There isn't really a whole lot to say about Spider-Man 2 because in reality, most of what you can say about the previous Insomniac Spider-Man games still holds true even now. Even story-wise, almost every beat is exactly what you'd expect based on both the comics they draw inspiration from and also just how they've written these games in the past. The symbiote storyline is so well-known and so hard to innovate upon that there really wasn't much Insomniac could do other than tell the same story again and hopefully be competent at it in the process. I think they succeeded, but there is one weird thing that happens towards the end, one that only seems to exist because this story happens to be told in the medium of video games.

I'm talking about the presence of the "Anti-Venom" suit, and it's something that got me thinking once again about a subject that's been on my mind for years but I've struggled to put into words. Because despite my issues with Anti-Venom that we'll get to in a moment, it's also fairly inconsequential. Anything and everything I say about it will inevitably be countered with "it's fun" and I wouldn't even disagree with that. This is not meant to be an "Anti-Venom makes the game bad" criticism, but rather it's a symptom of a larger problem I have with our collective understanding of game design, not just for Spider-Man games, but for almost all video games.

But before I get to those wider issues, let's talk about this one video game first. Spider-Man 2, among other things, is an adaptation of the fairly iconic "Black Suit" Spider-Man storyline, in which Spider-Man comes into contact with a mysterious black substance that turns into a new suit that gradually warps his mind until he isn't truly himself anymore, corrupted by the alien symbiote that is what he initially thought was just a fancy costume. Eventually, of course, he is able to reject the symbiote's influence and tear off the gooey "suit", leading the symbiote to seek out a new host and become the villainous Venom. If you've seen one version of this story, you've seen them all. Spider-Man 2 is doing nothing different in that regard.

Yuri Lowenthal, who plays Peter Parker in these games, recently did an interview where he likened his version of Peter being corrupted by the symbiote to addiction. At first the rush of power the symbiote gives Peter is great, but over time, he becomes more and more dependent on it, until he serves it rather than the other way around. I'm no expert on addiction here, but the analogy seems decent enough. And I think we can apply that to more than just his performance or even the writing, but to an extent, the game design.

After Peter finally dons the symbiote suit in Spider-Man 2, you'll instantly feel a change in the gameplay. For starters, you unlock the new Symbiote Surge ability, one that temporarily puts Peter into a state where he can utterly wallop most enemies in just a few attacks, essentially a "mash square to win" button. In addition, new symbiote powers replace abilities that previously utilized Peter's Iron Spider legs. And quite frankly, these symbiote abilities are far more useful than the Iron Spider ones ever were. In particular, the Symbiote Yank, which allows you to instantly grab a group of enemies in a surprisingly large area in front of you and then slam them down, taking every enemy affected by it out of commission for a moment while also doing heavy damage, is a life-saver on higher difficulties where large groups of enemies can feel like a death sentence.

Because of this, because the Symbiote has empowered Peter so much, as you play it's hard to imagine going back to a world without them. Even the powerful electric abilities of the other Spider-Man, Miles Morales, don't feel as devastating as anything you can accomplish with the Symbiote's power. Like in the story, in gameplay you'll come to be dependent on the Symbiote's abilities more and more, especially as the "Hunter" enemies pose a far more significant challenge than the basic gangsters you fight at the start of the game.

So, when you reach a point in the story that the time finally comes for Peter to reject the Symbiote and take off that black suit once and for all, you immediately notice the difference. Those old Iron Spider abilities you're now forced back into using just don't pack the same punch, and the aforementioned Symbiote Surge is gone, not even replaced with some lesser alternative. You have been put into a feeling of withdrawl, perfectly capturing the toxic influence of the symbiote. Video games are an interactive medium, after all, and here they successfully managed to convey narrative through the gameplay itself.

And then a handful of story missions later, we find out Peter has a piece of the symbiote still lingering inside him which is then cured by Mister Negative's powers, giving him the white Anti-Venom suit, essentially a version of the symbiote that won't mess with his head. Which means all those powers you lost earlier in the story are back. Although two of the previous symbiote abilities are replaced with slightly less powerful variants, two of them return completely unaltered from their original versions. On top of this, the Symbiote Surge, which caused you to play as the brutal, highly aggressive madman the symbiote turns you into, also comes back completely unchanged. Even in the story, this is outright described as having all the power of the original symbiote with none of the consequences.

I don't need to go into too much detail about why I take issues with this, right? It immediately goes back on all the praise I just laid on the gameplay/story synergy they achieved with the symbiote. Of course, I know why this was done. The symbiote was fun! Why take that power away from the player forever? Why leave one Spider-Man with less combat options than the other? And I'm not here to say the game is ruined because of this or anything, but just because I understand the thought process here doesn't mean I agree with it.

This moment is, I think, a good encapsulation of an approach to game design I wish had become less normalized. As much as we all like the idea of gameplay and narrative both working in harmony to tell the same story, too often there is a tension between doing that and still prioritizing "fun" above all else. And this is where we run into trouble, because when I say that, it sounds like I'm saying games should be less fun, which is not the case. I'm generally a completionist when it comes to the games I play, so it's not as if I want that experience to be painful.

