PS5 Final Fantasy XVI

[DisturbedSwan]

Surprised no one has made a thread for this yet as I think quite a few of us have now played the demo/Prologue. But yeah, I played through it in two sessions over the weekend and wow, just wow, this is utterly fantastic. Way exceeded my already high expectations, I like pretty much everything about it I think.

 

It's very Game of Thrones-y, that is my overwhelming first impression of it. Warring houses run by ruthless tyrants keen to expand their borders at whatever human cost it takes, it just feels a lot more grounded than a lot of past FF's and a lot of JRPGs in general, there's no super attractive Husbando leading the pack here and no really cute Waifu types either, all the folks encountered so far all feel more like real people and less caricatures if that makes sense.

 

As this is the early game, everything moves at quite a slow pace with lots of exposition, setting up Clive's back story 13 years before the present day and seeing where he grew up, his Father and family in general (has very much a Stark's in GoT vibe). All the combat tutorials and your first real mission take place with teen Clive just getting to grips with his abilities, you're sent on a mission to clear out some Goblins from a derelict nearby town and when you gets there Goblin's aren't all you encounter.

 

It's a cool mission that lets you get to grips with the early combat system for the first time, everything is relatively basic with only one Phoenix Eikon(?) ability to use, basic square and triangle attacks but how fast paced it is and how you can dodge just at the right time to engage a Witch-time equivalent and parry shots along with how phrenetic and bombastic it is just makes it an utter joy. Any game, especially a long RPG like this, that makes me actively want to engage with combat rather than sigh before engaging in another battle is a really great sign. It is relatively simplistic at this early stage but that is to be expected, you can see the roots of where it will grow and become more complex over the course of the game as well.

 

I think what has really drawn me in overall is the story, without giving anything away I really want to see what happens next, the Prologue/Demo ends in such a way that I am incredibly eager to find out what happens next. The eikon fights are a true spectacle, huge set pieces with all the music ramped up to 11 that make the ol' heart tick away at a fair rate of knots, just so much cool and crazy shit going on on screen at once it's just such a visual spectacle and an utter joy to play through.

 

So yeah, very early days but I'm so impressed with this so far and can't wait to carry on with it on Friday.
 

Pics below.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Not sure what game you're playing if you think it's lacking in husbandos and waifus tbh. Maybe you've got a copy of FFXVII by accident.

 

In terms of story and setting I found it interesting it uses crystals and eikons as this sort of high fantasy take on mutual assured destruction, and seems to be leading in a bit of a FFVII direction in terms of the consequences of using such power/magic for personal benefit ala mako energy

[Nag]

Think I've mentioned before but I'm going in to this game almost completely blind, I've watched literally zero pre release videos, read pretty much nothing on the game and have no interest in playing the demo... I'm buying it on the strength of the name alone.

[DisturbedSwan]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Not sure what game you're playing if you think it's lacking in husbandos and waifus tbh. Maybe you've got a copy of FFXVII by accident.

 

In terms of story and setting I found it interesting it uses crystals and eikons as this sort of high fantasy take on mutual assured destruction, and seems to be leading in a bit of a FFVII direction in terms of the consequences of using such power/magic for personal benefit ala mako energy

 

Well maybe not completely lacking lol but they aren't all these larger than life characters is what I mean, they seem a lot more muted and closer to real life, that's my take anyway. Clive isn't young either or childish either, I think he's 28 in the current day portions of the game so far which is quite old, especially for JRPGs and recent FF's in general, they haven't felt the need to put someone like Vaan (?) from FF12 in it, I think the previous oldest was something like FF7 who are all in their 20s or so. 

 

But yeah I think the story and setting are super intriguing, and I agree the kind of fight for resources is similar to Mako from FF7 (from what I've played at least).

 

1 hour ago, Nag said:

Think I've mentioned before but I'm going in to this game almost completely blind, I've watched literally zero pre release videos, read pretty much nothing on the game and have no interest in playing the demo... I'm buying it on the strength of the name alone.

 

I was the same really, but when I realised this is the first few hours of the actual game I thought why not really, it's just playing the actual game a little bit early, with progress carrying over so I can carry on hopefully on Friday. There is a second demo called 'Eikonic challenge' - which I think Dwarf mentioned in the news thread - that is a bit more spoilery as it's later on in the game, but there's no need to touch that, it's purely to show off how crazy the combat gets later on in the game.

 

Just as a sidenote, for anyone who's played A Plague Tale, the two main characters' voice actors in that, make an appearance in this and are just as great here as they are in those games.

