Fantasy XV left a bad taste in my mouth, being so small in scope as to not feel authentically Final Fantasy no matter how many Malboros it showed me. In all fairness, this is probably an antiquated critique considering I played it at launch, but along with Final Fantasy VII Remake situating itself firmly within the confines of Midgar, and the fact that game budgets have ballooned nearly to the point of unsustainability, I found it hard to imagine Final Fantasy XVI would be as vast and grand as I'd like.
Chapter 1 of 68
I am pleased to say this is a proper Final Fantasy. Too much Final Fantasy, even. I've been cancelling plans because I need to play more FFXVI. It's taken nearly a month to beat this game, I have other stuff I need to get to!
Valisthea is massive, comprised of four large open fields with numerous branching paths leading between different settlements and ecosystems. I've always felt that the size of the world plays a significant part in conveying to the player how far-reaching the core conflict of each Final Fantasy is, and FFXVI's plot is similarly well-served by being set in such an expansive world. So too is it vital for character development; it's hard to imagine Clive evolving into the same revolutionary he becomes were it not for how he witnesses the evils of Valisthea's caste system as it manifests in different nations and cultures. But, like, you wanna make sure you have a chocobo to ride, because it's a lot of ground to cover on foot.
I'm not kidding. Make sure you don't miss the chocobo. It's tied to an optional side-quest, and by the time it opens up to you, you might already be sick of doing those. This is one area where Final Fantasy XVI's size works against it. There's a lot of side content, and very little of it is interesting. Most of these side-quests have entirely too much dialog accompanying them, preamble that's provided in stilted shot/reverse-shot format to set up the reason why you're bussing tables in a restaurant. Valuable upgrades are locked behind certain quests like the aforementioned chocobo, or things like upgrades to the efficacy of your potions, but listening to Martha drone about the logistics of transporting Bearers between settlements is a steep price to pay. Maybe just look up a list of which quests are worth your time and plan around how much renown you need.
In a While You Will Lose That Smile When Torgal Gets Up on Ya Jack London Style
As far as combat goes, I hesitate to call this game an action-RPG, and I'm not really sure that matters. It skews much closer to a "character action" game, which makes some amount of sense when you consider Ryota Suzuki - who previously worked on Devil May Cry 5 - designed Final Fantasy XVI's combat system. It plays smoothly and the amount of tools provided grant a surprising amount of versatility, though the game is slow to introduce new battle mechanics. It is at its most anemic leading up to the assault on Garuda's fortress, but each time I felt like my enthusiasm was wavering, FFXVI offered up a new Eikon or mechanic to revitalize me. By the end of the game, you're given so much to work with that battles break down into absurd chains of magic casts. Dodging attacks to build meter to rain fireballs down in a radius while energy orbs home in on enemies, then freezing them, creating a tornado, and blasting them with an energy beam. A mid-game ring charges your sword on perfect dodges, which is visually conveyed through Clive sliding twenty feet away in slow motion while his whole entire sword catches on fire. Elites mistreating their Bearers and talking back to you? They won't be talking sass when I can summon Torgal.
There are also a number of fights against rival Eikons, which typically play out in gigantic 30-minute battles that lead you from set piece to set piece. I'd love to describe even one, but I wouldn't want to rob you of the experience of seeing them yourself. The fight against Bahamut was one of the most insane things I've witnessed in a Final Fantasy, and then the final boss came along and blew it out of the water. Just a psychotic pastiche of fighting anime tropes playing back-to-back. Turns out all you need to destroy a creator God is to reach level 47.
Truly They Were a Final Fantasy XVI
The plot deals heavily in themes of slavery and freedom, not only from an unjust caste system but from the gods and predestined fate. The social order is broken down into humans, Bearers who can cast magic without the aide of crystals and who face gradual petrification as a consequence, and Dominants (finally, a kink friendly Final Fantasy), who are the vessels for "Eikons," or "summons" in traditional Final Fantasy parlance. Bearers are subjugated by humans, forced into slavery and made to use their powers to the point that they rapidly succumb to the curse, which is placed upon them by gods indifferent to humanity's woes. Clive thinks that's pretty shitty, but his mom is cool with it.