What I'm trying to say is that I think most people who play games want video games to be taken seriously as an art form. And I think to some extent, that idea has become vastly more popular now than it was, say, 10 years ago. But I still wouldn't consider it quite "mainstream" yet, and I think there are a few roadblocks to that, and part of that comes down to how we think about game design. Fundamentally, even though we still understand games as being able to tell stories, to communicate emotions, they're still seen as "lesser", something meant to be enjoyed in the same way as a toy moreso than any other narrative medium.

I'm talking about this with Spider-Man 2 not because I think it is the most important game to placed within this phenomenon. It's, obviously, a mainstream AAA game meant to drive up console sales. We were not robbed of some deep artistic experience because it made certain choices. But that whole Anti-Venom thing finally helped me put together these thoughts. Its inclusion, fundamentally, treats the game as a toy. And that's fine! Toys are fun! Again, my takeaway here is not to say that the game is bad because of this, or that it shouldn't exist in the form it does. But it's not as if it's the only game we're designing this way.

I think there's just a fear in game design, more than any other medium, of losing the player's interest. Games require the most money to buy into of almost any art form. For the price of a single AAA video game, you're paying the equivalent of more movie tickets than you can count on one hand, or a few months of a streaming service where you could find several shows you want to watch. So there's an expectation that, when you buy a game, you're going to get something worth the money you put into it. There's a reason AAA open world games have become so homogenized.

But this mindset isn't one that I think indie games are immune to either. I don't think most indie games are really trying for anything less, even if there is somewhat more variation in the types of games being made. But any indie that tries to, perhaps, experiment with our typical notion of "fun" in order to generate unique meaning through its interactivity, it's often ignored entirely or met with derision. The existence of the term "walking simulator" is perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon.

But I think even games that are more conventional than, say, Gone Home, are able to perhaps subvert this "fun at all costs" mindset. For example, Undertale is a pretty typical turn-based RPG for the most part, albeit mixed with some bullet hell elements. However, it also features the infamous "genocide" route, which forces you to grind for what feels like hours in order to achieve it as a way of commenting on how what you're doing is senseless and pointless and is solely motivated by wanting to see what will happen at the end. It's not exactly "fun" outside of the few cool unique boss fights that exist seemingly just to generate word of mouth for this route and get people to try it, but the story it tells through the player's own interactions with it is incomparable.

The reason this all matters to me so much is, again, not because I think Spider-Man 2 is terrible or even unique to having these problems. But it's just one of those examples that gets you thinking about these sorts of things precisely because it actually gets these things right at first, only to trip over itself just before the finish line. Something I don't think I've talked about before is that game design is a field I am interested in working in one day, so I kind of can't help but think about the games I play this way. All of these questions of how we approach design are not just ones I'm asking others, but also ones I might have to ask myself one day if I'm put in the position of designing my own game.

So hopefully it's clear that this review isn't really about Spider-Man 2. It's about video games as a whole and how we think about them. And I still think I've really only scratched the surface on this topic of how we're designing games like toys, but talking any more about it felt like too much of a tangent. Again, this is something that's been on my mind for years, this game just happened to be the one that got me to start putting it into words. Video games are such an interesting medium for storytelling not just because of the way the player's actions can impact the narrative, but how the narrative can reflect those actions back at the player and make them question things about themselves. We can challenge people playing games on more levels than mechanical skill, we just have to try.

[WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME BELOW]

Stand back everyone, Final Fantasy has entered its Atheism+ ™ phase! Or rather, that’s the sort of uncharitable interpretation of Final Fantasy XVI I would have expected from audiences had the game released during the era it seems to think it belongs to. Indeed, XVI feels in many ways like it’s late to its own party: a JRPG based on and catering heavily to western setting and sensibilities? Check: in a world where international appeal of even culturally dense Japanese IP in all media spheres is practically exploding, the mere idea of a western setting dredges up painful memories of seventh-gen Capcom fare. A streamlined RPG with a greater focus on real-time action? Check: even in the western space, by the time Mass Effect 3 had released this trend was being lambasted constantly by enthusiasts, and the runaway successes of relatively hardcore JRPGs like Persona 5 and Xenoblade add more fuel to the burning question of why Square Enix felt it unnecessary to capitalize on the mainstream trend toward classic gameplay archetypes, especially for a much-anticipated sequel to a thirty year-old game series. A main character whose fashion sense would make Shadow the Hedgehog blush? Check: I’m pretty sure everyone gave Tales of a Berseria a pass on this under the implicit agreement that it should never happen again. The clear evocation of Game of Thrones long after even its most diehard apologists would prefer to forget it? I rest my case. Considering the media landscape we find ourselves in today, Final Fantasy XVI is awash with baffling creative decisions – no doubt due to development cycles in general offering little room to be as reactive as is required these days – but that’s not to say it uses them all to poor effect.

Expectations for Final Fantasy XVI were high to begin with: barring the MMO, it’s the series’ first new, flagship title in nearly fifteen years that isn’t derived from the heavily derided Fabula Nova Crystallis sub-series, and was thus given the unenviable task of redefining the Final Fantasy name while proving it still actually means something. In many ways it can be considered the modern counterpart of both Final Fantasy VII and XIII as inflection points for the series. While VII bore the burden of proving that Final Fantasy needn’t be beholden to high fantasy sword & sorcery, XVI sets out to prove that there is still a place under its umbrella for the settings audiences fell for on the Super Famicom. Final Fantasy XIII reintroduced core series concepts in the warriors of light and crystals while subverting expected canon and dabbling in a sort of light Gnosticism not by any means unfamiliar to JRPGs (see: Shin Megami Tensei). While XVI, perhaps coincidentally, builds its world atop similar ideas, it does so in a much more mature, holistic way. In fact, letting alone Japanese games, I don’t think I’ve seen a video game in general this unabashedly Christian, albeit sectarian, since Super 3D Noah’s Ark.

