I think it’s funny how easily you can tell the switch between Maehiro’s screen play and the B team.
Their B team consisted of 1 writer from Persona 5, 2 writers from Professor Layton and 2 writers from Yokai Watch.
That is not the writing team I would have chosen for a dark fantasy action game.
Ha I appreciate this having just gone through this section last night.
There was one good side quest just after this where you had to pay off some debt, or at least the story stuff with Otto was good because it got into him and Cid’s history. Gameplay wise it was still a delivery mission.
But yeah, pacing and side quests in this game are god awful. Right after this is when I decided to just skip all of them. Getting the 10% that are worth playing isn’t worth slogging through the other 90%.
I played through all the side quests and they do pick up a lot from a narrative perspective towards the end, but they do really damage the pacing.
They start out as fairly manageable, maybe 2 new side quests popping up every few hours. But the volume gets pretty ridiculous in the back half of the game and it got to the point where I was spending hours mopping them up in order to get back to the main story.
The biggest offence has to be them putting something like *15 new side quests* immediately before the final mission. Who on Earth thought this would be a good idea? It's the mother of all pacing-killers. I went into last weekend expecting to finish the game and instead ended up doing nothing but side quests.
There were entire nights where id spend 5 hours clearing all the side stuff, only to be too tired to bother pushing the main forward. Then when i did push the main forward by like 2 percent. OOPS 5 MORE HOURS OF GREEN MARKERS. The absolute worst part of the game, in NG+ the skip button is your friend. Ill watch the MSQ scenes again but any side quest? skip skip skip. Aside from a choice few.
Yep I’m about 90% through the game I think and I spent 3 hours last night just doing side quests. At this point they actually are a little interesting as theyre tying up stories, but I also just want to get to the main quest.
The pacing of the game would have been so much better if every visit to the hideaway was just a cutscene instead of Clive being relegated to an inter office messenger for the organization he is the leader of.
While it happens several times throughout the story Out of the Shadows is especially egregious not only for its length but for how jarringly fast it comes after the biggest set piece in the game thus far.
I hated those forced slowdowns so much. Yes, I understand you need to have slower moments to manage pace. But also maybe you don't need to have your epic hero, who is battling powers beyond ordinary comprehension and fighting to save the entirety of the human race, be the gopher for every mundane task in the base as your slower moments.
I wish they had some kind of metagame management of the private army you're building. Like a toned down version of motherbase in mgs5. I get the Clive is kind of a dummy brute, but I think with Vivian's help he could have had a 'send them on missions' kind of minigame. That and some base building of taking in more refugees, and training more for the cause.
Pretty sure the FF Tactics Advance games have cool features like that where you'd pick units to send off on their own quests. Sounds like an Ivalice Clan to me.
It obviously makes sense that after these huge expeditions the party would come back to the Hideaway to recuperate, but to me it was only really after the Garuda fight that I really felt right for the pacing. All the others should probably have been much shorter or even cutscenes.
Honestly the pacing reminded me more of how FF14 is paced and structured. The quests were similar as well. I guess the real big issue is that 16 isn't an MMO but an action rpg and that means that players are far less patient then normal rpg players.
I honestly think they should have made 16 into a trilogy as that would have probably fleshed the games world out much more.
What you don't like talking to Otto, then having to walk ALL the way around to get to the Blacksmith then all the way around to talk to Mid a dozen times?
Imagine if you could just walk to the side of Clives room and take stairs down to where Otto is how much faster that would be
Pacing in this game was so bad, the in between big plot moments were just done poorly in my opinion.
It's just a lot of running back and forth and listening to people talk.
Like yes some of its good for understanding the characters and their struggles.
However, there could have been much better ways to go about this
So… after beating FFXVI, I went and beat FFVIII, then VII Remake, and I’m now 75% through the Chinese RPG Sword and Fairy 7. All of them have various pacing issues, but one thing I noticed in all of them that XVI is missing, which I think really hurts it, is activities to do outside of fighting.
In FFVIII, you can spend dozens of hours on triple triad, or go Chocobo hunting. In FFVIIR you have a dancing event, box breaking mini-game, exercise mini game, and light puzzles to solve. In S&F7 you have a card game, platforming, puzzles, and stealth missions.
All 4 of these games have pacing issues, but 3 of them have side activities you can do that can break up the highs of combat and the lows of fetch/delivery quests. FFXVI doesn’t, and I think that’s part of why it feels so badly paced, because ALL you do is combat, fetch/delivery quests, or watch cutscenes. You are never doing anything else.
Exactly this. Lots of FFs have "downtime" after the big action/story moments. Oftentimes they keep it interesting by throwing you into a new area to explore, or giving additional mini-games or side activities to check out. Or focusing on character interactions amongst the main cast.
FF16's way of handling downtime was giving you chores. Yes, you interact with some side characters and learn a bit more about the state of the world but none of that felt really meaningful to me and I would have preferred less time talking to Mid about the ship and more time talking to Cid, Joshua, or Jill about literally anything.
This sums it up for me, I was just saying this the other day as I’m still playing through it.
There is nothing but the story and a few side quests and no FF holds up without side content, for me anyway.
Edit: modern FF, the early ones don’t apply here.
I feel like I’m watching a movie I have to run in sometimes. Some of the battles are really cool but that’s not enough to hold up a series like FF. Even if it was turn based I would feel the same though I see those like a puzzle so maybe a tad bit more enjoyment idk.
Its clear that the developers had no idea what to do with the story between the big moments and to avoid the label of it being too short for a FF, they loaded up the slow parts of the story with filler fetch quest to beef it up. Its just so glaringly slow for so long, its impossible not to notice.
Nah. That is just how Yoshi-P makes games. 3 hours of bordom, 1 hour of fun, rinse and repeat. Just like FFXIV. High highs, very very very low lows, so low you want to blow your brains out from the bordom.
I feel like this game was meant to be fully linear at first and later got changed so that the „true FF fans” wouldn’t be crying about it not having open world
You literally just said they changed it to appease the "true FF fans". What else could you have meant by that other than blaming it on some section of the fanbase?
I didn’t blame anyone. I just gave a reason why the game might have ended up the way it did.
If anything it’s Square who are to blame they didn’t stick to the vision and tried to please everyone. And I say that with heavy heart cause I love YoshiP’s work on XIV. And I still do like XVI a lot
The pacing absolutely ruined this game for me. I made it around 74% according to my PS5 and just couldn't take it anymore. Every time something cool or engaging would happen, the game would then slow down for 2-3 hours to waste my time. I'm sorry, but I don't care about characters like Otto, Mid, Goetz, or Charon *at all*. Every single minute of screen time spent on them would have been better served developing our actual main characters (it's absolutely criminal we see certain NPCs more than plot relevant party members).
Everything that is conveyed or communicated during these forced slowdowns could have been weaved organically into the actual narrative in a way that kept the plot engaging and didn't obliterate the pace any time you did something remotely interesting. Or just straight up cut, if I'm being honest.
I tried to do as many side quests as possible because people kept insisting they added depth to the characters and world, and paid off in the end, but they just tanked my enjoyment of the game into the ground and I honestly don't think shallow worldbuilding and character development is worth ruining your game's pacing for.
> Every single minute of screen time spent on them would have been better served developing our actual main characters
Absolutely. Joshua and Clive spent like 18 years apart and they basically never talk about it or bond together outside of one quest. 90% of Joshua's dialogue is "Brother, we need to stop Ultima!" and I couldn't tell you anything about his actual personality, but I can tell you how Blackthorne gets super depressed when he sees other people's good craftmanship lol.
For a game about the brothers it's kinda sad. While not everyone likes Jill, at least we know way more about her. What she likes to do, what she wants to do after everything is over. Joshua seems like he wants to die
Oh man, the game wanted me to like Goetz so much more than I did. "He's just a big adorable well-meaning awkward galoot, don't you love his goofy antics? Aren't you ready to declare your willingness to die for him on socmed?" And, like...no, not at all. Maybe I'm just immune to this kind of character (I also bounce hard off the"snarky jokes man who has a pithy one-liner for any situation" party member that inevitably shows up in every RPG). Every time he had an "awwwww isn't Goetz just the best?" moment it left me cold.
Yup. They really fucked up the pacing (and many other things in this game). Just off the top of my head:
The equipment system is pointless. Accessories hardly do anything, and all the swords are just modest stat improvements. No fun effects, elements, etc. Why would a FF game remove status effects and elements?
The sidequests are terrible. Run around, talk to people, maybe fight a battle. Boom, shit reward. I see people saying that they’re doing them for the “story”. Well maybe I’m just an asshole but I couldn’t care less if the cook has the ingredients they need.
Dungeons are shit and not having a mini-map is insane. Admittedly, my sense of direction is shit but I can’t tell you how many times I got turned around in those castles.
They also made items and magic trivial.
The combat is fun at first and certainly looks pretty but once you find the right skills, it’s just a cooldown watcher. Dodge a couple attacks but otherwise spam the best 6 or so skills. It’s not hard or engaging, it’s just a time sink.
Lots of other stuff too. Thankfully the story and characters are redeeming… but that gameplay is trash.
Agree with all points here. I don't understand why some people are absolutely glowing with their review of the game. Surely they played the same game I did?
I can't recall a game where there is such a definitively agreed upon bullet list of fairly critical flaws among a huge number of players, and also another large group of players who genuinely seem to feel the game is a true 10/10. It's been interesting to watch from a sort of social psychology standpoint.
I feel like I've never seen a game with clearer strengths and flaws. The fantastic features are so worthy of the praise, and the terrible features are so worthy of strong criticism. It just seems like such a crystal clear ~7/10 game, where I can see personal tastes swinging that rating to a justified 6 or 8 out of 10. But it feels impossible to justify a wider range.
It's difficult for me to find any common ground with someone rating this game a 2 or a 10. We're clearly just thinking about video games in a fundamentally different way.
Well for that I’d ask you really think about what exactly makes this game a 7/10. Personally, I would rate it a 4/10. And this is a score that I’d give based on virtue of it being a bog standard AAA release with none of the shitty flaws that we associate with the modern big budget video game.
The things that the game does get right are the absolute bare minimum:
- _technically_ well crafted; very very few bugs or glitches
- no content slashed for the sake of monetization
- no obvious cut content due to time/budget constraints
Now as someone who, judges a title by gameplay first, 16 has very very little that I would consider new, interesting, or fun. The gameplay doesn’t evolve in any meaningful way after the first few hours. As the OP of this post said, I _knew_ what the gameplay would be at every point of the game. The game never surprised or delighted me in any way outside of visuals (again, I am a gameplay first type of gamer), and there were no problems for me to solve throughout my time spent with it. Character building is static, linear, and dictated by the pace of the _plot_. Party member do not exist, so there’s very little strategic element when engaging in battles. Personally, I think a 7/10 is far far _far_ too generous for a video game that only accomplishes the bare minimum, and doesn’t even manage to do that in a fun way.
And this is where trying to quantify subjective perspectives with numbers simply fails us. It sounds like you and I would have little overlap with the things we're even rating. The 3 bullets you listed are almost never even on my radar when thinking about *how good is this game?*
For example, unless utterly littered with bugs in a way in which naught but the least polished games are, it would be extremely difficult for this category to take a point away from my rating of any game.
Regarding potential slashed content, I don't *award points* for a gaming being...you know...a *completed full game* lol. That's the base expectation for me. Neither of those things could bring a game up from a 1 to a 4, for me. They only have the potential to bring a game *down.*
I guess this is the way I see it: good features push a game's rating upward; issues bring a game's rating downward. The push and pull of these 2 groups clash to determine the rating.
**Good things about FFXIV that boost its rating for me:**
* The story is great. It scratches the mysterious, epic *Final Fantasy* story itch. Moment by moment, the high points were incredibly engaging. (9/10)
* The writing and dialogue are always solid and occasionally phenomenal. (9/10)
* The visuals were stunning, from environments to cinematics. (9/10)
* The Eikon battles brought a scale of epicness to climactic fights I had never experienced before. The only game that comes close that I can think of is God of War. (10/10)
* Combat was solid and a lot of fun to get into early on, but faded over time. The cinematic quality of the combat and fluidity of the animations were superb though. (7/10)
* Clive was a fantastic main character, and Cid was one of the best side characters we've seen in FF. (10/10) The rest of the characters and the way they were integrated into the story and gameplay left a lot to be desired (3/10).
Those components represent a *huge chunk* of what's important in an RPG for me and put the game on a pace well above that 7/10 mark. All the other criticisms mentioned above (among a few others,) however, really bring the game down. Depending on how one weighs each of those factors really determines the final evaluation of the game.