There's a lot of great characters here, like Cid, who is the most I've ever felt a video game character reeks of cigarettes, and Dion, whose relationship with Terance is thankfully not shied away from even though I wish he was a bit more developed as a character. It at least supports my theory that Dragoons are the gayest class in Final Fantasy, which is probably why I like them so much. Apparently they eat a diet of frog legs and crickets, which just makes them even more relatable to me.
Clive and his relationship to Joshua is at the heart of Final Fantasy XVI's story and is given plenty of room to breathe, though I do think some characters are grossly underutilized. Jote, Joshua's retainer, is heavily implied to have romantic feelings for him, but rather than explore this, the game keeps shrinking back to explain her devotion as duty. Jill, Shiva's Dominant, is given some good stuff to work with in the middle of the game, but towards the end it feels like they had no idea what to do with her. "The heroes of light are here to save the day! ... And Jill is here, too." At least they knew what they were cooking with Mid and Gav, the latter of whom I found myself unexpectedly endeared to. There's a bit where he starts to cry that actually got to me not because I found what he was experiencing especially relatable, so much as I just hated to see him hurt so badly. We all love Gav here.
On a smaller scale, the encroaching Blight that is sapping the land of its fertility, and unpredictable Aether floods that turn ordinary people into rage zombies creates a sense that the walls are always closing in, further breaking down the social order and casting familiar NPCs in a new light. The constantly shifting nature of the world usually doesn't change much mechanically, but seeing the effects of the Blight goes a long way towards selling you on both the urgency of Clive's quest while giving him and those displaced a common cause to fight for.
The core plot can also be a bit overwhelming at first, which is alleviated somewhat by the inclusion of an Active Lore System, which is one of the funniest names you could possible give to an RPG game mechanic. Pausing during a cutscene allows you to thumb through a small glossary of terms, bios, and historical events to provide context on the most relevant elements of a scene, but doing so is hugely disruptive to the flow of the story. Thankfully, Final Fantasy XVI's plot is far from impenetrable, even if the opening hours make it clear that Yoshi-P was inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics given how inundated they are with treaties and ceremonies and nations of varying power with unpronounceable names cutting deals and hatching schemes. Give it enough time and FFXVI will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, it's totally fine to let some of the details wash over you. It'll make sense eventually. It's a far cry from stuff like Final Fantasy XIII which almost mandates you read all its supplementary material, or Final Fantasy XV's own requirement that endured Kingsglaive to make its plot comprehensible.
OI'LL BE FUCKED IF A BEARER SLIPS BOI ME
I don't want to get too into the weeds on performance as many of Final Fantasy XVI's problems might be sorted out over time, but it is worth mentioning that the game runs like total garbage at the time of this writing. "Performance mode" is an oxymoron as it's rarely capable of hitting 60fps outside of certain cutscenes and conditions. Graphical mode does little to boost fidelity but does at least keep the game near a stable 30fps, but given how kinetic combat is, you really want to hit 60. Motion blur options were recently enabled, but for about half the game I didn't have the option to knock it out (see: turn it off), which made the game look soupy anytime I moved the camera around.
I felt like this generation has been pretty good in terms of performance, but this year has been a disaster. I'm sure games like Redfall are worse, but in terms of what I've personally played, Final Fantasy XVI might be the roughest AAA release I've experienced this generation. Microsoft has made the point that they won't be doing a pro version of the Series X (and still seem happy to hamstring developers with mandates to support the Series S), and I've heard people plead the case for how unimportant pro consoles will be given the current state of displays, 8K adoption, and the length of this hardware generation. I say if games are going to keep running this bad going forward that there may be a real reason to boost hardware performance. We will see each other in the cage.