Final Fantasy XVI takes place in a world on the brink of biblical Revelation: a magical blight is covering the continent of Valisthea, increasingly ferocious monsters roam just outside towns in greater and greater numbers and, as we come to find out, the world is a single revolution away from apocalypse. Playing the role of demiurge is Ultima, a supreme being of extradimensional origin who fashions humanity in his own image but resents humans’ strength of will and connection to the Gnostic Monad that he does not enjoy. Indeed, having been created by a demiurge, it is strongly implied that the humans of Final Fantasy XVI are but a permutation of the true creator’s will: while Ultima gave life to the people of Valisthea, he is neither the creator of the universe nor of the concept of life, and he becomes increasingly obsessive over humanity’s primordial lineage which grants them proximity to holiness: see the facsimile of Ifrit he impotently dons during the final confrontation. Thus, as jealous gods are wont to do, Ultima traps his creation in a cycle of reincarnation, allowing emanations of his archons (a fantastic and inspired way to work the classic Final Fantasy summons into a story, by the way) to inhabit a select few humans of proper lineage who inevitably are used by the many sovereign nations of Valisthea to wage war against one another. This is in service of finding a vessel – one that is compatible by virtue of being of Ultima’s lineage (magic aptitude; there is room to discuss here whether all magic users in FFXVI are essentially descendants of Nephilim), but has also been touched by the emanation of Monad known as Logos (as only humans can be inhabited by the true god) – in order to ascend to a higher plane and escape the encroaching blight that seems to be borne from the magic (witchcraft) inherent to his existence.

Find this vessel he does in the game’s swarthy protagonist, Clive Rosfield, who acts as something of a Christ-cum-Seth character, destined to free humanity from Ultima’s cycle. Clive’s latent power comes in the form of Ifrit, an Eikon which, according to the lore of the world, should not exist, and represents aeon in contrast to the other summons’ archons, an emanation of the Monad versus those of the demiurge, originating from a higher plane and naturally presiding over all Eikons. Final Fantasy XVI thematically frames his rebellion as a manifestation of humanity’s will versus the whims of his creator (part of a tenuously connected, two-front examination of enslavement that the game, disappointingly, never really resolves or even effectively conveys on the chattel slavery front), which by no means runs counter to Gnostic belief, but there seems to be an expectation that we, as the audience, are well aware by the back end of the narrative that Clive is not killing the true God, and in fact owes his victory to His blessing (inshallah). While Clive enters the final battle with the expectation that he will be leaving his world godless and potentially ruined, we know this couldn’t be further from the truth, and our expectations are borne out in the post-credits scene. Clive embodies Logos (Christ) and saves his people from damnation.

As far as the beat-by-beat unfolding of FFXVI’s narrative goes, I’m of several minds. Apparently the game itself is as well. It evokes Game of Thrones quite literally the second the story begins in earnest, with Clive’s training session and strained conflict with his mother echoing the first episode of the HBO adaptation, while also frontloading the game with a generous serving of overt sexuality and faux-nudity that no doubt was toned down by Sony thanks to the women in the game actually being attractive. We’re thrown into a world where something like six or seven nations are vying for control over the continent, including an empire, a kingdom, and an extremist theocracy, and the game wastes no time setting up expectations for a story filled with political intrigue, shifting alliances, and betrayal. Unfortunately, these expectations are never really met, as the narrative veers very quickly into a much more standard “chosen one” JRPG groove punctuated by gratuitous (though very fun) anime fights where, whenever Clive is not on screen, all the other characters must be asking “where’s Clive?” I must reiterate: FFXVI isn’t bad at realizing this type of story, but the shift in dynamic of the overarching conflict is incredibly jarring and makes the gallery of secondary and tertiary antagonists look at least slightly r-worded across the board. It’s understandably difficult to reach GoT-level complexity when the player can only interact with the world through a single character, but a lot of time and resources sure are spent in-game (and in marketing!) explaining all the big players, their goals, and the territories they’re encroaching on at any given moment, only for the resolution of every sub-conflict to be “Clive and his dog cross contested national borders with no resistance and slaughter the country’s ruler.”