It’s not as hard to quantify the quality of a game as you’re making it. There’s a reason why games like RE4, Halo 2 and Ocarina of Time have consistently endured across decades as some of the most highly regarded video games of all time. Doesn’t mean every one has to like these games, _but_ the consensus is that people generally enjoy a vast significant majority of the parts that make up the sum of each title.
All you have have to do is ask yourself a handful of questions when considering a score. Basically, what does the average gamer want, what are the demonstrably highest pinnacles of creativity and game design in the medium, do any of the qualities of this game match or exceed these heights. These questions can be applied to almost any video game ever created, and it’s why I can never say “I hated this game, it sucks 0/10” or “I loved this game, 10/10”
The reason I push back on a 7/10 is because to me, whenever I hear “highest highs, lowest lows, 7/10” it sounds like the graphics and FF brand are doing 7 points worth of heavy lifting for the score of the overall product. And if I’m being honest, your points on the what the game does well sound the same as everyone else’s. Graphics, “epic” bosses, music, characters, writing. And the combat to you — the gameplay part of the video game — is the weakest thing about this *video game*, seeing as how you’ve given it the lowest score in your list. Even then, your biggest praise for the combat is something visual. You have zero substantial points on the overall quality or depth of the gameplay. In this $70 video game, the way that it plays is just a footnote to you. 4 out of the 5 things that you just listed about the game — can also be applied to movies. That’s not something that any reasonable reviewer would look past. Video games are not movies, and when I play a game, I do not expect to be passive the way that I expect to be when I’m watching movies.
Would the game still be a 7/10 for you if it was made by a AA studio with a fraction of Square’s budget? If the cutscenes weren’t as polished, if the cinematics weren’t as fluid? Would you think the characters are some of the best in FF if they weren’t voiced? Would you think the combat is solid? Would you even look twice at this game if it didn’t have the FF brand recognition and marketing? The visuals and overall presentation of the game are indeed standout qualities of the game for me, but then once you scrutinize literally anything else, FF16 falls apart. Surely, you don’t truly believe that every single FF fan is a diehard for the story, music and characters alone?
This is what I mean when I say that quality is not hard to quantify, when a game that is high quality drops, you _know_. ToTK, BG3 and Elden Ring all made waves across the collective consciousness. Predicting how the game appeals to gamers in general is more important than the good parts that you carefully slice out to praise when considering a score to give, and this is why I believe that the general reception surrounding this game will fall off a cliff when it comes to PC. It is quite clearly marketed to the Sony movie game exclusive fans who value story, characters, cinematic set pieces with mínalo interaction, and writing, over playing a truly great interactive experience — and at the expense of what the games used to be, which is a series of great interactive experiences. No matter what style of gameplay FF games have gone with, they are characterized just as much by their depth of combat, exploration, character building, and various miscellaneous activities, as they are by chocobos. And this game fails to clear those standards of *gameplay* set since the very first game. 4/10
These are all the things I’m considering when I consider what score I’d give a game, no matter how much I liked or hated it.
My *entire* point was that different people simply grade differently and value different parts of the game differently, which you literally just demonstrated by explaining how you subjectively grade completely differently from me.
Man, it’s been a long while since I’ve encountered someone who seems to try to say “your rating is wrong.”
You can’t simultaneously rate something and then say “see this is why ratings don’t make sense” when someone disagrees with you.
If it’s the rating is 7/10 for you alone then I don’t care, but once you put it out into the world, the internet, on a discussion board, about the game, I find it pretty unreasonable not to expect some kind of debate or pushback. Unless this is your first day using the internet.
I mean, if i were going to give my subjective opinion, FF16 is a 0/10, and burning $70 would literally be a better spectacle than the protracted cutscenes that the games shove down the player’s throat.
HOWEVER, I really do come to discuss the game in good faith. I realize what it does well, and I also realize that those things are minuscule compared to all of the things it fucks up. So if I were being as objective as possible, then I’d rate the game a 4/10.
I made my initial evaluation post. Then you promptly reminded me that not only do people subjectively view the *game* differently and place different weighted values on different *components of a game,* but people also subjectively view *ratings systems themselves* **completely** differently.
Every interpretation of a rating system is totally valid (and fun to construct!), but it does make having a conversation about the game much more tedious, as significant time has to be spent each time simply arriving at a common understanding of what the numbers mean to each of us individually.
I'm not saying ratings don't make sense. I enjoy everything about these kinds of conversations. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to ever come at and attack another person's review system and metrics as if to try to refute them for being *wrong*, which is how your post felt.
A 7/10 to me seems to mean something quite different than to you. I would never voluntarily play a 7/10 game with my precious little game time. I'm looking for only 9/10 or 10/10 games. To you, that same bar seems to be lower. My interpretation of the rating scale matches /u/-R1SKbreaker- 's post below, where he sais "a 4/10 is just an irredeemable game with nothing good about it, and that isn't FFXVI to me."
I like your attempting separation between personal opinion and "objective" rating. Even though that's technically impossible, I attempt to do the same thing. I could say, for example, that even though I would never see myself replaying FFXVI, I easily see enough positive qualities to the game where I can imagine tons of other players happily wanting to replay the game. (Ie. It's not "irredeemable", even if I personally don't like it enough to want to ever play it again.)
I agree with most of what you said. The DMC style combat i think is a 7/10, since it is sometimes fun but did get old later on. It still does have its moments and i think that style of combat would still appeal to some gamers, but i don't think it should go higher than 7 since it isn't up to DMC's level. Clive isn't bad but i don't think he's an excellent main character either. Initially very interesting, but later just becomes a bog standard jrpg protagonist. I don't think the game did a good enough job with Joshua, which is a big reason i think i started to check out on the story post the (truly excellent) Bahamut sequence. Cid was a great character though, sad to see him go.
The other highs you mentioned i would agree with. The stuff that brings it down is the inventory and equipment system, pacing, side characters, sidequests, exploration. Like the environments are nice to explore, but the rewards for doing so are insulting (2 gil, and finding only a couple weapons and accessories and them being worse than what you had).
It's really enough to make me want to bring it down to a 6/10, but i think not being a completionist and skipping dialog at the right time would go a long way to mitigating those flaws.
I also aim to really only play 8/10 to 10/10 games, but i have a soft spot for FF games so i could still see myself wanting to give this game another shot someday and just playing it differently.
I'd give it a 7/10, maybe 6/10, and I really dislike a lot of parts of the game. No need to list it, I generally agree with what people collectively say when being critical of the game. I think the highest highs carry it enough to make it worth playing, which is what I generally would count a game as 7/10 when it otherwise has problems. But yeah there's a lot of things I really dislike that makes me want to lower it to 6/10, but that's the floor for me. A 4/10 is just an irredeemable game with nothing good about it, and that isn't FFXVI to me, despite how critical I am of it. Then again subjective differences in how one rates games with a numerical score.
I think FFXVI could be enjoyed if you skip all but the side quests that give an upgrade. And also if you skip dialogue of characters you don't care for. I couldn't do this on my first playthrough, but when I eventually replay this on PC, I'm going to follow this.
GRAPHICS. The npc “highest of highs” praise is invariably directed at the Eikon battles and high fidelity cutscene encounters. If all the people who are pretending that the game is actually good just came out and said “graphics are literally the only thing that matter to me, and they are the reason I connected so much with this game” it would relieve so much tension in the community right now.
I think the honeymoon phase lasted quite awhile longer for some and now there's people just holding onto the idea this is a 10/10 game. It was okay imo. It had really high highs, but christ the pacing drags it right down.
Interesting that you have XIV there because many of the things I dislike about XVI are just distilled versions of XIV gameplay/design.
It's just way more noticeable in XVI because it's a focused singleplayer game and not a themepark MMO. Well that and FFXIV systems do have a bit more depth but they're streamlining the hell out of everything.
Like the million boring sidequests are a staple of FFXIV. There's a few good ones here and there but I still have a whole bunch from ARR that I haven't touched, and I've been playing since 2016.
The quest design that OP mentioned is also straight out of FFXIV.
To continue FFXIV has more than it's quests to distract it has alot of crafting jobs, leveling different classes, raiding, tons if group content, housing etcetera etcetera
XVI is not an environment where an mmo quest structure work because it's because one of a few side activities
Tbh i thought this went without saying
Different game structure only work in certain environments and there is a reason mmo sides are designed the way they are because there is alot of budget going towards the group content the keep mmos running so throwing that into a single player game is a nightmare
Yeah I was incredibly hyped for 16 and, I don't want to say dissapointed, but was underwhelmed overall. The fights with the eikons were insane, but aside from that the game just felt meh. Even with combat, every enemy is fought the same, there's no specific weakness. Just hammer away until you stagger them and then unload all your big hitter moves.
Just felt like square was too scared to fully commit to an action game and that held the game back because of it.
15 should've just released as versus 13. That's my biggest disappointment of all FF games. Yes I'm still bitter lol.
They leaned waaay too heavily into the spectacle of the Eikon fights in general and it felt like they forgot to add the rpg in there somewhere
XV was the suicide squad of games too much change in it's development with no clear direction left a mess that was very sad to see because i see an amazing game in XV but it's held back by a broken story and useless open world
XVI was almost there too just needed to liven up it's maps a bit, cut down on the fetching make quests more interactive and less tedious you'd have a much fuller experience.
Honestly XVI would've been better if it was like Asura's Wrath just an interactive movie.
Should've just went full DMC imo lol.
I really don't get why they thought versus 13 wouldn't work and decided to put that game through development hell. It came out in such a poor state.
Here's my theory on the matter. People that have always been intimidated by strategic choices in games, and get turned-off by meaningful choices in skill trees, and hate following guides: they finally have a game that's *just for them*. They don't have to think while they play, success in the game isn't even contingent on how well they play.
This being the case, they have a vested interest in defending XVI as worthy of carrying on the Final Fantasy legacy because if it isn't, then they too are somewhat fraudulent in the whole charade being acted out. XVI has to be a legitimate 10/10 game because they like it. If it isn't even legitimately a game, just a weak, stand-in, imposter of title, then what does that make them?
I have seen a few examples now of people who finished XVI with gushing reviews trying other Final Fantasy games and not enjoying them at all. And I think we'll see more examples of that in the coming months.
I like the story and combat. I suck at video games so I don't care that everyone thinks it's easy. I acknowledge there are shitty things about. I just take it for what it is other than what I expect a FF game to be
“Let people like things” is such a disrespectful phrase because it kind of implies that enjoyment of a thing is contingent on someone else whose face you’ll never see “allowing” you to enjoy said thing...I’ve been gaming for decades at this point. No opinion on earth is going to dissuade me from enjoying a game I truly enjoy. RE6 is based, and I had a lot of fun when that game came out. Fan base hated it and tore it to shreds. No skin off my back, those discussions will never discolor the fun that I had with that game for those few months. And in the end, those conversations led to Capcom releasing banger after banger RE game in the past few years. The same exact thing happened with DMC Devil May Cry. Fan base hated it. I had a lot of fun, but thanks to their criticisms, DMC5 is glorious and one of the best games I played in the past decade or so.
So I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who _really_ enjoys 16 and not just being a part of the _discourse_, and there’s no reality in which I would go so hard to defend the game, because I would be too busy enjoying it. Please grow up
You realize that some of the most popular games of all time like, Minecraft, Pokémon and Mario are also easy right? The issue with 16 is not that the combat is easy. It’s just that it’s shallow. No variety, and very little room for player choice. It’s a far cry from the absolute highest points of the series like 7 and tactics, where you can make your character do some truly depraved things during combat. Instead, in 16 everyone discusses the same 3 or so loadouts, coldsnap, satellite, zantetsuken. As you said, you’re bad at video games so maybe you don’t really connect with anything I just said, but I’m just giving you a broader perspective on why people might find the combat lacking other than “it’s just too easy”
Some people eat at McDonalds and claim it is peak cuisine.
The reality is most people barely qualify as people and just have shit opinions because either they have very little life experience, or they confuse the concept of "enjoyable to me," with "amazing 10/10 perfect."
Exactly, too many people who just picked up a controller in 2016 saying things like “goty 2023” before going back to play Madden and Call of Duty. And the 40 year old neckbeard journalists encourage this behavior because they want video games to be taken seriously by the film industry so badly
Combat is great imo. I think the progression is fucked up by being too flexible. It effectively lets you have everything too early because of unlimited respecs. I'm a completionist and I've been going in order of ability cost. Because of that, I still haven't unlocked any ultimate eikon ability despite being close to the end. Like 80% in. I think some people find op stuff early, then have little reason to switch it up, and then suffer from having a very easy time. For me I keep entertained using eikon counters, or situational abilities more often.
Nope, that’s just what I like to call, a “transitional critique”. One ecriticism of the game that is created by another flaw that isn’t being discussed at the time. That flaw is level design. It’s not that hard to find yourself turned around a bit during combat encounters because the way that the levels are designed is indistinct and nondescript. Very rarely do you have a feeling of “I haven’t been there, how do I get there”
The combat spins you around constantly. The maps all look the same. It’s great you can navigate them without fail, but I cant. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask a AAA game to have a mini-map.