Despite some of my grievances, both major and minor, I think Final Fantasy XVI is one of the better mainline entries in a very long time. I hope that Final Fantasy XVII benefits from the team knowing what to reign in and where to focus their energy, but time will tell. Game development takes a while. Takes almost as long as it did for me to beat this thing. My friend finished this in a week! How is that humanly possible? I know someone else who just got 100% in this, meanwhile I'm in bed tossing and turning thinking about how I need to meticulously plan the next afternoon around making actual honest-to-god progress. But I'm done now. I'm free. Free to play Persona 5 Royal. Yes... YESSSS.... More 80 hour games please!
My initial few hours in Valisthea left me a bit worried that Final Fantasy XVI would remain a linear experience, taking me from one dungeon to the next, beat-by-beat, until the credits rolled. Final Fantasy XV left a bad taste in my mouth, being so small in scope as to not feel authentically Final Fantasy no matter how many Malboros it showed me. In all fairness, this is probably an antiquated critique considering I played it at launch, but along with Final Fantasy VII Remake situating itself firmly within the confines of Midgar, and the fact that game budgets have ballooned nearly to the point of unsustainability, I found it hard to imagine Final Fantasy XVI would be as vast and grand as I'd like.
Chapter 1 of 68
I am pleased to say this is a proper Final Fantasy. Too much Final Fantasy, even. I've been cancelling plans because I need to play more FFXVI. It's taken nearly a month to beat this game, I have other stuff I need to get to!
Valisthea is massive, comprised of four large open fields with numerous branching paths leading between different settlements and ecosystems. I've always felt that the size of the world plays a significant part in conveying to the player how far-reaching the core conflict of each Final Fantasy is, and FFXVI's plot is similarly well-served by being set in such an expansive world. So too is it vital for character development; it's hard to imagine Clive evolving into the same revolutionary he becomes were it not for how he witnesses the evils of Valisthea's caste system as it manifests in different nations and cultures. But, like, you wanna make sure you have a chocobo to ride, because it's a lot of ground to cover on foot.
I'm not kidding. Make sure you don't miss the chocobo. It's tied to an optional side-quest, and by the time it opens up to you, you might already be sick of doing those. This is one area where Final Fantasy XVI's size works against it. There's a lot of side content, and very little of it is interesting. Most of these side-quests have entirely too much dialog accompanying them, preamble that's provided in stilted shot/reverse-shot format to set up the reason why you're bussing tables in a restaurant. Valuable upgrades are locked behind certain quests like the aforementioned chocobo, or things like upgrades to the efficacy of your potions, but listening to Martha drone about the logistics of transporting Bearers between settlements is a steep price to pay. Maybe just look up a list of which quests are worth your time and plan around how much renown you need.
In a While You Will Lose That Smile When Torgal Gets Up on Ya Jack London Style
As far as combat goes, I hesitate to call this game an action-RPG, and I'm not really sure that matters. It skews much closer to a "character action" game, which makes some amount of sense when you consider Ryota Suzuki - who previously worked on Devil May Cry 5 - designed Final Fantasy XVI's combat system. It plays smoothly and the amount of tools provided grant a surprising amount of versatility, though the game is slow to introduce new battle mechanics. It is at its most anemic leading up to the assault on Garuda's fortress, but each time I felt like my enthusiasm was wavering, FFXVI offered up a new Eikon or mechanic to revitalize me. By the end of the game, you're given so much to work with that battles break down into absurd chains of magic casts. Dodging attacks to build meter to rain fireballs down in a radius while energy orbs home in on enemies, then freezing them, creating a tornado, and blasting them with an energy beam. A mid-game ring charges your sword on perfect dodges, which is visually conveyed through Clive sliding twenty feet away in slow motion while his whole entire sword catches on fire. Elites mistreating their Bearers and talking back to you? They won't be talking sass when I can summon Torgal.
There are also a number of fights against rival Eikons, which typically play out in gigantic 30-minute battles that lead you from set piece to set piece. I'd love to describe even one, but I wouldn't want to rob you of the experience of seeing them yourself. The fight against Bahamut was one of the most insane things I've witnessed in a Final Fantasy, and then the final boss came along and blew it out of the water. Just a psychotic pastiche of fighting anime tropes playing back-to-back. Turns out all you need to destroy a creator God is to reach level 47.