Refreshing, however, is that Final Fantasy XVI does not rely on “epic twists” to make its story interesting. “Theorycrafters” will absolutely despise this game, as most of the plot is couched in straightforward, millennia-old, but well-executed concepts. Your party members will not betray you, no one was “actually evil all along,” and there will be no earth-shattering revelations about the world that throw Clive and friends into an existential crisis. The game doesn’t take place inside of a computer and the magic isn’t powered by an alternate-dimension Nazi Germany. It’s downright subversive in its simplicity, and I’d argue it’s both the bravest and (I’m going to assume) least appreciated part of the whole package. Next to cameos, popular media has become overburdened with plot twists as replacement for a well written story to such a degree that they are becoming inefficacious, and JRPGs and visual novels tend to be the big offenders, to the point that being remotely familiar with a writer reliably allows one to predict just how many hours in the player will be subject to some paradigm shift just for shock value. In all fairness, I love stories that go absolutely batshit in their third acts, but Final Fantasy XVI is a reminder that a fun, unpretentious story can be told without subverting expectations vis-à-vis its narrative. I am seeing more than a few opinions making the rounds that FFXVI’s story is “actually not mature;” that the gratuitous sex and violence is an obfuscation, that beneath the superficial edge lies a fundamentally juvenile game, that other Final Fantasy games have done it better. I’m wondering where, between Cecil’s moon-man Darth Vader moment and “dilly dally shilly shally” this even remotely starts to ring true. It doesn’t, of course, and this is complete contrarianism derived from the same deranged, millennial line of thinking that leads to pulling out the ol’ faithful C.S. Lewis quote when it’s time to convince your wife to let you buy the new LEGO Millennium Falcon. Final Fantasy XVI is mature because it isn’t afraid of itself. It tells an age-old fable and tells it well, without getting cold feet, turning rebellious and reaching for shiny trinkets to dangle in the audience’s face. I can already hear the argument that it’s all so platitudinal, this talk of “free will” and “killing gods,” but we’re not dealing with something like Persona 5 here, where Yaldabaoth descends from the sky apropos of nothing in some desperate attempt to deliver a frankly unconvincing greater theme and frantically assure the audience that it really all meant something in the end. The Gnostic fable that has persisted for two thousand years is hardcoded into every corner of FFXVI, deliberately and with pride.

On a micro level, this also means that the story must be competently carried by its setting, characters, and script. In the raging debate over FFXVI’s validity as a Final Fantasy game, the world of Valisthea goes a long way in appealing to series tradition, even iterating on it in ways that were beyond the scope of the 2D games it calls back to but clearly would have been welcomed by their creators. Throughout my playthrough, it felt at nearly every junction the kind of world the teams who worked on the classics would have been ecstatic to have realized: warring factions, tortured protagonists, flashy summon fights, a long-lost sci-fi civilization. Most of Valisthea and the rules that govern it are cherrypicked from across the legacy entries, with perhaps the tangible focus on chattel slavery and the literal scale of its parts – crystals, summons, battles – being the two most obvious superficial curiosities that set XVI apart. I struggle to think of a Final Fantasy setting I’ve disliked so far, and I especially love FFVII’s grungy Blade Runner/Metropolis-style Midgar, but the return to basics here is exactly the palette cleanser I didn’t know I needed, especially coming off the heels of the futuristic FFXIII and hyper-contemporary FFXV, and releasing alongside a big-budget FFVII remake that pushes the buttons fans of that edgier, perhaps more uniquely Japanese style are looking for. Not only is the classic setting itself a joy to revisit, it also reestablishes a baseline from which future titles can deviate in satisfying ways, a baseline that feels like it’s been lost for quite some time in the shuffle of largely sci-fi worlds that were beginning to feel agnostic rather than deliberately (and properly) subversive in the way Final Fantasy VII was.

Early in his playthrough, my dwarflike Italian-American friend expressed a distaste for Final Fantasy XVI’s characters. They’re bland, boring, he said. I can imagine this being a somewhat popular opinion; these aren’t typical JRPG characters. There are no titty monsters, genki lolis, spikey-haired edgelords, catchphrase girls, never-say-die anikis, or talking animal mascots. The characters of FFXVI are not defined by their superficial traits, and we aren’t constantly made to revisit their quirks via dull slice-of-life scenes. I wouldn’t go so far as to call most of them superbly well written, but I do think it’s tempting to unfairly interpret characters with no outstanding gimmicks, characters who do not fit familiar JRPG archetypes, as dull or underwritten. That all characters in the game are quickly united under a singular cause and share the same core motivation compounds the issue, as there is little opportunity for the kind of tension and intrigue that comes with the “getting the gang together” phase of a typical JRPG. Final Fantasy XVI is not character driven, and the game’s larger conflict is constantly looming and taking priority over their individual arcs, but I disagree that this necessarily makes its characters boring as, while subtle, most of the major players do enjoy some decent development. Yes, even Jill who, in addition to being my wife, is beaten down from a sheltered noble with a girlish crush on Clive, to a stoic, confused and aimless nomad who eventually casts off her trauma and retakes her power through revenge, becoming a much more substantial partner to Clive than she ever would have been otherwise, all while never letting go of her core empathy for humanity that Clive himself was dangerously on the verge of losing. I won’t touch deeply on Kotaku’s schizophrenic feminist criticism of this character, but the notion that Jill isn’t a character in her own right because her driving motivation hinges on her love for Clive should be dismissed out of hand and is the same accusation that could be leveled at nearly every other character in the game, including the males like Gav and Otto. I’m assuming Jill’s “real” crime underpinning this “criticism” is in not fulfilling her role in deconstructing patriarchal standards because she’s traditionally attractive and not written to be a constant bitch.

