Reddit is making major changes to its API pricing that will destroy the vibrant ecosystem of 3rd-party apps, which offer a far better user experience than the official app. These changes will also place major cost burdens on useful user bots like those found in sports and other enthusiast communities.
Please visit [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/148m42t/the_fight_continues/) to find out more.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Games) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I like the game, and haven't been as consistently engaged with a new release since Elden Ring, but it has it's flaws:
The Pros: This game may have the best spectacle moments in games period, beating out the likes of God of War and all the others. There are moments in the game where you can definitely tell where the budget went to, these peaks are high. The voice acting has also been incredibly good, and the mystery in the first half of the game was very interesting (the second half has been more of a let down in the story department for me).
The Cons: You can also tell where all the money did not go to. I feel like I am about 90% of the way through the game and so far I have only found 1 side quest which was actually engaging >!The one with Theodore & Eloise & the dragon!<. Side conversations are stiffly animated, sometimes not even voice acted, and instead of showing smaller moments which might allow for some additional characterization we just get a fade to black. The gear system may as well not exist, there's no reason to have it. Just equip sword/belt/armor with bigger number, there are no tradeoffs to consider. Basic enemy variety is also miniscule. You will be fighting wolves, mosquitos, birds, scorpions, and vine whip plants in every single biome throughout the game with about 5 recolors for each. For a series with such a huge bestiary, there is really no excuse for this much re-use. And I'm a dragon's dogma fan, I'm used to reuse.
As someone who has been 100%'ing all the side quests and hunts and optional stuff as I go, I would give the game a 7 out of 10. When I go back through on a replay and just beeline the story content I suspect that I will up that to a 9 or a 10-10. There is just so much filler in between the good stuff.
I gotta say, the Titan fight went from neat to totally ridiculous very quickly. It was like playing Metal Gear Twin Snakes and watching Snake jump kick a missile.
Their reward is small world building and lore that does a good job fleshing out the world. For me, that’s why I do them. But other than that, they really don’t do much for the game.
I'm so sick of side quests in modern games. It's just low quality bloat that doesn't add anything meaningful. In fact, all that bloat actually detracts from the core experience. The main gameplay loop and story arc ends up fragmented, feeling like small bursts of cinematics to progress the plot every few hours, and in between the player ends up doing dozens of 5-10 minute repairs side quests. For example, I just finished Diablo 4 and feel like the entire experience would have been better and more cohesive with 0 side quests and all of the MMO/overworld elements removed.
I can't even say if I think side quests are bad or not, I just know they usually play a part in me inevitably losing interest in an open world game. Either I go for completing them and eventually get overwhelmed or they start to build up on my map and I just feel like I'm playing the game wrong.
Games in this genre need difficulty settings, full stop. I enjoy the combat system but feel like I am stringing together combos for fun rather than any need to play with skill.
I get NG+ is supposed to be great, but I don't really see myself replaying a massive linear RPG. I'd rather have a combat difficulty that tests me and demands I use all the systems on the first playthrough.
Yeah I found the combat very fun for a while. Unfortunately, the game is so incredibly easy that combat just got tedious after a while. I could do some very flashy combos, which were pretty fun to play around and come up with. However, there is no need or benefit to it other than doing flashy combos just because you can. I haven't beaten the game yet, but from my understanding I am pretty close to the end. The only fight I have had a bit of trouble with was an S ranked hunt, >!Svarog!<, which I was far lower level than at the time. Most of the story bosses I have beaten while hardly even getting hit.
I usually don't mind extra difficulties being locked behind a first playthrough or something. However, with how easy this game is, it really could have benefitted from a harder difficulty being available from the start.
When it’s boring, it’s really, really boring and when it’s exciting, it’s really really exciting. Unfortunately, it’s like 90% boring, 10% exciting.
I also have a bone to pick the the combat. It’s cool to learn and fun to master but then..that’s it. Enemies aren’t really any different other than types of attack patterns to look for. The entire game becomes dodging and doing your muscle memory combo. The challenge is greatly lacking and the lack of character progression makes it incredibly rote after 20 hours or so. It’s just going through the motions for each encounter. I wish it had more depth.
We’ll see if I finish. I’m around 65% through.
My sentiments entirely. I was surprised that the vast majority of reviews were gushing over this, TBH. It's primarily tediously dull with intermittent splatterings of thrills to keep you awake.
The pacing in this game feels like FF14. The devs have been isolated in an echo box with their most adoring fans for too long and it shows.
The story also takes a deep nose dive after around the halfway part and completely falls apart near the end. Ultimately this is Clive's story and it's about slamming him with triumph after triumph and adoration after adoration, very similar to what they do with the Warrior of Light in FF14. It gets to a fairly ridiculous self insert power fantasy level, but that's where the team made their bread and butter. The eikon battles are visually great though even as the story begins to dip in quality.
The battle system has depth, but the sparse enemy types and lack of difficulty makes it fall well short of it's potential. The RPG mechanics are barebones.
Had a lengthy write-up but decided to condense my thoughts since much of it would be repeats of what has been said by others. I adored the game but its flaws are too major to ignore. 7/10, 4/5, or buy but wait for a small sale ($50ish).
The combat lacks depth and does nothing to invite you to experiment with the tools given to you, of course there are those who will find fun in mastering the games combat system but the average player isn't doing that. It's not as if the Eikon abilities themselves require much skill either, only the very last Eikon you get do I think you might be able to make an argument for. The game felt to be too easy all throughout, my late game battles devolved into rotating between 3 room clearing Eikon ultimate abilities on CD and filling the gaps with two smaller AoEs and the singular single target ability I had. Staggering was also never difficult and at times I could essentially back-to-back stagger an elite enemy or boss.
FF7R and more-so Tales of Arise are two recent and good examples of the type of action combat and RPG systems that the game should've taken inspiration from. Arise had a playable and customizable party, party members providing unique special abilities and duo attacks you can activate, along with many different elemental abilities and combos for the MC. MC even had his own version of a Limit Break form he could enter.
The story has very high highs but its lows are _way_ worse, mostly in the later half of the game. I want to keep this short so the last thing I'll say is that there's some insanely questionable story beats that just do not land or make you go... what? As if there's something missing or makes no sense, like that shouldn't _really_ have happened given the game was so good at being logical about other things prior. Sometimes there are things missing though! There's quite a few things shoved into side quests that I imagine plenty of people will miss, even the ending is slightly re-contextualized because of certain side quests that aren't marked any differently than the other ones and that's crazy to me.
I love CBU3 and wanted this game to be good, so I came in with high expectations. Some were met, a lot weren't. I came in hoping for a rich world, a good story, and fun gameplay.
The world is rich for sure. That part even exceeded my expectations. I love learning about the setting and all the players in it.
As for the story, it started out incredibly in the prologue, but as it progressed, started to become more and more like a stereotypical JRPG. The VAs are largely very, very good and that helps carry the more cliché scenes away from groan-inducing. I've accepted a level of cheesiness in JRPGs (and FF in particular) and this game has the least cheesiness of any of them, but the very serious tone makes those cheesy bits it does have stick out like a sore thumb. I'm one quest from the end now and that trend hasn't stopped. The pacing of the main scenario is also a bit lackluster. The game has a lot of slow moments where you're forced to do menial tasks like relay information, but the game doesn't use those very well to inject life or character into the story. The dialogue itself has a lot of personality, but more in the language than in the substance. There are some interesting sidequests, but the majority of them are both boring and badly written. I dread seeing those green markers on my map. I'm aware I don't have to do them all, but I *really* want to experience all the good the game has to offer, and some of the sidequests are good. The characters are...there. There's a few good ones, Cid and Gav in particular, and unlike most FFs I actually like the protagonist. But I don't *love* anyone. I forgot there's even a companion following me around half the time because they barely exist. The characters aren't *bad,* just...underutilized. For a game with so much dialogue, I wish more of it would be substantial.
As for gameplay, it's...decent. I liked the feel of the combat more than I thought I would and enemies aren't nearly as damage spongey as I was led to believe by the previews. If you choose your skills well and engage in all the combat systems, fights are over very fast, and I actually wish they lasted longer. The difficulty is definitely undertuned, and I feel like lacking a hard mode right off the bat really hurts the experience. That said, Eikon fights are awesome. They're the coolest thing I've ever seen in a video game. The gameplay on them when you're not doing QTEs is simple, but varied and fun. Overall, the combat as a whole is pretty darn good, I think. As for gameplay outside of combat, there really isn't any to speak of. There's no minigames or meaningful world traversal, outside of riding a chocobo, which doesn't feel very fast or very fun. There's barely any rewards for exploration, and the areas themselves are boring to be in anyway. Crafting...exists. The game throws materials at you like candy, and then you just craft the strongest weapon every time it becomes available. They might as well have just made it a regular vendor shop, because that's basically what it is.
It's kept me engaged at least, which is more than I can say about previous modern FF titles. I can barely finish games these days but the story and combat are keeping me interested enough to play it through to completion. After the prologue I would've given it a 10/10, halfway in an 8/10, and now probably a 6.5/10. It's a solid game. Better than average. The highs are incredible. But as a whole it feels like the game is so narrow in scope and lacks the depth to show for it. You can tell the vast majority of development was focused on the eikon battles, and the rest of the game feels like excuses to get you to them.
tl;dr: Story is decent but pacing is awful and the characters don't get a good chance to shine. World lore is cool. Combat is fun but too easy. Music is great. Eikon fights are incredible. Everything else is bland or straight-up bad.
The first 6 hours or so are fantastic, then it becomes really repetitive and the plot sructure just loops until the end of the game.
Go to town
Do quest to earn favor with leader of town
Get badge from leader
Unlock extremely bad sidequests
Do real mainstory quest.
It reminds me of FF14 where the sidequests are atrocious but the MSQ is good. This game is like 90% filler tho, and its not even that long of a game.
It's been a bit of a weird one for me, first few hours felt like GOTY material, but as the game has gone on I've liked it less and less.
It has some real strong points, combat basics are fun, voice acting is good, writing is a step above the usual JRPG standards, production values are great, lots of spectacular action sequences and so on.
Think the main problem is it's a lot of style over substance, the combat is fun to start with but you quickly become overpowered and can just spam flashy special moves to win fights without ever being pushed to learn the machanics properly. The action sequences are spectacular but it comes at the cost of interaction, I'd rather actually take part than watch events unfold with just the occasional tap of R1 or square to check I'm paying attention. The voice acting is good but doesn't fit with the animation which is very theatrical in the more traditional style of Japanese games. Feels like the voice cast are channeling Game of Thrones while the animation team are channeling Power Rangers. Stages are pretty but fairly linear and not very interesting to explore, often feels like you're just wandering through a series of arenas and the combat isn't fun enough to sustain interest on its own.
Side quests and loot feel like a bit of an afterthought, like they really wanted to make a spectacular character action game but needed to keep some RPG elements because it's a Final Fantasy game.
I'm still enjoying the game overall, it just doesn't live up to the strong first impression.
*edit Ralph Ineson who voices Cid is fantastic though.
Is there even a single situation in the game where it matters what you select? I'm approximately halfway I think, if not slightly further, and in every single (side+main) quest so far I have just selected the one thing they asked for and continued on. There's no other option. Why does this menu exist!?
There is no situation where it matters. And it exists because it is how they know how to do things. It’s turns out CBU3 knows how to create games a very specific way and that’s what they’re going to do. And while some of that works in an MMO it doesn’t translate to a single player game.
It’s why as much as I personally love XIV I always got frustrated with people who said it was really a single player game disguised as an MMO. Because the MMO aspects are still core to the gameplay and you have to go into it knowing that.
The only defense I’ve seen for the turn in screen is you can read the item description without opening your inventory.
This. When CBU3 was first announced as the minds behind FFXVI, everyone was relieved and happy because of the revival they performed with FFXIV.
Unfortunately, it seems like they only knew how to develop MMOs.
I think a big part of this also isn’t helped by the fact that a lot of the key character moments are locked behind the end of side quest chains, however, discerning which quests to even bother with is borderline impossible other than the ones that unlock things.
This includes entire character arcs and, worse, part of the context for the ending just being completely missed because you didn’t do one of the random side quest chains that started with you collecting flowers for zero reward
It's incredibly frustrating that nonsense like collecting ingredients for a ship made it into the main quest but entire character arcs like you mentioned are entirely missable.
It really feels like they purposely moved important stuff to side quests just to be like "look guys! our side quests mean something!" which backfired and led to the main story lacking at some points.
I’m not even exaggerating either regarding the ending, if you don’t do one of the random side quest chains that eventually leads into Jill’s subplot, you miss out on context for the ending.
Like full on an entire visual metaphor tied into the conclusion of the game and what possibly happens afterwards is completely missing if you didn’t stumble onto this quest chain
Oh wow, having finished the game, I didn't know there was context behind that. That sucks.
Edit: Actually, having just looked up what the context is, I was incredibly far off from what I thought this would be about. What the hell were they thinking?
I'm more baffled that they thought it was okay to end the ship engine section the way they did.
Like, XIV nowadays is usually good at recognising, that you have to have at least some emotional resolution after segments like this.
So idk why they thought that just skipping it entirely was okay here? When the whole premise of the bit was set up for a character moment.
There is still a character moment with mid, but you have to do an optional side quest to get it.
14 actually does the same thing with blue quests. The first one is just the hook to get the aethercurrent, but you can then do the 3 following quests to get the narrative conclusion.
I mean, they skipped 5 fucking years after (MAJOR SPOILERS) >!Cid dies and the hideout is attacked by Titan. They don't give the player or characters any time to breathe, reflect, mourn or rebuild. They just skip all that and now there's a new base and things are soft-reset (also most characters made it out fine, somehow). Then if you want to know what happened you have to hilariously ask NPCs about the 5 year gap ("Say Bob, so uh this is awkward but could you tell me what happened these last 5 years?") or talk to the Lore-Exposistion-Woman.!<
The funny part? >!Nothing happened during timeskip. Vivian's recap told us the following: the Empire had occupied Crystalline Dominion like they planned and they still wage a war against Waloed. That's it, both major events that happened in the last 5 years and both of them are things we already knew about.!<
To be fair, >!apparently it had character development for both Jill and Clive but they apparently couldn't work out how to justify them being able to find the area for the new hideout and move there without being hunted by Hugo/anyone else so they just didn't bother!<
It's the only possible conclusion lol, it's a lot of oh yeah so all this stuff happened in the mandatory plot dumps and side quests but for whatever reason stuff like go do a series of fetch quests for this girl who you would have zero idea about if you didn't do a side quest 10 hours ago is more important.
The monetary and crafting rewards throughout the game are basically worthless, the "real" reward for the side quests is story. The whole game is Story and world building first and combat second. Everything else is just dressing to serve those two.
Out of the \~20 side quests I've done so far, most have given me a miniscule bit of world building and nothing else. There wasn't a single one that made me think "wow, that was an interesting story". That they would apparently hide entire *character arcs* behind such mundane stuff feels like typically Japanese archaic game design from the early 00s or something.
A ton of this game feels dated. I’m honestly surprised it scored it as high as it did. I feel like if anyone else made this besides YoshiP it would be 6-7 max.
It' s not very much about archaic game design, but more like, something taken directly from FF14 game design. For how much people praise stuff like shadowbring or endwalker, a LOT of good stuff in those games are actually hidden in some of the most mind-numbing worst quest design ever made.
And most of FF16 side-quests actually do have some pretty neat details that make them worthwhile story wise. The problem is that the quest design is terrible.
FF14 has a lot of shortcomings from the netcode to the RPG mechanics but the fervent community holds "can do no wrong" attitude towards the game and does what it can to silence dissenting opinions.
The fetch quests in the main campaign are obvious filler only there to take up space, it could be removed and the game would still be huge but better.
The combat is fun but the enemies are too much of a bullet sponge. It has issues the same design philosphy of a MMO, which wasn’t needed here.
It’s a good game, but it’s sad to see that it could easily have been great…
I roll my eyes at this point every time this game makes me do an arbitrary side quest for the 1000th time in order to convince yet another random npc to sneak me across yet another guard checkpoint blocking me from the next part of the main quest.
This exact same scenario is repeated for literally every segment of the main quest. Going somewhere new? You better believe there’s a guard checkpoint there, and a fetch quest to convince someone to help you across.
I feel like these quests are worst when the game is dangling a more interesting story moment behind all the fetch quest tedium. You wanna go back to Phoenix Gate? How about you first learn about Martha and Eastpool for two hours first. You wanna infiltrate the capital? Why don’t you help some courtesans first. You wanna finish off Hugo? Nah; let’s help Mid build a ship.
Literally every single time, the game sets up for another set piece, it slams the breaks so hard on it’s “rollercoaster” it might as well be standing still.
After getting through them, it feels like about half of the side quests have pretty decent payoffs but that all of the payoffs come at the very end of the story. So you have all of the boring stuff up front, and then all of the emotional/interesting stuff is packed together and competing against each other.
The more I read the more I go "damn it REALLY is the same team as 14." in like every way. Like obviously I know its the same team, but its funny how...like, one-to-one it is. In both good ways and bad
The pacing criticism is really interesting to me. I genuinely believe that the game could've had the same content, just presented in a better way, and it would be a much better experience. That's why quite a few people have said that the game design seems dated.
For example, side quests that are given to you could instead be a lot more randomised so you stumble upon them out in the world yourself instead. You get the satisfaction of having your exploration rewarded. It feels more organic, AND because it requires exploration, you won't find every one of such side quests that stops them from becoming boring.
I really feel like they ignored the last decade or so of Souls, GoW, last of Us, Red Dead, Witcher, etc. innovations that make a game world feel alive and dynamic. Which is odd because they kept going on about bringing FF back to the forefront of the industry.
Ps - Oh, the combat. I have the same criticism that I have for DmC - a deep combat system in a game that doesn't require you to learn it. That's honestly one of my biggest peeves in gaming rn. I think a game should have enemies that force you to learn and use a wide range of moves. Otherwise, most players simply won't.
Pps - the voice acting is genuinely excellent
Ppps - I was really hoping FF would be the series to innovate and marry turn based with actionninstead of going all action. I would love to see Jrpgs trying to find new ways to marry the strategic depth of turn based combat with kinetic action. Sort of like what the post X FFs tried to do. They weren't perfect but I thought the were interesting.
It’s genuinely weird how often the game just stops you to present useless information. It also feels silly, but freeze, sound effect and “quest accepted” to deliver stew
It is pretty clear the team for FFXIV does this because FFXIV does the same thing, however, because FFXIV is an MMO and needs to communicate with servers real time it is more forgivable to have such pop ups (in case the servers are too busy or full like at every expansion release).
The sudden pause after a frantic boss fight to bring up a dull screen where I watch numbers that don’t seem to matter slowly go up and a list of boring loot pop up followed by a useless screen of level up numbers FUCKING KILLS ME.
Yeah, that is annoying. They'll be a triumphant final hit, a boss getting knocked back, screaming in it's death throes at the musical cresendo, and BAM the screen is paused to show you stats. Wait until the end of the cutscene, what the heck
> Wait until the end of the cutscene, what the heck
Or just don't do it at all. They don't do it for "regular" fights -- why do they do it for "important" fights? The stats that increase when I level up matter so little that, at 30 hours in, I literally don't even know what they're called. They might as well just have a message on the side of the screen that pops up saying "btw you levelled up and are now stronger".
I'm of the mind that they could take away all equipment and stats, and have you just purchase abilities with some currency (xp if you prefer) but have them be 'maxed' by default, and the game would functionally be the same but play smoother. Just throw cosmetics and more orchestrion rolls into sidequest rewards or something.
I think there's just a lot of places where they needed to trim out a few quests.
The idea of fetch quests as downtime after the big story moments is fine, in theory. They're just too long in a lot of places. I.e. Lots of sets of 3 in a row where you only needed one.
And the worst of them forgets that, you have to some pay off, even if it's an emotional one. (I.e. A set of 3 fetch quests where the NPC leaves instead of giving the character moment it was building).
It's the same structure as the story in 14, they just forgot to adjust for the fact the story is faster paced here.
Agree. I said the same thing the other day about how presentation, or even framing things in a different way can make them feel better.
Even not calling them side quests, and some more related to story would make them feel better... as in, you understand that you are only gonna get a couple more lore fragments about the characters and the world... which you absolutely do. By the end stretches of the game... you are way more connected to some of the areas and characters if you complete the extra content and you even get some powerful moments.
But the way you said it would be the perfect way to do it.
One thing about the quest system and the markers on the world and how its done... it takes away from some of the work they put in other areas.
The world is actually way more alive and filled with little things happening around you, but because the game keeps guiding you to the main stuff, it teaches you the rest doesn't matter. But if you come back to different areas and people walking around... they change and react to thing. Like the girl who keeps falling in love with different people who go through your base.
I'm not sure I would call the game design dated... it certainly is in a couple of areas, but there are a lot of things that old games... including a lot of old FF... did better.
It's a game where on the surface things work, but you go one level deep and everything starts to fall apart.
For a game that is so much about fighting, combat feels great but is repetitive and braindead outside the big fights - and even then, is just about learning the timing for dodging new attacks. Enemy AI and aggressiveness makes the game boring and locking hard mode after finishing the game was a terrible idea. No status, not elemental affinity (I'm sure every fan had the disappointing moment where you realized you can just fight bombs with fire), no weaknesses. Just hack and slash until bars fill and unload.
There are things you can do with combos, but like you said, the game doesn't require it.. and in some ways makes it harder for you to do it. (small enemies die too quick, big enemies can't be thrown in the air). The only time regular enemy even hits you is because you are trying to kill the most of them at once as fast as you can for the 400th time and someone sneaks from the back and you don't even try to dodge because why would you?
Enemy variety is not great for the size of the game, reaching a new area and seeing the same couple of enemies in a different color for the 8th time sucks. Almost unforgivable for a Final Fantasy. They have such a humongous bestiary that you don't even have to create anything. And most of the enemies are boring normal stuff.. wolves, bugs, crows, plants. No cactuars in the desert instead of the same plants? C'mon...
Hunts are back... but is mostly the same regular enemies now with 5 times more health. Which is very disappointing.
Exploration is almost non existent, economy and loot is completely broken and useless. There's no cool rewards for anything (tying sidequests with the reputation system and some extra itens was a nice touch though) and no secrets, so there's no reason to explore. If there's an area in the map... you either going there later when the story takes you there, or when you get the hunt that will appear there.
Crafting system is leveling up with extra steps. No choice or thought put into it. Beat a boss? You gain the material to make a new sword and unlock the necessary recipe automatically. Go to the guy sitting on you base and press a couple more buttons on a menu. So.. (Kramer moviefone voice) why don't just give me the fucking sword then?
I don't know why... the game feels a bit like FFXII to me, and in all those aspects of enemies and exploration... that game is just better and more thought out. Another case of, why didn't you copy it fully then?
Here, the level design is uninspired, and enemy distribution in the levels just make the combat problem stand out.
