Final Fantasy XVI (Zero Punctuation)
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviewed Final Fantasy XVI.
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God, I miss the escapist site
Yatzee you were not in Norway where they tell tall tales of Clive the god slayer
Health chip really...
Have you seen the damage you can do
You were right about the cooldowns being F***ing long though
Oh god, Dave the Diver. Can't wait to see that one.
Fun fact: The development team actually watched Game of Thrones for inspiration, but only up until Season 4
They got out while it was still good
Dion's rebellion was on some Season 8 shit. He went all Berserk Dragon form like Danny did, granted his was done much better.
@@KyngD469 I thought ultima kind of influenced him with the eye flash?
Thank God if they did.
same, that's what I did too
I never once, in its entire run, watched Game of Thrones. Having watched my roommate play the game, I thought the story was good. So I guess I came out ahead in the long run
I like to imagine Nick telling Yahtzee to review the next FF but hes all apologetic about it. All "Hey Yahtz, so don't be mad but there's a new Final Fantasy..."
There's a new assassins creed this year, that joke might be making a comeback
I highly await the next franchise game review.
Probably because he, like everyone else (because Yatzhee himself never stops saying it) knows exactly how Yatzhee feels about RPGs
They need to stop giving him so many Japanese games to begin with. The guy is fundamentally baffled by that country's culture, which is fine (a lot of Japanese people are fundamentally baffled by English culture), but he can't fully appreciate what those games are doing because of that. Of course, the alternative is to have him only review American and Canadian/European games, the former of which are almost universally trash and the latter of which are either mediocre (Canadian) or underexposed (European).
Angry Joe: Wanna play a zombie game?
You are spot on about the name "Clive" description and all. Had a coworker named Clive was a twat.
I know what you mean, but im choosing to read that as his name being 'Clive was a twat' and imaganing the sort of pearent to give a child with the surname twat the middle name Was A gives me joy.
preconceived notions are a hell of a drug
Clive is just a few steps up from Todd or Clint, who are always, ALWAYS assholes
What's weird is that despite never meeting a Clive yet somehow I know exactly who they are
He'd just go on and on about Candyman this and Hellraiser that...
I like how Yahtzees description of a typical Clive is almost exactly the Clive in Frasier.
"I'll never understand how two men like you could be spawned from that sweet, courageous old astronaut." What a show.
I remember when I drove a moon crane. Damn near backed it into the Sea of Tranquility.
@@ImNotJoshBoltz Don't forget your warm glass of Tang
Uh
there is no 'Clive' in Frasier, unless you're talking about some utterly insignificant minor character I don't recall
Do you mean 'Niles'?
@@SavageGreywolf He's a character from S04E01. Great episode. Did we mean Niles, lol...the fuck outta here.
Part paralyzed thunderbirds puppet is so specific yet so evocative and unexpected that I ended up laughing out loud like I was being tickled. The family was concerned, but I enjoyed it.
Last time I remembered him referencing thunderbirds was in his Ride to Hell review talking about the awkward fully clothed dead eyed sex scenes
"The family was concerned, but I enjoyed it." sums up my adolescence, actually.
The Pokémon evolution line Clivum-Clive-Clivatar is a fantastic joke.
Clivtoris
Clive - Clivara - Clivaga is more attuned lorewise
I like that there's actually two different types of sidequests, one of which has a special icon to let you know that you actually get a permanent upgrade from it. The other's just for if you can't get enough of the story and world-building, which evidently was not a problem for Yahtzee.
"Pick up 3 garlics for me"
@@gustavohuehue7460 If Greg the garlic farmer was asking then I would do it.
The best side quest was truly “deliver 3 bowls of stew to 3 random old blokes… twice pls” lol
one was literally shopping for nuts and garlic to somehow turn into a fireproof coating.
but you got to choose a waifu to go shopping with.
@@kevadu Same! Poor guy just lost his wife, after all.
The high production value episode analogy is 100% spot on. I had the same thought but couldn't articulate it.
As an American I can say Clive sounds like a very basic name. Like he owns a truck and is 50% cheap beer by volume.