Now admittedly, FFXVI’s characters do tend to thrive in the moment. While the script sometimes has a propensity to get just a little too cute, it’s head and shoulders above most AAA English scripts these days, and manages to hold itself back from being too snarky or memetic while occasionally making me blow air out of my nose in amusement. I say English script, of course, because this game was made with an English-first mentality, and boy does it show. Not only is the Japanese dub one of the most stilted I’ve heard in recent memory; the script (which I had the pleasure of comparing as I played with Japanese subs) is downright sleep-inducing, with little of the English version’s personality shining through, and an occasional tendency for characters to completely contradict themselves between languages. I say this only half tongue-in-cheek, and entirely sarcastically, but I wonder when the perpetually ass-blasted Internet translation patrol will decide to make a stink about this. The scriptwriters thankfully did not capitulate to the midwit temptation to write the dialogue in faux-Old English, opting instead for largely contemporary speech with a few anachronisms thrown in (including a distressingly frequent use of “anon”), which works well for likely fan-favorite characters in the ever-sardonic Cid and bombastic Byron (alliteration completely unintended but contentedly noted) who breathe much of the intimacy and humanity into the game. Put simply, despite the occasional mustache-twirling NPC, FFXVI imbues just enough colloquial character to maintain novelty throughout without tripping into “holy amazeballs” Reddit territory, which feels like a feat in itself these days.

In discussing the characters, I would be remiss to not heap praise upon the VA cast, who further prove that English dubs can indeed be more than just tolerable when actors are sourced from literally anywhere but California or Texas. For a Japanese property, it just sounds fantastic. Ineson, whose voice was practically made for this line of work, was a particularly inspired choice, and I don’t think many would protest my saying that he steals the show as Cid. Ben Starr works wonders with Clive, taking a character who could have easily been played flat and affecting a range of emotion that also never tumbles into melodrama. Minor characters Gav, Charon and Blackthorne were also highlights, both in performance and writing, though as a whole package only a handful of NPC extras broke the illusion and reminded me that I was playing a video game for dumb nerds (letting alone Susannah Fielding’s inability to convincingly cry). FFXVI sounds great musically too, boasting what is easily the best soundtrack of the year. Being unacquainted with Soken’s prior work, it was a pleasant surprise to find within the game such a solid individual musical identity that still evoked the feeling of Final Fantasy. Much effort was obviously spent to this effect, as the game opens almost immediately to a track inspired by the classic Overture, reminiscent of FFVII and further solidifying XVI as its companion piece. Much later, we hear a track which includes bits of Final Fantasy I’s overworld theme. Most satisfyingly, as Clive prepares to set out for his final battle with Ultima we are treated to the Final Fantasy theme proper, possibly the most criminally underused piece of video game music relative to number of series entries which, to my recollection, is the only in-game appearance we’ve seen since the first title. It feels as though on the music front, on all fronts, FFXVI is triumphantly shouting: “Final Fantasy is back!”

Is it, though? It’s all well and good that its superficial dressings evoke nostalgia, but does Final Fantasy XVI ultimately, in its gameplay, where it really matters, embody the spirit of its title? Well, no, not really. In fact, it deviates so far from its predecessors as to be inexplicable. There seems to be a hefty number of Final Fantasy fans who, in their kneejerk backlash to this obvious truth, hasten to point out that their beloved series is no Dragon Quest, that Final Fantasy once matured has never been content to simply port a battle system from one game to the next. True enough, but the notion that Final Fantasy has no functional identity is so baffling it beggars belief that a dyed-in-the-wool fan could even suggest it. After its growing pains, the series settled into a niche within which two functions were pretty much non-negotiable: the presence of the Active Time Battle system, and the ability (and necessity) to create bespoke parties via class assignments which often blurred lines depending on the complexity of the given title. The exceedingly few exceptions prove the rule here. For all the grief FFXIII got, even that entry managed to preserve simplified iterations of these systems, with a focus on macro-level management from the player which I actually came to like quite a bit. Final Fantasy XVI eschews both ATB and class construction in favor of action RPG fare so simple it borders on trite. The game’s combat was designed by Ryota Suzuki of Capcom fame, but standing it next to the likes of Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter and Dragon’s Dogma, one could be excused for imagining Suzuki putting his feet up on day one and delegating the bulk of the work to some guy who slept his way through Kingdom Hearts.

Clive, the only playable character (barring gimmicky fight sequences) has two standard attacks: sword and magic, the latter depending aesthetically – but not functionally – on which Eikon’s power is equipped at a given time. FFXVI’s revolutionary addition to the typical action RPG loop is that, if timed correctly, sword and magic can be linked together in pairs to perform an 8-hit combo that deals greater stagger than standalone sword combos. Admittedly, this does add a bit of welcome immediate depth to the game, until you’ve mastered it about half an hour in and can perform it flawlessly every time for the next 70 hours. Evasion methods include the standard dodge and parry, which both provide discrete opportunities for counterattack. As expected, depleting the stagger bar leaves the enemy immobile and much more susceptible to damage as all incoming attacks are subject to a capped damage multiplier. At this point, the player unloads every special attack in his arsenal until the enemy stands back up. Specials are broadly sorted into damage-dealing and stagger-dealing, with some vaguely affecting positioning or incidentally working on some enemies better than others by virtue of size or movement. All tied to differing cooldown timers, once they’ve been used the player spends the next minute and a half largely just waiting to use them again. The typical combat encounter with a larger enemy consists of throwing out every stagger special possible, downing the enemy, popping a multi-hit special to increase the damage multiplier, and then unloading the strongest damage-dealing specials to chip away a third of the its health. Rinse and repeat. That’s every encounter, play-by-play, for the entire game. Smaller enemies obviously go down much more easily, but FFXVI lacks any accessible crowd control options, leaving the player with no choice but to slowly, monotonously, pick them off one by one. The slog is further exacerbated by most of the better abilities being acquired late in the game, and all of them being nerfed to facilitate the inclusion of a skill tree system. The whole thing could still be salvaged if FFXVI provided a proper challenge, but even the game’s optional bosses are frustratingly ineffectual, so the player is left with an experience full of protracted, facile engagements which mostly serve as padding between one cutscene and the next. Other standard battle modules are barely worth talking about: the game features all of seven types of items, equippables that are uninteresting and mostly linear iterations of each other, and the forgettable ability to issue basic orders to Clive’s dog companion during fights. I should stress that none of these systems alone is inherently bad. I enjoyed much of the first 30 or 40 hours of the game: Clive is responsive and easy to control, there is at least some variety in enemy behavior and movement, and each Eikon comes with a set of superficial gimmicks that can be fun to play with. Unfortunately, all the half-baked implementations of these ideas in tandem combine to present a dull, repetitive experience that doesn’t reward experimentation, or even provide much opportunity for it.

