Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

Just finished the FF XVI demo as well. It was bloody amazing! Love the characters and the story. The combat feels really good. My favourite parts were definitely the boss fights as it's here the combat truly gets to shine. It's just so satisfying!

Some of the sections are truly awe-inspiring. My god, imagine playing this game in the 90s. You'd be absolutely blown away! I'm blown away now lol. This is how a modern Final Fantasy game should be.

I've already preordered the game. Cannot wait until Thursday!

I’m loving the new FF so far, but the use of the F word just feels like it’s trying to be edgy and feeling. It feels out of place and feels like the writer thought he could do something that ends up feeling cheap.
A guy with powers shows and saves the MC and someone he cares about. “F***, F***”. Such a wonderful observation and such great FF dialouge
Don’t get me wrong, the story and characters are great so far, but in regards this one thing it felt like the writer was trying to write an M rates final fantasy for the sake of it instead of writing a FF game that happened to be M.

Finished the FF16 demo and it convinced me to buy the game. Felt like the demo started pretty slow, but man it went places by the end.

The combat is where the game sings for me, everything else is fairly serviceable, but it just feels so damn good to play. At least so far.

I'm only a couple of hours in and its felt like a bit of a boss gauntlet, but every fight is so enjoyable. So far the difficulty has remained fairly low, and the combat makes me feel awesome, even though I know I'm probably not that good, as I am rubbish at these sorts of games.

It takes some very well tuned mechanics to make a player a low skilled player feel really awesome, without just handholding them and making everything a QTE. It feels like every game like this these days wants to be a "Souls like", but this seems to be really zigging away from that trend. Here are to more games making you feel powerful and bad AF.

I'm really enjoying FF16 thus far. The things I like are the pacing and the bite-sized nature of the game. There are constant story moments and intense combat sections. Not to mention that the levels don't feel too long and you travel by a world map instead of walking from place to place so you don't need to travel long distances. It almost feels like this was meant to be a portable game given its structure. I'm glad that not all developers feel the need to make a game massive and can instead focus on providing a fun as well as epic experience, which is what FF16 is.

Granted, I've heard that the game can take upwards of 100 hours to play through so maybe it opens up later on. But at least it doesn't feel overwhelming right now like most games tend to be nowadays. I don't want to start up a game and spend hours in menus, doing side quests, talking to people etc. At first I want the game to grab me with its story and gameplay. Then when it clicks, I'll want to spend more time with the game. Hopefully that will be the case later on.

That has been one thing for me so far in FF16, it has this weirdly dated feel to it. If you told me this was a remake of a 15 year old PSP game, I would believe you. The game is a lot of fighting through barely window dressed corridors and tiny arenas with no real verticality or any real memorable features, it'll just be a lot of grassy circles or concrete circles. This was common action game design around 2010 and earlier, but we've sorta moved beyond it now. Same with how traversing the world is all map based.

There isn't inherently anything wrong with this, in a world of endless open world bloat FF16 may be the perfect antidote to those most fatigued, but it does give the game an uncannyness to it. It is very reminiscent to me of Dragon Age 2.

Interesting thoughts so far on FF16. Having not started yet (and unsure when I’ll start it, possibly weeks), and also choosing to skip the demo, I’m liking what I’m hearing from you all so far. The one concerning thing is the mundane environmental design as @Pizzamorg points out, but like you say I’m actually pleased to hear the game has a bite-sized approach, as described by @LtSarge I certainly have plenty of open world large map exploration games to choose from. Is it similar to MGS5 where there are missions you choose and then when you drop into one you have an objective to complete in order to further the story?

@Jaz007 I also echo the pet peeve of shoehorned mature content or language just for the sake of filling some kind of quota. I know the developers said they didn’t want to be held back by shooting for a lower ESRB rating, which I can appreciate, but Square-Enix’s recent output with Forspoken highlights how incongruous cringy dialogue can ruin a narrative, and ultimately the entire game. Fingers crossed that the dialogue has the appropriate depth and nuance going forward.

@Th3solution Yeah I guess that'd be a fair comparison, although FF16 is much more story-focused than MGS5 so the levels feel more interconnected in FF16. It's also worth mentioning that whenever you "finish" a level, you'll be brought back to the world map and can teleport back to your base in order to buy items and upgrades. So it's indeed like MGS5 in that regard.