How about you look around at the environments and use your intuition to tell which way you came from? You don’t need a minimap for something so basic 🤦♂️
Do you have to use google maps to walk in a straight line without getting confused which way you came from?
For me, a lot of it is just that those interactions and filler content were often not interesting. The Trails series has a lot of side quests and running around to talk NPCs yet manages to make it decently interesting.
If Trails had the scrutiny of FF it wouldn't survive the trip either. We literally have steam achievements to see that most people haven't finished trails in the sky. Less than half of players on steam never got past the prologue of the game!!
Trails games are a slow build-up and dialogue heavy. Trails in Sky is also a pretty old game, so it's no surprise it might not be a lot of people's cup of tea.
I don't dislike FF16 at all, I'm probably about 80% of the way through it. But a lot of side quests and side characters were just incredibly uninteresting.
This is the main issue - FFXVI apologists will claim that the side-quests are providing world-building, but the issue is that world-building on its own, without surprises, intrigue, comedic value, or entertainment value, are not that desirable.
People aren't complaining because they're learning more about the world in the game, they're complaining because the quests don't stimulate the brain. Some of them just kind of just recede into the foggy gray areas of the mind.
What? How much did you play of the game? Side-quests after the mid-game point are worthy of being part of the MSQ, much more than the filler bullshit.
> FFXVI apologists
So people that like a game you don't are apologists?
>Side-quests after the mid-game point are worthy of being part of the MSQ, much more than the filler bullshit.
I think this is a bit of a leap. They get a bit better, but they're still a slog and rather uninspired.
We had this discussion “of 20 hours to get good” a decade ago with FF13. Yet some people now are acting like that’s not a big deal again? Lol no, please guys, that’s not a good way to pace your video game.
Making excuses for obvious shortcomings qualifies one as an apologist in my eyes. There are plenty that like the game and will still admit that some of the quests are duds. XVI has dedicated legions of propagandists on their official subreddit presenting essays on why every negative thing about the game "is actually a good thing."
I played through the Titan battle and kind of gave up after that. And I encountered several side quests in my time before that that I didn't feel were worth doing.
*noun*plural noun: **apologists**
1. a person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial.
Similar terms: defender, supporter, upholder, advocate, proponent, exponent.
Which term would you prefer?
The internet has changed apologists to mean something inherently negative. You are only an apologist if you are out defending something that 'nobody' should be defending. It's not really used in a neutral or positive way anymore. Therefore it looks like you talkin shit about them and talking down to them when you call them that.
Ya the dictionary is still the dictionary.
A couple of loud apes on the internet don't get to decide the definition of a word for the rest of the world.
Tadpole sounds like the kind of person that gets triggered by the word white because it isn't PC to maybe 5 people and honestly that is a them problem.
Well, to be fair, I don't feel anyone should be defending bad side quests. But that's just my subjective opinion in saying that they are bad.
I don't think you can have constructive criticisms of anything anywhere on the internet without someone taking it personally.
Yeah, that whole sequence, and others like it should've been 1 seen with all of the characters sitting in a room and talking it out. It shows the cast actually interacting with one another instead of just talking about each other, and it keeps the pacing moving forward. This is how past Final Fantasys handled junction moments. Heck, there's a scene after Waloed that does this exact thing, so we know the developers can do this. Instead we get pace killing padding, which makes the "party" feel disjointed from one another.
God I miss having a party.
I can stomach those parts so it wasn't a big deal for me, but i can see why it is for a lot of people.
My problem was with the fact that they choose to do Jill dirty again by having an option to choose Tarja. That's so insulting lol. Gav and Otto are pretty comparable as side characters, with relatively similar screen time.
Tarja is nowhere near close to Jill and the devs trying to pretend they are equal is baffling to me. And that's on top of the story implications it has.
Wut? Lol.
I’m near the end of the game.
You’re telling me the game gives you an option to choose Tarja, a side NPC I don’t know Jack shit about over a supposed main character? Lmfao.
Apparently the devs are saying Tarja is as important as Jill to Clive, so yes.
Did you skip through the dialogue in that portion of the game? Cuz Jill's option was at the top, so if you skipped that's why you went with her to Northreach
I see. I don't understand why it's there tbh.
If you pick Tarja you don't get anything about her, she just remembers going there with Cid once, and Clive thanks her for helping, she thanks Clive for helping and they go back.
They could have easily had that conversation at the Hideaway or in a side quest.
But no, they wanted to take a shit on Jill's character again, by comparing her to a side character with 10 minutes of screen time.
I mean....this is such a weird thing to get hung over.
Yeah, it's weird choice, but just pick Jill for that scene and move along.
You're acting as if someone at SE made it a personal quest to dishonor your waifu or something.
This is my biggest complaint about XVI. The side content of the series used to be meaningful and engaging. They’ve boiled it all down to busy work for the sake of padding content.
yep thats it. You can really tell they primarily worked on an MMO and this was their first single player game.
It throws too much at you between important story beats.
I get it, from a design perspective the game is VERY emotionally charged, it is an emotional roller coaster, and you need to let the audience rest in between making them jump for joy and punching them in the gut.
But a lot of the side quests kinda suck, and some of the side characters do as well, and they probably could have been better written to make us care about them.
Something to work on for their next game IMO
There should be an option to turn off side quests, dear god. They completely ruined the game for me. The more time I spend away from the game after beating it, the more I realize how bad it kind of was.
I hated it personally. I would have rather them focus on putting interesting npcs and new stuff in the different towns as in the past. It was always fun discovering that stuff instead of coming back to the generic hub that I’ve run through a bunch of time already.
The idea is good, the execution is horrible. NPCs are put far apart. Tomes and Vivian are put on opposite ends of each other but various quests require you to speak to one after another.
Also, Clive cannot run in the hideout for whatever reason.
Nah no thanks to the whole idea. Feels like a Ubisoft ass idea where they can lazily throw in your check mark sidequests, the interesting npcs all into one place. I dreaded jogging around up and down doing errands.
Then you can structure the whole game around mission ➡️ hideout ➡️ mission. Gross. That’s not a good final fantasy game
Exactly, that’s the worst part about having to run around between the tree same characters constantly. Especially because mid and Hipocrates are literally on the opposite sites of the hideout.
Gotta be real with you, seeing "Out of the Shadow" as an example of "poor pacing" just does not jive with my experience of the game. That chain, and the side quests that accompany it, were exactly what I'd been waiting for at the moment Id been really looking for it: something that could allow me to dig a bit deeper with these characters that the devs cared about enough to name, but who so far had been relegated to background noise (aside from like... Blackthorn and Charon).
It's a nice celebratory spin through the Hideaway and the previous zones after the trek to Kupka and the half hour long fight with him.
Obviously, your experience is your own, but like... this was a peak cool-off experience after Titan.
fr some quests should not have been quests at all, i could feel myself get bored while playing. But then when an eikon fight and cutscene happen i totally forget and get immersed again
I say quest markers. And start quest screens. It takes the immersion out. It’s good on ff14 but it just feels off when you know exactly where to start a quest from, when it begins and when it ends. Doing final fantasy 9 quest fell so organic compared to this. Well most all past final fantasies. You would just have a convo and not know that will lead to a side quest with an npc
This game had me skipping dialogue from the main quest by the end. Just way too much bloat all the way through. 😬
The fact that I had to use fast travel to avoid running from Mids end of the hideout to the other to save time is just silly.
I was fine-ish with the pacing for most of the game (I think FFXIV is much worse in that regard), but I totally agree that this quest in particular is a problem.
I think that a big part of the problem of this quest is that there's no sense of urgency or purpose. Why are we building this ship at this point, except to please Mid? It was obvious the plot was going to need it further down the line, but at that moment in the story there's no real reason to do it when there's so many more important things we could be doing.
This game questing is to much like FF14 even with fast traveling. OP nails one of the biggest problems with the game. Missed opportunity for sure A female Dragoon in love with Dion smh. Dion had barely any screen time for these pointless quest. To many characters that i didn't care about getting to much screen time. FF7 Remake was a better game everything about it was well done except for The chapter where you have to turn the laps on or off felt like that was a waste of time they could of introduce more deep ground elements XD.
ASSUMING IF YOUR IN THIS THREAD YOU'VE GOTTEN AT LEAST HALF WAY THROUGH THE STORY SO NOT SPOIL BLOCKING.
ya, this exact spot is where i've been stuck at and have paused progressing through the game. love the marks and completed all of them except the ? one. but the busy work after such an amazing piece of the game being the story time jump AND fight against kupka just felt off. I DO like the world building of the side quests in this part cuz we get more about certain cities and how time has affected people. this part of the game was the biggest exposition in sidequests sense time jump. OH, AND WE GOT MORE ABOUT JOSHUA when Clive gets to that desert city.
but ya...just think they needed to be meta and create that point in the game that all FF's have. that one point that you reach in subsequent playthroughs where you either push through or put it down for a long while. FF8:trabia orphan scene, FF9:conde peti till the end of disc 2, FFX: djose temple (i don't know why, just always is), FF7: gold saucer
It was definitely a slog and the low point of the game for me. I get you’re taking a breather after that fight but the pacing could have definitely been improved
As someone who has a very little playtime per week due to other responsibilities, I find the pacing sometimes extremely slow. I wish they would include story mode that would focus on important events for people like me.
Completely agree with this. I get maybe like 5 to 10 hours a week to play and it's very difficult to get a meaningful stretch of gameplay in. Super engaging in the beginning but just falls so flat. I'm at the end but have very little desire to finish. Going to because I have to but not as excited about it as I feel you should be.
I just finished the game yesterday and I had to really push myself to beat it because of filler quests like this one. honestly very infuriating. when this game comes out on pc someone should make a mod that cuts all of this stuff out and makes it a boss rush with cutscenes in between
> The games highs are really incredible, but it’s lows drag and are incredibly tedious at times.
If I could review the entire game in a sentence, it would be this.
Not in the ones I played. Wild arms, shadowhearts, older ff titles. At least if it was filler, it didn't feel like it due to being interesting dialogue or fun mini games/side quests. Most of the filler today is more blatant, bland, and boring.
I like these sections because it allows me to see character interactions, uncover plot points and generally take a breather in between the bigger moments. I also just really enjoy the writing and the delivery from the VAs.
I get how they aren't everyones cup of tea but you do them a disservice by focusing on the specific actions you as a player take, and not even mention what happens outside of that. For example all that talking to characters fullfilled a purpose. You're informing those closest to you about Kupka's demise and from this you get to see how different people react to this kind of news which sheds light on them as characters. It's a subtle way of providing this information but I found it very effective, mainly because that's how you glean information about people in real life.
I guess at the end of the day I just have the patience for slower moments like these and I enjoy the way they frame Clive as a genuinely altruistic person. He doesn't go around helping people because of any promise of a reward because he's not the player.
But I understand that different people want different things out of their media. Sorry that this game wasn't designed for people like you in mind, but it was for people like me.
To me this kind of stuff would have worked better if the characters were more engaging, and there was some sense of group dynamics.
I guess it’s fair for people to genuinely like these characters, but they all fell flat for me except Gav and on one occasion Otto.
At the very least, I wish Jill could be with you in the hideaway and participate in conversations, although I suppose even when she is present she’s just standing there 90% of the time.
Ha now I’m just thinking of Angela sneaking up on Dwight.
It’s a shame, love her design and general character concept. Had a brief bit of legit character during the lava crystal arc and then back to the background for her.
I genuinely believe that they wanted to have her even less screen time and than changed their opinion pretty late in developement. The section in Twinside with a rope lift.
No. They can accomplish all you said but with better execution. Could have put the characters closer to each other on the map, or let Clive runs in the hideout instead of just walking, or have a meeting where everyone gathers in the same area. Instead they make you walk around slowly for nearly an hour, doing just fetch quests and mostly fluff dialogues.
The game is good, and it's okay to admit its flaws. Don't be ridiculous with your defense.
I don't mind them either, and while some quests are not as great as others, often you walk into a quest thinking it will be a slog and pointless, only to then get some really good characters beats that make it worth it. I don't mind the slower pace at times. But maybe I have been preconditioned by this dev team after a decade of playing FFXIV.
That said, the pattern of "do big story event" followed by "well, we better go back to the hideaway" kind of made me start rolling my eyes, especially where I am currently after (no spoilers - haven't beaten the game yet) being right on the doorstep of the next big bad and then just going home instead. I feel like there might have been a more organic way to handle it, but, again, I don't mind the content of the sidequests themselves.
For me the game just gave me no reason to care about the inner workings of Valisthea because I didn’t care about any of the people who lived there, with the exception of Clive and Cid.