Of course, Final Fantasy XVI’s big gameplay gimmick is the monster fights, where the player takes control of Ifrit to battle other Eikons. Gimmick is indeed the operative word here, because the only thing these segments have going for them is spectacle. Perhaps in an effort to convey Ifrit’s lumbering size, attacks are subject to input delay and the sword/magic combo becomes marginally more difficult to pull off, but otherwise these battles are even further dumbed-down versions of the standard fights, giving the player access to a severely limited kit of special moves and forcing him to rely on chip damage via normal combos. In lieu of letting the player actually do anything cool of his own volition, these battles are punctuated by quick time event cutscenes which, to be fair, are superbly directed and engaging enough to justify their existence. Their simplicity, however, raises the question of why the QTE interactivity was considered necessary at all. If anything, given the relatively few number of monster fights, these sequences feel like wasted opportunity. Imagine an FFXVI that gave the player even three or four action options during these cutscenes, allowing him to effect any number of outcomes throughout the fight. At risk of devaluing the effort that doubtlessly goes into crafting these sequences, I can’t imagine this would have been so much extra work as to be impossible. As they are now, Ifrit battles are peppered with enough cutscenes, so padded for length, that they are frustrating to replay.

It's hard to gauge which aspect of Final Fantasy XVI’s gameplay is more controversial: the combat or the world map navigation. Immediately following the game’s release, Gene Park managed to court considerable backlash for expressing disappointment that the game’s maps are littered with invisible walls – a backlash that would have been almost unbelievable back in 2010 when western critics and audiences alike were tearing into XIII’s “hallway” maps. Unfortunately, we now live in a post-XV world, where the ubiquity of lazy open-world games has given enthusiasts cause to be cautious about promises of sprawling, interactive maps. They’re right, of course; I don’t have much faith in a traditionally open-world Final Fantasy either. They are, however, missing the forest for the trees: reasonable critics of FFXVI’s maps are not looking for colossal, Ubisoft-style maps to trudge through, but rather the simple illusion of grand adventure. Final Fantasy, traditionally, has always delivered the enormity of its worlds via abstraction, whether that be depicting the player character at ridiculous scale on a world map, or letting him freely explore clusters of interconnected zones. Final Fantasy XIII, due to its plot-heavy, cinematic priorities, most deliberately broke this illusion, but these games have always been fundamentally linear experiences. FFXVI’s greatest sin here is a matter of simple presentation. How does the first Final Fantasy game convey the vastness of its world, the sense of embarking on a Tolkien-esque adventure? The player is dropped in an overworld, mostly directionless. He can walk as far as a man’s legs can carry him, but with every step risks death at the hands of goblins. The player will find that he’s on a peninsula surrounded by water, his vision blocked by the edges of a 4:3 screen. The world is seamless: guiding his giant sprite into a town or a cave lets the player shrink to normal size and converse with their inhabitants. Solving a town’s problem opens paths to new landmasses, and vehicles allow the player to directly assert his dominance over the world as he goes from limply rowing a canoe down a river early on to mastering the skies in an airship and flying around the globe at the end. A lot is at play here: the forced scale allows the world to be larger than it really is, random battles make the journey feel longer and more perilous, and carefully placed obstacles create the illusion of player agency. Final Fantasy was served well by this system for nearly fifteen years before experimenting with more ground-level, realistic map navigation. One will not find, for example, an overworld in FFXII, but its appropriately complex, interlocking maps serve the purpose of keeping a more contemporary-looking game to scale for its entire playthrough, with few concessions that would have otherwise justified the inclusion of either a chibi-fied world map or an impossibly demanding open world. This was a completely rational approach for such an anticipated prestige JRPG in 2006.