The result of an approach like this is a more focused experience with constant epic moments. I've only played 7 hours so far but it's easily my GOTY. This game is basically a Final Fantasy fan's wet dream.

Not really a spoiler but I'll black it anyway.
The reunion of Clive and Torgal was so disappointing. I hate it in games when scenes show lack of emotions when there should be floods of them.

I really liked the Skill Up review on youtube. he has good and fair points I believe and confirms some of my worries I had based on trailers; characters and party members, the flashy combat, RPG aspects, etc. I'll wait for a sale. hope you enjoy your time with FFXVI.

Yeah it is funny, because watching Skill Up's review (and some of the other more critical reviews that are now coming out of the woodwork too), it is hard to really relate to what he is saying when you are early into the game. An initially slow opening gives way to a multi hour gauntlet of boss encounters, set pieces and grand battles captured in gorgeous, cinematic, cutscenes. It takes a while to get to 60, but once it gets there, its pedal to the floor for hours on end. In the best possible way.

Every set piece would easily stand on its own as a highlight of any other game, and here they are constantly stacking these, outdoing themselves every time. How can this game be as flat as Skill Up made out? It is just not possible, I am having so much damn fun!

But then exactly how he says it in his review... it happens.

This opening rush of spectacular... spectacle just... ends. And ends so unceremoniously. The villain we have been chasing through this opening stretch of the game is felled, Clive catches up to the audience on a big twist that for us was resolved hours ago and there I go from fighting Gods in a battle straight out of the latest season climax of One Piece to being dropped into this semi open world hub space, where I am doing mundane tasks like grabbing soil for people (which is just walk up to exclamation mark and press x four times) or killing x number of monsters or whatever. Just mindless, busy work, MMO style filler nonsense. We just hurtled at 120 mph right into a wall.

And much like an MMO, the rewards for these are these myriad piles of currencies and materials, but they all mean absolutely nothing. Even when you get to use boss materials in crafting weapons, they don't unlock any new abilities or anything, they just put the number up of your damage and basically function as a cosmetic.

But even then, if you go the Forge and combine three lunar dust, with 1 meteor orb and one cheese croissant you can give your base sword you started with plus one that gives it more damage than that shiny new boss sword you made, so... great.

You also get three accessory slots, which offer passive buffs to either you, or your skills, but I dunno, everything about this system is bad. You only get three slots, so whenever you get an accessory that buffs just one of your six skills, why the hell would you ever use that if you only have three accessory slots for your entire character? Why does this system exist? Who thought this was fun and fit for purpose?

And then the skill tree, my word, it looks like they threw that together during the morning before the game went live. When I first started playing I assumed it was so barebones because I only had one set of abilities, but no, unless some later Eikons open up the tree, this skill tree is the most nothing skill tree I might have ever seen in a game.

And the whole time in this zone, I was just absolutely floored by how dated and how double AA this all felt. This feels like it was made by Spiders, rather than square, this is Greedfall with polished graphics. If this wasn't a Final Fantasy game, I don't think it would be getting the scores it is getting.

And its a shame too, because the story is excellent so far, the vocal performances are stellar, even with the basically non existent progression and itemisation the combat and set pieces are really phenomenal. But I dunno man, running around a landmarkless, detailless, barely a few metres wide, collection of nondescript greenery looking for lost slaves so I can get three more solar crusts to give me a whole extra 3 hp on my armour (when I have 2000 hp in my pool already at base) is just killing my vibes, man.

I'm nearing 20 hours of playtime. While the pacing has definitely slowed down, I'm still enjoying the game a lot. I can't stop playing it, it's just nice to play through a more linear game. The levels do open up much more later on but there aren't too many distractions if you just want to get to your next objective. The side quests are your typical mundane tasks like collecting stuff or defeating enemies but I did discover some interesting ones later on that focus more on the narrative aspect. It does also feel rather nice to run around in the levels, fight enemies and explore instead of only doing story missions. At least they're introducing this part much later on (7-8 hours into the game) to provide some variety to the formula.

Moreover, it's just absolutely incredible how epic the story missions are and that there are so many of them. Not to mention epic boss fights with fantastic music, it all comes together to deliver a truly awesome experience.

The only thing I'm really missing is more party members who travel with you and deliver entertaining banter. Hopefully that will happen soon.

@LtSarge Maybe you can go back and actually finish Final Fantasy 7 Remake after you're done with 16.