[one-armed dwarf]

Not to turn every FF thread into comparative analysis, but FF generally isn't as weeb baity as other JRPGs I think. To a certain extent at least, I mean some of their characters definitely are the poster for a certain type of archetype (Aerith). But XVI is very much in the same wheelhouse as XII and XIV* I think, with more swearing. I don't think it's a massive departure, it's very Matsuno. Very Vagrant Story. It's familiar territory really, with the Thrones influence offering it more of an 'edge' that perhaps these other games didn't try and go for

 

I think the world and setting is super interesting, and the intro to this is the most visually excellent and impressive opening a FF title has had since FFX. It's something these games haven't went for as much since that title. At the same time my problem remains with the combat being so difficult to see, being one of the most visually unclear games I think I've ever played, that I'm pretty worried it will ruin my initial playthrough of the game. Until they release the patch that improves it.

 

*ok, XIV has a catgirl thing. So it's pretty weeb baity. But still outside of this it's got similar vibes

[Nag]

First things first... we need that motion blur patch quickly, this is kind've hurting my eyes and making me feel a little queasy and it's the first time that's happened while gaming.

 

Second that opening with Titan and Shiva? was quite a spectacle.

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah I had to turn it off. The game itself I mean, you can't turn motion blur itself off. Nor the other annoying screen effects. I'm at the bit from the 2nd demo, which ends in a boss fight. I just can't look at the game currently and have to keep taking breaks from it. It looks horrible in motion, and it doesn't matter which setting you choose, 30 or 60. I'm kinda stunned that for how obsessive DF is about pixels and frametimes that they apparently have no problem at all with this lack of motion clarity.

 

There's some neat stuff in it I think though. Lightweight DMC as a sort of base for a combat system which is about speed but also being deliberate. Like, you can jump cancel stuff, but you also get punished severely for spamming. Somewhere in between the spectrum of character action and Souls style games. It's less forgiving than DMC, but not as strict as Souls. I know these are the two games that get the most compared to everything, but that's sort of how I feel about it

 

People should definitely read the descriptions of skills and look at the little videos of Clive doing stuff. I was messing around in training and did a thing where Clive does a stinger, the dog launches the enemy in the air, Clive teleports up, baps them a bit, uses a charged fireball to slam them back down. That is the kind of idea here, layering the different attack effects together, with their movement properties and enemy reactions. The thing is, the combat will be the dealbreaker for many people here. Because it's all you do in this game. If you're not on board with that then I dunno. I guess you might have fun delivering wood and soup to people, maybe you really love fetch quests cause this sure has them. No Triple Triad in sight

 

The general design of his combat is very similar to Nero in DMC5. Magic burst is somewhere in between exceed and his devil knuckle ability, in the sense that it will add knockback and AOE to skills that don't usually have it. There's reasons to go for it and reasons to use the normal attacks as well.

 

I think the game feels sort of rigid, but I think that this is a design choice. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've not made much progress in the story, really just did one major story boss since the last post. But what I spent a lot of time one was establishing some muscle memory for its combat in the training room, cause I struggle so much with 'real' combat in this game cause I can't see anything. But I actually think the combat is kind of great in this. The direct line from Nero to Clive becomes more and more clear.

 

What is the lynchpin of his offense are these 'buffered' attacks, the ones you charge up. You can charge them up doing other things. But what's more like Nero are his 'precision/magic burst' setups, in how they are to be triggered at the end of an attack. If you call 'sic' or 'ravage' on your little furry friend at the end of attacks, you get a powered up version which is more active, which lets you setup some smoking sick stylish dog combos. This also includes the end of magic burst attacks, so if you send an enemy flying off with burst, you can juggle them with dog. It's actually a really clever and original idea

 

Basically, the dog is your gun and summon swords. Also your healer, for some reason. Very good boy

 

 

The way things weave together are done very well in this, but you really have to search it out. The messiness of main campaign combat is just a miserable way to actually try and figure out any of this stuff. But going into training and turning performance mode on lets you do it.

 

Man, kills me that this doesn't have a PC release yet. I need it so bad.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Dunno who else is playing this, but this is one of the most uneven AAA games I think I've ever played. A lot of the post Sakaguchi Final Fantasies are pretty divisive (XII, XIII, XV). All responsible for lots of forum arguing they are. This will also be one of those games I reckon. There's lots of faff in this game, for some reason they brought over the terrible quest design of FFXIV, which is an MMO (obviously). But you take that kind of filler, faffing around doing fetch quests and looking at poorly animated cutscenes and put it in a character action game, it goes together about as well as chocolate ice cream and an onion. I think in its storytelling CBU3 has some real blind spots, like they haven't seen what AAA games have been doing the past decade cause they've being doing an MMO. 