The problem with FFXVI – and I’m sure you can see this coming – is that we are far, far removed from the world of 2006, and even that of FFXIII’s release in 2009. We’ve seen insane technological leaps, consumers embracing very different kinds of games (especially in the west), and new expectations for both product and art that would have seemed foreign just ten years ago. Final Fantasy XVI takes the two aforementioned map philosophies, smashes them together, and delivers to us the worst of both worlds (not the Picard season 3 episode, but nearly as bad). We get a world map, sure, but no means to explore it from overhead; instead travel is as mundane as clicking a desktop icon. We can freely move back and forth across open zones once the game begins in earnest, but they lack any interconnectedness, kicking the player to the map screen upon moving out of bounds and leaving huge swathes of the world map unexplorable (interesting swathes at that). The most politically and strategically important cities in the game’s setting can’t be entered outside of story events which always entail the destruction of the city in question, following a sort of tenuous narrative logic that could have easily been sidestepped in favor of varying player interaction. The player will not be able to pilot the Enterprise despite the fanfare that accompanies its appearance (and, side note, very disappointed Mid never gets around to fixing Clive’s airship base to make it fly), and the Chocobo – which controls like a Sonic R character – is only used to the effect of sprinting across empty fields more quickly. There are no real secrets to be found, no textured environments to navigate and discover, and every new area is unlocked by progressing linearly through the story. We aren’t getting the illusion of adventure here, we’re getting the illusion of “not actually” playing Final Fantasy XIII all over again.

The most damning thing about all of this is that ANY well-realized method on its own would have resulted in a better map. Square could have foregone the overhead world map altogether and properly linked FFXVI’s small segments in seamless fashion. This also begs the question of why these world fragments needed to be so small to begin with. Sure, it would take considerably more work to make the trek from Dhalmekia to Rosaria possible in real time, with branching paths and terrain worth exploring, but we’re talking about THE quintessential prestige JRPG series here, at least for western audiences. I’m sure many will be quick to excuse FFXVI’s claustrophobic maps in favor of its graphical fidelity, but between Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 and the incredible work Nintendo’s developers continue to churn out (Xenoblade, Zelda) for a piece of hardware less powerful than a modern cell phone (one that would get you laid at least), I think it’s time to start holding these games to higher standards. We aren’t in the seventh console generation anymore; high-definition 3D video games have reached maturity and even near parity across all but one frequently used platform. I’ll close my discussion on FFXVI’s tangible world with an unorthodox suggestion: keep the fragmented environments, keep the world map, blow it up to a respectable size and make it interactive. Rather than have the player travel via cursors and clicks, let him navigate the overhead map by moving his party in the style of the classics. HD-2D has been one of Square’s most critically praised ventures in years, and perfectly reflects growing audience openness to alternative graphical styles. Gone are the days of 2D PS2 games never reaching western shores for fear of devaluing brand image. On the contrary, gamers are hungry for substance and more than ever are willing to sacrifice photorealism for gameplay depth and stylized graphics. If it’s supposedly too monumental a task to open Valisthea up in a graphically consistent way, why not take advantage of this trend? Make the world map module a classic Final Fantasy game with environmental obstacles, puzzles to solve, treasure to discover, and (hot take) maybe even some Zelda II-style encounters that make use of the PS5’s speed to transition immediately from the classic overworld to FFXVI’s core combat. The overlap of modern HD graphics and 16-bit styles even has precedence in Square’s own recent Dragon Quest XI, so I have trouble imagining why this idea was either never considered or never pursued. In its current state FFXVI’s map is almost insulting as a part of a game that seems so hellbent on dredging up memories of its revered predecessors, and I’d go so far as to call it probably the most disappointing oversight of the whole package. With so many potential approaches to be taken in constructing that illusion of grand adventure, Square’s solution here is inexcusable.

“Inexcusable” might also describe the quest structure. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call the main quests inherently mishandled as their actual content is fun enough and doesn’t betray the gameplay expectations set by the tutorial, that Final Fantasy XVI divides them into traditional arcade-style levels (such that the player can choose to replay them from a menu later) only adds to the feeling of playing a Cliffs Notes version of a real JRPG. I think this is where the indecision between action game and RPG is most apparent: one would expect a Devil May Cry or a Bayonetta to take such an approach, but it almost runs counter to the very nature of an RPG to segment its content so thoroughly. Too many locations on the world map are only playable as “levels,” with the player otherwise forced to longingly stare at them on the horizon like a paypig at the newest Belle Delphine video. Final Fantasy VII Remake similarly included several linear, non-replayable sequences and locations, but I’d likely argue the scale and quantities of these areas are not comparable, and at the end of the day that game was more or less beholden to the logic of the original game’s Midgar serving as a prologue. I expect to have similar criticisms of Rebirth should it also fail to allow the freedom of movement the original game granted once the party leaves the city. I bring this up to note that, despite these similarities between two recent, big-budget Final Fantasy games, FFXVI’s main quest structure really is closest to FFXIII where it matters most, which is not a good thing.