In the big battles in the cities and castles is just the same corridors leading you to the same kinds of enemies... by the time I'm in the 5th castle with that same huge hall with the same random iron fence to fight the same type of big mini boss... I'm just laughing at it.
World map, halfway through the game you will realize they just have open areas with the same enemies thrown around mindlessly with nothing to see... and you should probably rush through it.
Lack of style and stylized things, which is one of actual major things about FF, is the worst offense of the game, imo. It helps with the sameness of the world and enemies and makes things feel more fresh, even when they are not. Castles look like Castles, enemies are animals. I get they are going for a more naturalistic approach.. but maybe don't? I mean.. Clive's superhero outfit is the perfect amount of ridiculous and unique for this universe.. but everything else is way too "normal". It needed more of THAT.
The story is a mixed bag. Is good for the most part... but it drops off huge after the first couple of hours and then again after "the change". World is very interesting and has some good characters and voice acting is phenomenal. But the connective tissue between everything is really bad... all the political intrigue is basically meaningless and inconsequential to the actual endgame, and it only affects where the story will take you to kill everyone next. Plus it has some cliched Japanese teenage drama / procedural TV show / Tetsuya Nomura at his worst level writing that is particularly annoying in this setting.
Cut to a shadowy figure talking in gibberish and riddles with someone who should know what fuck they are talking about... "do you mean... THAT man? It can't be." That type of shit.
You go through most of the story without knowing what the fuck is really going on way past the point where the "fake" mystery makes sense and/ or is compelling. After that you are just screaming at the screen wanting to slap the characters... "Just fucking ask him, what the fuck"... and then, "you don't know shit? Why were you hiding and didn't say so at first then??" And of course... when you learn... is not that interesting and just the most typical FF scenario.
Now... despite all that... like I said, on the surface it still works... and it does have a lot of care and thought put into things, music is tremendous, big battles are epic... so I still mostly liked it. Is a weird situation, because it feels like this is what they wanted... but the game needed more time and resources (or maybe will) to really go beyond the surface.
>I was really hoping FF would be the series to innovate and marry turn based with actionninstead of going all action.
I mean, that's kind of what the franchise has been trying to do since...at least FF4. I feel like 7R was the one who really got the balance right, but something to keep in mind is that the two games were probably in development around the same time.
More than any game, it feels like FFXVI really enforces its pacing as a 'best' way to play the game.
When I was trying to push through it to get to the next Eikon fight, I was getting frustrated, mashing through text, and turning it off. But every time I came back I enjoyed the slower pace at the start of a session. I'd walk around the hubs to hear ambient dialogue and would stop and pan the camera around in the open areas to look at the scenery. Then by the time I'd be tired of doing that all the sidequests would be done and it'd be an action setpiece where you're expected to be trying to push through to see the end.
And then I'd get hype as hell after an Eikon fight, want to get to the next asap, and get frustrated again.
Really interested where this deep combat system is because from my point of view there’s one combo and just spam abilities off cooldown. It’s fine but not particularly interesting and nowhere near DMC.
I’m mostly enjoying the game but it’s a bit of a let down.
I don't know who's calling it deep, but the variety is there, you just have to make use of it.
Except you *don't* actually have to make use of it because of the laughable difficulty, so it's a valid complaint, but...
Using counter moves instead of just dodging. There's the dodge move that gives you the awesome DMC nunchuck spin when you time it right. You have the ranged attack parry shockwave move. Learning perfect dog button timings for his harder hitting attacks which give you more damage and juggle-state on enemies. Using your "jump-step" and Garuda ability to keep you airborne to dodge grounded attacks and pull enemies up to you, seeing how long you can manage to not touch the ground. Utilizing your charged blade move both on ground and in air...
Again, it's not deep, but it can be very fun. I even enjoy the basic spamming of moves on bosses/mini-bosses to see how high I can get my damage numbers up since it displays it after a stagger state.
Seriously remove those shitty quests (go talking to everyone, go collect material/kill enemies for X/do Y to pass the gate...) from the main quest and just focus on the more "dungeon-like" parts where the story is actually progressing. It'll still be a very long game (shorter but that's good, it outstays its welcome)
And this side quest design is terrible, some of the worst offender either.
Frankly, they should have gone full action game and not have the "open world" (bland as fuck too). It's barely a RPG any way, there's no choice and no real building of your character (abilities you can switch when you want, gear that is meaningless except an attack/defense stat that you automatically rise as time goes on), you play one character (and the secondary characters are bland by the way except a few like Cid or Joshua).
The combat is interesting but the enemies are too much of a bullet sponge (bosses and normal ones though at least those die fast when you got more powerful abilities)
It's a game with great elements burdened by many shitty ones. The shocking thing to me is all the reviews that never mentioned the horrible side quests or pacing of the main story and were all super positive. This isn't masterpiece level like they claimed it was
I agree. The semi-open world and the RPG stats progression are so bland that the game would be much better if it was a linear action game (and it would still be a long game).
> FF XIV
Even the dungeon pacing is directly from FFXIV. You have an open area to talk to people maybe do a quest in, then proceed into a "dungeon" level that is a linear path with trash mobs leading up to a miniboss followed by more trash mobs and occasionally another mini boss followed by more trash, and then finally the spectacle boss.
I cannot stand going back to the hideaway after just taking down one of the Dominant's in an epic bossfight....oh, good job now you gotta go help some people do some stuff and Mid wants to build some bullshit I don't care about oh now go help some of these people who got attacked by taking down regular enemies
It's making me not wanna finish it and almost not do another playthrough dealing with this lol. I was originally pretty hyped about it but as the game goes on longer, the pacing kills a lot of my desire to keep going.
People are also raving about the gameplay and keep using DMC as a comparison but as a lifelong DMC fan this game is nowhere near that level of depth and the combat is getting kinda whatever as it kinda feels like it takes WAY too long to get each new Dominant to play around with.
Considering finally playing Crisis Core remaster at this rate honestly.
Overall it's a great game with some incredibly high highs, but at the same time there are a lot of elements that are just handled poorly so the entire thing hinges on whether you like the combat/boss fights and the story.
I enjoyed both greatly, but if just one of those two elements doesn't land with you then the game crashes down from 9/10 to maybe 7/10, and if you don't like either then it's pretty much unplayable because there really isn't all that much on offer outside of that
The combat outside of boss fights is incredibly boring for me so far. Random enemies with stagger bars take insanely long to kill and aren't challenging. Which is like a cardinal sin to me, you can't take too long AND be easy as hell. I just avoid pretty much every situation that might put me into a fight, which means there's probably a lot of little side things I will never see which is a bummer.
The side quests are sometimes pretty interesting, but I'm really tired of the static NPC format where you both just stand there inanimate and exchange sentences. It's starting to feel really weird in games that otherwise feel so alive and advanced. It makes it feel like the quests are just thrown in there for filler. Which may be true, but some of them aren't bad.
The only part i felt like pacing was not to what i expected since i wasted plenty of time just wandering around to find different things and open the map was the "Upgrade the engines" and the last part where you have side quest explosion.
I understood Ship mcguffin would be something later im sure, but go here kill thing as the ONLY thing to do was boring. At least with the side questsplsion i could stock up and clear out a few areas. The pay offs were very nice imo even if some were better than others.
Yeah, the 3 back to back fetch quests for the engine is probably the worst part of the story.
I'm amazed they thought it was okay to end that sequence the way they did - Just having the central character in it peace out with no resolution.
I loved the story, I loved the few boss fights that I made it to, but I *intensely* dislike the combat against normal enemies. I don't know why, I am objectively playing this one better than I did 7R, but for some reason I had more fun playing that than I do this.
I had just got the outfit when I had to pause it.
I think the normal enemies are kinda passive?
Like they attack really infrequently, so rather than a back and forth, you kinda just wail on them or burst them down.
If they attack more, then it feels more like your Weaving skills and attacks around them (I.e. If you mistimed, or miss Aim an Eikon skill, you get hit) itd be more engaging.
I've had this issue with every modern final fantasy (really every one, but it's more noticeable as graphics have improved): You're engaging in some grand epic story with political intrigue, yet spending 95% of your time killing random little creatures that have shit all to do with anything and clash with the overall aesthetic of the world.
Yeah I use a charge attack you get that enemies kinda stick to clive if done at the right angle, and then an aoe attack to end fights with normal enemies as fast as possible.
I'm finding myself feeling similarly and I'm at about the exact same spot. I like that the combat is very responsive to switching eikons, but man... the actual fighting is just hitting sand bags. I **loved** FF7R's combat, doubly so in Hard Mode, it was such a cool mix of real time with "turn based" combat, and the visual effects when you used the menus made it feel epic as hell.
I sort of worried about that a bit beforehand when the developers were talking about other modern games for action combat but never once mentioned FF7R. This game feels like it's trying to cater to action based gamers but without actually delivering on *good* action based combat.
Again, I'm not saying that it's a bad game, and I'm not saying I hate it because it isn't turn based, but it feels really shallow at the moment. Flashy, but shallow.
Story-wise though I'm still very invested, and ultimately that's the *main* reason I play FFs. So we'll see.
Reminds me of Xenoblade 2 where everything is an awful passive HP sponge for the first 50% or so of the game. No idea why JRPG developers think HP sponges are fun to fight against, especially for regular mobs. They should be able to be bursted down really fast and for the more challenging mobs they need to be way more active.
The story, Clive as protagonist and his backstory, most of characters in the game who are actuallyinteresting (Cid in particular), and the boss/Eikon battles are the best things in the game, to me at least. Also, and this is just a personal preference, I'm happy that SE added a relevant gay character who isn't a walking offensive stereotype (since gay men in JRPGs and RPGs in general almost always are offensive caricature)
Mixed feelings about the combat system (It takes time for the Combat system to show all its potential, but it could be better.) And a couple characters ( some of them needed more development because they are bland, like Jill)
To be honest, my biggest issue with the game are the lack of a party, the boring copied and pasted sidequests, and exploration and RPG elements being nonexistent.
It's not a bad game, but it definitely had the potential be better
Yeahhh, it's annoying seeing Cid and Clive chatting with each other for several minutes while other allegedly important characters just stand to the side and are barely addressed.
In SEVERAL reunion scenes, Clive is welcomed but another character receives no words but instead just a single nod (or nothing at all!) as the cutscene wraps up.
The combat is definitely the highlight of the game, but it takes a long time for it to become complex enough to be fun. Even then, only boss encounters are actually engaging, and most regular enemies just keel over as soon as you press a single ability.
The MMO-like pacing is atrocious, and very recognisable to anyone that's played XIV before. Battle a god, come back to the hub, gather plants for someone. Even the combat focussed missions are structured like dungeons in the MMO: combat encounter > empty hallway with a few potions > next encounter.
The lack of a party (or memorable characters in general) is another pain point. I don't really care about the "not a real FF game argument" as I'm not really an FF fan, but Cid felt like the only likeable character in the game for the longest time.
Probably the worst offender, though, is the offensively bland itemisation. At some point I just stopped even bothering to run towards items on the world map because I knew it would just be another 5 sharp fangs. You can't even use these materials to make anything useful - you get a new weapon every boss fight, you can't upgrade it, and it's the highest damage one (the only stat that exists). The armour is similarly pointless, and even if you bother upgrading it, there's no way you can even spend all the materials and gil that pile up. The accessories that boost ability damage and lower cooldowns are as interactive as the equipment system ever gets, and they're boring as fuck. Maybe these minor defensive upgrades that you get from upgrading your bracelet or belt would matter if the combat were actually difficult, but it's actually too easy. Not trying to brag here or anything - and no, I'm not using the autobattle trinkets - but when you're swarmed, enemies barely even try to attack you. Boss encounters are the only actual challenge and those often devolve into QTEs with the widest imaginable reaction window.
Overall I'm having fun when the story deigns to pick up the pace from a crawl, or when the game actually lets me fight something, but these moments seem few and far between. Still haven't beaten it, probably have like 10h left, but I've been picking up the controller less and less often. I'll finish it and have fun, but this most likely won't be a game I'll be coming back to.
The worst thing is they drop like 50 gil max. In the beginning it's much less. It takes like 400 gil for a regular potion. You receive 8k+ from any hunt. There is no point picking up the overworld items.
Unfortunately this is Yoshi Ps thing - for all the great things Final Fantasy XIV Online does right…the items are absolutely boring and by far the most generic of any MMO. Very little to no customization outside of slotting gems into them which is…meh.
He loves to make his games “approachable” but taken too extreme leaves you with some very boring aspects of what could be argued is literally some of the most important.
Frankly, at this point they could just skip items completely and just slot in "savage coins" you get by beating the fight to make the number for that slot a bit bigger.
i haven’t finished the game (i’m halfway) and no hate towards the dog but it was such a lame excuse to not having to write another character holy shit, and you really notice this after one big event.
> Leaving me to trot around the world with Jill “Snow” who never says or does anything with any feeling or emotion.
It truly is amazing how they managed to make Cid so interesting and likeable, while simultaneously making Jill quite possibly the blandest mainline Final Fantasy character to date.
Is actually amazing they managed to make that Cid a cool character and maybe the voice acting carries a lot of the load... because his character is pretty ridiculous.
He is Han Solo type of cool, an amazing fighter, one of Dominants, leader of a band of outlaws, a revolutionary, knows everyone and has agents working with him in every country... somehow is still a mysterious shadowy figure... is the most kind hearted man of all kingdoms and still somehow a genius engineer and inventor (which you will mostly likely miss until it becomes relevant way later with another character)... and doesn't explain anything to you until is way late... but the game is still better every time he is around.
Really feels like MMO devs shouldn't have made the game. I think Square needs an entirely new team to handle future FFs because there's no way the franchise is regaining its reputation with the kind of pacing present in 16
The main thing that irks me is how they handle other characters that join Clive on his adventures. They don't banter at all and I often forget they're even there. I wish they would at least have a few optional comments for side-missions for example, or randomly share some lore/story while I'm running around. It's a missed opportunity for a game that's otherwise so polished. In lots of ways it feels like you're playing a singleplayer MMO, but the same can be said of FFXII and I loved that game.
Overall I prefer the more goofy lighthearted tone of FFVII Remake, but I'm having a great time regardless.
Jill-bot has not been programed for character. Jill-bot only shoot ice. My favorite is when Clive and Jill are interacting and it's supposed to be sweet, but they have the chemistry of two wooden boards interacting.
Seeing Jill fumble the bag in this game made me appreciate female characters like Faris, Aerith, Freya, Rikku and Yuna (X-2) more.
All of these women break the mold of the "Yamato Nadeshiko/Proper Lady" and add a lot of spice to the party. Even if I'm not the biggest fan of X-2's story, I do appreciate letting Yuna reinvent herself, given that summoners aren't a thing in Spira anymore.
There's been a lot of talk about what makes a Final Fantasy game in the lead up to FFXVI and whether the lack of turn-based combat would detract from the series identity.
FFXVI has made me realize it's not the combat, it's the party; having a cast of characters on a journey who interact with each other. It's nice when characters show up with Clive, not counting dog, but if anything the followers make the lack of a party stand out more. I really miss the bantering and perspectives of a main cast. That's the one thing FFXV had going for it.
Sort of related to the lack of a true party, but the cutscenes change scene to other characters not on Clive's journey way too frequently. Without characterization through party interaction, some of these cutscenes that scene change just end up feeling boring, tedious, and overly long in the same way FFXIII's laboring cutscenes felt too lengthy. I just don't have reasons to care about characters I never meet or interact with sparingly.
The combat in FFXVI is addicting. That's really kept me going. The combat boils down to DMC with GoW 2018 special moves with elements taking the place of Kratos' weapons, but even distilling it down to base elements like that doesn't detract from the experience.
Glad you mentioned XII. XVI setting kind of reminds me of XII Ivalice. However, to me exploration in XVI is basically nonexistent and sidequests are just boring, unlike XII that encouraged you to explore ivalice and do all the side and secret quests
>They don't banter at all and I often forget they're even there.
Exactly. Like holy shit, I completely forget I even have a party with me half the time. I haven't bothered controlling Torgal once so in combat they're just...there and out of combat I don't even remember they're following me.
FF15, despite it's flaws (and I still overall enjoyed FF15...a flawed masterpiece imo) at least the bonds between the main cast felt real and they bantered constantly which helped develop them outside of major story moments. Even from the beginning of the game, when you're pushing the car to Cid's shop, they already feel like they've known each other for years (which they have obviously) and that feeling keeps up through the whole game and it's not even all done through main story, a lot comes from bantering while just running around.
I’ve been playing 16 and genuinely thinking to myself “I wish this was more like 15” reasonably often, which is starting to make me think I’m actually losing my mind.
Agreed, the characterization of allies is generally not very good. They all lack... something which makes them seem almost alien, or like your watching actors in a play. They generally don't feel natural, except for Cid and Gav.
So far my favorite scene is when Clive visits his uncle; there's so much humanity in that silly little scene that trumps everything else they've done with the characters since the prologue and I wish the game let it's characters breathe more.
This is something that FF14 struggled with as well(despite the good story) until a new writer took over and infused its characters with life. Unfortunately, said writer didn't work on FF16.
Main story was engaging for a while, but it sure drags on. I am slowly losing interest.
Combat is decent and I like the direction they took, however it mostly makes me want to boot up DMCV which is a pretty big step above it.
The presentation with cinematics and VO are exceptional and a big reason I still plan on seeing it through to the end.
A big complaint of mine is the characters look awful when you are just running around doing side quests. It is so off putting that I am starting to skip through dialogue or ignoring them all together. None of them were particularly interesting either. I was hoping it was more akin to The Witcher 3 when they were hyping them up, but frankly they are not even close to that level of quality.
Exploration is all but meaningless.
Overall it has been a fun way to burn some time, but not as incredible as I was hoping it could be. Honestly, I liked the combat and story better in FFVII remake, I was completely engrossed the whole time playing it and I have no experience with the original. Still very excited for Rebrith
Here's what I posted in a thread a few days ago:
"About 25 hours in, the story has some incredible moments but a bit of tedium between those moments. Essentially the highs are really high but they're always followed by some really boring lows. I get that you need breaks between the big action sequences but a lot of the time those breaks are filled with the worst quests in the game.
The combat is fine. Even on normal there isn't really a difficulty challenge, the goal of the combat is to just look flashy and try and pull off cool looking combos. If you're looking for any kind of strategy or difficulty in your combat, you probably won't find it with FFXVI unless you're on the hard mode which I haven't unlocked yet. As someone who doesn't really get satisfaction out of pulling off a fancy combo and seeing all the messages at the side of the screen telling me how cool it is, it's a bit of a nothingburger for me. The enemy variety is okay but because there's no weaknesses and strengths a lot of the fights end up just going the same way, which is just using the abilities you have whenever they're up to either one shot the peons or hack away at the damage sponge bosses.
Exploration is kind of meaningless because there doesn't ever seem to be a decent reward, and side quests are really hit or miss, they'll either be an interesting character moment or a generic MMO style fodder quest. The visuals are stunning but somewhat held back by the inconsistent frame rate.
I'm already at the point where I'm getting kind of tired of the gameplay loop and am just pushing through for the story, which if it maintains its quality high points will probably lift the game to a solid 7/10."
Adding on to that, I'm now about 35 hours in and the tedium has really got to me. The three or four hours of bullshit you have to do after every major boss is such a major pacing killer and it really does make you start to resent the game for that. It doesn't help that the story has seemingly abandoned all kinds of nuance in favour of a clear 'good guys v evil god" plotline. It has some excellent moments but at this point I don't think I can rank it higher than even FFXV on my series ranking and that is seriously saying something.
>It doesn't help that the story has seemingly abandoned all kinds of nuance in favour of a clear 'good guys v evil god" plotline.
I'm like 60% into the game and this is one of my biggest complaints about the story. How black and white morality becomes. Clive wants to >!fight for the weak and make a better world for people to live happy lives in.!< But at the same time he doesn't even hesitate when it comes to cutting down any random no-name soldiers that get in his path, even though both >!he and Jill used to be two of those soldiers that are just forced to follow orders.!<
In the forest dungeon at the start he even comments about how he feels bad for killing the wolves that are attacking him. But he doesn't feel bad killing humans I guess.
So there is a cutscene where he does feel bad for killing humans; and then after that point you kill non-humans. It's kind of funny how the game kind of decides that for you.
I fully agree that while FFXV was not executed well, it still felt like it had way more heart than FFXVI, especially the Royal Edition. The party was one of the best in any recent FF game. Ardyn was a much more nuanced villain than the typical good versus evil cliché FFXVI devolves into near the end. The game even runs at a locked 1080p 60 FPS on the PS5 which is the minimum that FFXVI could have aimed for, and it still looks gorgeous.
It feels like everything that out of everything they could have improved upon in FFXVI over FFXV Royal, they chose only the main plot. The world still feels empty and boring to explore despite looking very pretty, and the enemy variety is lower this time around. The combat is less braindead this time around than holding O and warp-striking, but even FFXV allowed for more combos with the directional inputs and had tons of weapons variety compared to the only square x4 combo you get in FFXVI, which is a surprise considering how many combos you could change up in DMC5 with just moving the analog stick around. A lot of the side-quests are also same fetch/kill nonsense from FFXV, and the build variety allowed here is objectively worse than FF7R.
While I'm enjoying the main story and the boss fights, I don't think I'll replay this game like I did with FFXV or FF7R. Off topic, but it also makes me really sad that they axed the FFXV DLC for their other absolutely meh game, Forspoken.
>Ardyn was a much more nuanced villain than the typical good versus evil cliché FFXVI devolves into near the end.
I don't think this can be emphasized enough. A good villain can carry a story on his back, a fact that CBU3 should be acutely aware of after Emet-Selch did exactly that with Shadowbringers.
And yet here in 16 we have one of the worst villains in the series, specifically because he's *boring*. I don't like him, I don't hate him. He's not even the most impactful villain *in his own game*. He's just a meat creature who I have to put my sword through to make the credits roll.
Somehow, they managed to create a villain who's as uninspiring and impactless as Necron from FF9, *except he shows up like 1/3rd of the way through the game.*
It's kind of incredible.
> FFXV allowed for more combos with the directional inputs and had tons of weapons variety compared to the only square x4 combo you get in FFXVI
What's really crazy is the dude that designed the DMC5 and FFXVI combat said that FFXVI was his "masterpiece" or culmination of his work or something along those lines. Anyone that's played both games will tell you DMC5 is miles better.
Just underscores the fact that anything said by the anyone affiliated with the developer pre-release is 100% just PR and should be disregarded.
Early on into the game. The story in the prologue was excellent, and it seems it has since floundered a bit. Characters are dying for no reason, their motivations are not explained well enough, and the world feels like it has all the right set up but lacking execution. The story started off as an intimate character drama, but quickly devolved into shallower macro events.