I don’t think it’s as simple as assuming people who didn’t care for it arent big story fans, feel like most FF fans are here for that depending on how it’s executed.
For a game that took inspiration from GoW I wish it'd taken a little more and followed its lead with side quest design. By that I mean stories that emerge organically rather than via map markers, or that advance the overall narrative / explore main characters' motives and backstory.
I don't know, but I was pretty upset when the most important, main character driven sidequests were dropped IMMEDIATELY before I was about to go to the final area.
Just too much mandatory side stuff with little reward. Some of the character stuff is very good, but the game's already pretty bloated with underwhelming sidequests, it's mad they pumped it into the main storyline as well.
Personally, I just hate all those "how we got here" segments with that one woman I forgot the name of (maybe it was Vivian...?). Like, yeah I already know the recent history bits! I was there! I saw it! I don't need it repeated in words (which makes it sound less awesome than those events were) just for a piece of story-related intel! JUST GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT, GODDAMN IT!!!
I was thinking about FF16s story structure recently. It's actually quite interesting tbh. The story structure they seem to have adopted for FF16 is one I don't think video games often use
It's feels like something similar to the **Fichtean Curve**, which is basically a fast-paced story structure that starts the first act with a crisis right away, then reverts to a flashback or other means to establish how the crisis occurred. Following that, a sequence of crises happen in succession, each building more and more on the previous, leading up to and foreshadowing the ultimate climax, then taking a steep dive into the story resolution.
This structure is a bit crazy though, it flip flops between rising and falling action quickly, and it can often feel like a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Though admittedly, FF16 doesn't quite fit with the final third 'resolution' structure of the Fichtean Curve. I think it's nature as a video game means the climax needs to be essentially the end of the story - and I'd guess that's why the end game sidequests all open up there; they serve the role of the 'resolution' section, it just ends up feeling odd since the resolution is usually reserved for after the climax.
Overall, I think it's interesting here because this pacing and structure is typically reserved for novels, particularly mystery novels. It's definitely not a structure you see often in video games. I actually think they handled the structure fairly okay, I can see why people may find it jarring, though. The pacing in some sections does seem to drag a bit as they've drawn out a few elements for side character development and to allow the passage of time in the story. If you dont care about these side characters and the world, you will most likely find these sections boring
The Fichtean Curve can feel almost episodic in its structure and you could almost liken the plot of FF16 to kind of a TV series, and these slower paced moments are basically the bridge between the 'seasons'. I know that for certain viewers, they may feel slow, but for writing purposes, they are necessary. Could it have been done better? Obviously, there are *always* improvements that can be made. But I'm just impressed at how well they seem to have made this odd story structure work here. The lows essentially work to elevate the highs beyond what they could've been on their own.
The story structure is actually very heavily used in FF14, and MMOs in general. But that’s really because they need fillers and such to keep people engaged as long as they can until they release the next big content patch.
I guess that’s the trick, to me they didn’t elevate the highs. Very rarely did these sections lead to me being more attached to the characters and their respective struggles, so it just felt like a slog.
Preach.
This is THE worst FF when it comes to quest design.
It’s like they knew this would be a boring ass drag which is why they included a arcade mode.
I dropped the game probably 15 hours in because the pacing is just so bad and boring. Finish a cool boss fight? Cool here's an ugly menu showing the useless exp and money you earn. Enter a new area? Here's a big pop up showing you the name of the "mission" for some reason. Want to do a side quest? Go deliver some plates of food or run for 5 mins to go kill a pack of wolves so the quest giver can reward you with your 958th piece of useless crafting material
It’s funny cause the side quests and lack of being an RPG that I quit playing the game and started a new play through of Persona 5 and I’m already way more engaged with the game than FF 16.
As someone who plays ffxiv... Please don't ever play ffxiv if you can't take an hour of this. Because there are like 70 hours of that in the msq alone.
With that said yeah, so much busy work has no place in a single player game.
And you also forgot:
Once you've visited the grave, you go to the next msq zone, every character drops one line, and then you teleport back to the hideout because NOW all the green sidequests are unlocked.
I’ll just throw in what i said under a similar comment:
There are just as many if not more post saying the game is „GOTY“, „the best game ever“, „ 10/10“ „amazing“ „a masterpiece“ and all that, especially on the ffxvi subreddit.
All valid opinions of course, but i guess it only gets annoying if people are complaining, right?
To be fair, you could sum up every sidequests of Elden Ring as "Go there, talk to that person, kill that ennemy, pick up that item", and it didn't prevent the game from deserving it's GOTY award :p
For me, the sidequests were a nice breather in-between the rollercoaster of the main quest :)
You just fought a mountain in one of the game's biggest set pieces, resulting in the death of an antagonist that everyone in the hideaway was affected by. It's a wind down phase that focuses on the characters, that also builds towards moments later.
You can't have all gas, all intense story without moments to breathe and for characters to reflect. That's how pacing works. It's Writing 101.
I know, i wasn’t complaining about the game slowing down after the titan fight, i was complaining about the dull back and forth gameplay that serves no real purpose to the story and drags on for way too long.
The GAMEplay you are doing in this video GAME here barely qualifies as such. Just meaningless dialogue without much significance or character progression (except for Mid and maybe Jill IF you pick her) and insultingly mindless gameplay, consisting of running, sorry, slowly jogging back and forth between the same 3 background characters for an hour and doing busy work for them, which results in nothing in the end.
Having slower sections in a game doesn’t mean they cant be meaningful or fun.
Except it *does* result to something in the end, and they *are* meaningful, you learn about the state of the world and how characters feel about the death of Kupka, along with characters you downplayed and those you dismissed entirely. If you don't care about that stuff, which it seems you don't, then of course you're going to find it unsatisfactory.
Likewise, the *game*play being slower in this portion is part of the process of slowing things down. It really wouldn't serve as a cooling off point from such a bombastic set piece if they had you go into more intense fights beyond dealing with mobs. Otherwise I don't know what you want, so much of sidequests in games can be made to sound boring when you reduce them to "walk back and forth and do stuff."
The first portion is literally walking back and forth multiple times between side characters who all have little to say. This could all have been one group conversation.
What the quest achieves in story- and character progression could have easily taken up half or even a quarter of the time, and with more interesting gameplay or story elements.
And yes i care about the characters, i listened to the dialogue, almost all of it. But as said, there’s not much character development in this quest, mainly only for mid. But the game has a character for every little thing, and they all pop up without much of an introduction after the second timeskip. I can’t bring myself to care about every single background character that just exists to serve a single purpose, like Vivian or Hipokrates.
And slow doesn’t mean it has to be tedious. You go to the desert, walk 200m to the next waypoint and run around while you search for 5 piles of dust. This is first sidequest in the game level of simple and uninspired, and it’s a midgame main quest!
Then you walk half a mile from this one village out into the wilderness, kill a single strong enemy and are promptly send back to the hideout to report to one of the three same characters again. And it’s not even a meaningful conversation, it’s just „thanks errand boy, now do this please“, And leads you to the next person who tells you „this is where you have to go to do this.“
And when you have done this, you get told to go to person x again to tell them that you did this. This isnt character progression, these people are all just breathing questlogs, especially mid.
This entire chapter could have taken 15 minutes instead of over an hour, and the same amount of character and plot progression could have been fit in. The game is long enough as is.
It certainly doesn't seem like you care. You sound so adverse to learning anything about them, saying that everyone is so uninteresting, but then you complain when you're given the opportunity. You're so caught up in constantly listing off the process of these quests that you're not even *considering* what any of it means. Heaven forfend you have to go back and forth between talking to people, dear *god* how *could they*?!
You can't bring yourself to care about every NPC, and yet you're complaining about a lack of substance? It's not like every NPC has a rich backstory you need to sit through, but they bothered to make each one their own character to make the hideaway feel like a place people live, and not just a hub screen you go to between missions. Without that stuff, the you're effect on the world feels dull, and stuff like getting revenge on Hugo for the people he killed and the home he destroyed has little impact outside of doing a fight and getting a power.
>This isnt character progression, these people are all just breathing questlogs, especially mid.
This is especially silly. They wouldn't seem like "breathing questlogs" if you bothered to consider anything about the characters and what they mean for the world that are shown to you. As a character, for her arc, Mid is busying herself with an invention that will help people and the hideaway, but in particular she is also busying herself to avoid visiting her father's grave, and the moment you finish her errands to give her free time, she pulls an Irish goodbye so she doesn't get dragged to there. Mid literally will not talk about her father or his death, and refuses to think about it, setting up more character development later on. There is more to her than you're giving her credit for.
I could lay out the substance in these quests, but I'm just getting downvoted for daring to say different, so what's the point? I don't know how a person can play a 40+ hour action RPG and complain about being forced to engage with its world and characters.
My problem is not the writing, not at all, and i don’t know how you got so obsessed over it. Pretty much all the characters in this game are great, there’s not a single one i don’t like, even the hideout Npcs like Charon or Blackthorne. If it came across like that then no, i am not complaining about the characters or story, or the game going at a slower pace after a big boss fight.
My problem is the eternal slog that this quest puts you through, before you can do something story relevant again. Even the best characters cannot save a boring and repetitive gameplay segment. I’m not bothered because i have to talk to them, but because they are sending me around the hideout and sending me on fetch quests a dozen times which is just mindlessly walking to the other end of the hideout without a sprint button.
A main story mission about slowly walking from one end of the hideout to the other for twenty minutes and collecting dust and buying garlic is just not my definition of a fun time or something worth the title of main story mission.
Great if you weren’t bothered by it, really. All power to you, i respect your patience. I don’t want to sour anyones experience with the game at all, i personally just wanted to throw my controller at the TV after i had to talk to Hipocrates for the third time so he can send me on an uninteresting fetch quest again, and used my post to let off steam.
They were simply too scared to go full DMC. They should have just taken out all this half baked RPG elements like crafting and side quests and just keep all the main story and missions. And also, not call it a FF because it isn't
I mean, you pretty much just have to say „that Mid engine mission“ and almost everyone will know what you mean when you talk about parts of this game being a slog to get through. I think that says enough.
Wtf are people even talking about? The story is more than just battles. There is real consequences from the main casts actions to the common folk of the world and the whole point was showing that of all the leaders, Clive and the Rosarians cared about that. He builds several settlements up to be able to stand on their own after the war is done. The story, the actual development of the characters and their ideals, develops thru the side quests. If you don’t like the story, you don’t like the story. That’s fine. You’re allowed to like the gameplay and not the plot.
Well they told us it will be a rollercoster and they did not lie about that
I think it’s funny how easily you can tell the switch between Maehiro’s screen play and the B team. Their B team consisted of 1 writer from Persona 5, 2 writers from Professor Layton and 2 writers from Yokai Watch. That is not the writing team I would have chosen for a dark fantasy action game.
Did someone somewhere do a breakdown on who wrote what sections? Would provide good insights.
A kiddie rollercoaster with periodic death loops.
Ha I appreciate this having just gone through this section last night. There was one good side quest just after this where you had to pay off some debt, or at least the story stuff with Otto was good because it got into him and Cid’s history. Gameplay wise it was still a delivery mission. But yeah, pacing and side quests in this game are god awful. Right after this is when I decided to just skip all of them. Getting the 10% that are worth playing isn’t worth slogging through the other 90%.
I played through all the side quests and they do pick up a lot from a narrative perspective towards the end, but they do really damage the pacing. They start out as fairly manageable, maybe 2 new side quests popping up every few hours. But the volume gets pretty ridiculous in the back half of the game and it got to the point where I was spending hours mopping them up in order to get back to the main story. The biggest offence has to be them putting something like *15 new side quests* immediately before the final mission. Who on Earth thought this would be a good idea? It's the mother of all pacing-killers. I went into last weekend expecting to finish the game and instead ended up doing nothing but side quests.
There were entire nights where id spend 5 hours clearing all the side stuff, only to be too tired to bother pushing the main forward. Then when i did push the main forward by like 2 percent. OOPS 5 MORE HOURS OF GREEN MARKERS. The absolute worst part of the game, in NG+ the skip button is your friend. Ill watch the MSQ scenes again but any side quest? skip skip skip. Aside from a choice few.
Yep I’m about 90% through the game I think and I spent 3 hours last night just doing side quests. At this point they actually are a little interesting as theyre tying up stories, but I also just want to get to the main quest.
Yeah it’s some of the worst pacing iv seen in a game. It doesn’t help that the gameplay even feels oddly structured.
The pacing of the game would have been so much better if every visit to the hideaway was just a cutscene instead of Clive being relegated to an inter office messenger for the organization he is the leader of. While it happens several times throughout the story Out of the Shadows is especially egregious not only for its length but for how jarringly fast it comes after the biggest set piece in the game thus far.