FFXVI’s side quests, on the other hand, all take place across the maps freely accessible to the player, and are taken on either from NPCs at Clive’s hideout or those spread across the handful of small towns the player will be able to return to. To call them boring would be an understatement. I don’t expect from simple side quests any sort of grand new gameplay element or subversion of a game’s main content, especially in a JRPG where control is necessarily limited. Somehow Final Fantasy XVI manages to run afoul of even my very low expectations, sporting side quests that consist of talking to half a dozen NPCs, fighting hordes of unengaging, low-level enemies, or simply walking from point A to B. One such egregious quest comes from Mid around the halfway point asking Clive to find a variety of materials to help build the Enterprise. One would think this would entail some deduction on the player’s part, some detective work in scouring the lands and extracting info from NPCs. Maybe fight a challenging unique monster at the end? In a normal game this would be the case. In Final Fantasy XVI, the player follows the quest marker until he finds the material lying about or the NPC who will simply hand it over to him. Most of the game’s side quests may as well resolve themselves while the player sits back and scarfs down Doritos. I would offer the concession that at least some of these quests involve talking to interesting characters and allow Clive to probe for their backstories or snippets of worldbuilding, but where else would this happen when the game, in all other respects, forbids the player from interacting with its world? When moving about is such a sterile experience, where else could the developers have shoved in all the interesting bits if not into the NPC monologues that sandwich low-level crab fights? Any substance the side quests provide could have been more thoughtfully and organically implemented, and it’s clear they’ve only been included to pad out the game’s play time to ridiculous excess. All the more annoying is that, even conceding and playing by its rules, FFXVI has no idea how to even pace its side quests with, I suspect, half the time spent on them being squeezed in immediately before the final boss, bringing the story to a standstill and engendering even further hatred for having to complete fifteen time-wasting MMO fetch quests back-to-back-to-back. This is without mentioning how ham-fisted the resolutions to many interesting side characters’ stories told via these quests are, with some approaching Saturday morning cartoon territory. As someone who tends to enjoy, to some degree, even time-wasting side quests in the context of fun gameplay systems, the state of Final Fantasy XVI’s own side quests is a damning tell that its core gameplay simply cannot sustain the inclusion of such thoughtless filler, and that neither part is picking up slack for the other.

It occurs to me that I’ve spent the bulk of this review tearing Final Fantasy XVI apart, and I must emphasize that I do not hate this game, nor do I even dislike it. A single playthrough is fun, and indeed most of my criticisms were felt in earnest while playing through New Game+’s useless “Final Fantasy” mode. I liked the characters, mostly enjoyed the gameplay, had fun hunting down unique monsters (despite their low difficulty), and spent way too much time letting the game idle to listen to its soundtrack, or walking around to stare at the beautiful background assets that the game so often urges the player to speed right past. This brings me to my final point, which I’d like to be a positive one: the graphics in this game are phenomenal and incredibly detailed, from the tallest castle down to a merchant’s fruit stand. Final Fantasy XVI is the best looking JRPG on the market and is easily in the running for best looking Japanese game in general. If there’s one thing that Square consistently impresses on, it’s visuals, and every mainline project they release is a reminder that they bear the burden of being the only Japanese developer that is held to such high graphical standards. Delivering on those expectations has had some obvious ramifications over the years, but no one can deny that these games stand the test of time visually. Final Fantasy XIII is still a beautiful game, and XVI will certainly look impressive even a decade out from its release. If I have one complaint about the visuals, it’s that the vibrant, popping colors of the forests, seas, monsters and magics give way to an overcast sky for the better part of the back half of the game that drowns out FFXVI’s striking style by running it through an ambiguously grey, drab color filter. Narratively appropriate, sure, but not all that much fun to look at in comparison. FFXVI’s cinematography (directed again by Takeshi Nozue) is of similarly high quality, and typically exceeds the sort of direction I would expect from a video game, with cutscenes making creative use of proper filmmaking techniques in such ways that I was engaged by even long stretches of non-interactive content. I’ve already touched on this, but I should repeat that even as someone with little love for gratuitous monster fights (at least, when the monsters aren’t guys in rubber suits), I couldn’t have been more entertained than I was with Ifrit’s scenes, and was consistently on the edge of my seat when it came time for him to brutally dismember one of the other monsters.

As a game plagued by so many odd decisions, it’s hard to say why I like Final Fantasy XVI. I could pull out the old “better than the sum of its parts” cliché, and I suppose that really is the case. Perhaps I simply wanted to like it. Perhaps all of its tangential aspects – the visuals, the sound, the story – combine to form a shell around the meaty interior of its gameplay that stops me from driving the stake through it completely. I think FFXVI’s sub-par elements teeter just on the edge of being acceptable, or even good, and its excellent ones provide enough cover, enough enjoyment, to keep me trudging through its low points. In big ways, it’s also a step in the right direction for the Final Fantasy series, casting away esoteric settings, needlessly convoluted plots, and largely automated battle systems in favor of something just a bit more grounded and immersive. Ultimately, and maybe most importantly, I can’t say the developers didn’t try. FFXVI’s barebones combat, restrictive world, and padded side quests don’t feel like a function of some cynical suits conspiring to push out a sub-par product; they feel for the most part like honest mistakes, perhaps most pessimistically made as a result of time crunch. I expect to replay this game in a decade and experience it, much like I did with Final Fantasy XIII, as a quaint little product of its time, with the added context of Final Fantasy XVII doubtlessly coloring my perception, and will probably appreciate it just a bit more. I’d definitely like to see more in this vein from Yoshi-P in the future, and honestly wouldn’t mind spending just a little more time in Valisthea, whether that be via DLC or sequel. I can safely say that Final Fantasy XVI doesn’t come close to dethroning VIIR as the most interesting modern FF project, nor does it reach the heights of Monolith’s Xenoblade, which I personally think has become the true contemporary successor to the classic JRPG formula, but at the end of the day I did platinum the game, so if it’s all that bad then I guess I’m a masochist.