Truly They Were a Final Fantasy XVI
The plot deals heavily in themes of slavery and freedom, not only from an unjust caste system but from the gods and predestined fate. The social order is broken down into humans, Bearers who can cast magic without the aide of crystals and who face gradual petrification as a consequence, and Dominants (finally, a kink friendly Final Fantasy), who are the vessels for "Eikons," or "summons" in traditional Final Fantasy parlance. Bearers are subjugated by humans, forced into slavery and made to use their powers to the point that they rapidly succumb to the curse, which is placed upon them by gods indifferent to humanity's woes. Clive thinks that's pretty shitty, but his mom is cool with it.
There's a lot of great characters here, like Cid, who is the most I've ever felt a video game character reeks of cigarettes, and Dion, whose relationship with Terance is thankfully not shied away from even though I wish he was a bit more developed as a character. It at least supports my theory that Dragoons are the gayest class in Final Fantasy, which is probably why I like them so much. Apparently they eat a diet of frog legs and crickets, which just makes them even more relatable to me.
Clive and his relationship to Joshua is at the heart of Final Fantasy XVI's story and is given plenty of room to breathe, though I do think some characters are grossly underutilized. Jote, Joshua's retainer, is heavily implied to have romantic feelings for him, but rather than explore this, the game keeps shrinking back to explain her devotion as duty. Jill, Shiva's Dominant, is given some good stuff to work with in the middle of the game, but towards the end it feels like they had no idea what to do with her. "The heroes of light are here to save the day! ... And Jill is here, too." At least they knew what they were cooking with Mid and Gav, the latter of whom I found myself unexpectedly endeared to. There's a bit where he starts to cry that actually got to me not because I found what he was experiencing especially relatable, so much as I just hated to see him hurt so badly. We all love Gav here.
On a smaller scale, the encroaching Blight that is sapping the land of its fertility, and unpredictable Aether floods that turn ordinary people into rage zombies creates a sense that the walls are always closing in, further breaking down the social order and casting familiar NPCs in a new light. The constantly shifting nature of the world usually doesn't change much mechanically, but seeing the effects of the Blight goes a long way towards selling you on both the urgency of Clive's quest while giving him and those displaced a common cause to fight for.
The core plot can also be a bit overwhelming at first, which is alleviated somewhat by the inclusion of an Active Lore System, which is one of the funniest names you could possible give to an RPG game mechanic. Pausing during a cutscene allows you to thumb through a small glossary of terms, bios, and historical events to provide context on the most relevant elements of a scene, but doing so is hugely disruptive to the flow of the story. Thankfully, Final Fantasy XVI's plot is far from impenetrable, even if the opening hours make it clear that Yoshi-P was inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics given how inundated they are with treaties and ceremonies and nations of varying power with unpronounceable names cutting deals and hatching schemes. Give it enough time and FFXVI will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, it's totally fine to let some of the details wash over you. It'll make sense eventually. It's a far cry from stuff like Final Fantasy XIII which almost mandates you read all its supplementary material, or Final Fantasy XV's own requirement that endured Kingsglaive to make its plot comprehensible.
OI'LL BE FUCKED IF A BEARER SLIPS BOI ME
I don't want to get too into the weeds on performance as many of Final Fantasy XVI's problems might be sorted out over time, but it is worth mentioning that the game runs like total garbage at the time of this writing. "Performance mode" is an oxymoron as it's rarely capable of hitting 60fps outside of certain cutscenes and conditions. Graphical mode does little to boost fidelity but does at least keep the game near a stable 30fps, but given how kinetic combat is, you really want to hit 60. Motion blur options were recently enabled, but for about half the game I didn't have the option to knock it out (see: turn it off), which made the game look soupy anytime I moved the camera around.