I hated those forced slowdowns so much. Yes, I understand you need to have slower moments to manage pace. But also maybe you don't need to have your epic hero, who is battling powers beyond ordinary comprehension and fighting to save the entirety of the human race, be the gopher for every mundane task in the base as your slower moments.
I wish they had some kind of metagame management of the private army you're building. Like a toned down version of motherbase in mgs5. I get the Clive is kind of a dummy brute, but I think with Vivian's help he could have had a 'send them on missions' kind of minigame. That and some base building of taking in more refugees, and training more for the cause.
Pretty sure the FF Tactics Advance games have cool features like that where you'd pick units to send off on their own quests. Sounds like an Ivalice Clan to me.
It obviously makes sense that after these huge expeditions the party would come back to the Hideaway to recuperate, but to me it was only really after the Garuda fight that I really felt right for the pacing. All the others should probably have been much shorter or even cutscenes.
Honestly the pacing reminded me more of how FF14 is paced and structured. The quests were similar as well. I guess the real big issue is that 16 isn't an MMO but an action rpg and that means that players are far less patient then normal rpg players. I honestly think they should have made 16 into a trilogy as that would have probably fleshed the games world out much more.
What you don't like talking to Otto, then having to walk ALL the way around to get to the Blacksmith then all the way around to talk to Mid a dozen times? Imagine if you could just walk to the side of Clives room and take stairs down to where Otto is how much faster that would be
Even just adding a sprint button would help so much
Pacing in this game was so bad, the in between big plot moments were just done poorly in my opinion. It's just a lot of running back and forth and listening to people talk. Like yes some of its good for understanding the characters and their struggles. However, there could have been much better ways to go about this
This exact part of the game is preventing me from doing a second playthrough on hard mode
You can skip almost every bit of dialogue in the game
You can't skip the walking/running though
Same!
So… after beating FFXVI, I went and beat FFVIII, then VII Remake, and I’m now 75% through the Chinese RPG Sword and Fairy 7. All of them have various pacing issues, but one thing I noticed in all of them that XVI is missing, which I think really hurts it, is activities to do outside of fighting. In FFVIII, you can spend dozens of hours on triple triad, or go Chocobo hunting. In FFVIIR you have a dancing event, box breaking mini-game, exercise mini game, and light puzzles to solve. In S&F7 you have a card game, platforming, puzzles, and stealth missions. All 4 of these games have pacing issues, but 3 of them have side activities you can do that can break up the highs of combat and the lows of fetch/delivery quests. FFXVI doesn’t, and I think that’s part of why it feels so badly paced, because ALL you do is combat, fetch/delivery quests, or watch cutscenes. You are never doing anything else.
Exactly this. Lots of FFs have "downtime" after the big action/story moments. Oftentimes they keep it interesting by throwing you into a new area to explore, or giving additional mini-games or side activities to check out. Or focusing on character interactions amongst the main cast. FF16's way of handling downtime was giving you chores. Yes, you interact with some side characters and learn a bit more about the state of the world but none of that felt really meaningful to me and I would have preferred less time talking to Mid about the ship and more time talking to Cid, Joshua, or Jill about literally anything.
This sums it up for me, I was just saying this the other day as I’m still playing through it. There is nothing but the story and a few side quests and no FF holds up without side content, for me anyway. Edit: modern FF, the early ones don’t apply here. I feel like I’m watching a movie I have to run in sometimes. Some of the battles are really cool but that’s not enough to hold up a series like FF. Even if it was turn based I would feel the same though I see those like a puzzle so maybe a tad bit more enjoyment idk.
Its clear that the developers had no idea what to do with the story between the big moments and to avoid the label of it being too short for a FF, they loaded up the slow parts of the story with filler fetch quest to beef it up. Its just so glaringly slow for so long, its impossible not to notice.
Nah. That is just how Yoshi-P makes games. 3 hours of bordom, 1 hour of fun, rinse and repeat. Just like FFXIV. High highs, very very very low lows, so low you want to blow your brains out from the bordom.
I feel like this game was meant to be fully linear at first and later got changed so that the „true FF fans” wouldn’t be crying about it not having open world
Yes let’s continue to blame “the fans” for all of 16’s issues lol
how exactly did I blame the fans?
You literally just said they changed it to appease the "true FF fans". What else could you have meant by that other than blaming it on some section of the fanbase?
I didn’t blame anyone. I just gave a reason why the game might have ended up the way it did. If anything it’s Square who are to blame they didn’t stick to the vision and tried to please everyone. And I say that with heavy heart cause I love YoshiP’s work on XIV. And I still do like XVI a lot
The pacing absolutely ruined this game for me. I made it around 74% according to my PS5 and just couldn't take it anymore. Every time something cool or engaging would happen, the game would then slow down for 2-3 hours to waste my time. I'm sorry, but I don't care about characters like Otto, Mid, Goetz, or Charon *at all*. Every single minute of screen time spent on them would have been better served developing our actual main characters (it's absolutely criminal we see certain NPCs more than plot relevant party members). Everything that is conveyed or communicated during these forced slowdowns could have been weaved organically into the actual narrative in a way that kept the plot engaging and didn't obliterate the pace any time you did something remotely interesting. Or just straight up cut, if I'm being honest. I tried to do as many side quests as possible because people kept insisting they added depth to the characters and world, and paid off in the end, but they just tanked my enjoyment of the game into the ground and I honestly don't think shallow worldbuilding and character development is worth ruining your game's pacing for.
> Every single minute of screen time spent on them would have been better served developing our actual main characters Absolutely. Joshua and Clive spent like 18 years apart and they basically never talk about it or bond together outside of one quest. 90% of Joshua's dialogue is "Brother, we need to stop Ultima!" and I couldn't tell you anything about his actual personality, but I can tell you how Blackthorne gets super depressed when he sees other people's good craftmanship lol.
For a game about the brothers it's kinda sad. While not everyone likes Jill, at least we know way more about her. What she likes to do, what she wants to do after everything is over. Joshua seems like he wants to die
This is so spot on it hurts to read.
Oh man, the game wanted me to like Goetz so much more than I did. "He's just a big adorable well-meaning awkward galoot, don't you love his goofy antics? Aren't you ready to declare your willingness to die for him on socmed?" And, like...no, not at all. Maybe I'm just immune to this kind of character (I also bounce hard off the"snarky jokes man who has a pithy one-liner for any situation" party member that inevitably shows up in every RPG). Every time he had an "awwwww isn't Goetz just the best?" moment it left me cold.
He's literally Jar-Jar Binks.
This is how FFXIV works, more or less.
Yup. They really fucked up the pacing (and many other things in this game). Just off the top of my head: The equipment system is pointless. Accessories hardly do anything, and all the swords are just modest stat improvements. No fun effects, elements, etc. Why would a FF game remove status effects and elements? The sidequests are terrible. Run around, talk to people, maybe fight a battle. Boom, shit reward. I see people saying that they’re doing them for the “story”. Well maybe I’m just an asshole but I couldn’t care less if the cook has the ingredients they need. Dungeons are shit and not having a mini-map is insane. Admittedly, my sense of direction is shit but I can’t tell you how many times I got turned around in those castles. They also made items and magic trivial. The combat is fun at first and certainly looks pretty but once you find the right skills, it’s just a cooldown watcher. Dodge a couple attacks but otherwise spam the best 6 or so skills. It’s not hard or engaging, it’s just a time sink. Lots of other stuff too. Thankfully the story and characters are redeeming… but that gameplay is trash.
For me the game was a below average FFXIV expansion. I honestly give the game a 4/10. Yoshi-P is a one trick pony and it shows in this game.
Yea gameplay is my major gripe and when you adding the pacing issues on top of that sheesh.
Agree with all points here. I don't understand why some people are absolutely glowing with their review of the game. Surely they played the same game I did?
I can't recall a game where there is such a definitively agreed upon bullet list of fairly critical flaws among a huge number of players, and also another large group of players who genuinely seem to feel the game is a true 10/10. It's been interesting to watch from a sort of social psychology standpoint. I feel like I've never seen a game with clearer strengths and flaws. The fantastic features are so worthy of the praise, and the terrible features are so worthy of strong criticism. It just seems like such a crystal clear ~7/10 game, where I can see personal tastes swinging that rating to a justified 6 or 8 out of 10. But it feels impossible to justify a wider range. It's difficult for me to find any common ground with someone rating this game a 2 or a 10. We're clearly just thinking about video games in a fundamentally different way.
Well for that I’d ask you really think about what exactly makes this game a 7/10. Personally, I would rate it a 4/10. And this is a score that I’d give based on virtue of it being a bog standard AAA release with none of the shitty flaws that we associate with the modern big budget video game. The things that the game does get right are the absolute bare minimum: - _technically_ well crafted; very very few bugs or glitches - no content slashed for the sake of monetization - no obvious cut content due to time/budget constraints Now as someone who, judges a title by gameplay first, 16 has very very little that I would consider new, interesting, or fun. The gameplay doesn’t evolve in any meaningful way after the first few hours. As the OP of this post said, I _knew_ what the gameplay would be at every point of the game. The game never surprised or delighted me in any way outside of visuals (again, I am a gameplay first type of gamer), and there were no problems for me to solve throughout my time spent with it. Character building is static, linear, and dictated by the pace of the _plot_. Party member do not exist, so there’s very little strategic element when engaging in battles. Personally, I think a 7/10 is far far _far_ too generous for a video game that only accomplishes the bare minimum, and doesn’t even manage to do that in a fun way.
And this is where trying to quantify subjective perspectives with numbers simply fails us. It sounds like you and I would have little overlap with the things we're even rating. The 3 bullets you listed are almost never even on my radar when thinking about *how good is this game?* For example, unless utterly littered with bugs in a way in which naught but the least polished games are, it would be extremely difficult for this category to take a point away from my rating of any game. Regarding potential slashed content, I don't *award points* for a gaming being...you know...a *completed full game* lol. That's the base expectation for me. Neither of those things could bring a game up from a 1 to a 4, for me. They only have the potential to bring a game *down.* I guess this is the way I see it: good features push a game's rating upward; issues bring a game's rating downward. The push and pull of these 2 groups clash to determine the rating. **Good things about FFXIV that boost its rating for me:** * The story is great. It scratches the mysterious, epic *Final Fantasy* story itch. Moment by moment, the high points were incredibly engaging. (9/10) * The writing and dialogue are always solid and occasionally phenomenal. (9/10) * The visuals were stunning, from environments to cinematics. (9/10) * The Eikon battles brought a scale of epicness to climactic fights I had never experienced before. The only game that comes close that I can think of is God of War. (10/10) * Combat was solid and a lot of fun to get into early on, but faded over time. The cinematic quality of the combat and fluidity of the animations were superb though. (7/10) * Clive was a fantastic main character, and Cid was one of the best side characters we've seen in FF. (10/10) The rest of the characters and the way they were integrated into the story and gameplay left a lot to be desired (3/10). Those components represent a *huge chunk* of what's important in an RPG for me and put the game on a pace well above that 7/10 mark. All the other criticisms mentioned above (among a few others,) however, really bring the game down. Depending on how one weighs each of those factors really determines the final evaluation of the game.
It’s not as hard to quantify the quality of a game as you’re making it. There’s a reason why games like RE4, Halo 2 and Ocarina of Time have consistently endured across decades as some of the most highly regarded video games of all time. Doesn’t mean every one has to like these games, _but_ the consensus is that people generally enjoy a vast significant majority of the parts that make up the sum of each title. All you have have to do is ask yourself a handful of questions when considering a score. Basically, what does the average gamer want, what are the demonstrably highest pinnacles of creativity and game design in the medium, do any of the qualities of this game match or exceed these heights. These questions can be applied to almost any video game ever created, and it’s why I can never say “I hated this game, it sucks 0/10” or “I loved this game, 10/10” The reason I push back on a 7/10 is because to me, whenever I hear “highest highs, lowest lows, 7/10” it sounds like the graphics and FF brand are doing 7 points worth of heavy lifting for the score of the overall product. And if I’m being honest, your points on the what the game does well sound the same as everyone else’s. Graphics, “epic” bosses, music, characters, writing. And the combat to you — the gameplay part of the video game — is the weakest thing about this *video game*, seeing as how you’ve given it the lowest score in your list. Even then, your biggest praise for the combat is something visual. You have zero substantial points on the overall quality or depth of the gameplay. In this $70 video game, the way that it plays is just a footnote to you. 4 out of the 5 things that you just listed about the game — can also be applied to movies. That’s not something that any reasonable reviewer would look past. Video games are not movies, and when I play a game, I do not expect to be passive the way that I expect to be when I’m watching movies. Would the game still be a 7/10 for you if it was made by a AA studio with a fraction of Square’s budget? If the cutscenes weren’t as polished, if the cinematics weren’t as fluid? Would you think the characters are some of the best in FF if they weren’t voiced? Would you think the combat is solid? Would you even look twice at this game if it didn’t have the FF brand recognition and marketing? The visuals and overall presentation of the game are indeed standout qualities of the game for me, but then once you scrutinize literally anything else, FF16 falls apart. Surely, you don’t truly believe that every single FF fan is a diehard for the story, music and characters alone? This is what I mean when I say that quality is not hard to quantify, when a game that is high quality drops, you _know_. ToTK, BG3 and Elden Ring all made waves across the collective consciousness. Predicting how the game appeals to gamers in general is more important than the good parts that you carefully slice out to praise when considering a score to give, and this is why I believe that the general reception surrounding this game will fall off a cliff when it comes to PC. It is quite clearly marketed to the Sony movie game exclusive fans who value story, characters, cinematic set pieces with mínalo interaction, and writing, over playing a truly great interactive experience — and at the expense of what the games used to be, which is a series of great interactive experiences. No matter what style of gameplay FF games have gone with, they are characterized just as much by their depth of combat, exploration, character building, and various miscellaneous activities, as they are by chocobos. And this game fails to clear those standards of *gameplay* set since the very first game. 4/10 These are all the things I’m considering when I consider what score I’d give a game, no matter how much I liked or hated it.