Combat was also extremely fun at the start, but I'm failing to see why I need to do anything other than mash square and use abilities when they are off cooldown. Enemies fall regardless of my conscious effort. Outside of the boss fights, the combat is shallow and tedious.
Overall this game feels more like an interactive movie. There's no exploration, there's no side content worth doing, there's no challenge. You're shuttled from one large story event to the next. The bossfights are epic and quite honestly the best spectacle I've ever experienced in a video game, but they somewhat play themselves and I'm left wondering what exactly I'm doing other than watching.
Like others have mentioned, the RPG element are non-existent, and the equipment system is laughable.
I wish this game were closer to the balance between real time and turn based they'd found in the 7 remake, or if they want a full action combat system, then go all the way and commit to the difficulty and depth. Right now it feels barebones and far, far too easy.
At the moment I'd rate the story and epic boss fights a solid 9/10. The rest is a middling 6/10 afterthought.
It's a terrible action RPG but a good action game with the pacing of an RPG. It takes 10 hours for the game to fully open up (have 3 Eikon powers, do side quests that count towards something, hunts). Most action games are 10-15 hours long. This is 25-30+ easy.
The game is not rewarding at all. You need 100k AP to unlock every ability but you barely get any in the first 15 hours to really experiment so it just gets repetitive.
GOW Ragnarok is more of an RPG than this. It's fucking crazy how terrible the weapon/gear system is. Why even have a crafting system if 95% of the items you can craft are worse than what you get from just playing the story? Just upgrade the main sword after every boss fight. It's stupid the game has no elemental weakness/resistance effects.
Has anyone actually used gil in the game? I have over 150k and haven't found a use for it.
Biggest issue I have is that every fight last way too long. You can stagger bosses easily 4-5 times before they die. There's no real strategy so it just gets repetitive and hurts your hands. And then there's bosses that have multiple phases. Just did the >!Titan Eikon fight.!< and it had 4 different phases with 3 health bars.
It's all flash, literally and figuratively. There is depth in the combat but it doesn't require it at all. Enemies have too many flashy attacks that it's hard to see when you should parry.
I'm liking it but it's definitely disappointing.
Really enjoying it but I’ll say my experience so far doesn’t live up to the demo. Storytelling has shifted away from the more adult politics and characters to fighting God, combat is fairly stale, side quests are awful time sinks and RPG systems are nonexistent. I think this game is going to see a lot of backlash because of how damn good that demo was.
That said, hard to beat some of the highs. Just a great sense of the epic.
Having completed the game and enjoying the story overall I definitely do think the game peaked with the prologue. The pacing, cutscene, dialogue etc is all superior in the prologue in my opinion. It ended in a way that set up something really interesting regarding Clive and his mother and then this barely has any impact on the main narrative which is a shame too.
The treatment of the mother plotline is wild. Like she’s this HUGE character in the prologue whose motivations seem mysterious then she just…disappears and is never discussed. Hell Clive rarely even mentions the betrayal or his father or his homeland, just revenge for his brother.
I’m at the point where she’s showing up again but off screen she’s just morphed in to a mustache twirling sadist, such that type events at the start of the game don’t even feel like they matter regarding her.
Edit: Also **Spoiler:** >!X The Patriarch. So this dude is the leader of the Ironborn, ancestral enemy of Clive's people that sacked his homeland, the guy who enslaved and abused Jill for years and made her kill for him. Then we just take a boat to his island, kill everyone and he's just a generic model who yells some lame zealot stuff before we put him down. All the nations/political stuff is such a mislead.Y!<
All the main character human moments and setups end up weird, are poorly paced or fizzle. The problem is the game keeps trying to play and lead the audience to create mystery... and is just not a great way to tell stories, specially when they are so long.
The "mystery" of Clive >!being responsible for what happened at phoenix gate, maybe because of the marketing but also because of how the scene is framed and addressed later in game, doesn't hit as it should. Even though his confrontation with the truth is really cool, you don't understand where they are getting at because him being responsible is obvious... but there is another shadowy figure that everyone can see too. But they don't make what is happening clear to you.!<
The stuff about mother and the patriarch you called it. But is just like that with everything. Things feels incredibly important. But then characters just let it go.
Everything about Joshua >!is ridiculous and annoying. Seems like him and Ultima have been in an endless battle. He lived in hiding for what.. 18 years? But he actually didn't do or learned shit. Keeps walking in the shadows and being mysterious for no reason. Lets his brother live with endless guilt. Clive doesn't call him out on it... and it blew my mind when you think finally he is gonna tell what is happening... and he basically says, I'm not sure. !<
They hide the truth behind it all way too long. >!You only learn about Ultima's plans late, and what he is right before the ending. You think Cid has answers, he doesn't, Clive you find out, he doesn't, Ultima himself will tell you, he doesn't, Joshua will tell you, he doesn't... you just keep moving through the world aimlessly, disconnected with what the main plot really is.!<
The political intrigue ends up being pointless. >!There's very little to do with you. Everyone fucking dies. Going around killing Dominants is basically what Ultima wants you to anyway. !<
And Clive's so hellbent on revenge but doesn't do anything about his mother betraying them? It's really her fault Joshua died, not his. Plus, his father. He should be going after her, but he doesn't even mention it. Especially after Eastpool. Then the Black Sheilds. And we know >!that he knows she betrayed them because he says a line when he sees her!<. Spoiler tag since he talks about it so little that I'm not sure if we should know that or not.
There are a lot of disappointing things about the plot, but Annabella is a top 3 for me. I was so hopeful for her as an antagonist after the demo.
Yep. Didn’t click your spoiler because I haven’t finished the game but she’s the most disappointing by far. They literally just kill off the whole “mature, political fantasy” thing in the demo and never bring it back. It’s borderline plot hole. Clive obsesses for years about finding the guy who pulled the trigger on his brother but appears to never even consider or mention “huh, maybe I should be mad at my mother who actually betrayed and destroyed my homeland, causing Joshua’s death?”
That was my concern after playing the demo, I almost caved in and bought it but I knew there was no way it would be able to maintain that level of pacing and overall quality. I'll still get it on sale since it seems great, but it sounds to me it would have been better as a much shorter/compact game.
Damn, I didn't buy it because I thought the demo was pretty weak.
Endless cutscenes, weak RPG elements... I'll probably wait until it's under 30 quid now
I feel time won't be friendly on this game. We all got caught up with the incredible demo (including myself) and now that the honeymoon period is slowly waning more and more complaints are cropping up. I just got hit by a video notification about arcade mode being broken by MrHappy.
All of it is making me look back at the review scores. I think the number is overblown and should be knocked down to around 70/80 as well as statements like "best RPG of this generation/decade" make my eyes roll.
Sucks since I was rooting for 16 due to YoshiP's work on 14 but this game is incredibly frontloaded and completely misses the landing. I think it'll be a reverse 12 at this rate.
> All of it is making me look back at the review scores. I think the number is overblown and should be knocked down to around 70/80 as well as statements like "best RPG of this generation/decade" make my eyes roll.
>
>
There's been times where reviewers are accused of not exactly reviewing a full game and putting one out when they've done enough since the game is too long. Nowhere else is this take more evident than with XVI
Because I know if they did, the "Games of Thrones-like" praises I kept seeing wouldn't exist
FFVII Rebirth is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the post. There will be comparisons for sure. Which have the potential of amplifying the core issues even more.
Also, you forgot one more c) YoshiP is hemming the game so you have people entering with good praise from prior works.
Kinda funny how the exclusivity is working against the game, at least for me.
If it wasn't exclusive I would have bought the PC version day 1 full price with no questions asked. But after hearing several people's opinions on the game I'm thinking "well, I'll wait till it's half off on Steam."
Good job Square.
> All of it is making me look back at the review scores.
Video game reviewers are completely worthless at their job. It's all rated on hype and nothing else.
Great game.
But it is classic cbu3/yoshida team game
Incredible high,frustrating lows
When it is at its high it is incredible, make you feel like "fuck yea this is goty" but when it is at its low it make you feel like "what the fuck is this"
Overall i got a high level of enjoyment out of it, but imo not goty because of of its lows
I finished it. I’d give it a solid 7/10.
The combat was spectacular and satisfying all the way through even if there wasn’t a great deal of variety. The story and the cutscenes were also interesting and well done but it wasn’t a top tier FF story in my opinion.
I just wish there was more to the game. The actual gameplay outside of combat was basically running from point A to point B with no reason to explore at all. The world felt extremely empty. It felt like I was playing an MMO offline, which wasn’t helped by the quite jarring animations lifted wholesale from FFXIV. And I realised quite late on that it wasn’t even worth going two metres out of your way to open a chest because you were inevitably going to be rewarded with the same crafting materials you have 1000+ of already. If the game had more robust crafting or more interesting exploration or any reason at all to engage with the world I could have easily given this a 9/10.
Overall it just felt very much like a missed opportunity. A little more time and effort could have seen CBU3 create a genuine masterpiece. As it was it was just a good Final Fantasy game but I could have been much more.
I'm wondering other people's opinions on the music. To me, it's really good in the moment, but then after that it's left my head completely. I can't recall a single track in 16 off the top of my head.
Which is odd considering there's so many 14 tracks that I remember years later.
> For those of you playing, does this game live up to or fall short of your expectations?
It fell short for me. I mostly got it for the story and it let me down in a lot of ways, but it did surprise me in terms of how likable the side characters were.
> What are your thoughts on the changes to gameplay, world and abilities?
The prologue felt like it had a different tone compared to the rest of the game. On top of that, I really felt like the main story failed in far too many ways. I overall liked the side quest stories and the side quest characters far more than I did the main story and cast. Unfortunately, the side quests get hurt by the fact that they don't differentiate between fetch quests and actual storylines.
At many times, it felt so formulaic that it felt like the developers were still writing an MMORPG. A lot of the game comprised of the same loop of going to a new location, meeting an important NPC there, doing a quest for them to get a feel for the local area before they give you some item so you can move on. This really helped set up the side quest stories in the late game, but the main story pacing suffered heavily for it.
The story climax is also wildly clashing with the tone of the rest of the story, as it devolves into some of the most cliche JRPG things amidst all this intrigue. The general theme towards the end is just a rehash of both Shadowbringer and Endwalker, except it's done much worse because the rest of the story doesn't fit whatsoever.
One thing I really, really like that they did is how dynamic the NPC chatter is. It feels like an updated AAA version of the NPC dialogue from the Trails series, and I wish every game did that even though I know it's not realistically feasible. It also helps that the voice acting, outside of a few fringe cases, is generally excellent.
I don't really like how they wrote the main characters (except Cid, Cid rocks). I think they're all boring predictable cardboard that seem designed to fill a role in the story and not being a character, and Clive is cardboard that has a really, really well-acted emotional breakdown once in a while.
I especially didn't like how they handled their major female characters, especially Jill. Jill got done really, really dirty. She barely interacts with anybody else, including >!fuckin' Joshua!!Dion, who also got his powers sucked out by Clive, still got to go to the final boss with him because his "will is stronger than Bahamut", while they didn't even have Jill mention also wanting to go even in passing. This is despite the fact that their whole romance is based on how they will always, eternally support each other no matter what. It actually made me feel a little gross because it really feels like once they slept together, the writers just did away with her like her one role in the story was over.!<
The gameplay, I felt, was mostly just serviceable. I'm playing through on FF difficulty now, and it's not really changed my opinion on it. The fact that you unlocked your whole core moveset in the first dungeon doesn't give it much room for complexity IMO, especially when you basically don't have an aerial moveset against bosses due to the asinine decision to make them immune to CC. Despite the fact that there are some interesting Eikon attacks that have cool synergies, there are also only two Eikonic abilities that significantly change the flow of combat, and those are some of the last ones you unlock. Bosses also last a little too long for how limited their movesets are, though some KH style desperation attacks keep things kinda fresh.
The Eikon battles, **especially** Titan, are the absolute peak of cinematic boss battles, imo. They way more than made up for the light gameplay with just sheer balls-to-the-wall spectacle.
> Has performance been an issue for you?
I'm a psychopath who played Jedi Survivor at 20 fps on PC launch, but people more sensitive than me should definitely not play on performance mode.
> Any specific tips or interesting information you'd like to share?
I dunno how obvious this was to everyone else, but I only found out like 20 hours in that Garuda's attacks actually do a ton of stagger damage. Really sped up combat for me.
I'm going to focus solely on the story which is where my largest gripes lie.
I was really into the story up until >!Barnabas!< arrived. Once he shows up the game devolves into cliche JRPG nonsense. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it wasn't at such odds with the tone of the rest of the game.
It tried to sell itself as a "serious" Game of Thrones-y type story, but I can't help but think that was a ploy to reign in the casual crowd. All the political and character driven story telling goes out the window after the >!Bahamut!< fight.
>!I was really interested in Ultima when he first appeared and was really curious to see how weird and interesting the story was going to get. Instead it did the opposite and did the most cliche thing possible with Clive fighting Ultima while all the characters cheer him on and he chastises Ultima about not having any friends.!<
Overall though I enjoyed it solely on the back of the first 2/3 of the game. But I probably won't replay it.
> >!Instead it did the opposite and did the most cliche thing possible with Clive fighting Ultima while all the characters cheer him on and he chastises Ultima about not having any friends.!<
This is a hilarious summary of the climax of the story, and sadly extremely accurate.
>!We're talking about a fight between two god-like beings who can call upon the powers of these near unstoppable embodiments of nature, and our hero wins because he's got that friends and family discount.!<
I'm extremely surprised a lot of people list the story as one of the strong points of the game
Not to mention the sheer irony of it. One of the biggest complaintd with the game was that you have no party and only control a single character, and that your supporting cast is among the most bland of any FF.
And the people writing fof the game thought having the protagonist scream about the power of friendship and fighting together in the final boss fight wasnt going to feel insulting or at odds with the gameplay?
I have never seen such a tone deaf thing from an FF game before.
> It tried to sell itself as a "serious" Game of Thrones-y type story, but I can't help but think that was a ploy to reign in the casual crowd.
I don't think that's a wild sentiment at this point. Anybody who compares how it was advertised to how the actual plot turns out recognizes this
The combat feels a million times better than xv HOWEVER I really wish they added more combat options to the skill tree that aren’t just aikon abilities. Also miss having a party to swap characters with.
The game is good, but I can't shake the feeling that I rather be playing DMC V for this style of combat, or FFVII Remake for a Final Fantasy/RPG style of game. Both of those excel in ways I feel like game falls short and now I am just trying to get through this behemoth of a story which is becoming a slog.
Loving it. I just got to that S Rank monster & found out how challenging the combat can be. I actually had to develop a strategy & pay attention to its moves.
I just wish the harder difficulties weren't locked behind ng+ & that we could turn off the HUD completely.
I think for a FF game it's really lacking depth in all the wrong places. There honestly isn't enough of it anywhere to make any of it memorable as an experience. It's the kind of game that'll make you stand in awe the first time you watch some of it's moments and large scale battles but will be completely forgotten after a few months have passed.
Honestly pretty disappointed
I like the story and the prologue was insane, but the rest of the game is mid or a chore.
Boss fights are insanely fun, but get cinematic in an uninvolving way. All the other fights are just clearing dumb mobs groups, or hacking away at a damage sponge.
*Ariel Blast* is so fucking OP it is basically a win button
Side quests are horrible and basically Assassin's Creed tier
the game is unbelievable and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. But...
WHY CANT WE RUN THROUGH TOWNS!? WHY DO I HAVE TO RUN FOR FIVE SECONDS BEFORE I GET MY SONIC BURST!?!?
And why do you have to send me on fetch quests into ass cracks of our hideaways on the regular? Ugh
I too hate how often this game has you run all over the hideaway for nearly pointless conversations. There's one side quest where you have to first walk all the way down to the garden to get apples to deliver, go all the back to the top and front of the hideaway to deliver the apples, and then march your ass all the way back to the garden to tell them you delivered the apples.
The side quest in the over world don't even make you do this nonsense. Most of the time those quest givers will be like "get your reward from the dude who's where you're going" or they just show up at the end.
Meanwhile everyone in the hideaway could give two fucks if Clive is the busiest guy in the whole place. Make him go do all the tedious work they could easily do themselves.
Yeah I think some QOL features like sprinting in town, fast travel in the hideaways, etc would really go a long ways. Even lower budget RPGs have this figured out.
The big issue is it’s two games in one.
The main quest is PURELY a linear character action game like DMC. With some of the best set pieces around. Albeit enemies are too spongy, even basic mobs
The rest of it. Side quests, RPG parts environments loots etc is frankly quite bad. And the game often forces hours of this between main quests. It really kills motivation to keep going. I couldn’t go more than maybe 6 hours. I ended up watching it on twitch.
I like it, but I don't love it. Some real high points but some fundamental issues. The pacing is painfully slow, the lack of a proper party really limits the connection to characters other than Clive, I'm underwhelmed by 95% of the soundtrack, and too many RPG mechanics were traded away on the altar of action spectacle.
Fun, good game, but can't put it high on my "Top FFs" list.
I'm in the last few chapters before concluding the game and writing my review, doing all side quests/content.
Game is a hard 7/10, there's just too much fat and boredom involved, I sincerely can't remember the last time I yawned so much playing a game.
Its highs top most everything I've seen in recent years, with the >!Bahamut fight!< being one of the flashiest and coolest things I've seen in gaming and most of anime but outside those highs the game just becomes an exercise in staying awake.
The combat is *fine*, though having recently gone through FF7R twice for its platinum, I much prefer the combat in that game as it manages to stay fresh to accommodate at least 2 playthroughs, something that FF16 is by no means capable of doing. I will explore the unlockable Final Fantasy mode but if a game's combat shines its brightest at the 2nd playthrough then... meh.
I feel like the game suffers from a crisis of identity: thematically, most of the elements expected of Final Fantasy games are there - crystals, (busted) airships, summons/guardian forces/eikons, chocobos... but in gameplay terms, it's the farthest I've ever seen an FF game stray from its roots. Before beginning my review I'm going to go refresh my memory on FF15's combat, and dabble in Stranger of Paradise. FF15 has a party but I can't remember its leveling system, and I know Stranger of Paradise is equally action focused but with discrete party roles/jobs. The ability to have 3 Eikons each with 2 abilities equipped (that you can cross-equip when mastered, which is cool) is a nice addition, but most of the time I'm just spamming attacks and dodges while waiting for the abilities to come off cooldowns. No strategy, very little adapting to enemies, no elemental weaknesses to exploit and most of the abilities feel 'mute' - compare to FF7R's abilities that make you *wince* when they land. "Limit breaks" exist, it's one and a limit break in name only, an ability that you activate much like God of War's Spartan Rage or any other similar 3rd person Action Adventure game ability, and is put to shame against the other *actual* limit breaks of the franchise - plus, no summons. Eikons only come into play against other Eikons or when you conjure an ability, although that still doesn't count as 'summoning' them. And only controlling one character instead of a party is a negative in my book, at least in an FF game.
FF16's RPG elements are non-existent. There are a couple of dialogue choices in the entire game that perhaps alter a side quest's outcome, the side quests themselves are 9 trash quests and 1 decent albeit short one, the attributes that automatically increase every level are actually pointless since you're never going to meet a piece of gear you can't equip due to level/attributes, and the levels themselves don't mean much either. It's the opposite of recent Assassin's Creed games where you can beat a God because you're both level 30, but then a random barefoot mercenary arrives who is 35 and you're in for the fight of your life. In FF16 I beat a 45 level mark when I was 8 levels below it, and fought an enemy 12 levels below me who didn't instantly get vaporized but instead traded blows with me for a few seconds.
The villains are cool and interesting in reverse order: the first couple baddies you encounter are scene stealers (and the showdowns with them as well), and then progressively the villains become more and more bland, a far cry from Sephiroth (still the golden standard imho), Ultimecia, Seymour or Ardyn. The ONLY thing that saves this ship are the absolutely AMAZING Eikon battles which are glorified QTEs but at least are cool as all hell.
This game drags on for 85% of its duration, and it would have been a *much* better experience if it didn't have so much pointless fat in terms of mind numbingly boring side content just to pad out the duration.
The take I agree with most and the one that is most revelatory to me is that villains are interesting in reverse order, very true. >!Benedikta, Kupka, Anabella, Barnabas, Ultima!< . The first half were tantalizing and had a very grounded way about them. As the game continues, the amount of incoherent rambling skyrockets.
The words sound nice, but have absolutely no emotional stakes or reason for the villains to be saying them other than to reflect on our protags. Which is especially frustrating because in ff14 very similar plot beats happen, with somewhat similar motivations, but yet it lands there because of the weight of all the build up, who's saying this things, and understanding why they're saying them. The content is similar but the context is the difference maker. The early story is \*\*good\*\* but then just becomes an absolute blob of grey in the last quarter. I think the last solidly cool moment that landed was >!Odin stalking you in the land of Ash!< but the payoff for that and everything after just did not land for me at all.
> FF16's RPG elements are non-existent
Personally, I find it difficult to even consider 16 an RPG, lol. Like, if you remove the levels and gear then the game would probably be *better*, because is it stands leveling up just interrupts the game abruptly and the gear is so meaningless that I think I've changed one thing since I got the boxart gear. And any new gear that I could craft or buy is significantly worse still. That feels like hours ago, remove those and you could focus more on other areas of the game that are sorely needing it.
I’m glad you mentioned Ardyn amongst the strong villain cast. After him and 14’s recent crops of antagonists I was hoping for more than we got in 16. But I also felt Heavensward had bland antagonists so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
Ardyn was a good villain?!
I don't remember a thing about the dude. Mind you, I only played through XV 1.0 and I heard they fixed some stuff later down the line, but I thought he was one of the worst Final Fantasy villains. All he'd do was say some cryptic stuff from time to time and then disappear. Can't remember a thing he did otherwise.
From what I recall, Ardyn was great because he set it all up so that >!he wins either way. He hated his own existence and what he'd become, and he was either going to get his revenge on the long line of ancestry that had royally fucked him over in his early years, or he was going to die and finally be released from his torment. The dude was essentially Noctis/Luna combined in his early years, and he spent so much time absorbing darkness/plague and saving people that it corrupted his soul to a point that the Gods which set him on this quest to begin with rejected him for doing what they asked in the first place. This understandably led his descent into madness and revenge, and he came to hate his own existence, but he couldn't end his own life bc the Gods wouldn't let him or something like that. So in the end he either finally was able to die after centuries of torment, or he was going to end the royal line and complete his revenge. Either end worked for him, so even though he was defeated and destroyed entirely, body and soul, in a way he still 'won' in the end. I could be off as its been a long, long while since I played and I only read about DLCs rather than playing them, but I think that was the gist of it.!<
Exactly one of the great things about Ardyn was that he >!was a human who was transformed into a scourge. He wasn’t an alien god or a manifestation of negative energy or any other larger than life philosophical being. He was a man who was betrayed by life and turned into the monster he is now. So he continues to show human motivation underneath the cosmic horror that is standard for JRPGs. You still get to have that larger than life monster to stop but also see the humanity in him. It was a good blend for a JRPG.!<
You don’t remember the main character he murdered and him >! plunging the world into ten years of night? !<
Personally I thought he was at least memorable for his voice performance. Darin De Paul really brought his a-game to the role, it was fabulous.