 

So sometimes the game is kinda disappointing. But the boss encounters, some of the best designed fights in the genre. They're so good, and some of them so clever. Some of the more regular mob fights are still a headache, too many effects. Too blurry, you simply cannot interact with most of these enemies. But the encounters against a big single enemy are much more clean and interactive, and it really feels like playing against a FFXIV raid boss but with character action mechanics. Of course there's a level of complexity in a raid encounter which is simply impossible to provide when it's 1 player playing rather than 8. But still, when it works it works. Chaining together precision dodges, syncing your dog up with your attacks, using the chain grab and teleports to endlessly teleport around the place and skillfully jump cancel your way around enemies. It's a surface level take on DMC, but keeps the bits that really matter in terms of movement and basic action concepts and marries it with this teams previous experience in designing spectacular fight sequences. When you think about it, it's sort of an obvious pairing

 

When it doesn't work though, it's easily the most boring Final Fantasy game ever made. Clive is such a dullard, and none of the other characters other than Cid are really that interesting. Its pacing is horrible. Its weirdly streamlined and doesn't feel like an RPG, but feels like it keeps trying to be one anyway. The Game of Thrones influence was way overstated, it's just the prologue which delivers that. Such a weird one. I reckon it's better than XIII and XV, but I still much prefer XII. Also I'm kinda disappointed in the soundtrack, it's Soken's weakest imo. Overall though I think it's one of those games where there's still a lot to like, provided you are ok with accepting a lot of shite and can look past that. 

 

Which to be honest, also describes Final Fantasy XIV. Huh

 

All that said, I do like the game and I bet it's awesome on new game plus when you can just speed through it all.

 

I did another combo, there's decent flexibility in this combat system

 

Spoiler

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I’ve not played much of this yet, been away most the weekend. I have watched Skill Up’s review, and can kind of see his point. The combat is great, but what I’ve played thus far has been predominantly cut scenes. 
Clive so far is, ok, I guess? I’ve seen some claim “OMG HE’S AMAZING!”. I haven’t played as him enough to form an opinion one way or another. But so far he’s hardly Zack from FF7.

[Nag]

I've put a fair few hours in over the weekend and today (still only have two Eikons though) and I'm still thoroughly confused about what to think of the game. 

 

Story wise I'm definitely conflicted, I'm finding myself grabbing my phone or tablet far to regularly when a cutscene starts up, that may have something to do with whichever character is on screen at the time (and definitely not helped that they've already killed off one of the more interesting ones) but it's not a great sign in regards to the story.

 

The actual combat is fine, not particularly difficult, which is nice... mob crowds can get a little boring having to repeatedly do the same thing and I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time with the pathetic amounts of XP/AP you receive. To be fair I could quite easily be playing God of War or DMC, it's about as far removed from FF game as you can get. And then there's the "sidequests"... fucking hell those have been trash so far.

 

I'm aware so far I've not been overly positive but then the game will pull out some batshit crazy set piece (like the Eikon battles) that look absolutely stunning and makes you feel like an absolute badass... so yeah, I know I've got loads to go with the game and so far it's been very uneven.

 

I'm enjoying more the 15 though.😂

[one-armed dwarf]

edit fuck it, I've talked enough about the main quest design, just repeated my previous post tbh. Wanted to post about something in the game that's good instead. Here's a hunt I did, it was fun

 

 

I have the same issue as you nag with the plot, constantly checking my phone

 

EDIT

 

Titan is such FFXIV fan service, I fucking love it

 

Music spoilers, and obviously spoilers for a certain set piece battle

 

Spoiler

I am 90 percent sure that is Koji Fox on the vocals, the localiser (see the easy allies post in the FFXVI news thread)

 

 

Cause it sounds so much like these. Also 1:40 of 'Under the Weight' gets re-used as leitmotif in 6:00 of the XVI track, love that

 

 

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

Just done my first major boss battle, it was pretty bloody epic. Definitely enjoying Cid as a character. I can see SkillUp’s point, in as much as it goes from “Massive summon fight” to “serve these guys some soup”. But hey, I’m enjoying this so far. It’s not quite up there with FF7 Remake, but from what I’ve played so far, It’s pretty good.

[one-armed dwarf]

Said I was done talking about the main quest, but man, it's so dull in this section I did yesterday. Trading passes, wtf? Can't believe how deeply uninteresting this thing can be at times. It hits hitherto unseen fathoms in sheer drudgery and often for very long stretches. Literally fell asleep, not figuratively 😴

 

Then after that, an exhilarating sequence of set piece battles which introduce novel gameplay concepts using familiar systems in exciting new ways, and afterwards an incredibly interesting set of Eikon powers based around building stagger and juggling enemies with magic/damage over time that also syncs up with your use of magic/magic burst. As well as a unique dodge stance that builds up power from avoiding attacks to fill the arena with lasers. Which kept me up past 1 AM trying to see what are the new ways to play the game with this new Eikon, the completely new approach it enables. Those hunts won't know what hit them, with the blitzkrieg of bullshit I have to hit them with now

 

Man, fuck this game, be amazing or be rubbish, you can't be both 😠

[one-armed dwarf]