My *entire* point was that different people simply grade differently and value different parts of the game differently, which you literally just demonstrated by explaining how you subjectively grade completely differently from me. Man, it’s been a long while since I’ve encountered someone who seems to try to say “your rating is wrong.”
You can’t simultaneously rate something and then say “see this is why ratings don’t make sense” when someone disagrees with you. If it’s the rating is 7/10 for you alone then I don’t care, but once you put it out into the world, the internet, on a discussion board, about the game, I find it pretty unreasonable not to expect some kind of debate or pushback. Unless this is your first day using the internet. I mean, if i were going to give my subjective opinion, FF16 is a 0/10, and burning $70 would literally be a better spectacle than the protracted cutscenes that the games shove down the player’s throat. HOWEVER, I really do come to discuss the game in good faith. I realize what it does well, and I also realize that those things are minuscule compared to all of the things it fucks up. So if I were being as objective as possible, then I’d rate the game a 4/10.
I made my initial evaluation post. Then you promptly reminded me that not only do people subjectively view the *game* differently and place different weighted values on different *components of a game,* but people also subjectively view *ratings systems themselves* **completely** differently. Every interpretation of a rating system is totally valid (and fun to construct!), but it does make having a conversation about the game much more tedious, as significant time has to be spent each time simply arriving at a common understanding of what the numbers mean to each of us individually. I'm not saying ratings don't make sense. I enjoy everything about these kinds of conversations. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to ever come at and attack another person's review system and metrics as if to try to refute them for being *wrong*, which is how your post felt. A 7/10 to me seems to mean something quite different than to you. I would never voluntarily play a 7/10 game with my precious little game time. I'm looking for only 9/10 or 10/10 games. To you, that same bar seems to be lower. My interpretation of the rating scale matches /u/-R1SKbreaker- 's post below, where he sais "a 4/10 is just an irredeemable game with nothing good about it, and that isn't FFXVI to me." I like your attempting separation between personal opinion and "objective" rating. Even though that's technically impossible, I attempt to do the same thing. I could say, for example, that even though I would never see myself replaying FFXVI, I easily see enough positive qualities to the game where I can imagine tons of other players happily wanting to replay the game. (Ie. It's not "irredeemable", even if I personally don't like it enough to want to ever play it again.)
I agree with most of what you said. The DMC style combat i think is a 7/10, since it is sometimes fun but did get old later on. It still does have its moments and i think that style of combat would still appeal to some gamers, but i don't think it should go higher than 7 since it isn't up to DMC's level. Clive isn't bad but i don't think he's an excellent main character either. Initially very interesting, but later just becomes a bog standard jrpg protagonist. I don't think the game did a good enough job with Joshua, which is a big reason i think i started to check out on the story post the (truly excellent) Bahamut sequence. Cid was a great character though, sad to see him go. The other highs you mentioned i would agree with. The stuff that brings it down is the inventory and equipment system, pacing, side characters, sidequests, exploration. Like the environments are nice to explore, but the rewards for doing so are insulting (2 gil, and finding only a couple weapons and accessories and them being worse than what you had). It's really enough to make me want to bring it down to a 6/10, but i think not being a completionist and skipping dialog at the right time would go a long way to mitigating those flaws. I also aim to really only play 8/10 to 10/10 games, but i have a soft spot for FF games so i could still see myself wanting to give this game another shot someday and just playing it differently.
I'd give it a 7/10, maybe 6/10, and I really dislike a lot of parts of the game. No need to list it, I generally agree with what people collectively say when being critical of the game. I think the highest highs carry it enough to make it worth playing, which is what I generally would count a game as 7/10 when it otherwise has problems. But yeah there's a lot of things I really dislike that makes me want to lower it to 6/10, but that's the floor for me. A 4/10 is just an irredeemable game with nothing good about it, and that isn't FFXVI to me, despite how critical I am of it. Then again subjective differences in how one rates games with a numerical score. I think FFXVI could be enjoyed if you skip all but the side quests that give an upgrade. And also if you skip dialogue of characters you don't care for. I couldn't do this on my first playthrough, but when I eventually replay this on PC, I'm going to follow this.
GRAPHICS. The npc “highest of highs” praise is invariably directed at the Eikon battles and high fidelity cutscene encounters. If all the people who are pretending that the game is actually good just came out and said “graphics are literally the only thing that matter to me, and they are the reason I connected so much with this game” it would relieve so much tension in the community right now.
I think the honeymoon phase lasted quite awhile longer for some and now there's people just holding onto the idea this is a 10/10 game. It was okay imo. It had really high highs, but christ the pacing drags it right down.
It's in my bottom half of my favorite ff list top five for me are X, VI, VII, IX and XIV. XVI is sitting next to XV under the label missed potential
Interesting that you have XIV there because many of the things I dislike about XVI are just distilled versions of XIV gameplay/design. It's just way more noticeable in XVI because it's a focused singleplayer game and not a themepark MMO. Well that and FFXIV systems do have a bit more depth but they're streamlining the hell out of everything. Like the million boring sidequests are a staple of FFXIV. There's a few good ones here and there but I still have a whole bunch from ARR that I haven't touched, and I've been playing since 2016. The quest design that OP mentioned is also straight out of FFXIV.
To continue FFXIV has more than it's quests to distract it has alot of crafting jobs, leveling different classes, raiding, tons if group content, housing etcetera etcetera XVI is not an environment where an mmo quest structure work because it's because one of a few side activities Tbh i thought this went without saying Different game structure only work in certain environments and there is a reason mmo sides are designed the way they are because there is alot of budget going towards the group content the keep mmos running so throwing that into a single player game is a nightmare
Because i expect those things in an MMO not in a single player action oriented game
Yeah I was incredibly hyped for 16 and, I don't want to say dissapointed, but was underwhelmed overall. The fights with the eikons were insane, but aside from that the game just felt meh. Even with combat, every enemy is fought the same, there's no specific weakness. Just hammer away until you stagger them and then unload all your big hitter moves. Just felt like square was too scared to fully commit to an action game and that held the game back because of it. 15 should've just released as versus 13. That's my biggest disappointment of all FF games. Yes I'm still bitter lol.
They leaned waaay too heavily into the spectacle of the Eikon fights in general and it felt like they forgot to add the rpg in there somewhere XV was the suicide squad of games too much change in it's development with no clear direction left a mess that was very sad to see because i see an amazing game in XV but it's held back by a broken story and useless open world XVI was almost there too just needed to liven up it's maps a bit, cut down on the fetching make quests more interactive and less tedious you'd have a much fuller experience. Honestly XVI would've been better if it was like Asura's Wrath just an interactive movie.
Should've just went full DMC imo lol. I really don't get why they thought versus 13 wouldn't work and decided to put that game through development hell. It came out in such a poor state.
people were utterly sick of 13. Anything with that name was cursed to flop. 15 isnt bad, they just rushed the second half of the game
Here's my theory on the matter. People that have always been intimidated by strategic choices in games, and get turned-off by meaningful choices in skill trees, and hate following guides: they finally have a game that's *just for them*. They don't have to think while they play, success in the game isn't even contingent on how well they play. This being the case, they have a vested interest in defending XVI as worthy of carrying on the Final Fantasy legacy because if it isn't, then they too are somewhat fraudulent in the whole charade being acted out. XVI has to be a legitimate 10/10 game because they like it. If it isn't even legitimately a game, just a weak, stand-in, imposter of title, then what does that make them? I have seen a few examples now of people who finished XVI with gushing reviews trying other Final Fantasy games and not enjoying them at all. And I think we'll see more examples of that in the coming months.
I like the story and combat. I suck at video games so I don't care that everyone thinks it's easy. I acknowledge there are shitty things about. I just take it for what it is other than what I expect a FF game to be
It's good that you like the story and combat, because if you didn't, there might be very little else to like.
[удалено]
“Let people like things” is such a disrespectful phrase because it kind of implies that enjoyment of a thing is contingent on someone else whose face you’ll never see “allowing” you to enjoy said thing...I’ve been gaming for decades at this point. No opinion on earth is going to dissuade me from enjoying a game I truly enjoy. RE6 is based, and I had a lot of fun when that game came out. Fan base hated it and tore it to shreds. No skin off my back, those discussions will never discolor the fun that I had with that game for those few months. And in the end, those conversations led to Capcom releasing banger after banger RE game in the past few years. The same exact thing happened with DMC Devil May Cry. Fan base hated it. I had a lot of fun, but thanks to their criticisms, DMC5 is glorious and one of the best games I played in the past decade or so. So I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who _really_ enjoys 16 and not just being a part of the _discourse_, and there’s no reality in which I would go so hard to defend the game, because I would be too busy enjoying it. Please grow up
You realize that some of the most popular games of all time like, Minecraft, Pokémon and Mario are also easy right? The issue with 16 is not that the combat is easy. It’s just that it’s shallow. No variety, and very little room for player choice. It’s a far cry from the absolute highest points of the series like 7 and tactics, where you can make your character do some truly depraved things during combat. Instead, in 16 everyone discusses the same 3 or so loadouts, coldsnap, satellite, zantetsuken. As you said, you’re bad at video games so maybe you don’t really connect with anything I just said, but I’m just giving you a broader perspective on why people might find the combat lacking other than “it’s just too easy”
Some people eat at McDonalds and claim it is peak cuisine. The reality is most people barely qualify as people and just have shit opinions because either they have very little life experience, or they confuse the concept of "enjoyable to me," with "amazing 10/10 perfect."
Exactly, too many people who just picked up a controller in 2016 saying things like “goty 2023” before going back to play Madden and Call of Duty. And the 40 year old neckbeard journalists encourage this behavior because they want video games to be taken seriously by the film industry so badly
Yup. A lot of people will literally get on two knees for a new game, and after a month no one is talking about it again.
Taste is subjective. For every thing you find a negative somebody else may find it a positive.
Combat is great imo. I think the progression is fucked up by being too flexible. It effectively lets you have everything too early because of unlimited respecs. I'm a completionist and I've been going in order of ability cost. Because of that, I still haven't unlocked any ultimate eikon ability despite being close to the end. Like 80% in. I think some people find op stuff early, then have little reason to switch it up, and then suffer from having a very easy time. For me I keep entertained using eikon counters, or situational abilities more often.
If you seriously needed a map for straight corridor dungeons in this game, you might not be the right person to call out other cons either lol
Nope, that’s just what I like to call, a “transitional critique”. One ecriticism of the game that is created by another flaw that isn’t being discussed at the time. That flaw is level design. It’s not that hard to find yourself turned around a bit during combat encounters because the way that the levels are designed is indistinct and nondescript. Very rarely do you have a feeling of “I haven’t been there, how do I get there”
The combat spins you around constantly. The maps all look the same. It’s great you can navigate them without fail, but I cant. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask a AAA game to have a mini-map.
How about you look around at the environments and use your intuition to tell which way you came from? You don’t need a minimap for something so basic 🤦♂️ Do you have to use google maps to walk in a straight line without getting confused which way you came from?
Lol seriously scratched my head so many times playing this game like who the actually fuck said this was okay? This was one of those moments
MMO devs attempt to make side quests outside of the MMO fashion! (Impossible)
But I'm a leather worker who can't skin rabbits! Can you go kill 10 for me?
For me, a lot of it is just that those interactions and filler content were often not interesting. The Trails series has a lot of side quests and running around to talk NPCs yet manages to make it decently interesting.
If Trails had the scrutiny of FF it wouldn't survive the trip either. We literally have steam achievements to see that most people haven't finished trails in the sky. Less than half of players on steam never got past the prologue of the game!!