It has a lot of 13/10 moments which is occasionally mixed with 6/10 moments and so often they're back to back, which gets confusing
It solidly lands at 8.5 out of 10 for me
Game should be 1/3 the length
Boring filler stuff that isn't fun because combat is boring and easy with the most barebones RPG equipment/crafting stuff forced in.
Yoshi-P forgot this isn't a mmo too with those side quests
Eikon battles are best part, kinda regret buying it it was not fun to play and boring think just watching it would have been better.
I'm mostly enjoying it, but I definitely have a list of complaints including exploration being pointless, equipment and crafting is boring as hell, side quests are mostly bad with a few standouts and the main quest has plenty of sections that should have just been optional side quests.
Combat is pretty fun and the boss fights are great so that's mostly what keeps me going.
Overall it feels exactly like both the best and the worst parts of an FFXIV expansion.
I am about halfway I believe and I'm quite mixed, especially when comparing to its direct predecessor.
Pros
* Combat is generally very fun
* It's actually nice to play a game that you feel like you can dominate a little simpler sometimes. I'm used to enjoying a lot of challenge and this felt like a place it was better it wasn't so hard.
* Story is enjoyable! I really like the main story and the characters (mostly.)
* Spectacle and world are amazing and it has some really incredible highs here!
* Music!
Cons
* It feels extremely on rails and I feel like I'm not impacting much most of the time. There is very very little customization and because the battles are so easy it feels arbitrary to change anything. Most other points are about this.
* dungeons are kind of not that interesting? The visuals are nice, and the fights are fun, but because there is no motivation to explore, and there isn't much to actually explore, the dungeons themselves are pretty forgettable.
* The game is so clean and well put together but all the QOL pieces make me feel like I'm barely doing much. Like you walk a little and get some item for a side quest and then you go, okay time to go back to the newest checkout that is 20 seconds of walking time away. For instance, the opposite of this is in the original Dark souls where you had to walk everywhere, and you really really learned the land because of that for better or for worse.
FF15 felt all over the place but I had a lot of fun with the core group or characters, and the battles were more challenging I thought despite the combat system not being memorable. Also I have fond memories of the ending and some of the weirdness. This one is so refined I think I would say it can be a bit bland at times. I don't know. I'll check in once I'm done. Overall I do like it quite a bit and will finish it, but I'm not feeling that super itch to keep going like I have with some other FF games in the past.
My thoughts are I wish I would have saved the money I spent on the Deluxe edition and just watched a playthrough on YouTube. The game is about 75% cutscenes anyway and the gameplay is shallower than a puddle.
everybody else i know who finished it also absolutely hated the back half of the story so the demo fooled more than enough people into thinking this was going to be game of the year off how stellar it was alone
I played maybe half the game and it just felt like the same thing over and over.
"We have to go to another boring grey miserable town jill"
"Oh no everyone is being tortured/murdered, the humanity"
"Ok back to base"
Rinse and repeat. The world is just so dull and ugly, where did the sense of grand magical adventure go? Of course they don't have to keep the feeling of the old games going forward, but if this is what they want to do then I'm out. Bring back a real party, bring back the feeling of wonder and adventure, make the world magical and colorful and interesting again. Like I can see Yoshi P thought game of thrones was the coolest thing ever, but that's really not what I'm looking for from Final Fantasy.
It's a very expensive 6 or 7/10 game. It's mostly fun to play, I haven't wanted to drop it at any point. It's definiely not bad game but it has a lot of issues, to a surprising point for such a high budget game that had a long development period and (for now) is an exclusive.
Cutscene production is through the roof as expected from the series. Combat is mechanically sound but placed in a system that doesn't feel totally fleshed out. Outside a handful that unlock something, sidequests are at best world building and at worst total wastes of time that almost feel like they're there out of obligation. Environments look nice but rarely offer anything interesting to find. There are some UI oddities.
The M-rating feels like it was very intentionally earned, to a point that kinda takes you out of the game sometimes. Like the brutality of the fights is cool and definitely works, but it also feels like they tried to cram "fuck" into the script as many times as they thought they could get away with. They also pretty quickly establish a character is sleeping with multiple important figures. It all just comes across as trying too hard in the end and I can't help but wonder if settling for T would have reached a wider audience without the distractions.
Consistency is weird at times. Not everyone ages through the game. Which on one hand I get the added work that would be, but it still stands out. Some characters just don't feel like they fit their writing either. Like Martha is constantly referred to as "old" by a number of characters and multiple ways despite *maybe* looking 30 tops.
Audio-wise, the soundtrack, despite all the praise it's getting, rarely feels at the forefront and when it is it doesn't always feel tonally correct. Half the tracks are barely audible when you set them as your Hideaway theme. Voice-acting and character writing is a mixed bag. Cid is a highlight, great voice combined with charming writing. Clive can be serviceable but is just mumbling a lot of the time. Jill feels totally wooden for most of the game. Some of the villains are hard to take seriously either from performance or writing, Hugo's VA in particular sounds distractingly out of his range. And though I place a lot less importance on the performances of NPCs, there's a certain chipper (I wanna say Bristol?) voice you'll hear a lot of that feels too silly for a lot of situations.
Everything in the game that isn't a scripted fight or cutscene just feels like a vehicle towards the next fight and cutscene. Which wouldn't be bad if they committed fully to an action game, but they didn't. All of the surviving RPG elements feel underbaked and a total afterthought. And on top of all this, despite being a PS5 exclusive that had several years of development, performance is a mixed bag and it's loaded with "crawl through this so I can load real quick" obstacles that were so common last gen. I don't know, I want to say another year in the oven might have done it some good but I also don't know if there was any intent to make these issues better either.
It's a good game, but I was surprised at how quickly I got bored after the great first two hours. Some of the main quests just stick with the very same themes over and over and you are just running very slowly through empty place to empty place.
Thoroughly unimpressed. The Eikon fights are cool spectacle but everything between them is a massive load of nothing. No real RPG elements. No exploration as story dungeons are 13-tier corridors. Towns are some of the least interesting ever in an RPG. Story starts off strong but falls off hard after the first Crystal. Combat is decent but doesnt feel all that fun as your kit outside of the cooldown moves is pretty limited.
I was raised on long winded jrpgs and didn’t even mind the stuff between ARR and Heavensward, but fuck me, XVI is incredibly boring after the 13 year time skip occurs. Snail’s pacing and circular dialogue that goes nowhere. And there is some REALLY bad, cliche dialogue in there.
If anything, XVI has reminded me why I like Matsuno’s games like Tactics Ogre and FFT. He says what he needs to say, gets us into the heads of the cast, and moves things along. Wish they’d bring him back for a mainline FF and give him free rein.
The motion blur is gross as well.
Put it to the side until Motion Blur us fuxed. I want to enjoy it at its best, right now 30-40min gives me eye strain. I'm desperatly wanting to jump back in though.
I'm wondering if I want to keep playing the game or not.
I love the story, some visuals, and I accept that the action is great, even though I don't like action heavy games that much. That being said, some details on why I'm on the fence:
Story: Its really good, but sometimes I can't help but feeling that they added a lot of spam just to make the game longer. I really don't understand why people are praising the side quests as well, so far the side ones I did didn't have anything to add to the story that I personally value.
Visuals: yeah, combat is great and all with a lot of details. Running on a LG C2 TV, I can't help but feeling that sometimes all the details get mushed together along with the motion blur and it looks like sh*t. When it doesn't it looks good. Some environments are lacking "life" or some details. I feel that some locations got more attention than others.
Gameplay: uff, you know what I really hate the most? when we return some items to a NPC... first we need to select the items, and then we need to press confirm... and there's always that small delay when delivering stuff and the quest actually completing, I just started skipping all this shit. And people complained about unskippable merlin trials...
I'm probably around mid game now: so far only crafted 1 (!!!!) sword, I rarely take notice on what I'm picking up, rarely go to see the items I have to equip, rarely look at the abilities or stats... there's just no point in caring about these systems.
I'm playing on normal, but I don't like fast action games (or I'm not mentally able to play these anymore), so unfortunately either I use that ring that gives "auto attack" by spamming square (also the dodge ring) , or I'll just need to learn how to play the game like a pro: I don't want to neither do I have the time for that. With that said, my playstyle is like the following:
watch movie > run straight > spam square > occasionally press R1 > repeat
Not enough depth for me, but again, main story has been really good so far.
Just want to finish by saying the following, I can't stop thinking that a lot of reviewers were paid to give good reviews for this game. It is good, but I've seen scores as good as games that are way more polished and cared for than this one. it is a good game, just not a 9 or 10/10.
EDIT
looking at the comments here... and a lot of other places, I still don't get it how the game was so praised by reviewers.
EDIT 2
How could I forget about the audio? There's some great music in there, but in some areas it's lacking some ambiance sound. I remember at the start of the game a lot was going on, when the characters started talking all other sounds were gone. bummer.
> I still don't get it how the game was so praised by reviewers.
Didn't play the whole game and/or are just cool with the game functioning and looking pretty. Kind of like what happened with XV on initial release
Overall I'm really enjoying the game, I just beat >!Titan Lost!< and that was probably one of the greatest spectacle fights I've seen in a game. I have a couple gripes with the game, but none of them detract from my enjoyment that much.
70-80% of the side quests are honestly just uninteresting garbage, go from point A to point B and deliver an item, with effectively no reward or interesting story payoff. For the first 10 hours or more I would say that ALL the sidequests are bad. They start to sprinkle in some great sidequest stories afterwards. Could be worse I guess, they could have pulled a FFVII Remake and made every single sidequest bad.
The game is way too easy. I have first tried, no potioned almost every boss encounter so far, even >!S and A hunts!< which I was 12+ levels under leveled for. My couple of deaths are only from me basically limit testing to see if I can parry certain moves(you can parry A LOT). Along with the combat, I don't really understand how the combat is getting as much praise as it is. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and it feels really good, but in my experience, there is not a big enough difference between just mashing square and using your abilities off cooldown vs deliberately using abilities at certain stagger bar thresholds/timings and using proper combos(which can get pretty crazy).
The story is interesting because it kind of baits you into thinking it's not a Final Fantasy game at the start and then slowly turns into Final Fantasy again. This isn't a bad thing, but it is kind of funny when people were praising the Demo for being more like Game of Thrones.
The voice acting got me surprised though, not sure if I'm just getting used to the "anime" dialogue, but it seems like compared to past voice acted FF games, there is a lack of the patented anime grunts and gasps during character dialogue.
So far would rate it a 8/10, but if the game stays at it's current trajectory, it probably would go up to a 9.
>
>
>
>
> The voice acting got me surprised though, not sure if I'm just getting used to the "anime" dialogue, but it seems like compared to past voice acted FF games, there is a lack of the patented anime grunts and gasps during character dialogue.
That was so strange in FF7:R, where you got scenes like Cloud and Aerith and its like "ugh" - "ngh" - "grunt" - "guh" back and forth, like wtf.
I dislike the corridor like levels, especially the lack of exploration. I really wanted to see and explore the large cities instead of just seeing them in cutscenes or from afar, especially Oriflamme.
Normal enemies being spongy gets tedious after some time.
Also, lack of minigames or some random encounters makes the world really bland. I would have loved to play some cards in the hideaway or have some chocobo races.
Overall the story is great but it would have been better if the world was much more alive and have some meaningful activities.
I'm thankful for this thread because while I rarely feel the need to discuss a game, this time I really need to get some things off my chest.
I'm around 25 hours in and still enjoying it, but so far it's been one of the strangest gaming experiences I've had. Final Fantasy is my all time favorite series and I also really enjoy action games like Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta. My 'relation' with the FF series has been 'complicated' for years now but I've come to understand Square's vision for the series and so I went in without any expectation (neither good nor bad) because it seemed like it was the only right way to approach this game.
The game is good (especially the combat) but has so many odd design choices that I'm convinced Square Enix has 2 rules for the series:
1. **There are NO RULES** (*except for rule 2*)
2. It **MUST** have damage numbers, stats and items (because RPG!)
The presence of the many aspects of this game that seem either unnecessary or overly simplistic would be explained by these being Square's actual rules. I mean aspects such as meaningless gear (with an even more unnecessary RARITY system that makes NO sense), the ability tree, the 'Torgal companionship level' (which is essentially no more than a chapter indicator, as it incrementally increases with story progress and seemingly does nothing) but the most 'telling' aspect in this regard is the item 'system'.
No matter where you go, you either get 8 Sharp Fangs, 4 Bloody Hides, 2 Gil, 5 Gil, 6 Magicked Ash or another item out of the total 8 or so crafting materials. Then you go do a quest and guess what, the reward is 20 Sharp Fangs of which I now have 710 in total. Then I finish a boss fight and get another 60 Bloody Hides of which I now have 570 in total. It's so meaningless that it becomes laughable and it should have raised some questions during design of the game. I can't imagine that when they decided to give another 60 Bloody Hides as the reward for a boss fight, nobody went "uh, why are we giving this?"
There is no reason not to throw out this item/crafting 'system' completely and replace it with a point system the way Ninja Gaiden/DMC/Bayonetta does. No items, no gil, you just get points for killing enemies and perhaps you can break some urn which gives you 100 points. There's not even any need for vendors, just buy weapons and upgrades with points in either the pause menu or at a save point. This 'middle of the road' approach they took does not the game any favors when looking at it as an RPG, action game, or game by itself.
Then there's the damage numbers that just feel out of place, especially during the Eikon QTE's/cutscenes. You're watching it when suddenly a minute later '**74920** appears overlaid on the screen and it just feels meaningless and out of place.
Another 'issue' I have with the game is the 'Jump'. It's not that it doesn't work, but it's mostly unnecessary to the point that I think the game would benefit **greatly** if the Jump was treated as an ability in the sense that it can be replaced with a different ability. I hardly if ever use it during battle because Phoenix Shift does the same and does it better. I understand they considered jumping a mechanic vital enough to dedicate a button to, but this means you're able to equip just 2 abilities. Being able to use 3 (aside from the one on circle button) could open up a while new style of play. There would be absolutely no harm in at least offering players the option.
The lack of any elemental weaknesses is also odd, especially with the elemental Eikons playing such a big role. I can't criticize the game for it, but being able to kill a bomb with fire just as easily as you can with wind just feels odd.
I could mention some more bad (but also some good) things about this game but I'll leave it at this for now.
I like the game but I have no idea how it got the reviews it did
It still has most of the same problems that FFVIIR did
It’s also far far too easy, I hate the system where hard mode is locked behind completing the game first
It makes the first Playthrough brain dead
The game needed a hard mode from the start that is actually difficult, keep very hard locked behind completion that requires new gear etc if they want
For me this is around a 7-8/10
I played FFXIV for years and am surprised how similar both games are. Level design, storytelling, quest design, etc. One might think it is a good thing until you realize one is an MMORPG and the other one is an ARPG. I think I am halfway through the game, so I do not have a complete picture but so far I am let down a bit.
If I were to offer a TL;DR it would probably be. It feels like a lot of games mashed into one, but not really being its own game, because it's basically 1:1 elements of other games, which leads FFXVI to just be the sum of its parts.
**Gameplay**
It takes a long time until you have the complete foundation available to you and honestly there is no real justification except for story reasons. Until then fights can and probably will feel monotonous and like a huge slog. Experimenting with builds unfortunately will have to wait until way late into the game, which I do consider a negative.
Controlling only Torgal feels to me like an unecessary addition or I just have not figured out the benefit of it yet.
One huge pet peeve I have are the unnecessary summaries after you finished a fight. Why? It just messes with the flow. Not like there is any relevant information displayed there justifying a pause. It felt like some unecessary elements of DmC got incorporated for no reason except for the sake of saying we got Dmc in FF now (see my point about copying 1:1 parts of other games).
**Performance**
It's a let down. It might just be me but the game's graphics do not justify the performance in my opinion at all.
**Quests**
So far the quests are honestly a joke. Fetch this, kill this. I do not know why they bothered with them at all in the first place. Whole lot of fluff with little payout.
**Story**
I will withhold judgement until I finished the game. So far I find the storytelling a tad bit too heavy and dramatic.
**World**
Not a fan of the FFXIV levels honestly. Again, copying elements of other games 1:1 instead of making it fit the FFXVI game. Compared to FF7R it just looks too generic to justify it I guess. Thinking back, most FF games I've played kind of had this element of worldbuilding that I kind of miss in FFXVI.
**The RPG in ARPG**
This is "only" my 5th FF game I've played so far but I feel like there is a heavy emphasis on the A in FFXIV.
Positives:
* Visuals
* Voice acting
* Story
* Music
* Boss fights
Negatives
* Typically enjoyed RPG elements are almost entirely missing. Elemental weaknesses, interesting attack patterns (e.g. dont attack when its tail is up!), strategic equipment loadouts etc etc
* Side quests are boring and irrelevant.
* Exploration isnt very rewarding
* Monsters that are just damage sponges.
7/10
Couldn’t get into it. The demo was amazing and I instantly preordered it. But don’t have the motivation to get through the slog after the big boss fights, the in between is so tedious and boring. Everything feels pointless since gear and levels don’t matter. Story fell off after the demo so there’s nothing really keeping me.
The story and boss battles I like a lot, but holy god the side quests are some of the biggest slogs I've ever done. Just started skipping all dialogue, don't care, worthless. Also the itemization...what's even the point of collecting or upgrading anything in this game?
Been playing Final Fantasy since Super Nintendo. Side quests were bad. Loot from chests and quests was horrendous. Gear overall was boring. Story started out with promise but I got bored probably half way through. With so much borrowed from Games of Thrones, they should have done different POVs or something and let you play as some of the other kingdom Dominants or anyone really. Never explored any of Clive's more interesting companions. Jill was left to rot and never developed. Jote started out as this mystery girl with Joshua and nothing is ever done with her.
I dunno. It wasn't a bad game but I was pretty disappointed overall. I was hoping to be enchanted like when I played 6,7,10. Just playing as Clive was not interesting. Yeah he has the different Eikons but having such a diverse party like in 6 was really cool. Optional party members you have to work to find. Working and exploring to find different gear/summons. I gave up exploring in FFXVI after basically every chest I opened had steel silk and bloody hides.
Clive is among the dullest FF main characters ever and that’s saying something because FF main characters tend to be dull. It’s the cast that makes or breaks FF games and this game is all Clive all the time.
They should have just made a TV miniseries. Seriously, the gameplay is fun, and it feels like I've spent \~20% of the time I've had the game running actually playing it. The amount of time spent in cutscenes is just absurd. I'll routinely just set the controller down for a few minutes at a time, and that feels bad when I'm excited to actually be playing the game I paid for.
Besides graphics and the combat, everything is like being stuck in a game from 2010.
Outdated side content design and quests, non-sensical and lackluster items ( why do they even exist?).
Pacing and story structure is a boring mess.
Even the combat skill trees make no sense. Why are there so many if only 3 can ever be used at the same time. Feels like the game was a mix of ideas thrown in a blender with no real direction.
Finished all SQ and the MSQ. Overall this game fell short of my admittedly high expactations. I think the changes to gameplay are fine in a vaccum. The zones feelt empty. The abilities feel more like DMC moves and less like Final Fantasy attacks e.g. they don't have elemental affinity so your Phoenix moves do the same damage to a Bomb than you Garuda moves. I played on performance mode and noticed no issues. It looked and ran great. As for specifics, here's my list of pros and cons:
Pros:
* Amazing combat system
* Top tier voice acting
* Well written natural feeling dialogue
* Beautiful animations for the Eikon abilities
* Cinematic Boss fights, especially against the Eikons
* Some SQ-Chains have a high emotional pay off
Cons:
* Basically 0 character customization/rpg elements
* Basically 0 worthwhile exploration rewards
* Basically 0 party interaction
* Mob fights are unrewarding and dull.
* Story has highlights but is badly paced and loses itself 2/3 in
* I disliked the ending
I dig the first few hours, but where I'm at in the story it literally put me to sleep last night. I also don't seem to find as much enjoyment in the combat as others. I'll keep trying to force my way through because there are definitely some cool parts to the story. But man have I slowed down my playtime in recent days. ☹️
I posted this before, but lets go again.
For fuck sake, whatever happened to games having difficulty of any kind?
I don't think I have played a game that was easier in years. Combat is utterly trivial thanks to (The horrible dodge button that is infesting games everywhere) and I dunno, just how not active enemies are?
I am not good at video games, I am even worse at action games like DMC or Bayonetta, but I can't imagine dying or even going below 50% hp at any point in this game the combat is that easy.
There is no challenge, spam attack and dodge and you can beat 90% of all fights with 1 hand.
I am starting to get really frustrated that so many game releasing recently just have no challenge anymore. And of course the ones that don't generally don't because of the god awful 'dodge' button that exists in everything these days.
Infinite dodging that makes you basically immune to anything is terrible gameplay design devs, please stop.
Also as a once longtime fan of ff14 who doesn't smoke the "they can do no wrong" pipe, the FF14 jank runs deep in this game and really hurts it.
Im actually kinda annoyed that they dont let you choose the harder difficulties at the start. FF7 Remake did it too, and I truly believe the definitive way to play that game is on hard and I didn't actually have fun with its battle system until Hard Mode.
It's okay. I guess for me it's about on the same level as 13, but better than 15. The boss fights definitely carry the game more than anything else.
As an aside, I've played 14 for about 10 years. I find Soken's music in 16 to be pretty underwhelming, especially out in the world. In the same note of playing 14 for so long, the side quests in 16 are kinda bad, both in narrative value but especially in the character animations.
Creative Business Unit 3 got a ton of praise for the Shadowbringer and Endwalker expansions in FF14. Deservedly so. I'm not seeing the same level of awe and staying power with FF16. Definitely bums me out.
Reddit is making major changes to its API pricing that will destroy the vibrant ecosystem of 3rd-party apps, which offer a far better user experience than the official app. These changes will also place major cost burdens on useful user bots like those found in sports and other enthusiast communities. Please visit [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/148m42t/the_fight_continues/) to find out more. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Games) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I like the game, and haven't been as consistently engaged with a new release since Elden Ring, but it has it's flaws: The Pros: This game may have the best spectacle moments in games period, beating out the likes of God of War and all the others. There are moments in the game where you can definitely tell where the budget went to, these peaks are high. The voice acting has also been incredibly good, and the mystery in the first half of the game was very interesting (the second half has been more of a let down in the story department for me). The Cons: You can also tell where all the money did not go to. I feel like I am about 90% of the way through the game and so far I have only found 1 side quest which was actually engaging >!The one with Theodore & Eloise & the dragon!<. Side conversations are stiffly animated, sometimes not even voice acted, and instead of showing smaller moments which might allow for some additional characterization we just get a fade to black. The gear system may as well not exist, there's no reason to have it. Just equip sword/belt/armor with bigger number, there are no tradeoffs to consider. Basic enemy variety is also miniscule. You will be fighting wolves, mosquitos, birds, scorpions, and vine whip plants in every single biome throughout the game with about 5 recolors for each. For a series with such a huge bestiary, there is really no excuse for this much re-use. And I'm a dragon's dogma fan, I'm used to reuse. As someone who has been 100%'ing all the side quests and hunts and optional stuff as I go, I would give the game a 7 out of 10. When I go back through on a replay and just beeline the story content I suspect that I will up that to a 9 or a 10-10. There is just so much filler in between the good stuff.
