Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

I wonder where do the fans rank ffxvi in their lists of mainline titles. I think most people are like it's far from the worst but not close to the best

@Arisen 7th, according to this article:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/07/final-fantasy-16-is-t...

Of course this includes non-mainline I think too.

Borrowed FFXVI from a friend a few days ago and have been mainlining it in an attempt to avoid spoilers. Got far enough in now to say that it’s possibly got the worst writing with regards to female characters that I’ve seen in a long, long time. I’m not even sure that it passes the Bechdel test. A lot of the game is really great, the political stuff is good, Cid is a cool dude and Clive has a pretty complex emotional arc. The combat isn’t really for me as it goes on, I’m not finding it to be that satisfying fighting mobs. It’s also like, really really linear. That can work in some games but it reminds me a bit of XIII in that respect. So it’s an overall hesitant 7 and I’ve just finished the quest ‘Through the Maelstrom’ if that non-spoilery says where I am.

Worth saying that it really pays to have a pal who buys games Day 1, gives them to me to play and then sells them to CEX 😂

Final Fantasy XVI received a small update later on tonight, probably within the last few hours since there wasn't an update for it when I was on there playing it 4 hours ago. I'm not sure what was all included in the update besides them finally adding a Motion Blur slider (from 0-5). I put it down to 0, but didn't have much time to test it out just now. I did notice the ghosting was gone while panning the camera, but I just did things around the Hideaway since I didn't have a whole lot of time, so I can't say how it is without motion blur in combat now.

@KilloWertz Thanks for the info! I'm glad that Square Enix put out this update right before I'm about to face the final boss.

@LtSarge So you can at least see who you're fighting without the extremely heavy motion blur? You're welcome.

I'm nowhere near that far along. I'm ready to start Captial Punishment, which is the quest where you go back to Rosalith to fight Hugo. It will be nice to play it without the extreme motion blur regardless, even though I had gotten about as used to it as you could.

UGH

@Pizzamorg I feel exactly the same the same way, still wondering how it got great reviews when the design flaws are really this obvious.

It is like all these people played the first couple of hours and reviewed it based on that. Playing as much of the game as I have, I feel like I would have a hard time justifying giving the game a 7 (if I scored games like that), instead the bulk of the reviews are 8s and 9s, making it one of the highest rated games of the year to me and this is just madness as far as I am concerned.

I appreciate people can like different things, and I suppose seeing a game as very shallow is still potentially a matter of taste, but when its a Final Fantasy game, I just dunno how you can just ignore the limitations and shortcomings this has and slap a high score on it anyway. It is missing fundamental, core, parts of what makes an RPG an RPG. And you could argue it is just an action game and needs to be measured against that only, but even then, you are telling me this is a 9 out of 10 action game? It has only one combo!

@Ralizah I can totally understand why some people are liking the structure, God of War’s reboot struck a chord with a lot of people after all, but it obfuscates the journey for me and makes the world feel smaller. Another pet peeve, the game’s unflinching refusal to have any people of colour doesn’t gel with the world’s clear multiple cultures. They even do the wee music jingle while showing the desert kingdom, real Agrabah vibes, and then when you walk around everybody’s talking like they’re from Sheffield. Also just the fact that for all Yoshi-P’s nonsense about black people not fitting the world or something, it’s all just because there’s slavery at every turn that isn’t motivated by race and it would require better writers to navigate that without massive controversy.

@nessisonett I miss when big-budget JRPGs were grand, world-spanning adventures that invited you to plumb their depths while maintaining just enough structure to feel like you were consistently making progress. You get that with Xenoblade Chronicles and little else these days.

I thought God of War was alright, but it's not what I want Final Fantasy to be. And even GoW would have been better if it loosened up a bit and allowed more naturalistic exploration/dungeon-crawling than it did. The best parts of that game were always non-story bits.

God of War Ragnarok at least is a deeper RPG than FF16 and a way better action game, while also I would argue delivering a far stronger story and set of characters as well.

@Pizzamorg How would you say the structure and pacing are compared to the 2018 one? I liked the previous one a lot when it wasn't doing the Uncharted thing where it was leading me by the nose between setpieces. The optional dungeons and realms are where the game shined for me.

I would say that's a more difficult comparison to draw, mostly because I don't exactly like 2018. FF16 doesn't block your progress with tedious, one solution, puzzles either. At least not so far. However, I'd argue the combat was still much deeper in 2018 GOW than it is in FF16 and you had a much more tangible suite of RPG systems which felt light by typical RPG standards, but are as deep as a canyon compared to what FF16 offers.

Pacing is kind of more complicated to answer, because in 2018, a lot of the pacing mechanisms are mandatory. Whereas in FF16 you could probably skip most of the side quests if you wanted and probably have a much better experience, I just get weird OCD about doing that.

Set pieces also feel generally more plentiful and grander in FF16, but I would say GOW finds more variety in theirs or at least more smoke and mirrors to give the illusion of variety, whereas FF16 seems to pull from a small deck of cards.

@Pizzamorg I'm so sorry; I was asking for comparisons between Ragnarok and 2018. I should have been clearer.

It's pretty incredible to hear how light FFXVI is on RPG systems, though, if even GoW2018 stands out in comparison!

Oh, night and day. I LOVE Ragnarok, one of my favourite games ever. It is basically everything I wanted 2018 to be. If you had any issues with 2018, Ragnarok fixes it.

And yeah, in FF16 there basically are no RPG systems. It is very weird.

I tried to play a little more FF16 yesterday and I do have to admit that I’m having trouble getting into it. After the initial hype has been brought crashing down by some of the game’s shortcomings, I feel the wind taken out of its sails at the moment. I wonder if I’m a little burned out on the AAA grandiose epics right now.

Been dropping in on this thread every now and then and I do feel that it’ll have served as a useful gauge for when I get around to playing FFXVI. I don’t pre-order many games but did this as I was pretty hyped… so much so, that I decided to save it for my 150th platinum. Well, judging from most peoples thoughts here, I may have picked the wrong game for that particular benchmark… but at least I’ll be going in with realistic expectations.

@Pizzamorg Hm. I should pick up Ragnarok at some point. I liked 2018 enough to platinum it, so, theoretically, I should like this one even more.

@Th3solution I have a few Sony first-party epics just sitting around on my shelf collecting dust. That type of game is fine, but I find I need to be in the mood for them, and that mood doesn't crop up too often.

Need to soon, though. The real question is whether I play Spider-Man GOTY or Ghost of Tsushima DC first.

I would say it is probably more down to the games awful pacing. It sends you down an epic rollercoaster, then you get off in some kind of liminal void they call a hub location for you to press x to sand three times and waste hours earning 5xp and 50000000000 teeth you'll never use, before they let you back on the rollercoaster again.

And then by the third time of doing this loop you realise you aren't even going on a new rollercoaster, you are just going on the same one over and over, and now the thrill of that loop de loop feels cold because you know it is coming.

There is an argument to be made about the homogenisation of gaming, but that isn't FF16's problem, FF16's problem is it feels like a lost game from 15 years ago someone has done on a remaster of. Being freed of all the modern bloat should be refreshing, but the game isn't just devoid of modern bloat, it is devoid of all things.... a blackhole where substance goes to die. You end up craving that same bloat you thought you were running from, just to have anything meaningful to engage with at all.