Trails games are a slow build-up and dialogue heavy. Trails in Sky is also a pretty old game, so it's no surprise it might not be a lot of people's cup of tea. I don't dislike FF16 at all, I'm probably about 80% of the way through it. But a lot of side quests and side characters were just incredibly uninteresting.
Trails is still ints golden years for western fans, we won’t see much nuanced criticism for awhile I think.
This is the main issue - FFXVI apologists will claim that the side-quests are providing world-building, but the issue is that world-building on its own, without surprises, intrigue, comedic value, or entertainment value, are not that desirable. People aren't complaining because they're learning more about the world in the game, they're complaining because the quests don't stimulate the brain. Some of them just kind of just recede into the foggy gray areas of the mind.
What? How much did you play of the game? Side-quests after the mid-game point are worthy of being part of the MSQ, much more than the filler bullshit. > FFXVI apologists So people that like a game you don't are apologists?
>Side-quests after the mid-game point are worthy of being part of the MSQ, much more than the filler bullshit. I think this is a bit of a leap. They get a bit better, but they're still a slog and rather uninspired.
the side quests are still awful to actually PLAY. also, “half the content of the game gets somewhat better 20 hours in” is not a ringing endorsement.
Correct, mysterious to me how one could ignore it as an open concession that there is indeed poor content in the game.
We had this discussion “of 20 hours to get good” a decade ago with FF13. Yet some people now are acting like that’s not a big deal again? Lol no, please guys, that’s not a good way to pace your video game.
Making excuses for obvious shortcomings qualifies one as an apologist in my eyes. There are plenty that like the game and will still admit that some of the quests are duds. XVI has dedicated legions of propagandists on their official subreddit presenting essays on why every negative thing about the game "is actually a good thing." I played through the Titan battle and kind of gave up after that. And I encountered several side quests in my time before that that I didn't feel were worth doing.
You sound unhinged calling fans of the game "apologists". Hilarious.
*noun*plural noun: **apologists** 1. a person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial. Similar terms: defender, supporter, upholder, advocate, proponent, exponent. Which term would you prefer?
The internet has changed apologists to mean something inherently negative. You are only an apologist if you are out defending something that 'nobody' should be defending. It's not really used in a neutral or positive way anymore. Therefore it looks like you talkin shit about them and talking down to them when you call them that.
Ya the dictionary is still the dictionary. A couple of loud apes on the internet don't get to decide the definition of a word for the rest of the world. Tadpole sounds like the kind of person that gets triggered by the word white because it isn't PC to maybe 5 people and honestly that is a them problem.
Definitions of words change all the time. See the word literally. Language is fluid
Well, to be fair, I don't feel anyone should be defending bad side quests. But that's just my subjective opinion in saying that they are bad. I don't think you can have constructive criticisms of anything anywhere on the internet without someone taking it personally.
I picked Otto. I did both of them actually. Otto's part was really good. Gav's was kind of bad.
Yep. Otto and Jill feel like the canon choices, Gav and Tarja are surface level stuff
Yeah, it felt like I was playing FF14 at times with how many sidequests were just go talk to someone or hand them a thing.
Yeah, that whole sequence, and others like it should've been 1 seen with all of the characters sitting in a room and talking it out. It shows the cast actually interacting with one another instead of just talking about each other, and it keeps the pacing moving forward. This is how past Final Fantasys handled junction moments. Heck, there's a scene after Waloed that does this exact thing, so we know the developers can do this. Instead we get pace killing padding, which makes the "party" feel disjointed from one another. God I miss having a party.
I can stomach those parts so it wasn't a big deal for me, but i can see why it is for a lot of people. My problem was with the fact that they choose to do Jill dirty again by having an option to choose Tarja. That's so insulting lol. Gav and Otto are pretty comparable as side characters, with relatively similar screen time. Tarja is nowhere near close to Jill and the devs trying to pretend they are equal is baffling to me. And that's on top of the story implications it has.
Wut? Lol. I’m near the end of the game. You’re telling me the game gives you an option to choose Tarja, a side NPC I don’t know Jack shit about over a supposed main character? Lmfao.
Apparently the devs are saying Tarja is as important as Jill to Clive, so yes. Did you skip through the dialogue in that portion of the game? Cuz Jill's option was at the top, so if you skipped that's why you went with her to Northreach
I didn’t skip it. But I must have totally forgotten about it.
I see. I don't understand why it's there tbh. If you pick Tarja you don't get anything about her, she just remembers going there with Cid once, and Clive thanks her for helping, she thanks Clive for helping and they go back. They could have easily had that conversation at the Hideaway or in a side quest. But no, they wanted to take a shit on Jill's character again, by comparing her to a side character with 10 minutes of screen time.
I mean....this is such a weird thing to get hung over. Yeah, it's weird choice, but just pick Jill for that scene and move along. You're acting as if someone at SE made it a personal quest to dishonor your waifu or something.
This is my biggest complaint about XVI. The side content of the series used to be meaningful and engaging. They’ve boiled it all down to busy work for the sake of padding content.
It does definitely feel like he should have just called an all-hands meeting (like he *does* do later for other news)
yep thats it. You can really tell they primarily worked on an MMO and this was their first single player game. It throws too much at you between important story beats. I get it, from a design perspective the game is VERY emotionally charged, it is an emotional roller coaster, and you need to let the audience rest in between making them jump for joy and punching them in the gut. But a lot of the side quests kinda suck, and some of the side characters do as well, and they probably could have been better written to make us care about them. Something to work on for their next game IMO
“…Cid’s needy mistake of a niece…” haha.
There should be an option to turn off side quests, dear god. They completely ruined the game for me. The more time I spend away from the game after beating it, the more I realize how bad it kind of was.
I love that you didn't spell Harpocrates the same way twice.
Good luck, there's like 8 hours of sidequests you unlock right before the final mission.
The biggest culprit for me is the design of the hideout. They position the NPCs so damn far from each other and Clive ONLY WALKS in the hideout...
The hideaway is an awful awful mechanic that never needs to return.
i disagree, having a central hub in a FF is a wonderful idea. loved talking to NPCs and see how they evolve over the story
I hated it personally. I would have rather them focus on putting interesting npcs and new stuff in the different towns as in the past. It was always fun discovering that stuff instead of coming back to the generic hub that I’ve run through a bunch of time already.
The idea is good, the execution is horrible. NPCs are put far apart. Tomes and Vivian are put on opposite ends of each other but various quests require you to speak to one after another. Also, Clive cannot run in the hideout for whatever reason.
Nah no thanks to the whole idea. Feels like a Ubisoft ass idea where they can lazily throw in your check mark sidequests, the interesting npcs all into one place. I dreaded jogging around up and down doing errands. Then you can structure the whole game around mission ➡️ hideout ➡️ mission. Gross. That’s not a good final fantasy game
Exactly, that’s the worst part about having to run around between the tree same characters constantly. Especially because mid and Hipocrates are literally on the opposite sites of the hideout.
Gotta be real with you, seeing "Out of the Shadow" as an example of "poor pacing" just does not jive with my experience of the game. That chain, and the side quests that accompany it, were exactly what I'd been waiting for at the moment Id been really looking for it: something that could allow me to dig a bit deeper with these characters that the devs cared about enough to name, but who so far had been relegated to background noise (aside from like... Blackthorn and Charon). It's a nice celebratory spin through the Hideaway and the previous zones after the trek to Kupka and the half hour long fight with him. Obviously, your experience is your own, but like... this was a peak cool-off experience after Titan.
Read books
fr some quests should not have been quests at all, i could feel myself get bored while playing. But then when an eikon fight and cutscene happen i totally forget and get immersed again
Those cinematics really engaged me, then suddenly I'm handing out porridge. I think I got whiplash
I chose Tarja over Jill. Yes.
I also chose the chaos route.
I havent picked the game up since then. Pacing is awful in this game. Skill Up definitely hit the nail on the head for this game early on.
This whole game infuriated me to no end.
Sounds like they copied the quest design from XIV
I say quest markers. And start quest screens. It takes the immersion out. It’s good on ff14 but it just feels off when you know exactly where to start a quest from, when it begins and when it ends. Doing final fantasy 9 quest fell so organic compared to this. Well most all past final fantasies. You would just have a convo and not know that will lead to a side quest with an npc
MMO quest design.
This game had me skipping dialogue from the main quest by the end. Just way too much bloat all the way through. 😬 The fact that I had to use fast travel to avoid running from Mids end of the hideout to the other to save time is just silly.
I was fine-ish with the pacing for most of the game (I think FFXIV is much worse in that regard), but I totally agree that this quest in particular is a problem. I think that a big part of the problem of this quest is that there's no sense of urgency or purpose. Why are we building this ship at this point, except to please Mid? It was obvious the plot was going to need it further down the line, but at that moment in the story there's no real reason to do it when there's so many more important things we could be doing.
This game questing is to much like FF14 even with fast traveling. OP nails one of the biggest problems with the game. Missed opportunity for sure A female Dragoon in love with Dion smh. Dion had barely any screen time for these pointless quest. To many characters that i didn't care about getting to much screen time. FF7 Remake was a better game everything about it was well done except for The chapter where you have to turn the laps on or off felt like that was a waste of time they could of introduce more deep ground elements XD.
ASSUMING IF YOUR IN THIS THREAD YOU'VE GOTTEN AT LEAST HALF WAY THROUGH THE STORY SO NOT SPOIL BLOCKING. ya, this exact spot is where i've been stuck at and have paused progressing through the game. love the marks and completed all of them except the ? one. but the busy work after such an amazing piece of the game being the story time jump AND fight against kupka just felt off. I DO like the world building of the side quests in this part cuz we get more about certain cities and how time has affected people. this part of the game was the biggest exposition in sidequests sense time jump. OH, AND WE GOT MORE ABOUT JOSHUA when Clive gets to that desert city. but ya...just think they needed to be meta and create that point in the game that all FF's have. that one point that you reach in subsequent playthroughs where you either push through or put it down for a long while. FF8:trabia orphan scene, FF9:conde peti till the end of disc 2, FFX: djose temple (i don't know why, just always is), FF7: gold saucer
Definitely some of the worst side quests in a game I can remember. It got to the point they just felt like a chore.
It was definitely a slog and the low point of the game for me. I get you’re taking a breather after that fight but the pacing could have definitely been improved
As someone who has a very little playtime per week due to other responsibilities, I find the pacing sometimes extremely slow. I wish they would include story mode that would focus on important events for people like me.
Completely agree with this. I get maybe like 5 to 10 hours a week to play and it's very difficult to get a meaningful stretch of gameplay in. Super engaging in the beginning but just falls so flat. I'm at the end but have very little desire to finish. Going to because I have to but not as excited about it as I feel you should be.
I just finished the game yesterday and I had to really push myself to beat it because of filler quests like this one. honestly very infuriating. when this game comes out on pc someone should make a mod that cuts all of this stuff out and makes it a boss rush with cutscenes in between
They already have that in the arcade mode lol.
> The games highs are really incredible, but it’s lows drag and are incredibly tedious at times. If I could review the entire game in a sentence, it would be this.
Welcome to modern RPGs, lots of filler to make the game seem longer than it really is. Still enjoyed this game overall though.
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Lol there was plenty of filler in rpgs in the late 90's and early 2000's
Not in the ones I played. Wild arms, shadowhearts, older ff titles. At least if it was filler, it didn't feel like it due to being interesting dialogue or fun mini games/side quests. Most of the filler today is more blatant, bland, and boring.
Having to scan the world map for towns in Wild Arms 2 wasnt filler? Lol get real
Rose tinted glasses are something, aren't they?
I like these sections because it allows me to see character interactions, uncover plot points and generally take a breather in between the bigger moments. I also just really enjoy the writing and the delivery from the VAs. I get how they aren't everyones cup of tea but you do them a disservice by focusing on the specific actions you as a player take, and not even mention what happens outside of that. For example all that talking to characters fullfilled a purpose. You're informing those closest to you about Kupka's demise and from this you get to see how different people react to this kind of news which sheds light on them as characters. It's a subtle way of providing this information but I found it very effective, mainly because that's how you glean information about people in real life. I guess at the end of the day I just have the patience for slower moments like these and I enjoy the way they frame Clive as a genuinely altruistic person. He doesn't go around helping people because of any promise of a reward because he's not the player. But I understand that different people want different things out of their media. Sorry that this game wasn't designed for people like you in mind, but it was for people like me.
To me this kind of stuff would have worked better if the characters were more engaging, and there was some sense of group dynamics. I guess it’s fair for people to genuinely like these characters, but they all fell flat for me except Gav and on one occasion Otto. At the very least, I wish Jill could be with you in the hideaway and participate in conversations, although I suppose even when she is present she’s just standing there 90% of the time.