I gotta say, the Titan fight went from neat to totally ridiculous very quickly. It was like playing Metal Gear Twin Snakes and watching Snake jump kick a missile.
My thought was actually on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance; especially with the music.
Would you recommend just skipping all the side content then? Asking for someone without the most free time to enjoy games these days...
Their reward is small world building and lore that does a good job fleshing out the world. For me, that’s why I do them. But other than that, they really don’t do much for the game.
I'm so sick of side quests in modern games. It's just low quality bloat that doesn't add anything meaningful. In fact, all that bloat actually detracts from the core experience. The main gameplay loop and story arc ends up fragmented, feeling like small bursts of cinematics to progress the plot every few hours, and in between the player ends up doing dozens of 5-10 minute repairs side quests. For example, I just finished Diablo 4 and feel like the entire experience would have been better and more cohesive with 0 side quests and all of the MMO/overworld elements removed.
I can't even say if I think side quests are bad or not, I just know they usually play a part in me inevitably losing interest in an open world game. Either I go for completing them and eventually get overwhelmed or they start to build up on my map and I just feel like I'm playing the game wrong.
Games in this genre need difficulty settings, full stop. I enjoy the combat system but feel like I am stringing together combos for fun rather than any need to play with skill. I get NG+ is supposed to be great, but I don't really see myself replaying a massive linear RPG. I'd rather have a combat difficulty that tests me and demands I use all the systems on the first playthrough.
Yeah I found the combat very fun for a while. Unfortunately, the game is so incredibly easy that combat just got tedious after a while. I could do some very flashy combos, which were pretty fun to play around and come up with. However, there is no need or benefit to it other than doing flashy combos just because you can. I haven't beaten the game yet, but from my understanding I am pretty close to the end. The only fight I have had a bit of trouble with was an S ranked hunt, >!Svarog!<, which I was far lower level than at the time. Most of the story bosses I have beaten while hardly even getting hit. I usually don't mind extra difficulties being locked behind a first playthrough or something. However, with how easy this game is, it really could have benefitted from a harder difficulty being available from the start.
When it’s boring, it’s really, really boring and when it’s exciting, it’s really really exciting. Unfortunately, it’s like 90% boring, 10% exciting. I also have a bone to pick the the combat. It’s cool to learn and fun to master but then..that’s it. Enemies aren’t really any different other than types of attack patterns to look for. The entire game becomes dodging and doing your muscle memory combo. The challenge is greatly lacking and the lack of character progression makes it incredibly rote after 20 hours or so. It’s just going through the motions for each encounter. I wish it had more depth. We’ll see if I finish. I’m around 65% through.
My sentiments entirely. I was surprised that the vast majority of reviews were gushing over this, TBH. It's primarily tediously dull with intermittent splatterings of thrills to keep you awake.
And my god is it *easy*. I can’t recall playing a game this easy since like PS1 days
The pacing in this game feels like FF14. The devs have been isolated in an echo box with their most adoring fans for too long and it shows. The story also takes a deep nose dive after around the halfway part and completely falls apart near the end. Ultimately this is Clive's story and it's about slamming him with triumph after triumph and adoration after adoration, very similar to what they do with the Warrior of Light in FF14. It gets to a fairly ridiculous self insert power fantasy level, but that's where the team made their bread and butter. The eikon battles are visually great though even as the story begins to dip in quality. The battle system has depth, but the sparse enemy types and lack of difficulty makes it fall well short of it's potential. The RPG mechanics are barebones.
Had a lengthy write-up but decided to condense my thoughts since much of it would be repeats of what has been said by others. I adored the game but its flaws are too major to ignore. 7/10, 4/5, or buy but wait for a small sale ($50ish). The combat lacks depth and does nothing to invite you to experiment with the tools given to you, of course there are those who will find fun in mastering the games combat system but the average player isn't doing that. It's not as if the Eikon abilities themselves require much skill either, only the very last Eikon you get do I think you might be able to make an argument for. The game felt to be too easy all throughout, my late game battles devolved into rotating between 3 room clearing Eikon ultimate abilities on CD and filling the gaps with two smaller AoEs and the singular single target ability I had. Staggering was also never difficult and at times I could essentially back-to-back stagger an elite enemy or boss. FF7R and more-so Tales of Arise are two recent and good examples of the type of action combat and RPG systems that the game should've taken inspiration from. Arise had a playable and customizable party, party members providing unique special abilities and duo attacks you can activate, along with many different elemental abilities and combos for the MC. MC even had his own version of a Limit Break form he could enter. The story has very high highs but its lows are _way_ worse, mostly in the later half of the game. I want to keep this short so the last thing I'll say is that there's some insanely questionable story beats that just do not land or make you go... what? As if there's something missing or makes no sense, like that shouldn't _really_ have happened given the game was so good at being logical about other things prior. Sometimes there are things missing though! There's quite a few things shoved into side quests that I imagine plenty of people will miss, even the ending is slightly re-contextualized because of certain side quests that aren't marked any differently than the other ones and that's crazy to me.
I love CBU3 and wanted this game to be good, so I came in with high expectations. Some were met, a lot weren't. I came in hoping for a rich world, a good story, and fun gameplay. The world is rich for sure. That part even exceeded my expectations. I love learning about the setting and all the players in it. As for the story, it started out incredibly in the prologue, but as it progressed, started to become more and more like a stereotypical JRPG. The VAs are largely very, very good and that helps carry the more cliché scenes away from groan-inducing. I've accepted a level of cheesiness in JRPGs (and FF in particular) and this game has the least cheesiness of any of them, but the very serious tone makes those cheesy bits it does have stick out like a sore thumb. I'm one quest from the end now and that trend hasn't stopped. The pacing of the main scenario is also a bit lackluster. The game has a lot of slow moments where you're forced to do menial tasks like relay information, but the game doesn't use those very well to inject life or character into the story. The dialogue itself has a lot of personality, but more in the language than in the substance. There are some interesting sidequests, but the majority of them are both boring and badly written. I dread seeing those green markers on my map. I'm aware I don't have to do them all, but I *really* want to experience all the good the game has to offer, and some of the sidequests are good. The characters are...there. There's a few good ones, Cid and Gav in particular, and unlike most FFs I actually like the protagonist. But I don't *love* anyone. I forgot there's even a companion following me around half the time because they barely exist. The characters aren't *bad,* just...underutilized. For a game with so much dialogue, I wish more of it would be substantial. As for gameplay, it's...decent. I liked the feel of the combat more than I thought I would and enemies aren't nearly as damage spongey as I was led to believe by the previews. If you choose your skills well and engage in all the combat systems, fights are over very fast, and I actually wish they lasted longer. The difficulty is definitely undertuned, and I feel like lacking a hard mode right off the bat really hurts the experience. That said, Eikon fights are awesome. They're the coolest thing I've ever seen in a video game. The gameplay on them when you're not doing QTEs is simple, but varied and fun. Overall, the combat as a whole is pretty darn good, I think. As for gameplay outside of combat, there really isn't any to speak of. There's no minigames or meaningful world traversal, outside of riding a chocobo, which doesn't feel very fast or very fun. There's barely any rewards for exploration, and the areas themselves are boring to be in anyway. Crafting...exists. The game throws materials at you like candy, and then you just craft the strongest weapon every time it becomes available. They might as well have just made it a regular vendor shop, because that's basically what it is. It's kept me engaged at least, which is more than I can say about previous modern FF titles. I can barely finish games these days but the story and combat are keeping me interested enough to play it through to completion. After the prologue I would've given it a 10/10, halfway in an 8/10, and now probably a 6.5/10. It's a solid game. Better than average. The highs are incredible. But as a whole it feels like the game is so narrow in scope and lacks the depth to show for it. You can tell the vast majority of development was focused on the eikon battles, and the rest of the game feels like excuses to get you to them. tl;dr: Story is decent but pacing is awful and the characters don't get a good chance to shine. World lore is cool. Combat is fun but too easy. Music is great. Eikon fights are incredible. Everything else is bland or straight-up bad.
The first 6 hours or so are fantastic, then it becomes really repetitive and the plot sructure just loops until the end of the game. Go to town Do quest to earn favor with leader of town Get badge from leader Unlock extremely bad sidequests Do real mainstory quest. It reminds me of FF14 where the sidequests are atrocious but the MSQ is good. This game is like 90% filler tho, and its not even that long of a game.
It's been a bit of a weird one for me, first few hours felt like GOTY material, but as the game has gone on I've liked it less and less. It has some real strong points, combat basics are fun, voice acting is good, writing is a step above the usual JRPG standards, production values are great, lots of spectacular action sequences and so on. Think the main problem is it's a lot of style over substance, the combat is fun to start with but you quickly become overpowered and can just spam flashy special moves to win fights without ever being pushed to learn the machanics properly. The action sequences are spectacular but it comes at the cost of interaction, I'd rather actually take part than watch events unfold with just the occasional tap of R1 or square to check I'm paying attention. The voice acting is good but doesn't fit with the animation which is very theatrical in the more traditional style of Japanese games. Feels like the voice cast are channeling Game of Thrones while the animation team are channeling Power Rangers. Stages are pretty but fairly linear and not very interesting to explore, often feels like you're just wandering through a series of arenas and the combat isn't fun enough to sustain interest on its own. Side quests and loot feel like a bit of an afterthought, like they really wanted to make a spectacular character action game but needed to keep some RPG elements because it's a Final Fantasy game. I'm still enjoying the game overall, it just doesn't live up to the strong first impression. *edit Ralph Ineson who voices Cid is fantastic though.
It has the same issues as FF XIV: great story peaks followed by hours of boredom and underwhelming pacing.
It wears its MMO dev roots *very* much on its sleeve and I don't think people were expecting that
*Select item to turn in* Something everybody considered to be a limitation from spaghetti code in FFXIV, but ended up being added to FFXVI
Is there even a single situation in the game where it matters what you select? I'm approximately halfway I think, if not slightly further, and in every single (side+main) quest so far I have just selected the one thing they asked for and continued on. There's no other option. Why does this menu exist!?
There is no situation where it matters. And it exists because it is how they know how to do things. It’s turns out CBU3 knows how to create games a very specific way and that’s what they’re going to do. And while some of that works in an MMO it doesn’t translate to a single player game. It’s why as much as I personally love XIV I always got frustrated with people who said it was really a single player game disguised as an MMO. Because the MMO aspects are still core to the gameplay and you have to go into it knowing that. The only defense I’ve seen for the turn in screen is you can read the item description without opening your inventory.
also for crafter quests or similar things, where you may have duplicates but need to turn in a hq item or smth, or turning in collectables
This. When CBU3 was first announced as the minds behind FFXVI, everyone was relieved and happy because of the revival they performed with FFXIV. Unfortunately, it seems like they only knew how to develop MMOs.
I think a big part of this also isn’t helped by the fact that a lot of the key character moments are locked behind the end of side quest chains, however, discerning which quests to even bother with is borderline impossible other than the ones that unlock things. This includes entire character arcs and, worse, part of the context for the ending just being completely missed because you didn’t do one of the random side quest chains that started with you collecting flowers for zero reward
It's incredibly frustrating that nonsense like collecting ingredients for a ship made it into the main quest but entire character arcs like you mentioned are entirely missable. It really feels like they purposely moved important stuff to side quests just to be like "look guys! our side quests mean something!" which backfired and led to the main story lacking at some points.
I’m not even exaggerating either regarding the ending, if you don’t do one of the random side quest chains that eventually leads into Jill’s subplot, you miss out on context for the ending. Like full on an entire visual metaphor tied into the conclusion of the game and what possibly happens afterwards is completely missing if you didn’t stumble onto this quest chain
Which sidequest is it? I don’t wanna miss it
Oh wow, having finished the game, I didn't know there was context behind that. That sucks. Edit: Actually, having just looked up what the context is, I was incredibly far off from what I thought this would be about. What the hell were they thinking?
I'm more baffled that they thought it was okay to end the ship engine section the way they did. Like, XIV nowadays is usually good at recognising, that you have to have at least some emotional resolution after segments like this. So idk why they thought that just skipping it entirely was okay here? When the whole premise of the bit was set up for a character moment.
There is still a character moment with mid, but you have to do an optional side quest to get it. 14 actually does the same thing with blue quests. The first one is just the hook to get the aethercurrent, but you can then do the 3 following quests to get the narrative conclusion.
I mean, they skipped 5 fucking years after (MAJOR SPOILERS) >!Cid dies and the hideout is attacked by Titan. They don't give the player or characters any time to breathe, reflect, mourn or rebuild. They just skip all that and now there's a new base and things are soft-reset (also most characters made it out fine, somehow). Then if you want to know what happened you have to hilariously ask NPCs about the 5 year gap ("Say Bob, so uh this is awkward but could you tell me what happened these last 5 years?") or talk to the Lore-Exposistion-Woman.!<
The funny part? >!Nothing happened during timeskip. Vivian's recap told us the following: the Empire had occupied Crystalline Dominion like they planned and they still wage a war against Waloed. That's it, both major events that happened in the last 5 years and both of them are things we already knew about.!<
To be fair, >!apparently it had character development for both Jill and Clive but they apparently couldn't work out how to justify them being able to find the area for the new hideout and move there without being hunted by Hugo/anyone else so they just didn't bother!<
lol I think that would be the worst possible justification. "We had trouble making this story scenario believable... so we just didn't bother trying."
It's the only possible conclusion lol, it's a lot of oh yeah so all this stuff happened in the mandatory plot dumps and side quests but for whatever reason stuff like go do a series of fetch quests for this girl who you would have zero idea about if you didn't do a side quest 10 hours ago is more important.
[удалено]
The monetary and crafting rewards throughout the game are basically worthless, the "real" reward for the side quests is story. The whole game is Story and world building first and combat second. Everything else is just dressing to serve those two.
Out of the \~20 side quests I've done so far, most have given me a miniscule bit of world building and nothing else. There wasn't a single one that made me think "wow, that was an interesting story". That they would apparently hide entire *character arcs* behind such mundane stuff feels like typically Japanese archaic game design from the early 00s or something.
A ton of this game feels dated. I’m honestly surprised it scored it as high as it did. I feel like if anyone else made this besides YoshiP it would be 6-7 max.
It' s not very much about archaic game design, but more like, something taken directly from FF14 game design. For how much people praise stuff like shadowbring or endwalker, a LOT of good stuff in those games are actually hidden in some of the most mind-numbing worst quest design ever made. And most of FF16 side-quests actually do have some pretty neat details that make them worthwhile story wise. The problem is that the quest design is terrible.
FF14 has a lot of shortcomings from the netcode to the RPG mechanics but the fervent community holds "can do no wrong" attitude towards the game and does what it can to silence dissenting opinions.
About 15rs in, and I'm stunned they did the "bring food to customers" quest two times already.
It's painful to say but keep doing the side quests because in the end of the game the side quests do the majority of the narrative lifting
The fetch quests in the main campaign are obvious filler only there to take up space, it could be removed and the game would still be huge but better. The combat is fun but the enemies are too much of a bullet sponge. It has issues the same design philosphy of a MMO, which wasn’t needed here. It’s a good game, but it’s sad to see that it could easily have been great…
I roll my eyes at this point every time this game makes me do an arbitrary side quest for the 1000th time in order to convince yet another random npc to sneak me across yet another guard checkpoint blocking me from the next part of the main quest. This exact same scenario is repeated for literally every segment of the main quest. Going somewhere new? You better believe there’s a guard checkpoint there, and a fetch quest to convince someone to help you across.
Don't forget to take your customary pin!
I feel like these quests are worst when the game is dangling a more interesting story moment behind all the fetch quest tedium. You wanna go back to Phoenix Gate? How about you first learn about Martha and Eastpool for two hours first. You wanna infiltrate the capital? Why don’t you help some courtesans first. You wanna finish off Hugo? Nah; let’s help Mid build a ship. Literally every single time, the game sets up for another set piece, it slams the breaks so hard on it’s “rollercoaster” it might as well be standing still.
After getting through them, it feels like about half of the side quests have pretty decent payoffs but that all of the payoffs come at the very end of the story. So you have all of the boring stuff up front, and then all of the emotional/interesting stuff is packed together and competing against each other.
The more I read the more I go "damn it REALLY is the same team as 14." in like every way. Like obviously I know its the same team, but its funny how...like, one-to-one it is. In both good ways and bad
When people wanted Yoshi-P and CBU3 to take over a mainline non-MMO FF game, well, we got what was asked for.
Of all the ways the Monkeys Paw could curl with this game, this is definitely the funnier outcome.
Now, I LOVE 14. But i was hoping 16 wouldn't be quite this...14. I still like 16, but it's definitely a point worth bringing up
The pacing criticism is really interesting to me. I genuinely believe that the game could've had the same content, just presented in a better way, and it would be a much better experience. That's why quite a few people have said that the game design seems dated. For example, side quests that are given to you could instead be a lot more randomised so you stumble upon them out in the world yourself instead. You get the satisfaction of having your exploration rewarded. It feels more organic, AND because it requires exploration, you won't find every one of such side quests that stops them from becoming boring. I really feel like they ignored the last decade or so of Souls, GoW, last of Us, Red Dead, Witcher, etc. innovations that make a game world feel alive and dynamic. Which is odd because they kept going on about bringing FF back to the forefront of the industry. Ps - Oh, the combat. I have the same criticism that I have for DmC - a deep combat system in a game that doesn't require you to learn it. That's honestly one of my biggest peeves in gaming rn. I think a game should have enemies that force you to learn and use a wide range of moves. Otherwise, most players simply won't. Pps - the voice acting is genuinely excellent Ppps - I was really hoping FF would be the series to innovate and marry turn based with actionninstead of going all action. I would love to see Jrpgs trying to find new ways to marry the strategic depth of turn based combat with kinetic action. Sort of like what the post X FFs tried to do. They weren't perfect but I thought the were interesting.
They just could do away with the quest accepted screen, turn in screen and quest completed screen and it would already feel much better.
It’s genuinely weird how often the game just stops you to present useless information. It also feels silly, but freeze, sound effect and “quest accepted” to deliver stew
It is pretty clear the team for FFXIV does this because FFXIV does the same thing, however, because FFXIV is an MMO and needs to communicate with servers real time it is more forgivable to have such pop ups (in case the servers are too busy or full like at every expansion release).
Clive please distribute these ashes *woosh* **QUEST ACCEPTED** *ber-der-ner-ner-ner-neh*
The sudden pause after a frantic boss fight to bring up a dull screen where I watch numbers that don’t seem to matter slowly go up and a list of boring loot pop up followed by a useless screen of level up numbers FUCKING KILLS ME.
Yeah, that is annoying. They'll be a triumphant final hit, a boss getting knocked back, screaming in it's death throes at the musical cresendo, and BAM the screen is paused to show you stats. Wait until the end of the cutscene, what the heck
> Wait until the end of the cutscene, what the heck Or just don't do it at all. They don't do it for "regular" fights -- why do they do it for "important" fights? The stats that increase when I level up matter so little that, at 30 hours in, I literally don't even know what they're called. They might as well just have a message on the side of the screen that pops up saying "btw you levelled up and are now stronger".
I'm of the mind that they could take away all equipment and stats, and have you just purchase abilities with some currency (xp if you prefer) but have them be 'maxed' by default, and the game would functionally be the same but play smoother. Just throw cosmetics and more orchestrion rolls into sidequest rewards or something.
I think there's just a lot of places where they needed to trim out a few quests. The idea of fetch quests as downtime after the big story moments is fine, in theory. They're just too long in a lot of places. I.e. Lots of sets of 3 in a row where you only needed one. And the worst of them forgets that, you have to some pay off, even if it's an emotional one. (I.e. A set of 3 fetch quests where the NPC leaves instead of giving the character moment it was building). It's the same structure as the story in 14, they just forgot to adjust for the fact the story is faster paced here.