I've only gotten to play it for 4-5 hours so far, but I'm highly enjoying it so far as well. I had the big early story point spoiled well beforehand about the mother being bad, but it's not a big deal as you can see it coming from a mile away. Regardless, my only real disappointment so far is the fact that they botched the performance mode, but at least it still plays really well in Graphics mode since I'm guessing it was intended to be played in that.

I've started getting early side quests already, but they are so simple so far that it's not a big deal or anything. Silly, but they do allow you to get to know the people at the Hideout a little bit.

I will say one other thing, and that would be how heavy handed the motion blur is. I'm not one to get physically bothered by it, but there is so much of it at times that I had a hard time even really following what was going on during the Eikons of Fire fight scene when Joshua gets killed. It's not so much that it was so chaotic either. It's just it's simply hard to see because it's so blurry. It was an epic scene, but would have been even better if you were able to turn motion blur off. It's more of a nitpick than anything, but it still is a shame you can't turn it off.

@KilloWertz It's actually quite interesting to compare FF16 with FF7R since both are very linear FF games. FF7 definitely has a better cast of characters but you can spend way too much time in the menus managing materia and weapon upgrades. That's my primary issue whenever I start up the game and probably why I lost motivation to play it. FF16 on the other hand keeps thing more simple and I commend it for that. I mentioned that the game doesn't feel overwhelming compared to other AAA experiences and it's still the case, even now that the game has opened up more.

I honestly feel like games keep getting more and more complicated nowadays. There's too much customisation. I just want to jump in and play the game, not sit around in menus.

Combat is also more fluid in FF16 compared to FF7R, which isn't that surprising considering FF7R has both turn-based and real-time gameplay. But I personally prefer the combat in FF16.

Is graphics mode objectively better than performance mode? I haven't noticed anything wrong with performance mode, although I don't even know what I should be looking out for.

Also, a tip for people playing FF16: if you pause the game by hitting the Options button during a cutscene, you can click on the touch pad and read some lore on the things you're seeing on the screen (individuals, locations etc.). Didn't know that at all until I found it out by watching a streamer play the game.

@LtSarge This is not meant to be anything "hostile", but you do seem to play a lot of games and not finish some of them, so that might be a big reason too. I absolutely loved Final Fantasy 7 Remake, so maybe there's a small bit of bias as to why I can't see why somebody wouldn't want to finish the game when they were already highly enjoying it. I do think you should go back to it at some point as, especially for somebody that seemed like they were highly enjoying it not that long ago, there is a great experience to be had there.

That's not to criticize your reasons why you are enjoying FF16 more. It is true that it is more streamlined in comparison with having to manage things like Materia in FF7R but not in 16, although you still have to manage your gear to an extent in 16. Nor should you not be highly enjoying FF16. It is indeed a highly enjoyable experience too. I hope that continues for both you and I of course.

The base resolution for Performance mode is 1080p, but it can drop all the way down to 720p in some instances. That and the framerate is supposed to be an extremely inconsistent 60 FPS, while the Graphics mode is 1440p with an almost rock solid 30 FPS. I haven't compared them myself as I don't want to follow the recommendation from Digital Foundry and not start getting used to 60 FPS in it and then go back to 30 FPS. There's nothing wrong with playing it however you are already enjoying it though. If the Performance mode is fine for you, that's fine. I've gotten used to the 30 FPS for the most part, so I don't want to screw that up by playing it at 60 FPS for a bit.

I've never actually done that outside of the "library" from the Hideout, but I'm assuming that's the same thing. In a way that reminds me of watching stuff on Prime video where you can pause it in the middle of a scene and it will show you who's in the scene and you can get info on each actor and such. A nice little feature for both.

I personally think any criticism of an RPG franchise which chooses to streamline its RPG elements to the point of near non existence for a more simple action focus are valid. This isn't the first franchise to do this, and it won't be the last. I feel like it sucked harder in other franchises, but maybe it is because I am not that precious over Final Fantasy.

I also love series like Yakuza choosing to become turn based, as many pillar turn based franchises are being changed for a real time focus, like we don't have enough of those already. As great as FF16's combat is, it is quite literally the best thing about it, there is no reason why this couldn't have been a more traditional Final Fantasy experience.

And for the new audiences this game captures, I am happy for you, but I do think it will be a shame if this game costs the core audience who got Final Fantasy this far, as that seems like a bad message to send.

