FF16 no td01241 thread

Story has me highly intrigued. Certainly has FF elements without being just like the rest. I did find myself wishing for a bit more vibrant color early but that's just me nitpicking.

I’m pretty far into it. Really enjoying the story and combat. Some of the boss fights are wild spectacles.

The game is good enough, but it unfortunately doesn't shake the modern FF stink that has been invading the Final Fantasy franchise since the PS3 era.

Visually, it feels like it was originally developed as a cross-gen game and then at some point mandated to release for PS5 only. At that point, they designed these visually insane Eikon battles when the rest of the game just looks bland and cheap by comparison.

I can't say I approve of the direction they are taking Final Fantasy, because once again, there is no direction. Final Fantasy XVI is completely different than XV which was completely different from XIII which was completely different from XII. There is a difference between being innovative (of which Final Fantasy certainly has not been innovative at least since 13) and trying new things and just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. It is abundantly clear that the brass at SquareEnix have no clue what to do with the Final Fantasy franchise outside of the 7 Remake.


This game may as well be a completely different genre. It'd be like Activision releasing the next Call of Duty as an RTS instead of a first person shooter. For that matter, I would not be surprised in the least if Final Fantasy XVII was a modern military shooter. Better yet, games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have proven that modern military shooters can sell millions of copies without even needing to include a single player campaign, so perhaps in their never-ending attend to appeal to as many players as humanly possibly, SquareEnix will abandon single player stories for Final Fantasy entirely in favor of micro-transaction filled multiplayer modern military shooters.

This game does pay lip service to the idea that it is still an RPG, but it is by far the most stripped down, barebones, appeal to lowest common denominator RPG that I think I have ever played.

Final Fantasy, a series which was once known to set the standard for what a JRPG is and should be, has spent almost the last 10 years chasing trends and not doing any of them better.

There is nothing to see and/or do in the game's larger, more open areas. The side questions are exactly like the worst side quests in any MMORPG. You talk to an NPC, the NPC spouts a few lines of dialogue, and you go to another area to kill/collect x of y and then return. You get virtually nothing interesting for completing these quests because again, the actual RPG mechanics are far too streamlined to afford for any kind of interesting gear or loot.

The combat is solid overall, but it's your bog standard Platinum Games combat. We've seen this combat done many times before and done better (even with SquareEnix's own Nier Automata).

The actual, overarching story is very good. Game of Thrones comparisons are overdone and only surface level at best. The problem that I have with the story is that it's filled with an egregious amount of padding.

In between each major story beat, you are usually set loose in some of the more open zones and tasked with fulfilling a series of what ultimately feel like side objectives even though they are flagged as main quests which are tangentially related to the main plot at best and completely unrelated to anything going on in the larger narrative at worst. Again, these tasks mostly boil down to going to point A, talking to NPC, moving to point B, talking to NPC, maybe killing/collecting something, then going back to point A.

Once this is complete, you are whisked away to what best could be described as an action stage or the closest thing that FFXVI may have to dungeons. These are at least a bit more visually interesting than the open areas, but likewise, they are all also extremely linear. They are almost all a complete straight line broken up by open rooms where you fight a wave of enemies before returning to a series of hallways, at the end of which you fight a boss, and watch a series of cool cutscenes, and then the game usually dumps you back to the more open areas fulfilling some meaningless tasks to pad the game length.

Some of these action stages end in Eikon battles which are the most visually stimulating aspects of the game by a mile. It makes me wonder why so much care and attention couldn't be afforded to the more quiet moments of the game. They do tend to go on forever though. I'm talking, in some instances, depleting 4 or 5 entire healthbars before the Eikon is finally defeated. FFXVI is an easy game. I don't necessarily have any issue with it being easy. All Yakuza games are incredibly easy, yet Yakuza is one of my favorite franchises. These Eikon battles drag because at some point it's just repeated particle effect porn. You don't feel like you're at any risk of dieing, you're just following the same attack patterns over and over again until the enemy is finally dead. There's no reason to continue to drag these fights out for as long as they do.

When I first heard about this game, I was excited to see what Yoshi P's team could do with a mainline Final Fantasy game. I tried to look past all the red flags (Yoshi P saying JRPGs are racist), but unfortunately what it would appear that they've done is they have literally crafted an expansion for Final Fantasy XIV and replaced the tab-target combat with real-time action combat. The constant busywork bookended by dungeons followed by major storybeats is straight out of the MMORPG, and in an era where you have action RPGs like the Witcher 3 or even Kingdoms of Reckoning Amalur (which does the whole offline MMO thing much better) that's just not enough for what once was one of the most premier franchises in gaming.

I'm literally begging SquareEnix at this point to put the team that was in charge of Dragon Quest 11 in charge of mainline Final Fantasy titles moving forward, that is to say if their never-ending quest to appeal to western markets doesn't ruin that franchise too

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Does the combat get to be a little more varied

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No. You’ll get more abilities as the game goes on (every 5-8 hours depending how much side content you do) but the core premise of how you fight is the same all the way to the end and through all of the optional content other than the Chronolith trials

I normally roll my eyes at bulldogs posts because he shits on every single game that come out but this time it seems pretty accurate

I'm really surprised the combat took such a step backward after FF7 remake. I honestly felt like that was a master class mix of pace and abilities.

I'm not touching this till it hits PC. That's all I got.

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Anyways, even though I have my gripes I am enjoying the game. First half of the game has Game of Thrones and Attack on Titan vibes with a bit of Witcher 2.

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Exactly what the story reminds me of Probably why I like it so much

im still pretty early on but for my own sanity....should i even bother with side quests anymore? the 5 i did were completely underwhelming and pointless thus far.