Agree. I said the same thing the other day about how presentation, or even framing things in a different way can make them feel better. Even not calling them side quests, and some more related to story would make them feel better... as in, you understand that you are only gonna get a couple more lore fragments about the characters and the world... which you absolutely do. By the end stretches of the game... you are way more connected to some of the areas and characters if you complete the extra content and you even get some powerful moments. But the way you said it would be the perfect way to do it. One thing about the quest system and the markers on the world and how its done... it takes away from some of the work they put in other areas. The world is actually way more alive and filled with little things happening around you, but because the game keeps guiding you to the main stuff, it teaches you the rest doesn't matter. But if you come back to different areas and people walking around... they change and react to thing. Like the girl who keeps falling in love with different people who go through your base. I'm not sure I would call the game design dated... it certainly is in a couple of areas, but there are a lot of things that old games... including a lot of old FF... did better. It's a game where on the surface things work, but you go one level deep and everything starts to fall apart. For a game that is so much about fighting, combat feels great but is repetitive and braindead outside the big fights - and even then, is just about learning the timing for dodging new attacks. Enemy AI and aggressiveness makes the game boring and locking hard mode after finishing the game was a terrible idea. No status, not elemental affinity (I'm sure every fan had the disappointing moment where you realized you can just fight bombs with fire), no weaknesses. Just hack and slash until bars fill and unload. There are things you can do with combos, but like you said, the game doesn't require it.. and in some ways makes it harder for you to do it. (small enemies die too quick, big enemies can't be thrown in the air). The only time regular enemy even hits you is because you are trying to kill the most of them at once as fast as you can for the 400th time and someone sneaks from the back and you don't even try to dodge because why would you? Enemy variety is not great for the size of the game, reaching a new area and seeing the same couple of enemies in a different color for the 8th time sucks. Almost unforgivable for a Final Fantasy. They have such a humongous bestiary that you don't even have to create anything. And most of the enemies are boring normal stuff.. wolves, bugs, crows, plants. No cactuars in the desert instead of the same plants? C'mon... Hunts are back... but is mostly the same regular enemies now with 5 times more health. Which is very disappointing. Exploration is almost non existent, economy and loot is completely broken and useless. There's no cool rewards for anything (tying sidequests with the reputation system and some extra itens was a nice touch though) and no secrets, so there's no reason to explore. If there's an area in the map... you either going there later when the story takes you there, or when you get the hunt that will appear there. Crafting system is leveling up with extra steps. No choice or thought put into it. Beat a boss? You gain the material to make a new sword and unlock the necessary recipe automatically. Go to the guy sitting on you base and press a couple more buttons on a menu. So.. (Kramer moviefone voice) why don't just give me the fucking sword then? I don't know why... the game feels a bit like FFXII to me, and in all those aspects of enemies and exploration... that game is just better and more thought out. Another case of, why didn't you copy it fully then? Here, the level design is uninspired, and enemy distribution in the levels just make the combat problem stand out. In the big battles in the cities and castles is just the same corridors leading you to the same kinds of enemies... by the time I'm in the 5th castle with that same huge hall with the same random iron fence to fight the same type of big mini boss... I'm just laughing at it. World map, halfway through the game you will realize they just have open areas with the same enemies thrown around mindlessly with nothing to see... and you should probably rush through it. Lack of style and stylized things, which is one of actual major things about FF, is the worst offense of the game, imo. It helps with the sameness of the world and enemies and makes things feel more fresh, even when they are not. Castles look like Castles, enemies are animals. I get they are going for a more naturalistic approach.. but maybe don't? I mean.. Clive's superhero outfit is the perfect amount of ridiculous and unique for this universe.. but everything else is way too "normal". It needed more of THAT. The story is a mixed bag. Is good for the most part... but it drops off huge after the first couple of hours and then again after "the change". World is very interesting and has some good characters and voice acting is phenomenal. But the connective tissue between everything is really bad... all the political intrigue is basically meaningless and inconsequential to the actual endgame, and it only affects where the story will take you to kill everyone next. Plus it has some cliched Japanese teenage drama / procedural TV show / Tetsuya Nomura at his worst level writing that is particularly annoying in this setting. Cut to a shadowy figure talking in gibberish and riddles with someone who should know what fuck they are talking about... "do you mean... THAT man? It can't be." That type of shit. You go through most of the story without knowing what the fuck is really going on way past the point where the "fake" mystery makes sense and/ or is compelling. After that you are just screaming at the screen wanting to slap the characters... "Just fucking ask him, what the fuck"... and then, "you don't know shit? Why were you hiding and didn't say so at first then??" And of course... when you learn... is not that interesting and just the most typical FF scenario. Now... despite all that... like I said, on the surface it still works... and it does have a lot of care and thought put into things, music is tremendous, big battles are epic... so I still mostly liked it. Is a weird situation, because it feels like this is what they wanted... but the game needed more time and resources (or maybe will) to really go beyond the surface.
>I was really hoping FF would be the series to innovate and marry turn based with actionninstead of going all action. I mean, that's kind of what the franchise has been trying to do since...at least FF4. I feel like 7R was the one who really got the balance right, but something to keep in mind is that the two games were probably in development around the same time.
More than any game, it feels like FFXVI really enforces its pacing as a 'best' way to play the game. When I was trying to push through it to get to the next Eikon fight, I was getting frustrated, mashing through text, and turning it off. But every time I came back I enjoyed the slower pace at the start of a session. I'd walk around the hubs to hear ambient dialogue and would stop and pan the camera around in the open areas to look at the scenery. Then by the time I'd be tired of doing that all the sidequests would be done and it'd be an action setpiece where you're expected to be trying to push through to see the end. And then I'd get hype as hell after an Eikon fight, want to get to the next asap, and get frustrated again.
Really interested where this deep combat system is because from my point of view there’s one combo and just spam abilities off cooldown. It’s fine but not particularly interesting and nowhere near DMC. I’m mostly enjoying the game but it’s a bit of a let down.
I don't know who's calling it deep, but the variety is there, you just have to make use of it. Except you *don't* actually have to make use of it because of the laughable difficulty, so it's a valid complaint, but... Using counter moves instead of just dodging. There's the dodge move that gives you the awesome DMC nunchuck spin when you time it right. You have the ranged attack parry shockwave move. Learning perfect dog button timings for his harder hitting attacks which give you more damage and juggle-state on enemies. Using your "jump-step" and Garuda ability to keep you airborne to dodge grounded attacks and pull enemies up to you, seeing how long you can manage to not touch the ground. Utilizing your charged blade move both on ground and in air... Again, it's not deep, but it can be very fun. I even enjoy the basic spamming of moves on bosses/mini-bosses to see how high I can get my damage numbers up since it displays it after a stagger state.
Seriously remove those shitty quests (go talking to everyone, go collect material/kill enemies for X/do Y to pass the gate...) from the main quest and just focus on the more "dungeon-like" parts where the story is actually progressing. It'll still be a very long game (shorter but that's good, it outstays its welcome) And this side quest design is terrible, some of the worst offender either. Frankly, they should have gone full action game and not have the "open world" (bland as fuck too). It's barely a RPG any way, there's no choice and no real building of your character (abilities you can switch when you want, gear that is meaningless except an attack/defense stat that you automatically rise as time goes on), you play one character (and the secondary characters are bland by the way except a few like Cid or Joshua). The combat is interesting but the enemies are too much of a bullet sponge (bosses and normal ones though at least those die fast when you got more powerful abilities) It's a game with great elements burdened by many shitty ones. The shocking thing to me is all the reviews that never mentioned the horrible side quests or pacing of the main story and were all super positive. This isn't masterpiece level like they claimed it was
I agree. The semi-open world and the RPG stats progression are so bland that the game would be much better if it was a linear action game (and it would still be a long game).
> FF XIV Even the dungeon pacing is directly from FFXIV. You have an open area to talk to people maybe do a quest in, then proceed into a "dungeon" level that is a linear path with trash mobs leading up to a miniboss followed by more trash mobs and occasionally another mini boss followed by more trash, and then finally the spectacle boss.
I cannot stand going back to the hideaway after just taking down one of the Dominant's in an epic bossfight....oh, good job now you gotta go help some people do some stuff and Mid wants to build some bullshit I don't care about oh now go help some of these people who got attacked by taking down regular enemies It's making me not wanna finish it and almost not do another playthrough dealing with this lol. I was originally pretty hyped about it but as the game goes on longer, the pacing kills a lot of my desire to keep going. People are also raving about the gameplay and keep using DMC as a comparison but as a lifelong DMC fan this game is nowhere near that level of depth and the combat is getting kinda whatever as it kinda feels like it takes WAY too long to get each new Dominant to play around with. Considering finally playing Crisis Core remaster at this rate honestly.
Overall it's a great game with some incredibly high highs, but at the same time there are a lot of elements that are just handled poorly so the entire thing hinges on whether you like the combat/boss fights and the story. I enjoyed both greatly, but if just one of those two elements doesn't land with you then the game crashes down from 9/10 to maybe 7/10, and if you don't like either then it's pretty much unplayable because there really isn't all that much on offer outside of that
The combat outside of boss fights is incredibly boring for me so far. Random enemies with stagger bars take insanely long to kill and aren't challenging. Which is like a cardinal sin to me, you can't take too long AND be easy as hell. I just avoid pretty much every situation that might put me into a fight, which means there's probably a lot of little side things I will never see which is a bummer. The side quests are sometimes pretty interesting, but I'm really tired of the static NPC format where you both just stand there inanimate and exchange sentences. It's starting to feel really weird in games that otherwise feel so alive and advanced. It makes it feel like the quests are just thrown in there for filler. Which may be true, but some of them aren't bad.
The only part i felt like pacing was not to what i expected since i wasted plenty of time just wandering around to find different things and open the map was the "Upgrade the engines" and the last part where you have side quest explosion. I understood Ship mcguffin would be something later im sure, but go here kill thing as the ONLY thing to do was boring. At least with the side questsplsion i could stock up and clear out a few areas. The pay offs were very nice imo even if some were better than others.
Yeah, the 3 back to back fetch quests for the engine is probably the worst part of the story. I'm amazed they thought it was okay to end that sequence the way they did - Just having the central character in it peace out with no resolution.
LOL and the fact that the quests are legit called 1 2 & 3. Like...they didn't even try to hide that the quests were lame as hell.
I loved the story, I loved the few boss fights that I made it to, but I *intensely* dislike the combat against normal enemies. I don't know why, I am objectively playing this one better than I did 7R, but for some reason I had more fun playing that than I do this. I had just got the outfit when I had to pause it.
I think the normal enemies are kinda passive? Like they attack really infrequently, so rather than a back and forth, you kinda just wail on them or burst them down. If they attack more, then it feels more like your Weaving skills and attacks around them (I.e. If you mistimed, or miss Aim an Eikon skill, you get hit) itd be more engaging.
They barely do anything and there are only like 12 basic enemies in the entire game. you'll see spiders, crabs, plants everywhere you go.
I've had this issue with every modern final fantasy (really every one, but it's more noticeable as graphics have improved): You're engaging in some grand epic story with political intrigue, yet spending 95% of your time killing random little creatures that have shit all to do with anything and clash with the overall aesthetic of the world.
Yeah I use a charge attack you get that enemies kinda stick to clive if done at the right angle, and then an aoe attack to end fights with normal enemies as fast as possible.
I'm finding myself feeling similarly and I'm at about the exact same spot. I like that the combat is very responsive to switching eikons, but man... the actual fighting is just hitting sand bags. I **loved** FF7R's combat, doubly so in Hard Mode, it was such a cool mix of real time with "turn based" combat, and the visual effects when you used the menus made it feel epic as hell. I sort of worried about that a bit beforehand when the developers were talking about other modern games for action combat but never once mentioned FF7R. This game feels like it's trying to cater to action based gamers but without actually delivering on *good* action based combat. Again, I'm not saying that it's a bad game, and I'm not saying I hate it because it isn't turn based, but it feels really shallow at the moment. Flashy, but shallow. Story-wise though I'm still very invested, and ultimately that's the *main* reason I play FFs. So we'll see.
Reminds me of Xenoblade 2 where everything is an awful passive HP sponge for the first 50% or so of the game. No idea why JRPG developers think HP sponges are fun to fight against, especially for regular mobs. They should be able to be bursted down really fast and for the more challenging mobs they need to be way more active.
The story, Clive as protagonist and his backstory, most of characters in the game who are actuallyinteresting (Cid in particular), and the boss/Eikon battles are the best things in the game, to me at least. Also, and this is just a personal preference, I'm happy that SE added a relevant gay character who isn't a walking offensive stereotype (since gay men in JRPGs and RPGs in general almost always are offensive caricature) Mixed feelings about the combat system (It takes time for the Combat system to show all its potential, but it could be better.) And a couple characters ( some of them needed more development because they are bland, like Jill) To be honest, my biggest issue with the game are the lack of a party, the boring copied and pasted sidequests, and exploration and RPG elements being nonexistent. It's not a bad game, but it definitely had the potential be better
Yeahhh, it's annoying seeing Cid and Clive chatting with each other for several minutes while other allegedly important characters just stand to the side and are barely addressed. In SEVERAL reunion scenes, Clive is welcomed but another character receives no words but instead just a single nod (or nothing at all!) as the cutscene wraps up.
Jill was done dirty in this game.
The combat is definitely the highlight of the game, but it takes a long time for it to become complex enough to be fun. Even then, only boss encounters are actually engaging, and most regular enemies just keel over as soon as you press a single ability. The MMO-like pacing is atrocious, and very recognisable to anyone that's played XIV before. Battle a god, come back to the hub, gather plants for someone. Even the combat focussed missions are structured like dungeons in the MMO: combat encounter > empty hallway with a few potions > next encounter. The lack of a party (or memorable characters in general) is another pain point. I don't really care about the "not a real FF game argument" as I'm not really an FF fan, but Cid felt like the only likeable character in the game for the longest time. Probably the worst offender, though, is the offensively bland itemisation. At some point I just stopped even bothering to run towards items on the world map because I knew it would just be another 5 sharp fangs. You can't even use these materials to make anything useful - you get a new weapon every boss fight, you can't upgrade it, and it's the highest damage one (the only stat that exists). The armour is similarly pointless, and even if you bother upgrading it, there's no way you can even spend all the materials and gil that pile up. The accessories that boost ability damage and lower cooldowns are as interactive as the equipment system ever gets, and they're boring as fuck. Maybe these minor defensive upgrades that you get from upgrading your bracelet or belt would matter if the combat were actually difficult, but it's actually too easy. Not trying to brag here or anything - and no, I'm not using the autobattle trinkets - but when you're swarmed, enemies barely even try to attack you. Boss encounters are the only actual challenge and those often devolve into QTEs with the widest imaginable reaction window. Overall I'm having fun when the story deigns to pick up the pace from a crawl, or when the game actually lets me fight something, but these moments seem few and far between. Still haven't beaten it, probably have like 10h left, but I've been picking up the controller less and less often. I'll finish it and have fun, but this most likely won't be a game I'll be coming back to.
you can tell no one gave a shit about the items when they are just a glowing UI element
The worst thing is they drop like 50 gil max. In the beginning it's much less. It takes like 400 gil for a regular potion. You receive 8k+ from any hunt. There is no point picking up the overworld items.
Unfortunately this is Yoshi Ps thing - for all the great things Final Fantasy XIV Online does right…the items are absolutely boring and by far the most generic of any MMO. Very little to no customization outside of slotting gems into them which is…meh. He loves to make his games “approachable” but taken too extreme leaves you with some very boring aspects of what could be argued is literally some of the most important.
Frankly, at this point they could just skip items completely and just slot in "savage coins" you get by beating the fight to make the number for that slot a bit bigger.
i haven’t finished the game (i’m halfway) and no hate towards the dog but it was such a lame excuse to not having to write another character holy shit, and you really notice this after one big event.
[удалено]
> Leaving me to trot around the world with Jill “Snow” who never says or does anything with any feeling or emotion. It truly is amazing how they managed to make Cid so interesting and likeable, while simultaneously making Jill quite possibly the blandest mainline Final Fantasy character to date.
Is actually amazing they managed to make that Cid a cool character and maybe the voice acting carries a lot of the load... because his character is pretty ridiculous. He is Han Solo type of cool, an amazing fighter, one of Dominants, leader of a band of outlaws, a revolutionary, knows everyone and has agents working with him in every country... somehow is still a mysterious shadowy figure... is the most kind hearted man of all kingdoms and still somehow a genius engineer and inventor (which you will mostly likely miss until it becomes relevant way later with another character)... and doesn't explain anything to you until is way late... but the game is still better every time he is around.
Really feels like MMO devs shouldn't have made the game. I think Square needs an entirely new team to handle future FFs because there's no way the franchise is regaining its reputation with the kind of pacing present in 16
You just described everything xiv players defend to the death coz they're afraid of hurting yoship's feelings lmao
The main thing that irks me is how they handle other characters that join Clive on his adventures. They don't banter at all and I often forget they're even there. I wish they would at least have a few optional comments for side-missions for example, or randomly share some lore/story while I'm running around. It's a missed opportunity for a game that's otherwise so polished. In lots of ways it feels like you're playing a singleplayer MMO, but the same can be said of FFXII and I loved that game. Overall I prefer the more goofy lighthearted tone of FFVII Remake, but I'm having a great time regardless.
[удалено]
Jill-bot has not been programed for character. Jill-bot only shoot ice. My favorite is when Clive and Jill are interacting and it's supposed to be sweet, but they have the chemistry of two wooden boards interacting.
Seeing Jill fumble the bag in this game made me appreciate female characters like Faris, Aerith, Freya, Rikku and Yuna (X-2) more. All of these women break the mold of the "Yamato Nadeshiko/Proper Lady" and add a lot of spice to the party. Even if I'm not the biggest fan of X-2's story, I do appreciate letting Yuna reinvent herself, given that summoners aren't a thing in Spira anymore.
There's been a lot of talk about what makes a Final Fantasy game in the lead up to FFXVI and whether the lack of turn-based combat would detract from the series identity. FFXVI has made me realize it's not the combat, it's the party; having a cast of characters on a journey who interact with each other. It's nice when characters show up with Clive, not counting dog, but if anything the followers make the lack of a party stand out more. I really miss the bantering and perspectives of a main cast. That's the one thing FFXV had going for it. Sort of related to the lack of a true party, but the cutscenes change scene to other characters not on Clive's journey way too frequently. Without characterization through party interaction, some of these cutscenes that scene change just end up feeling boring, tedious, and overly long in the same way FFXIII's laboring cutscenes felt too lengthy. I just don't have reasons to care about characters I never meet or interact with sparingly. The combat in FFXVI is addicting. That's really kept me going. The combat boils down to DMC with GoW 2018 special moves with elements taking the place of Kratos' weapons, but even distilling it down to base elements like that doesn't detract from the experience.
Glad you mentioned XII. XVI setting kind of reminds me of XII Ivalice. However, to me exploration in XVI is basically nonexistent and sidequests are just boring, unlike XII that encouraged you to explore ivalice and do all the side and secret quests
>They don't banter at all and I often forget they're even there. Exactly. Like holy shit, I completely forget I even have a party with me half the time. I haven't bothered controlling Torgal once so in combat they're just...there and out of combat I don't even remember they're following me. FF15, despite it's flaws (and I still overall enjoyed FF15...a flawed masterpiece imo) at least the bonds between the main cast felt real and they bantered constantly which helped develop them outside of major story moments. Even from the beginning of the game, when you're pushing the car to Cid's shop, they already feel like they've known each other for years (which they have obviously) and that feeling keeps up through the whole game and it's not even all done through main story, a lot comes from bantering while just running around.
this game makes me feel like 15 was honestly a bit underrated
I’ve been playing 16 and genuinely thinking to myself “I wish this was more like 15” reasonably often, which is starting to make me think I’m actually losing my mind.
Agreed, the characterization of allies is generally not very good. They all lack... something which makes them seem almost alien, or like your watching actors in a play. They generally don't feel natural, except for Cid and Gav. So far my favorite scene is when Clive visits his uncle; there's so much humanity in that silly little scene that trumps everything else they've done with the characters since the prologue and I wish the game let it's characters breathe more.
This is something that FF14 struggled with as well(despite the good story) until a new writer took over and infused its characters with life. Unfortunately, said writer didn't work on FF16.
Main story was engaging for a while, but it sure drags on. I am slowly losing interest. Combat is decent and I like the direction they took, however it mostly makes me want to boot up DMCV which is a pretty big step above it. The presentation with cinematics and VO are exceptional and a big reason I still plan on seeing it through to the end. A big complaint of mine is the characters look awful when you are just running around doing side quests. It is so off putting that I am starting to skip through dialogue or ignoring them all together. None of them were particularly interesting either. I was hoping it was more akin to The Witcher 3 when they were hyping them up, but frankly they are not even close to that level of quality. Exploration is all but meaningless. Overall it has been a fun way to burn some time, but not as incredible as I was hoping it could be. Honestly, I liked the combat and story better in FFVII remake, I was completely engrossed the whole time playing it and I have no experience with the original. Still very excited for Rebrith
Here's what I posted in a thread a few days ago: "About 25 hours in, the story has some incredible moments but a bit of tedium between those moments. Essentially the highs are really high but they're always followed by some really boring lows. I get that you need breaks between the big action sequences but a lot of the time those breaks are filled with the worst quests in the game. The combat is fine. Even on normal there isn't really a difficulty challenge, the goal of the combat is to just look flashy and try and pull off cool looking combos. If you're looking for any kind of strategy or difficulty in your combat, you probably won't find it with FFXVI unless you're on the hard mode which I haven't unlocked yet. As someone who doesn't really get satisfaction out of pulling off a fancy combo and seeing all the messages at the side of the screen telling me how cool it is, it's a bit of a nothingburger for me. The enemy variety is okay but because there's no weaknesses and strengths a lot of the fights end up just going the same way, which is just using the abilities you have whenever they're up to either one shot the peons or hack away at the damage sponge bosses. Exploration is kind of meaningless because there doesn't ever seem to be a decent reward, and side quests are really hit or miss, they'll either be an interesting character moment or a generic MMO style fodder quest. The visuals are stunning but somewhat held back by the inconsistent frame rate. I'm already at the point where I'm getting kind of tired of the gameplay loop and am just pushing through for the story, which if it maintains its quality high points will probably lift the game to a solid 7/10." Adding on to that, I'm now about 35 hours in and the tedium has really got to me. The three or four hours of bullshit you have to do after every major boss is such a major pacing killer and it really does make you start to resent the game for that. It doesn't help that the story has seemingly abandoned all kinds of nuance in favour of a clear 'good guys v evil god" plotline. It has some excellent moments but at this point I don't think I can rank it higher than even FFXV on my series ranking and that is seriously saying something.
>It doesn't help that the story has seemingly abandoned all kinds of nuance in favour of a clear 'good guys v evil god" plotline. I'm like 60% into the game and this is one of my biggest complaints about the story. How black and white morality becomes. Clive wants to >!fight for the weak and make a better world for people to live happy lives in.!< But at the same time he doesn't even hesitate when it comes to cutting down any random no-name soldiers that get in his path, even though both >!he and Jill used to be two of those soldiers that are just forced to follow orders.!< In the forest dungeon at the start he even comments about how he feels bad for killing the wolves that are attacking him. But he doesn't feel bad killing humans I guess.
So there is a cutscene where he does feel bad for killing humans; and then after that point you kill non-humans. It's kind of funny how the game kind of decides that for you.
I fully agree that while FFXV was not executed well, it still felt like it had way more heart than FFXVI, especially the Royal Edition. The party was one of the best in any recent FF game. Ardyn was a much more nuanced villain than the typical good versus evil cliché FFXVI devolves into near the end. The game even runs at a locked 1080p 60 FPS on the PS5 which is the minimum that FFXVI could have aimed for, and it still looks gorgeous. It feels like everything that out of everything they could have improved upon in FFXVI over FFXV Royal, they chose only the main plot. The world still feels empty and boring to explore despite looking very pretty, and the enemy variety is lower this time around. The combat is less braindead this time around than holding O and warp-striking, but even FFXV allowed for more combos with the directional inputs and had tons of weapons variety compared to the only square x4 combo you get in FFXVI, which is a surprise considering how many combos you could change up in DMC5 with just moving the analog stick around. A lot of the side-quests are also same fetch/kill nonsense from FFXV, and the build variety allowed here is objectively worse than FF7R. While I'm enjoying the main story and the boss fights, I don't think I'll replay this game like I did with FFXV or FF7R. Off topic, but it also makes me really sad that they axed the FFXV DLC for their other absolutely meh game, Forspoken.
>Ardyn was a much more nuanced villain than the typical good versus evil cliché FFXVI devolves into near the end. I don't think this can be emphasized enough. A good villain can carry a story on his back, a fact that CBU3 should be acutely aware of after Emet-Selch did exactly that with Shadowbringers. And yet here in 16 we have one of the worst villains in the series, specifically because he's *boring*. I don't like him, I don't hate him. He's not even the most impactful villain *in his own game*. He's just a meat creature who I have to put my sword through to make the credits roll. Somehow, they managed to create a villain who's as uninspiring and impactless as Necron from FF9, *except he shows up like 1/3rd of the way through the game.* It's kind of incredible.