FF16's real issue though for me is pace, every time I get dropped into a new hub area and am given a bunch of a side quests to do, I feel compelled to do them as I get OCD adjacent about this kinda stuff. But my God they are so boring, and it feels like they grind the game to a halt for hours on end, killing all momentum.

I do agree the game probably did need moments to breathe, as if its just giant Gods smashing into each other for hours on end, I think you are gonna really lose interest. But with the sheer amount of cutscenes in this, I think we already had a platform to create respites, without these sections being necessary.

Maybe this would work better if there was actually a proper RPG attached to this with loot to find, stats to crunch and characters to build, but I know every side quest is just me walking ten feet, pressing X on some exclamation mark, maybe killing some trash enemies who offer me no challenge and then head back to the quest giver for some gil I have nothing to spend on, and my 10,000 bloody hide I have no idea what I am meant to do with.

@KilloWertz Well it's not like I don't go back and wrap up games that I haven't finished. I'm definitely going to continue FF7R in the near future and I probably would've played it more this month if I hadn't bought a month of Game Pass.

Ah I see. Well my TV doesn't output 1440p so performance mode is the best option for me. I did give graphics mode a try and it felt way worse for me. So inconsistent 60 FPS seems like the better option in my case. It's too bad that it's like that, but it hasn't negatively affected my experience so far.

I don't really like spending a long time reading on lore just to get caught up with the plot. FF16 doesn't do a good job of explaining who everyone and what everything is during the cutscenes but having the option of pausing cutscenes and reading about the stuff on screen is a good idea. Not to mention that later on in the game you'll be able to read a synopsis of everything that has happened so far. There will also be explanations of the different kingdoms, the key figures, their relationships and geography. I think introducing this part much later on is a great idea. As I've mentioned before, I don't want to start a game and get served a bunch of exposition. I want a gripping narrative with fun gameplay and then if the game grabs my attention, I'll invest more time in learning about its universe. Which I actually did now! So the structure of this game matches my preference to a T. It's awesome to play a game that actually takes these things into consideration.

@Pizzamorg It is a bit weird that they're giving you so much materials as I have no idea what you're supposed to do with them. Having a lot of money is nice though so that I won't have to worry about potions but I haven't used most of the materials that I've collected. Although I have noticed that the game tends to introduce things at a slow pace, so maybe we'll get to use materials with other things later on.

I think the side quests are getting better in general the more you play. Some tell an interesting narrative, others reward you with significant additions. Even the common rewards are getting better. I'm now getting a lot of EXP and AP as well as good accessories from most side quests. Hopefully this trend will continue.

I recently did find some interesting side quests near enough next to each other, both about nobles and their pets, which painted a grim picture of this world. I appreciated the narrative dressing, it certainly helped, but it was still ultimately more of 'go three steps in this direction and press X, watch a bunch of very cheap, canned looking, animations. The end.'

And sure, if you boil every game down to its core parts you can make these sorts of statements, but this isn't me boiling down to make a facetious point, this is just how the side quests are structured, they feel like MMO tasks.

I've also played for long enough where this has really seeped into the wider game for me, too. Boss battles and Eikon fights are generally a lot of fun, and great spectacle, never particularly challenging or mechanically complex or varied, but with enough spectacular dressing that they make for a terrific ride.

However, the fights in between have grown really boring for me, to be honest. Most mission locations are a set of identical looking hallways and slightly larger rooms with pockets of enemies scattered throughout, chained together into a formless rail. Each location has basically three enemy types reskinned, and the enemy AI seems to be set to pacifist mode, because they offer zero challenge and honestly they barely even attack you.

The abilities are awesome, the combat feels great, but no one plays say... a Diablo for just the moment to moment gameplay alone. They click on demons for that loot chase, for that piece of gear that can create a new build, unlock a new playstyle or transform the way you play your class. The absence of that is felt sharply in FF16, mindlessly carving my way through enemies that barely even fight back is fun for the first couple of encounters, especially when you just unlock some new abilities, but fighting dozens and dozens of waves just seems to exist to tire and burn me out before I can even get to the next proper encounter I will actually enjoy.

@LtSarge While it is something I have noticed after seeing you talk about playing this, purchasing that, then playing this, it is what it is. I can't tell you what to do, and I was more or less just playfully talking about it. No big deal. I am glad to see that you will continue with Final Fantasy 7 Remake at some point after you are done with 16.