In the endgame, doing endgame fetch quests. Now that I'm at the end, overall impression isn't going to be changed much I guess. Such extreme lows and such extreme highs, the campaign is literally just a FFXIV structure with the exact same design of fetch quest, even some of the same cutscene scripting it seems (I am 99 percent sure I saw the FFXIV Warrior classes battle ready stance in one sidequest cutscene). The story has kind of plodded along, it's like a mashup of classic SNES FF (Clive and Jill have some FFIV vibes with Cecil and Rosa), Matsuno (FFXII, Vagrant story, tactics) and Dragon Ball Z. I guess there's a little bit of Game of Thrones, but it's got much more Goku than it does Lannister about it. I did warm a bit more to Clive and some of the gang but these guys aren't on the same level as some of the cast in earlier titles. Gav is alright but he's no Wakka.

 

The action remains exceptionally high quality, at least when you can see what the fuck is going on. A late game boss fight was ruined due to it taking place in the dark with lots of flashy attacks, could not see a fucking thing. But mercifully, not every fight is like that at least. The PC port will fix a lot of those kinds of issues. But to me it just seems like with this game Square didn't aim particularly high, not that they set out to make a middling game (which this most definitely isnt), but that they tried to keep costs down and that's why so much of it feels like it was built from FFXIV development tools. If you watch interviews with Yoshi P on NoClip, the producer on this game, he actually criticises Square for their pursuit of visuals during the early HD gen (FFXIII, XIV 1.0 and Versus XIII). So with that in mind this approach makes sense, but also IMO feels like an overcorrection because it makes the overall presentation feel very dated at times, which hurts immersion in its world and story

 

Sounds very negative, but this is still one of the best games I've played this generation. My main takeaway is that this game reminds me a lot of the original Nier. Not the sequel or remake, though the remake is largely the same thing anyway. Where the game was kinda shambolic and felt a bit thrown together but there was a ton of heart and it had great writing, and that's why people liked it. This is like that in a different sort of way, its carried not by story (lmao) but combat and set piece encounters, and a decent depth to its skill expression. It's a game you either love in spite of its shit parts, or the shit parts will be a big dealbreaker. Overall I like it, but wish it could have been more. Literally if they cut parts of this game out, it would improve. 

[Nag]

I've actually had to take a break from it over the weekend as it was literally boring me to tears... I will go back to it, I'm not having another Final Fantasy XII moment.

[AndyKurosaki]

It’s definitely a game of extremes. The action is often brilliant, the boss fights especially so. But the side quests are frequently so fucking boring. Deliver soup. Collect soil. Deliver more bloody meals. I do them for the XP boost, but they’re tedious as fuck. I’ve forgotten them as instantly as I’ve completed them. 
 

I’ve seen people claiming this is “OMG best game of the year”. I can’t agree with that. Others claim it’s “One of the best FFs ever”. I don’t agree with that either. It’s certainly good. But there’s a lot of tedium to get through. 

[Nag]

Think the motion blur toggle patch dropped earlier... I'll probably go back to this over the weekend if that's the case, still waiting on the "stop being boring" patch though.😢

[one-armed dwarf]

Well, I did everything on my NG save except for the chronoliths, which I'll do now that I'm on FF mode maybe. I just wanted to get to NG+ really.

 

Anyway, the structure of this game does not change in any major way. The fetch quests become more numerous later on, and they throw them on the main quest as well. It only gets more boring. Even though I like the game overall, it's also at times maybe the most boring AAA game I've played in my life, without exception. When it's good it's awesome, but when it sucks it's really really fucking boring

 

good review here https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/final-fantasy-xvi-playstation-clive-review

 

While I'm getting better at dashing around I'm finding I'm rubbish at optimising stagger combos. There's a knack to them I think, start off with multihitting moves and end up with hard hitting ones. Or just use an ultimate, but I find the ultimates super boring and linear. That's a problem with this game in general actually, given the small selection of abilities it stands out that a few have very limited branching options off them. Titan being the worst example, every time you parry the game basically stops, it's no royal guard.

 

Spoiler

Shiva

is awesome though. You get an air dash and can extend air combos.

 

(I have no idea if that's even a spoiler, the eikon was in the state of play and everything, in fact all the eikons were. But anyways)

[AndyKurosaki]

It’s definitely not a game I can play for hours at a time. Because after an epic boss battle, the tedium kicks in big time. I’ve been doing all the side quests as they come up, but Christ they’re so boring. The majority of them I’ve done up to now have been literal fetch quests. “Go here. Kill a few enemies. Come back. The End”. 
 

I’m 50% in now, long enough to decide what I think of Clive. “Meh” sums it up. He’s had no memorable lines, doesn’t have much character. Once I’ve finished this, he certainly won’t be entering my fond memories of other classic FF characters. He’s not awful. But like the constant barrage of fetch quests, he’s a bit boring really.