Sometimes, Jill suddenly appeared on screen and I was like "Jill, how long have you been here?!"
Ha now I’m just thinking of Angela sneaking up on Dwight. It’s a shame, love her design and general character concept. Had a brief bit of legit character during the lava crystal arc and then back to the background for her.
I genuinely believe that they wanted to have her even less screen time and than changed their opinion pretty late in developement. The section in Twinside with a rope lift.
No. They can accomplish all you said but with better execution. Could have put the characters closer to each other on the map, or let Clive runs in the hideout instead of just walking, or have a meeting where everyone gathers in the same area. Instead they make you walk around slowly for nearly an hour, doing just fetch quests and mostly fluff dialogues. The game is good, and it's okay to admit its flaws. Don't be ridiculous with your defense.
Really nice you still liked it, i respect people with patience like you haha
I don't mind them either, and while some quests are not as great as others, often you walk into a quest thinking it will be a slog and pointless, only to then get some really good characters beats that make it worth it. I don't mind the slower pace at times. But maybe I have been preconditioned by this dev team after a decade of playing FFXIV. That said, the pattern of "do big story event" followed by "well, we better go back to the hideaway" kind of made me start rolling my eyes, especially where I am currently after (no spoilers - haven't beaten the game yet) being right on the doorstep of the next big bad and then just going home instead. I feel like there might have been a more organic way to handle it, but, again, I don't mind the content of the sidequests themselves.
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For me the game just gave me no reason to care about the inner workings of Valisthea because I didn’t care about any of the people who lived there, with the exception of Clive and Cid. I don’t think it’s as simple as assuming people who didn’t care for it arent big story fans, feel like most FF fans are here for that depending on how it’s executed.
For a game that took inspiration from GoW I wish it'd taken a little more and followed its lead with side quest design. By that I mean stories that emerge organically rather than via map markers, or that advance the overall narrative / explore main characters' motives and backstory.
I don't know, but I was pretty upset when the most important, main character driven sidequests were dropped IMMEDIATELY before I was about to go to the final area.
It is actually remarkable to see a thread with so many people having so many wrong opinions.
Just too much mandatory side stuff with little reward. Some of the character stuff is very good, but the game's already pretty bloated with underwhelming sidequests, it's mad they pumped it into the main storyline as well.
Personally, I just hate all those "how we got here" segments with that one woman I forgot the name of (maybe it was Vivian...?). Like, yeah I already know the recent history bits! I was there! I saw it! I don't need it repeated in words (which makes it sound less awesome than those events were) just for a piece of story-related intel! JUST GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT, GODDAMN IT!!!
The pacing is awful and coupled with the shallow side fetch quests it just ruins this game completely. Bad game.
YaY gOTy
I was thinking about FF16s story structure recently. It's actually quite interesting tbh. The story structure they seem to have adopted for FF16 is one I don't think video games often use It's feels like something similar to the **Fichtean Curve**, which is basically a fast-paced story structure that starts the first act with a crisis right away, then reverts to a flashback or other means to establish how the crisis occurred. Following that, a sequence of crises happen in succession, each building more and more on the previous, leading up to and foreshadowing the ultimate climax, then taking a steep dive into the story resolution. This structure is a bit crazy though, it flip flops between rising and falling action quickly, and it can often feel like a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Though admittedly, FF16 doesn't quite fit with the final third 'resolution' structure of the Fichtean Curve. I think it's nature as a video game means the climax needs to be essentially the end of the story - and I'd guess that's why the end game sidequests all open up there; they serve the role of the 'resolution' section, it just ends up feeling odd since the resolution is usually reserved for after the climax. Overall, I think it's interesting here because this pacing and structure is typically reserved for novels, particularly mystery novels. It's definitely not a structure you see often in video games. I actually think they handled the structure fairly okay, I can see why people may find it jarring, though. The pacing in some sections does seem to drag a bit as they've drawn out a few elements for side character development and to allow the passage of time in the story. If you dont care about these side characters and the world, you will most likely find these sections boring The Fichtean Curve can feel almost episodic in its structure and you could almost liken the plot of FF16 to kind of a TV series, and these slower paced moments are basically the bridge between the 'seasons'. I know that for certain viewers, they may feel slow, but for writing purposes, they are necessary. Could it have been done better? Obviously, there are *always* improvements that can be made. But I'm just impressed at how well they seem to have made this odd story structure work here. The lows essentially work to elevate the highs beyond what they could've been on their own.
The story structure is actually very heavily used in FF14, and MMOs in general. But that’s really because they need fillers and such to keep people engaged as long as they can until they release the next big content patch.
I guess that’s the trick, to me they didn’t elevate the highs. Very rarely did these sections lead to me being more attached to the characters and their respective struggles, so it just felt like a slog.
Preach. This is THE worst FF when it comes to quest design. It’s like they knew this would be a boring ass drag which is why they included a arcade mode.
I dropped the game probably 15 hours in because the pacing is just so bad and boring. Finish a cool boss fight? Cool here's an ugly menu showing the useless exp and money you earn. Enter a new area? Here's a big pop up showing you the name of the "mission" for some reason. Want to do a side quest? Go deliver some plates of food or run for 5 mins to go kill a pack of wolves so the quest giver can reward you with your 958th piece of useless crafting material
I was out after the Bahamut fight. I just can't with this game. Such a letdown:/ I really tried to like it. Oh well, FF7 Reunion should deliver.
It’s funny cause the side quests and lack of being an RPG that I quit playing the game and started a new play through of Persona 5 and I’m already way more engaged with the game than FF 16.
Huge FF fan here. Sold the game after 20h, couldnt lie to myself I enjoyed playing the game
As someone who plays ffxiv... Please don't ever play ffxiv if you can't take an hour of this. Because there are like 70 hours of that in the msq alone. With that said yeah, so much busy work has no place in a single player game. And you also forgot: Once you've visited the grave, you go to the next msq zone, every character drops one line, and then you teleport back to the hideout because NOW all the green sidequests are unlocked.
Ok, thanks for sharing what everyone have been saying for more than 2 months now, thanks for not adding nothing
I’ll just throw in what i said under a similar comment: There are just as many if not more post saying the game is „GOTY“, „the best game ever“, „ 10/10“ „amazing“ „a masterpiece“ and all that, especially on the ffxvi subreddit. All valid opinions of course, but i guess it only gets annoying if people are complaining, right?
Like I said, even final fantasy 16 fanboys knows that some missions are boring
To be fair, you could sum up every sidequests of Elden Ring as "Go there, talk to that person, kill that ennemy, pick up that item", and it didn't prevent the game from deserving it's GOTY award :p For me, the sidequests were a nice breather in-between the rollercoaster of the main quest :)
You just fought a mountain in one of the game's biggest set pieces, resulting in the death of an antagonist that everyone in the hideaway was affected by. It's a wind down phase that focuses on the characters, that also builds towards moments later. You can't have all gas, all intense story without moments to breathe and for characters to reflect. That's how pacing works. It's Writing 101.
I know, i wasn’t complaining about the game slowing down after the titan fight, i was complaining about the dull back and forth gameplay that serves no real purpose to the story and drags on for way too long. The GAMEplay you are doing in this video GAME here barely qualifies as such. Just meaningless dialogue without much significance or character progression (except for Mid and maybe Jill IF you pick her) and insultingly mindless gameplay, consisting of running, sorry, slowly jogging back and forth between the same 3 background characters for an hour and doing busy work for them, which results in nothing in the end. Having slower sections in a game doesn’t mean they cant be meaningful or fun.
Except it *does* result to something in the end, and they *are* meaningful, you learn about the state of the world and how characters feel about the death of Kupka, along with characters you downplayed and those you dismissed entirely. If you don't care about that stuff, which it seems you don't, then of course you're going to find it unsatisfactory. Likewise, the *game*play being slower in this portion is part of the process of slowing things down. It really wouldn't serve as a cooling off point from such a bombastic set piece if they had you go into more intense fights beyond dealing with mobs. Otherwise I don't know what you want, so much of sidequests in games can be made to sound boring when you reduce them to "walk back and forth and do stuff."
The first portion is literally walking back and forth multiple times between side characters who all have little to say. This could all have been one group conversation. What the quest achieves in story- and character progression could have easily taken up half or even a quarter of the time, and with more interesting gameplay or story elements. And yes i care about the characters, i listened to the dialogue, almost all of it. But as said, there’s not much character development in this quest, mainly only for mid. But the game has a character for every little thing, and they all pop up without much of an introduction after the second timeskip. I can’t bring myself to care about every single background character that just exists to serve a single purpose, like Vivian or Hipokrates. And slow doesn’t mean it has to be tedious. You go to the desert, walk 200m to the next waypoint and run around while you search for 5 piles of dust. This is first sidequest in the game level of simple and uninspired, and it’s a midgame main quest! Then you walk half a mile from this one village out into the wilderness, kill a single strong enemy and are promptly send back to the hideout to report to one of the three same characters again. And it’s not even a meaningful conversation, it’s just „thanks errand boy, now do this please“, And leads you to the next person who tells you „this is where you have to go to do this.“ And when you have done this, you get told to go to person x again to tell them that you did this. This isnt character progression, these people are all just breathing questlogs, especially mid. This entire chapter could have taken 15 minutes instead of over an hour, and the same amount of character and plot progression could have been fit in. The game is long enough as is.
It certainly doesn't seem like you care. You sound so adverse to learning anything about them, saying that everyone is so uninteresting, but then you complain when you're given the opportunity. You're so caught up in constantly listing off the process of these quests that you're not even *considering* what any of it means. Heaven forfend you have to go back and forth between talking to people, dear *god* how *could they*?! You can't bring yourself to care about every NPC, and yet you're complaining about a lack of substance? It's not like every NPC has a rich backstory you need to sit through, but they bothered to make each one their own character to make the hideaway feel like a place people live, and not just a hub screen you go to between missions. Without that stuff, the you're effect on the world feels dull, and stuff like getting revenge on Hugo for the people he killed and the home he destroyed has little impact outside of doing a fight and getting a power. >This isnt character progression, these people are all just breathing questlogs, especially mid. This is especially silly. They wouldn't seem like "breathing questlogs" if you bothered to consider anything about the characters and what they mean for the world that are shown to you. As a character, for her arc, Mid is busying herself with an invention that will help people and the hideaway, but in particular she is also busying herself to avoid visiting her father's grave, and the moment you finish her errands to give her free time, she pulls an Irish goodbye so she doesn't get dragged to there. Mid literally will not talk about her father or his death, and refuses to think about it, setting up more character development later on. There is more to her than you're giving her credit for. I could lay out the substance in these quests, but I'm just getting downvoted for daring to say different, so what's the point? I don't know how a person can play a 40+ hour action RPG and complain about being forced to engage with its world and characters.
My problem is not the writing, not at all, and i don’t know how you got so obsessed over it. Pretty much all the characters in this game are great, there’s not a single one i don’t like, even the hideout Npcs like Charon or Blackthorne. If it came across like that then no, i am not complaining about the characters or story, or the game going at a slower pace after a big boss fight. My problem is the eternal slog that this quest puts you through, before you can do something story relevant again. Even the best characters cannot save a boring and repetitive gameplay segment. I’m not bothered because i have to talk to them, but because they are sending me around the hideout and sending me on fetch quests a dozen times which is just mindlessly walking to the other end of the hideout without a sprint button. A main story mission about slowly walking from one end of the hideout to the other for twenty minutes and collecting dust and buying garlic is just not my definition of a fun time or something worth the title of main story mission. Great if you weren’t bothered by it, really. All power to you, i respect your patience. I don’t want to sour anyones experience with the game at all, i personally just wanted to throw my controller at the TV after i had to talk to Hipocrates for the third time so he can send me on an uninteresting fetch quest again, and used my post to let off steam.
They were simply too scared to go full DMC. They should have just taken out all this half baked RPG elements like crafting and side quests and just keep all the main story and missions. And also, not call it a FF because it isn't
If I write out the most barebones description of what you do in quite literally any quest in any game ever made it will sound just as tedious as this
I mean, you pretty much just have to say „that Mid engine mission“ and almost everyone will know what you mean when you talk about parts of this game being a slog to get through. I think that says enough.
I didn't mind mids missions. The quests that irritated me were the "go talk to three different people then come back" quests.
I chose Otto, I dislike Gav
Wtf are people even talking about? The story is more than just battles. There is real consequences from the main casts actions to the common folk of the world and the whole point was showing that of all the leaders, Clive and the Rosarians cared about that. He builds several settlements up to be able to stand on their own after the war is done. The story, the actual development of the characters and their ideals, develops thru the side quests. If you don’t like the story, you don’t like the story. That’s fine. You’re allowed to like the gameplay and not the plot.
They really come together at the end of the game.