I felt like this generation has been pretty good in terms of performance, but this year has been a disaster. I'm sure games like Redfall are worse, but in terms of what I've personally played, Final Fantasy XVI might be the roughest AAA release I've experienced this generation. Microsoft has made the point that they won't be doing a pro version of the Series X (and still seem happy to hamstring developers with mandates to support the Series S), and I've heard people plead the case for how unimportant pro consoles will be given the current state of displays, 8K adoption, and the length of this hardware generation. I say if games are going to keep running this bad going forward that there may be a real reason to boost hardware performance. We will see each other in the cage.
Despite some of my grievances, both major and minor, I think Final Fantasy XVI is one of the better mainline entries in a very long time. I hope that Final Fantasy XVII benefits from the team knowing what to reign in and where to focus their energy, but time will tell. Game development takes a while. Takes almost as long as it did for me to beat this thing. My friend finished this in a week! How is that humanly possible? I know someone else who just got 100% in this, meanwhile I'm in bed tossing and turning thinking about how I need to meticulously plan the next afternoon around making actual honest-to-god progress. But I'm done now. I'm free. Free to play Persona 5 Royal. Yes... YESSSS.... More 80 hour games please!
8 Comments
I feel like at this point this game is the only reason I'd want to get a PS5 aside from maybe Tekken 8, which kinda sucks since the console's been out for years now.
Regardless, it's cool that it seems Final Fantasy is having series of releases where the general consensus is that they're at least pretty good, since even as far back as Final Fantasy X or debatably further it's always been kinda 50/50 whether or not a game is all that great (At least for me).
Regardless, it's cool that it seems Final Fantasy is having series of releases where the general consensus is that they're at least pretty good, since even as far back as Final Fantasy X or debatably further it's always been kinda 50/50 whether or not a game is all that great (At least for me).
@LarryDavis Had they included Grimace as an S-Rank hunt perhaps it would be as good as Mcdonald's Treasure Island Adventure.
@DeltaWDunn I think it's really to the credit of passionate developers and a handful of talented directors that there's good Final Fantasy games coming out, given how Square-Enix's corporate arm seems more interested in getting involved with financial schemes, if not outright crimes.
@Yeah, you could say the same about most AAA devs tbh.
Nice to see someone else who prefers the Sakaguchi era liking this one so much. Playing XV and VIIR was like an epiphany on what the hell "modern FF" even is, so seeing praise from someone who shares some of my opinion makes me optimistic.
I'll find out for myself when this comes to PC like a year from now
I'll find out for myself when this comes to PC like a year from now
@Artur Bear in mind I do really like FFVIIR so maybe I am just a bit more predisposed to the more action-driven nature Final Fantasy has veered towards than I let on. It would be nice to see a return to turn-based combat, but I doubt we'll ever see the mainline series adopt that style of gameplay again, which really sucks.
As someone who has a pretty long standing (but maybe not extremely involved) relationship with Square Enix, Final Fantasy 16 represents this for me:
- Im glad its not absolute gunk-ass trash like Final Fantasy 15 was, this is an actually coherent and functional game.
- Im disappointed theyre still kind of just not fully utilizing the Final Fantasy property outside of the 7 Remakes (a concept thats already partially made for them). The spectacle is cool, everything else is just very.... idk. Not cool? But "everything else" is like 2/3rds or 3/4ths of FF16. Thats alot of "whatever" to work through.
But I guess I gotta count my blessings right, an "Okay Game" is a net positive from how they were doing.
- Im glad its not absolute gunk-ass trash like Final Fantasy 15 was, this is an actually coherent and functional game.
- Im disappointed theyre still kind of just not fully utilizing the Final Fantasy property outside of the 7 Remakes (a concept thats already partially made for them). The spectacle is cool, everything else is just very.... idk. Not cool? But "everything else" is like 2/3rds or 3/4ths of FF16. Thats alot of "whatever" to work through.
But I guess I gotta count my blessings right, an "Okay Game" is a net positive from how they were doing.
LarryDavis
10 months ago