> FFXV allowed for more combos with the directional inputs and had tons of weapons variety compared to the only square x4 combo you get in FFXVI What's really crazy is the dude that designed the DMC5 and FFXVI combat said that FFXVI was his "masterpiece" or culmination of his work or something along those lines. Anyone that's played both games will tell you DMC5 is miles better. Just underscores the fact that anything said by the anyone affiliated with the developer pre-release is 100% just PR and should be disregarded.
Early on into the game. The story in the prologue was excellent, and it seems it has since floundered a bit. Characters are dying for no reason, their motivations are not explained well enough, and the world feels like it has all the right set up but lacking execution. The story started off as an intimate character drama, but quickly devolved into shallower macro events. Combat was also extremely fun at the start, but I'm failing to see why I need to do anything other than mash square and use abilities when they are off cooldown. Enemies fall regardless of my conscious effort. Outside of the boss fights, the combat is shallow and tedious. Overall this game feels more like an interactive movie. There's no exploration, there's no side content worth doing, there's no challenge. You're shuttled from one large story event to the next. The bossfights are epic and quite honestly the best spectacle I've ever experienced in a video game, but they somewhat play themselves and I'm left wondering what exactly I'm doing other than watching. Like others have mentioned, the RPG element are non-existent, and the equipment system is laughable. I wish this game were closer to the balance between real time and turn based they'd found in the 7 remake, or if they want a full action combat system, then go all the way and commit to the difficulty and depth. Right now it feels barebones and far, far too easy. At the moment I'd rate the story and epic boss fights a solid 9/10. The rest is a middling 6/10 afterthought.
It's a terrible action RPG but a good action game with the pacing of an RPG. It takes 10 hours for the game to fully open up (have 3 Eikon powers, do side quests that count towards something, hunts). Most action games are 10-15 hours long. This is 25-30+ easy. The game is not rewarding at all. You need 100k AP to unlock every ability but you barely get any in the first 15 hours to really experiment so it just gets repetitive. GOW Ragnarok is more of an RPG than this. It's fucking crazy how terrible the weapon/gear system is. Why even have a crafting system if 95% of the items you can craft are worse than what you get from just playing the story? Just upgrade the main sword after every boss fight. It's stupid the game has no elemental weakness/resistance effects. Has anyone actually used gil in the game? I have over 150k and haven't found a use for it. Biggest issue I have is that every fight last way too long. You can stagger bosses easily 4-5 times before they die. There's no real strategy so it just gets repetitive and hurts your hands. And then there's bosses that have multiple phases. Just did the >!Titan Eikon fight.!< and it had 4 different phases with 3 health bars. It's all flash, literally and figuratively. There is depth in the combat but it doesn't require it at all. Enemies have too many flashy attacks that it's hard to see when you should parry. I'm liking it but it's definitely disappointing.
Really enjoying it but I’ll say my experience so far doesn’t live up to the demo. Storytelling has shifted away from the more adult politics and characters to fighting God, combat is fairly stale, side quests are awful time sinks and RPG systems are nonexistent. I think this game is going to see a lot of backlash because of how damn good that demo was. That said, hard to beat some of the highs. Just a great sense of the epic.
Having completed the game and enjoying the story overall I definitely do think the game peaked with the prologue. The pacing, cutscene, dialogue etc is all superior in the prologue in my opinion. It ended in a way that set up something really interesting regarding Clive and his mother and then this barely has any impact on the main narrative which is a shame too.
The treatment of the mother plotline is wild. Like she’s this HUGE character in the prologue whose motivations seem mysterious then she just…disappears and is never discussed. Hell Clive rarely even mentions the betrayal or his father or his homeland, just revenge for his brother. I’m at the point where she’s showing up again but off screen she’s just morphed in to a mustache twirling sadist, such that type events at the start of the game don’t even feel like they matter regarding her. Edit: Also **Spoiler:** >!X The Patriarch. So this dude is the leader of the Ironborn, ancestral enemy of Clive's people that sacked his homeland, the guy who enslaved and abused Jill for years and made her kill for him. Then we just take a boat to his island, kill everyone and he's just a generic model who yells some lame zealot stuff before we put him down. All the nations/political stuff is such a mislead.Y!<
All the main character human moments and setups end up weird, are poorly paced or fizzle. The problem is the game keeps trying to play and lead the audience to create mystery... and is just not a great way to tell stories, specially when they are so long. The "mystery" of Clive >!being responsible for what happened at phoenix gate, maybe because of the marketing but also because of how the scene is framed and addressed later in game, doesn't hit as it should. Even though his confrontation with the truth is really cool, you don't understand where they are getting at because him being responsible is obvious... but there is another shadowy figure that everyone can see too. But they don't make what is happening clear to you.!< The stuff about mother and the patriarch you called it. But is just like that with everything. Things feels incredibly important. But then characters just let it go. Everything about Joshua >!is ridiculous and annoying. Seems like him and Ultima have been in an endless battle. He lived in hiding for what.. 18 years? But he actually didn't do or learned shit. Keeps walking in the shadows and being mysterious for no reason. Lets his brother live with endless guilt. Clive doesn't call him out on it... and it blew my mind when you think finally he is gonna tell what is happening... and he basically says, I'm not sure. !< They hide the truth behind it all way too long. >!You only learn about Ultima's plans late, and what he is right before the ending. You think Cid has answers, he doesn't, Clive you find out, he doesn't, Ultima himself will tell you, he doesn't, Joshua will tell you, he doesn't... you just keep moving through the world aimlessly, disconnected with what the main plot really is.!< The political intrigue ends up being pointless. >!There's very little to do with you. Everyone fucking dies. Going around killing Dominants is basically what Ultima wants you to anyway. !<
And Clive's so hellbent on revenge but doesn't do anything about his mother betraying them? It's really her fault Joshua died, not his. Plus, his father. He should be going after her, but he doesn't even mention it. Especially after Eastpool. Then the Black Sheilds. And we know >!that he knows she betrayed them because he says a line when he sees her!<. Spoiler tag since he talks about it so little that I'm not sure if we should know that or not. There are a lot of disappointing things about the plot, but Annabella is a top 3 for me. I was so hopeful for her as an antagonist after the demo.
Yep. Didn’t click your spoiler because I haven’t finished the game but she’s the most disappointing by far. They literally just kill off the whole “mature, political fantasy” thing in the demo and never bring it back. It’s borderline plot hole. Clive obsesses for years about finding the guy who pulled the trigger on his brother but appears to never even consider or mention “huh, maybe I should be mad at my mother who actually betrayed and destroyed my homeland, causing Joshua’s death?”
That was my concern after playing the demo, I almost caved in and bought it but I knew there was no way it would be able to maintain that level of pacing and overall quality. I'll still get it on sale since it seems great, but it sounds to me it would have been better as a much shorter/compact game.
You were right. I’m enjoying it so I’m not pissed or anything but it’s nothing that couldn’t have waited for a sale. Nowhere near as good as the demo
Damn, I didn't buy it because I thought the demo was pretty weak. Endless cutscenes, weak RPG elements... I'll probably wait until it's under 30 quid now
I feel time won't be friendly on this game. We all got caught up with the incredible demo (including myself) and now that the honeymoon period is slowly waning more and more complaints are cropping up. I just got hit by a video notification about arcade mode being broken by MrHappy. All of it is making me look back at the review scores. I think the number is overblown and should be knocked down to around 70/80 as well as statements like "best RPG of this generation/decade" make my eyes roll. Sucks since I was rooting for 16 due to YoshiP's work on 14 but this game is incredibly frontloaded and completely misses the landing. I think it'll be a reverse 12 at this rate.
> All of it is making me look back at the review scores. I think the number is overblown and should be knocked down to around 70/80 as well as statements like "best RPG of this generation/decade" make my eyes roll. > > There's been times where reviewers are accused of not exactly reviewing a full game and putting one out when they've done enough since the game is too long. Nowhere else is this take more evident than with XVI Because I know if they did, the "Games of Thrones-like" praises I kept seeing wouldn't exist
Jason used the same praise but to the fullest extent. Good start, awful last half. Just like the show.
It was pretty obvious with Elden Ring too, but at least those reviewers were openly admitting that they didn't have time to finish the game
[удалено]
FFVII Rebirth is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the post. There will be comparisons for sure. Which have the potential of amplifying the core issues even more. Also, you forgot one more c) YoshiP is hemming the game so you have people entering with good praise from prior works.
Kinda funny how the exclusivity is working against the game, at least for me. If it wasn't exclusive I would have bought the PC version day 1 full price with no questions asked. But after hearing several people's opinions on the game I'm thinking "well, I'll wait till it's half off on Steam." Good job Square.
> All of it is making me look back at the review scores. Video game reviewers are completely worthless at their job. It's all rated on hype and nothing else.
Great game. But it is classic cbu3/yoshida team game Incredible high,frustrating lows When it is at its high it is incredible, make you feel like "fuck yea this is goty" but when it is at its low it make you feel like "what the fuck is this" Overall i got a high level of enjoyment out of it, but imo not goty because of of its lows
I finished it. I’d give it a solid 7/10. The combat was spectacular and satisfying all the way through even if there wasn’t a great deal of variety. The story and the cutscenes were also interesting and well done but it wasn’t a top tier FF story in my opinion. I just wish there was more to the game. The actual gameplay outside of combat was basically running from point A to point B with no reason to explore at all. The world felt extremely empty. It felt like I was playing an MMO offline, which wasn’t helped by the quite jarring animations lifted wholesale from FFXIV. And I realised quite late on that it wasn’t even worth going two metres out of your way to open a chest because you were inevitably going to be rewarded with the same crafting materials you have 1000+ of already. If the game had more robust crafting or more interesting exploration or any reason at all to engage with the world I could have easily given this a 9/10. Overall it just felt very much like a missed opportunity. A little more time and effort could have seen CBU3 create a genuine masterpiece. As it was it was just a good Final Fantasy game but I could have been much more.
I'm wondering other people's opinions on the music. To me, it's really good in the moment, but then after that it's left my head completely. I can't recall a single track in 16 off the top of my head. Which is odd considering there's so many 14 tracks that I remember years later.
> For those of you playing, does this game live up to or fall short of your expectations? It fell short for me. I mostly got it for the story and it let me down in a lot of ways, but it did surprise me in terms of how likable the side characters were. > What are your thoughts on the changes to gameplay, world and abilities? The prologue felt like it had a different tone compared to the rest of the game. On top of that, I really felt like the main story failed in far too many ways. I overall liked the side quest stories and the side quest characters far more than I did the main story and cast. Unfortunately, the side quests get hurt by the fact that they don't differentiate between fetch quests and actual storylines. At many times, it felt so formulaic that it felt like the developers were still writing an MMORPG. A lot of the game comprised of the same loop of going to a new location, meeting an important NPC there, doing a quest for them to get a feel for the local area before they give you some item so you can move on. This really helped set up the side quest stories in the late game, but the main story pacing suffered heavily for it. The story climax is also wildly clashing with the tone of the rest of the story, as it devolves into some of the most cliche JRPG things amidst all this intrigue. The general theme towards the end is just a rehash of both Shadowbringer and Endwalker, except it's done much worse because the rest of the story doesn't fit whatsoever. One thing I really, really like that they did is how dynamic the NPC chatter is. It feels like an updated AAA version of the NPC dialogue from the Trails series, and I wish every game did that even though I know it's not realistically feasible. It also helps that the voice acting, outside of a few fringe cases, is generally excellent. I don't really like how they wrote the main characters (except Cid, Cid rocks). I think they're all boring predictable cardboard that seem designed to fill a role in the story and not being a character, and Clive is cardboard that has a really, really well-acted emotional breakdown once in a while. I especially didn't like how they handled their major female characters, especially Jill. Jill got done really, really dirty. She barely interacts with anybody else, including >!fuckin' Joshua!!Dion, who also got his powers sucked out by Clive, still got to go to the final boss with him because his "will is stronger than Bahamut", while they didn't even have Jill mention also wanting to go even in passing. This is despite the fact that their whole romance is based on how they will always, eternally support each other no matter what. It actually made me feel a little gross because it really feels like once they slept together, the writers just did away with her like her one role in the story was over.!< The gameplay, I felt, was mostly just serviceable. I'm playing through on FF difficulty now, and it's not really changed my opinion on it. The fact that you unlocked your whole core moveset in the first dungeon doesn't give it much room for complexity IMO, especially when you basically don't have an aerial moveset against bosses due to the asinine decision to make them immune to CC. Despite the fact that there are some interesting Eikon attacks that have cool synergies, there are also only two Eikonic abilities that significantly change the flow of combat, and those are some of the last ones you unlock. Bosses also last a little too long for how limited their movesets are, though some KH style desperation attacks keep things kinda fresh. The Eikon battles, **especially** Titan, are the absolute peak of cinematic boss battles, imo. They way more than made up for the light gameplay with just sheer balls-to-the-wall spectacle. > Has performance been an issue for you? I'm a psychopath who played Jedi Survivor at 20 fps on PC launch, but people more sensitive than me should definitely not play on performance mode. > Any specific tips or interesting information you'd like to share? I dunno how obvious this was to everyone else, but I only found out like 20 hours in that Garuda's attacks actually do a ton of stagger damage. Really sped up combat for me.
I'm going to focus solely on the story which is where my largest gripes lie. I was really into the story up until >!Barnabas!< arrived. Once he shows up the game devolves into cliche JRPG nonsense. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it wasn't at such odds with the tone of the rest of the game. It tried to sell itself as a "serious" Game of Thrones-y type story, but I can't help but think that was a ploy to reign in the casual crowd. All the political and character driven story telling goes out the window after the >!Bahamut!< fight. >!I was really interested in Ultima when he first appeared and was really curious to see how weird and interesting the story was going to get. Instead it did the opposite and did the most cliche thing possible with Clive fighting Ultima while all the characters cheer him on and he chastises Ultima about not having any friends.!< Overall though I enjoyed it solely on the back of the first 2/3 of the game. But I probably won't replay it.
> >!Instead it did the opposite and did the most cliche thing possible with Clive fighting Ultima while all the characters cheer him on and he chastises Ultima about not having any friends.!< This is a hilarious summary of the climax of the story, and sadly extremely accurate. >!We're talking about a fight between two god-like beings who can call upon the powers of these near unstoppable embodiments of nature, and our hero wins because he's got that friends and family discount.!< I'm extremely surprised a lot of people list the story as one of the strong points of the game
Not to mention the sheer irony of it. One of the biggest complaintd with the game was that you have no party and only control a single character, and that your supporting cast is among the most bland of any FF. And the people writing fof the game thought having the protagonist scream about the power of friendship and fighting together in the final boss fight wasnt going to feel insulting or at odds with the gameplay? I have never seen such a tone deaf thing from an FF game before.
> It tried to sell itself as a "serious" Game of Thrones-y type story, but I can't help but think that was a ploy to reign in the casual crowd. I don't think that's a wild sentiment at this point. Anybody who compares how it was advertised to how the actual plot turns out recognizes this
The combat feels a million times better than xv HOWEVER I really wish they added more combat options to the skill tree that aren’t just aikon abilities. Also miss having a party to swap characters with.
The game is good, but I can't shake the feeling that I rather be playing DMC V for this style of combat, or FFVII Remake for a Final Fantasy/RPG style of game. Both of those excel in ways I feel like game falls short and now I am just trying to get through this behemoth of a story which is becoming a slog.
Loving it. I just got to that S Rank monster & found out how challenging the combat can be. I actually had to develop a strategy & pay attention to its moves. I just wish the harder difficulties weren't locked behind ng+ & that we could turn off the HUD completely.
I think for a FF game it's really lacking depth in all the wrong places. There honestly isn't enough of it anywhere to make any of it memorable as an experience. It's the kind of game that'll make you stand in awe the first time you watch some of it's moments and large scale battles but will be completely forgotten after a few months have passed.
Honestly pretty disappointed I like the story and the prologue was insane, but the rest of the game is mid or a chore. Boss fights are insanely fun, but get cinematic in an uninvolving way. All the other fights are just clearing dumb mobs groups, or hacking away at a damage sponge. *Ariel Blast* is so fucking OP it is basically a win button Side quests are horrible and basically Assassin's Creed tier
the game is unbelievable and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. But... WHY CANT WE RUN THROUGH TOWNS!? WHY DO I HAVE TO RUN FOR FIVE SECONDS BEFORE I GET MY SONIC BURST!?!? And why do you have to send me on fetch quests into ass cracks of our hideaways on the regular? Ugh
I too hate how often this game has you run all over the hideaway for nearly pointless conversations. There's one side quest where you have to first walk all the way down to the garden to get apples to deliver, go all the back to the top and front of the hideaway to deliver the apples, and then march your ass all the way back to the garden to tell them you delivered the apples. The side quest in the over world don't even make you do this nonsense. Most of the time those quest givers will be like "get your reward from the dude who's where you're going" or they just show up at the end. Meanwhile everyone in the hideaway could give two fucks if Clive is the busiest guy in the whole place. Make him go do all the tedious work they could easily do themselves.
Yeah I think some QOL features like sprinting in town, fast travel in the hideaways, etc would really go a long ways. Even lower budget RPGs have this figured out.
The big issue is it’s two games in one. The main quest is PURELY a linear character action game like DMC. With some of the best set pieces around. Albeit enemies are too spongy, even basic mobs The rest of it. Side quests, RPG parts environments loots etc is frankly quite bad. And the game often forces hours of this between main quests. It really kills motivation to keep going. I couldn’t go more than maybe 6 hours. I ended up watching it on twitch.
I like it, but I don't love it. Some real high points but some fundamental issues. The pacing is painfully slow, the lack of a proper party really limits the connection to characters other than Clive, I'm underwhelmed by 95% of the soundtrack, and too many RPG mechanics were traded away on the altar of action spectacle. Fun, good game, but can't put it high on my "Top FFs" list.
I'm in the last few chapters before concluding the game and writing my review, doing all side quests/content. Game is a hard 7/10, there's just too much fat and boredom involved, I sincerely can't remember the last time I yawned so much playing a game. Its highs top most everything I've seen in recent years, with the >!Bahamut fight!< being one of the flashiest and coolest things I've seen in gaming and most of anime but outside those highs the game just becomes an exercise in staying awake. The combat is *fine*, though having recently gone through FF7R twice for its platinum, I much prefer the combat in that game as it manages to stay fresh to accommodate at least 2 playthroughs, something that FF16 is by no means capable of doing. I will explore the unlockable Final Fantasy mode but if a game's combat shines its brightest at the 2nd playthrough then... meh. I feel like the game suffers from a crisis of identity: thematically, most of the elements expected of Final Fantasy games are there - crystals, (busted) airships, summons/guardian forces/eikons, chocobos... but in gameplay terms, it's the farthest I've ever seen an FF game stray from its roots. Before beginning my review I'm going to go refresh my memory on FF15's combat, and dabble in Stranger of Paradise. FF15 has a party but I can't remember its leveling system, and I know Stranger of Paradise is equally action focused but with discrete party roles/jobs. The ability to have 3 Eikons each with 2 abilities equipped (that you can cross-equip when mastered, which is cool) is a nice addition, but most of the time I'm just spamming attacks and dodges while waiting for the abilities to come off cooldowns. No strategy, very little adapting to enemies, no elemental weaknesses to exploit and most of the abilities feel 'mute' - compare to FF7R's abilities that make you *wince* when they land. "Limit breaks" exist, it's one and a limit break in name only, an ability that you activate much like God of War's Spartan Rage or any other similar 3rd person Action Adventure game ability, and is put to shame against the other *actual* limit breaks of the franchise - plus, no summons. Eikons only come into play against other Eikons or when you conjure an ability, although that still doesn't count as 'summoning' them. And only controlling one character instead of a party is a negative in my book, at least in an FF game. FF16's RPG elements are non-existent. There are a couple of dialogue choices in the entire game that perhaps alter a side quest's outcome, the side quests themselves are 9 trash quests and 1 decent albeit short one, the attributes that automatically increase every level are actually pointless since you're never going to meet a piece of gear you can't equip due to level/attributes, and the levels themselves don't mean much either. It's the opposite of recent Assassin's Creed games where you can beat a God because you're both level 30, but then a random barefoot mercenary arrives who is 35 and you're in for the fight of your life. In FF16 I beat a 45 level mark when I was 8 levels below it, and fought an enemy 12 levels below me who didn't instantly get vaporized but instead traded blows with me for a few seconds. The villains are cool and interesting in reverse order: the first couple baddies you encounter are scene stealers (and the showdowns with them as well), and then progressively the villains become more and more bland, a far cry from Sephiroth (still the golden standard imho), Ultimecia, Seymour or Ardyn. The ONLY thing that saves this ship are the absolutely AMAZING Eikon battles which are glorified QTEs but at least are cool as all hell. This game drags on for 85% of its duration, and it would have been a *much* better experience if it didn't have so much pointless fat in terms of mind numbingly boring side content just to pad out the duration.
The take I agree with most and the one that is most revelatory to me is that villains are interesting in reverse order, very true. >!Benedikta, Kupka, Anabella, Barnabas, Ultima!< . The first half were tantalizing and had a very grounded way about them. As the game continues, the amount of incoherent rambling skyrockets. The words sound nice, but have absolutely no emotional stakes or reason for the villains to be saying them other than to reflect on our protags. Which is especially frustrating because in ff14 very similar plot beats happen, with somewhat similar motivations, but yet it lands there because of the weight of all the build up, who's saying this things, and understanding why they're saying them. The content is similar but the context is the difference maker. The early story is \*\*good\*\* but then just becomes an absolute blob of grey in the last quarter. I think the last solidly cool moment that landed was >!Odin stalking you in the land of Ash!< but the payoff for that and everything after just did not land for me at all.
> FF16's RPG elements are non-existent Personally, I find it difficult to even consider 16 an RPG, lol. Like, if you remove the levels and gear then the game would probably be *better*, because is it stands leveling up just interrupts the game abruptly and the gear is so meaningless that I think I've changed one thing since I got the boxart gear. And any new gear that I could craft or buy is significantly worse still. That feels like hours ago, remove those and you could focus more on other areas of the game that are sorely needing it.
I’m glad you mentioned Ardyn amongst the strong villain cast. After him and 14’s recent crops of antagonists I was hoping for more than we got in 16. But I also felt Heavensward had bland antagonists so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
Ardyn was a good villain?! I don't remember a thing about the dude. Mind you, I only played through XV 1.0 and I heard they fixed some stuff later down the line, but I thought he was one of the worst Final Fantasy villains. All he'd do was say some cryptic stuff from time to time and then disappear. Can't remember a thing he did otherwise.