Yeah, it is disappointing, especially with how polished the game was supposed to be. It technically is other than in it's performance, but still, I was surprised at how poorly done the performance mode seems to be as a whole at the moment. Obviously the issues with the performance mode in Horizon Forbidden West at launch were also surprising, but as for Final Fantasy 16, at least the Graphics mode seems to be really polished. You and somebody I watch on YouTube both have played in Performance mode and have been just fine with it, so it's whatever.

I don't care for having to read a lot to learn most of the story and such either. As much as I loved Control, I didn't read a whole lot of the collectables that you pick up along the way either time I beat the game. I did appreciate the encyclopedia-like approach to things in Final Fantasy 16 even a few hours in and will probably dig deeper into it the more the game grips me. At the very least, it's a nice alternative to literally having to find a lot of the backstory.

I have a feeling I will be able to shrug off the side quests and still highly enjoy the game. Granted I've only just begun getting them in the game, they can't be worse than the side quests in Crisis Core or the original Xenoblade Chronicles. At least they seem to be connected to each area you arrive in and allow you to get to know the people a bit. Crisis Core was literally the same thing over and over again, with the difficulty in them eventually reaching a point of complete ridiculousness. I wanted to at least finish the ones with Young Yuffie, but they became so horrible I couldn't.

I spent a tiny amount of time with FF16 yesterday and came away pretty happy with it. I’m barely scratching the surface though and after some of the into tutorial I realized I needed to probably wait until I was ready to devote my full attention before I rewire my brain to a new set of controls. If the game was less twitchy and action-reaction based then I’d be okay with playing it alongside another action game, but when timing is key then I better not confuse myself with a new move set.

On that subject —The reinvention or evolution of a franchise is an interesting topic. Most would argue God of War and Zelda made good choices about that, as well as Elden Ring. Although some of those changes are not as drastic as going turn-based RPG to action combat RPG-lite.

I think the audience for turn-based combat might be dwindling. I can’t be sure because, like @Pizzamorg said, Yakuza took the opposite route and I think it’s global popularity actually has gone up since the Like A Dragon shift change. I think games like Dragon Quest and Octopath Traveler are doing fine, but not on the level of the third person character action games (at least in the West).

It will be interesting to see how the sales of the game stack up. I do think if the game was called “Clive’s Odyssey” or “The War of the Kingdoms” or even more appropriately “Clash of Thrones” then it’s sales would be a fraction of it being “Final Fantasy XVI”.

When I look back though, the series has been gradually becoming more action based since FF12. It’s a bit of a Ship of Theseus at this point. Is this the game that makes it “not a true Final Fantasy game”? I think they started to veer off the classic recipe long ago.

I think with turn based games, it is really hard to judge because of context. What I mean by this, is it seems like mainstream gaming has been trying to phase out turn based games, calling them things like "outdated" but there are people out there like me who adore turn based games. I grew up with turn based games, and as someone who is low skilled in the dexterity department, every game being a sweaty, timing based, action game is not what I want. We've seen so many long standing turn based games go for an action focus, or some kind of weird real time turn based hybrid (I personally think every system I have played like this has been ass, excluding classic real time with pause CRPGs). I think because of this, you have this dedicated group of turn based lovers, who are being generally so starved, anything turn based comes along and they'll throw their support at it even if the game sucks, just to show that people still want this. That some people don't want every turn based game to introduce real time elements. Which then warps the data somewhat.

On that note, that is probably the one weird double edged blessing for FF16 for me. While it is very much baby's first RPG, it is also very much baby's first character action game, too. This is problematic for either audiences of those respective genres, but had FF16 abandoned turned based mechanics to mean I got 20 different weapons/powers, all with their own dedicated codex of combos. Where I needed to hit 90 input combo strings to beat bosses or needed to get S ranks on every boss to get the true ending, I just wouldn't have ever played this, being honest.

The combat being so basic is what makes it grow tiresome, but it is also the only real reason I am able to play and enjoy this like I have done. As someone like me, with no talent for these sorts of games, can manage a game where its just effectively one combo you use all the time, ability dumping and occasionally needing to dodge (with an extremely generous dodge window) and that gets you through basically the whole game. Or at least it has for me so far and I feel like I am a decent way through.

And that isn't to say you can't make things more complicated for yourself if you wanted to, but there is absolutely no real benefit to doing that, which sucks for dedicated fans, but to me is a blessing.