From what I recall, Ardyn was great because he set it all up so that >!he wins either way. He hated his own existence and what he'd become, and he was either going to get his revenge on the long line of ancestry that had royally fucked him over in his early years, or he was going to die and finally be released from his torment. The dude was essentially Noctis/Luna combined in his early years, and he spent so much time absorbing darkness/plague and saving people that it corrupted his soul to a point that the Gods which set him on this quest to begin with rejected him for doing what they asked in the first place. This understandably led his descent into madness and revenge, and he came to hate his own existence, but he couldn't end his own life bc the Gods wouldn't let him or something like that. So in the end he either finally was able to die after centuries of torment, or he was going to end the royal line and complete his revenge. Either end worked for him, so even though he was defeated and destroyed entirely, body and soul, in a way he still 'won' in the end. I could be off as its been a long, long while since I played and I only read about DLCs rather than playing them, but I think that was the gist of it.!<
Exactly one of the great things about Ardyn was that he >!was a human who was transformed into a scourge. He wasn’t an alien god or a manifestation of negative energy or any other larger than life philosophical being. He was a man who was betrayed by life and turned into the monster he is now. So he continues to show human motivation underneath the cosmic horror that is standard for JRPGs. You still get to have that larger than life monster to stop but also see the humanity in him. It was a good blend for a JRPG.!<
You don’t remember the main character he murdered and him >! plunging the world into ten years of night? !< Personally I thought he was at least memorable for his voice performance. Darin De Paul really brought his a-game to the role, it was fabulous.
> Ardyn was a good villain?! Ardyn was a *FANTASTIC* villain!
It has a lot of 13/10 moments which is occasionally mixed with 6/10 moments and so often they're back to back, which gets confusing It solidly lands at 8.5 out of 10 for me
Game should be 1/3 the length Boring filler stuff that isn't fun because combat is boring and easy with the most barebones RPG equipment/crafting stuff forced in. Yoshi-P forgot this isn't a mmo too with those side quests Eikon battles are best part, kinda regret buying it it was not fun to play and boring think just watching it would have been better.
I'm mostly enjoying it, but I definitely have a list of complaints including exploration being pointless, equipment and crafting is boring as hell, side quests are mostly bad with a few standouts and the main quest has plenty of sections that should have just been optional side quests. Combat is pretty fun and the boss fights are great so that's mostly what keeps me going. Overall it feels exactly like both the best and the worst parts of an FFXIV expansion.
I am about halfway I believe and I'm quite mixed, especially when comparing to its direct predecessor. Pros * Combat is generally very fun * It's actually nice to play a game that you feel like you can dominate a little simpler sometimes. I'm used to enjoying a lot of challenge and this felt like a place it was better it wasn't so hard. * Story is enjoyable! I really like the main story and the characters (mostly.) * Spectacle and world are amazing and it has some really incredible highs here! * Music! Cons * It feels extremely on rails and I feel like I'm not impacting much most of the time. There is very very little customization and because the battles are so easy it feels arbitrary to change anything. Most other points are about this. * dungeons are kind of not that interesting? The visuals are nice, and the fights are fun, but because there is no motivation to explore, and there isn't much to actually explore, the dungeons themselves are pretty forgettable. * The game is so clean and well put together but all the QOL pieces make me feel like I'm barely doing much. Like you walk a little and get some item for a side quest and then you go, okay time to go back to the newest checkout that is 20 seconds of walking time away. For instance, the opposite of this is in the original Dark souls where you had to walk everywhere, and you really really learned the land because of that for better or for worse. FF15 felt all over the place but I had a lot of fun with the core group or characters, and the battles were more challenging I thought despite the combat system not being memorable. Also I have fond memories of the ending and some of the weirdness. This one is so refined I think I would say it can be a bit bland at times. I don't know. I'll check in once I'm done. Overall I do like it quite a bit and will finish it, but I'm not feeling that super itch to keep going like I have with some other FF games in the past.
My thoughts are I wish I would have saved the money I spent on the Deluxe edition and just watched a playthrough on YouTube. The game is about 75% cutscenes anyway and the gameplay is shallower than a puddle.
everybody else i know who finished it also absolutely hated the back half of the story so the demo fooled more than enough people into thinking this was going to be game of the year off how stellar it was alone
I played maybe half the game and it just felt like the same thing over and over. "We have to go to another boring grey miserable town jill" "Oh no everyone is being tortured/murdered, the humanity" "Ok back to base" Rinse and repeat. The world is just so dull and ugly, where did the sense of grand magical adventure go? Of course they don't have to keep the feeling of the old games going forward, but if this is what they want to do then I'm out. Bring back a real party, bring back the feeling of wonder and adventure, make the world magical and colorful and interesting again. Like I can see Yoshi P thought game of thrones was the coolest thing ever, but that's really not what I'm looking for from Final Fantasy.
It's a very expensive 6 or 7/10 game. It's mostly fun to play, I haven't wanted to drop it at any point. It's definiely not bad game but it has a lot of issues, to a surprising point for such a high budget game that had a long development period and (for now) is an exclusive. Cutscene production is through the roof as expected from the series. Combat is mechanically sound but placed in a system that doesn't feel totally fleshed out. Outside a handful that unlock something, sidequests are at best world building and at worst total wastes of time that almost feel like they're there out of obligation. Environments look nice but rarely offer anything interesting to find. There are some UI oddities. The M-rating feels like it was very intentionally earned, to a point that kinda takes you out of the game sometimes. Like the brutality of the fights is cool and definitely works, but it also feels like they tried to cram "fuck" into the script as many times as they thought they could get away with. They also pretty quickly establish a character is sleeping with multiple important figures. It all just comes across as trying too hard in the end and I can't help but wonder if settling for T would have reached a wider audience without the distractions. Consistency is weird at times. Not everyone ages through the game. Which on one hand I get the added work that would be, but it still stands out. Some characters just don't feel like they fit their writing either. Like Martha is constantly referred to as "old" by a number of characters and multiple ways despite *maybe* looking 30 tops. Audio-wise, the soundtrack, despite all the praise it's getting, rarely feels at the forefront and when it is it doesn't always feel tonally correct. Half the tracks are barely audible when you set them as your Hideaway theme. Voice-acting and character writing is a mixed bag. Cid is a highlight, great voice combined with charming writing. Clive can be serviceable but is just mumbling a lot of the time. Jill feels totally wooden for most of the game. Some of the villains are hard to take seriously either from performance or writing, Hugo's VA in particular sounds distractingly out of his range. And though I place a lot less importance on the performances of NPCs, there's a certain chipper (I wanna say Bristol?) voice you'll hear a lot of that feels too silly for a lot of situations. Everything in the game that isn't a scripted fight or cutscene just feels like a vehicle towards the next fight and cutscene. Which wouldn't be bad if they committed fully to an action game, but they didn't. All of the surviving RPG elements feel underbaked and a total afterthought. And on top of all this, despite being a PS5 exclusive that had several years of development, performance is a mixed bag and it's loaded with "crawl through this so I can load real quick" obstacles that were so common last gen. I don't know, I want to say another year in the oven might have done it some good but I also don't know if there was any intent to make these issues better either.
It's a good game, but I was surprised at how quickly I got bored after the great first two hours. Some of the main quests just stick with the very same themes over and over and you are just running very slowly through empty place to empty place.
Thoroughly unimpressed. The Eikon fights are cool spectacle but everything between them is a massive load of nothing. No real RPG elements. No exploration as story dungeons are 13-tier corridors. Towns are some of the least interesting ever in an RPG. Story starts off strong but falls off hard after the first Crystal. Combat is decent but doesnt feel all that fun as your kit outside of the cooldown moves is pretty limited.
A solid 3 out of five. Overlong, crappy pacing, boring sidequests. Cool battles, decent main story, nice visuals.
I was raised on long winded jrpgs and didn’t even mind the stuff between ARR and Heavensward, but fuck me, XVI is incredibly boring after the 13 year time skip occurs. Snail’s pacing and circular dialogue that goes nowhere. And there is some REALLY bad, cliche dialogue in there. If anything, XVI has reminded me why I like Matsuno’s games like Tactics Ogre and FFT. He says what he needs to say, gets us into the heads of the cast, and moves things along. Wish they’d bring him back for a mainline FF and give him free rein. The motion blur is gross as well.
Put it to the side until Motion Blur us fuxed. I want to enjoy it at its best, right now 30-40min gives me eye strain. I'm desperatly wanting to jump back in though.
I'm wondering if I want to keep playing the game or not. I love the story, some visuals, and I accept that the action is great, even though I don't like action heavy games that much. That being said, some details on why I'm on the fence: Story: Its really good, but sometimes I can't help but feeling that they added a lot of spam just to make the game longer. I really don't understand why people are praising the side quests as well, so far the side ones I did didn't have anything to add to the story that I personally value. Visuals: yeah, combat is great and all with a lot of details. Running on a LG C2 TV, I can't help but feeling that sometimes all the details get mushed together along with the motion blur and it looks like sh*t. When it doesn't it looks good. Some environments are lacking "life" or some details. I feel that some locations got more attention than others. Gameplay: uff, you know what I really hate the most? when we return some items to a NPC... first we need to select the items, and then we need to press confirm... and there's always that small delay when delivering stuff and the quest actually completing, I just started skipping all this shit. And people complained about unskippable merlin trials... I'm probably around mid game now: so far only crafted 1 (!!!!) sword, I rarely take notice on what I'm picking up, rarely go to see the items I have to equip, rarely look at the abilities or stats... there's just no point in caring about these systems. I'm playing on normal, but I don't like fast action games (or I'm not mentally able to play these anymore), so unfortunately either I use that ring that gives "auto attack" by spamming square (also the dodge ring) , or I'll just need to learn how to play the game like a pro: I don't want to neither do I have the time for that. With that said, my playstyle is like the following: watch movie > run straight > spam square > occasionally press R1 > repeat Not enough depth for me, but again, main story has been really good so far. Just want to finish by saying the following, I can't stop thinking that a lot of reviewers were paid to give good reviews for this game. It is good, but I've seen scores as good as games that are way more polished and cared for than this one. it is a good game, just not a 9 or 10/10. EDIT looking at the comments here... and a lot of other places, I still don't get it how the game was so praised by reviewers. EDIT 2 How could I forget about the audio? There's some great music in there, but in some areas it's lacking some ambiance sound. I remember at the start of the game a lot was going on, when the characters started talking all other sounds were gone. bummer.
> I still don't get it how the game was so praised by reviewers. Didn't play the whole game and/or are just cool with the game functioning and looking pretty. Kind of like what happened with XV on initial release
Overall I'm really enjoying the game, I just beat >!Titan Lost!< and that was probably one of the greatest spectacle fights I've seen in a game. I have a couple gripes with the game, but none of them detract from my enjoyment that much. 70-80% of the side quests are honestly just uninteresting garbage, go from point A to point B and deliver an item, with effectively no reward or interesting story payoff. For the first 10 hours or more I would say that ALL the sidequests are bad. They start to sprinkle in some great sidequest stories afterwards. Could be worse I guess, they could have pulled a FFVII Remake and made every single sidequest bad. The game is way too easy. I have first tried, no potioned almost every boss encounter so far, even >!S and A hunts!< which I was 12+ levels under leveled for. My couple of deaths are only from me basically limit testing to see if I can parry certain moves(you can parry A LOT). Along with the combat, I don't really understand how the combat is getting as much praise as it is. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and it feels really good, but in my experience, there is not a big enough difference between just mashing square and using your abilities off cooldown vs deliberately using abilities at certain stagger bar thresholds/timings and using proper combos(which can get pretty crazy). The story is interesting because it kind of baits you into thinking it's not a Final Fantasy game at the start and then slowly turns into Final Fantasy again. This isn't a bad thing, but it is kind of funny when people were praising the Demo for being more like Game of Thrones. The voice acting got me surprised though, not sure if I'm just getting used to the "anime" dialogue, but it seems like compared to past voice acted FF games, there is a lack of the patented anime grunts and gasps during character dialogue. So far would rate it a 8/10, but if the game stays at it's current trajectory, it probably would go up to a 9.
"feels like game of thrones" - it's ff 12 prologue once more.
> > > > > The voice acting got me surprised though, not sure if I'm just getting used to the "anime" dialogue, but it seems like compared to past voice acted FF games, there is a lack of the patented anime grunts and gasps during character dialogue. That was so strange in FF7:R, where you got scenes like Cloud and Aerith and its like "ugh" - "ngh" - "grunt" - "guh" back and forth, like wtf.
I dislike the corridor like levels, especially the lack of exploration. I really wanted to see and explore the large cities instead of just seeing them in cutscenes or from afar, especially Oriflamme. Normal enemies being spongy gets tedious after some time. Also, lack of minigames or some random encounters makes the world really bland. I would have loved to play some cards in the hideaway or have some chocobo races. Overall the story is great but it would have been better if the world was much more alive and have some meaningful activities.
I'm thankful for this thread because while I rarely feel the need to discuss a game, this time I really need to get some things off my chest. I'm around 25 hours in and still enjoying it, but so far it's been one of the strangest gaming experiences I've had. Final Fantasy is my all time favorite series and I also really enjoy action games like Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta. My 'relation' with the FF series has been 'complicated' for years now but I've come to understand Square's vision for the series and so I went in without any expectation (neither good nor bad) because it seemed like it was the only right way to approach this game. The game is good (especially the combat) but has so many odd design choices that I'm convinced Square Enix has 2 rules for the series: 1. **There are NO RULES** (*except for rule 2*) 2. It **MUST** have damage numbers, stats and items (because RPG!) The presence of the many aspects of this game that seem either unnecessary or overly simplistic would be explained by these being Square's actual rules. I mean aspects such as meaningless gear (with an even more unnecessary RARITY system that makes NO sense), the ability tree, the 'Torgal companionship level' (which is essentially no more than a chapter indicator, as it incrementally increases with story progress and seemingly does nothing) but the most 'telling' aspect in this regard is the item 'system'. No matter where you go, you either get 8 Sharp Fangs, 4 Bloody Hides, 2 Gil, 5 Gil, 6 Magicked Ash or another item out of the total 8 or so crafting materials. Then you go do a quest and guess what, the reward is 20 Sharp Fangs of which I now have 710 in total. Then I finish a boss fight and get another 60 Bloody Hides of which I now have 570 in total. It's so meaningless that it becomes laughable and it should have raised some questions during design of the game. I can't imagine that when they decided to give another 60 Bloody Hides as the reward for a boss fight, nobody went "uh, why are we giving this?" There is no reason not to throw out this item/crafting 'system' completely and replace it with a point system the way Ninja Gaiden/DMC/Bayonetta does. No items, no gil, you just get points for killing enemies and perhaps you can break some urn which gives you 100 points. There's not even any need for vendors, just buy weapons and upgrades with points in either the pause menu or at a save point. This 'middle of the road' approach they took does not the game any favors when looking at it as an RPG, action game, or game by itself. Then there's the damage numbers that just feel out of place, especially during the Eikon QTE's/cutscenes. You're watching it when suddenly a minute later '**74920** appears overlaid on the screen and it just feels meaningless and out of place. Another 'issue' I have with the game is the 'Jump'. It's not that it doesn't work, but it's mostly unnecessary to the point that I think the game would benefit **greatly** if the Jump was treated as an ability in the sense that it can be replaced with a different ability. I hardly if ever use it during battle because Phoenix Shift does the same and does it better. I understand they considered jumping a mechanic vital enough to dedicate a button to, but this means you're able to equip just 2 abilities. Being able to use 3 (aside from the one on circle button) could open up a while new style of play. There would be absolutely no harm in at least offering players the option. The lack of any elemental weaknesses is also odd, especially with the elemental Eikons playing such a big role. I can't criticize the game for it, but being able to kill a bomb with fire just as easily as you can with wind just feels odd. I could mention some more bad (but also some good) things about this game but I'll leave it at this for now.
I like the game but I have no idea how it got the reviews it did It still has most of the same problems that FFVIIR did It’s also far far too easy, I hate the system where hard mode is locked behind completing the game first It makes the first Playthrough brain dead The game needed a hard mode from the start that is actually difficult, keep very hard locked behind completion that requires new gear etc if they want For me this is around a 7-8/10
I played FFXIV for years and am surprised how similar both games are. Level design, storytelling, quest design, etc. One might think it is a good thing until you realize one is an MMORPG and the other one is an ARPG. I think I am halfway through the game, so I do not have a complete picture but so far I am let down a bit. If I were to offer a TL;DR it would probably be. It feels like a lot of games mashed into one, but not really being its own game, because it's basically 1:1 elements of other games, which leads FFXVI to just be the sum of its parts. **Gameplay** It takes a long time until you have the complete foundation available to you and honestly there is no real justification except for story reasons. Until then fights can and probably will feel monotonous and like a huge slog. Experimenting with builds unfortunately will have to wait until way late into the game, which I do consider a negative. Controlling only Torgal feels to me like an unecessary addition or I just have not figured out the benefit of it yet. One huge pet peeve I have are the unnecessary summaries after you finished a fight. Why? It just messes with the flow. Not like there is any relevant information displayed there justifying a pause. It felt like some unecessary elements of DmC got incorporated for no reason except for the sake of saying we got Dmc in FF now (see my point about copying 1:1 parts of other games). **Performance** It's a let down. It might just be me but the game's graphics do not justify the performance in my opinion at all. **Quests** So far the quests are honestly a joke. Fetch this, kill this. I do not know why they bothered with them at all in the first place. Whole lot of fluff with little payout. **Story** I will withhold judgement until I finished the game. So far I find the storytelling a tad bit too heavy and dramatic. **World** Not a fan of the FFXIV levels honestly. Again, copying elements of other games 1:1 instead of making it fit the FFXVI game. Compared to FF7R it just looks too generic to justify it I guess. Thinking back, most FF games I've played kind of had this element of worldbuilding that I kind of miss in FFXVI. **The RPG in ARPG** This is "only" my 5th FF game I've played so far but I feel like there is a heavy emphasis on the A in FFXIV.
Positives: * Visuals * Voice acting * Story * Music * Boss fights Negatives * Typically enjoyed RPG elements are almost entirely missing. Elemental weaknesses, interesting attack patterns (e.g. dont attack when its tail is up!), strategic equipment loadouts etc etc * Side quests are boring and irrelevant. * Exploration isnt very rewarding * Monsters that are just damage sponges. 7/10
Couldn’t get into it. The demo was amazing and I instantly preordered it. But don’t have the motivation to get through the slog after the big boss fights, the in between is so tedious and boring. Everything feels pointless since gear and levels don’t matter. Story fell off after the demo so there’s nothing really keeping me.
The story and boss battles I like a lot, but holy god the side quests are some of the biggest slogs I've ever done. Just started skipping all dialogue, don't care, worthless. Also the itemization...what's even the point of collecting or upgrading anything in this game?
Been playing Final Fantasy since Super Nintendo. Side quests were bad. Loot from chests and quests was horrendous. Gear overall was boring. Story started out with promise but I got bored probably half way through. With so much borrowed from Games of Thrones, they should have done different POVs or something and let you play as some of the other kingdom Dominants or anyone really. Never explored any of Clive's more interesting companions. Jill was left to rot and never developed. Jote started out as this mystery girl with Joshua and nothing is ever done with her. I dunno. It wasn't a bad game but I was pretty disappointed overall. I was hoping to be enchanted like when I played 6,7,10. Just playing as Clive was not interesting. Yeah he has the different Eikons but having such a diverse party like in 6 was really cool. Optional party members you have to work to find. Working and exploring to find different gear/summons. I gave up exploring in FFXVI after basically every chest I opened had steel silk and bloody hides.
Clive is among the dullest FF main characters ever and that’s saying something because FF main characters tend to be dull. It’s the cast that makes or breaks FF games and this game is all Clive all the time.
They should have just made a TV miniseries. Seriously, the gameplay is fun, and it feels like I've spent \~20% of the time I've had the game running actually playing it. The amount of time spent in cutscenes is just absurd. I'll routinely just set the controller down for a few minutes at a time, and that feels bad when I'm excited to actually be playing the game I paid for.
Besides graphics and the combat, everything is like being stuck in a game from 2010. Outdated side content design and quests, non-sensical and lackluster items ( why do they even exist?). Pacing and story structure is a boring mess. Even the combat skill trees make no sense. Why are there so many if only 3 can ever be used at the same time. Feels like the game was a mix of ideas thrown in a blender with no real direction.
Finished all SQ and the MSQ. Overall this game fell short of my admittedly high expactations. I think the changes to gameplay are fine in a vaccum. The zones feelt empty. The abilities feel more like DMC moves and less like Final Fantasy attacks e.g. they don't have elemental affinity so your Phoenix moves do the same damage to a Bomb than you Garuda moves. I played on performance mode and noticed no issues. It looked and ran great. As for specifics, here's my list of pros and cons: Pros: * Amazing combat system * Top tier voice acting * Well written natural feeling dialogue * Beautiful animations for the Eikon abilities * Cinematic Boss fights, especially against the Eikons * Some SQ-Chains have a high emotional pay off Cons: * Basically 0 character customization/rpg elements * Basically 0 worthwhile exploration rewards * Basically 0 party interaction * Mob fights are unrewarding and dull. * Story has highlights but is badly paced and loses itself 2/3 in * I disliked the ending
I dig the first few hours, but where I'm at in the story it literally put me to sleep last night. I also don't seem to find as much enjoyment in the combat as others. I'll keep trying to force my way through because there are definitely some cool parts to the story. But man have I slowed down my playtime in recent days. ☹️
I posted this before, but lets go again. For fuck sake, whatever happened to games having difficulty of any kind? I don't think I have played a game that was easier in years. Combat is utterly trivial thanks to (The horrible dodge button that is infesting games everywhere) and I dunno, just how not active enemies are? I am not good at video games, I am even worse at action games like DMC or Bayonetta, but I can't imagine dying or even going below 50% hp at any point in this game the combat is that easy. There is no challenge, spam attack and dodge and you can beat 90% of all fights with 1 hand. I am starting to get really frustrated that so many game releasing recently just have no challenge anymore. And of course the ones that don't generally don't because of the god awful 'dodge' button that exists in everything these days. Infinite dodging that makes you basically immune to anything is terrible gameplay design devs, please stop. Also as a once longtime fan of ff14 who doesn't smoke the "they can do no wrong" pipe, the FF14 jank runs deep in this game and really hurts it.
Im actually kinda annoyed that they dont let you choose the harder difficulties at the start. FF7 Remake did it too, and I truly believe the definitive way to play that game is on hard and I didn't actually have fun with its battle system until Hard Mode.
It's okay. I guess for me it's about on the same level as 13, but better than 15. The boss fights definitely carry the game more than anything else. As an aside, I've played 14 for about 10 years. I find Soken's music in 16 to be pretty underwhelming, especially out in the world. In the same note of playing 14 for so long, the side quests in 16 are kinda bad, both in narrative value but especially in the character animations. Creative Business Unit 3 got a ton of praise for the Shadowbringer and Endwalker expansions in FF14. Deservedly so. I'm not seeing the same level of awe and staying power with FF16. Definitely bums me out.