Also the truck has a brush guard with a cheap paint job that flakes off easily, and is lifted but still has the stock wheels on it. And its headlights have halogen bulbs.
@@dairoleon2682 The fenders are rusting through and the driver's side door won't close right unless you lift it up slightly before closing it.
Don't be silly. It is at least 65%.
@@SgtDax 80% on the weekends
I've seen enough King of the Hill to know that if there isn't a Clive in that show somewhere, I'll be very surprised.
Feels like there was. Can't rightly say where.
Yahtzee made it the whole way through without a Clive Barker reference when that was the *first* thing that came to my mind.
But then he would've had to think about Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Jericho (by Clive Barker)
@@ChrisMattern-oh6wx Blurgh, you just made me think that thing again >=\
My best mate from birmingham is called Clive and I'm so proud he's finally made it big.
I appreciate getting a bit more insight in the culture of what its like to be a Clive in Birmingham.
"One foot in anime and one foot in game of thrones" really describes a lot of JRPGs the last couple years.
Like which, specifically?
In at least some cases, the inspiration might not be Game of Thrones, but Final Fantasy Tactics. _Triangle Strategy,_ for example, is very much inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics.
Stop being edgelords JRPG's, no one buys you for doing that
Final Fantasy has literally never been "medieval fantasy" either. Robots and airships from game one in the series.
@@ItsmeInternetStranger Fire Emblem 3 Houses comes to mind.
One of the weirdest parts of FF16 is when you find out that goblins have community, language and even commerce and then it puts you in battles against them and wild chocobos for some reason after saving ambrosia whos protecting other wild chocobos? Its so fucking bizarre
I don't know that that's bizarre. Goblins in FF11 and FF14 are the exact same way. There are tribes that are pacifist and even live in human cities and trade with humans, and those that kill on sight. In fact: that was the same in FF16 (if you did the side quest, that is). And Wild Chocobos are aggressive, that's not a new occurrence in the series (e.g., FF7, FF12). Remember: Ambrosia picked a fight with the bandits first (to protect human traders), and the difference between her and the typical wild chocobo is that she was a domesticated bird that went feral and became the matron of a flock. Otherwise, she'd probably be out there on demon time attacking anything that didn't have feathers.
@@trumps_toupee FFT too
The goblin one was definitely on purpose, they make you run into a group of enemy goblins immediately after you meet a group of goblins who are friendly and just trying to survive.
There's also the one chocobo that ate people
There's a sidequest that features a guy who established contact with a tribe of goblins and managed to start peaceful relations with them, specifically asking you not to harm them. They are their own culture, it's just mostly based around killing and eating other people so they don't gel well with humans. It's not like you have much mercy for bandits, either.
He actually finished this one, so take that if you need it
Frankly that's a form of high praise, when you think about it.
Oooh an alright from Yahtzee's high praise anywhere else
@@Kuraerisubuzzbuzz
Is it because it was shorter though? It seems to me most of the time he doesn’t at least finish a story for a game it’s a time constraint thing
@@tc5589-1 FF16 is not a short game
"Invert my nipples and call me a minigolf course." is a saying I don't think I expected to hear today...
You're not going to believe this, but I own the wacky fantasy sword he used for the visuals in this episode. A friend bought it for me at a con and it sat in my room forever before being moved into my new place, falling over, and punching a hole straight through my toe with its VERY sharp quillons. That little tiny handle on the pommel is actually a tiny sword you can use as a toothpick. Amazing.
wait, you own a sword?
you have to see 'wolfhound'. you have no choice, it's your destiny. though I should warn you, if you hate your job, you should plan ahead before you see it.
@@ehhorve857 I see that Ross's Game Dungeon reference! Thought we wouldn't notice... but we did.
@@K4RN4GE911 good!...good.
Even in America Clive may not be common, but it’s also definitely not exotic or interesting. I assume a Clive to either be some very old Korean War veteran or someone who’s parents didn’t love them
I mean, those are both archetypes that kinda fit Clive in the game, so I suppose it's appropriate.
personally I've never heard the name until they revealed for 16. so to me it's I would say fairly maybe not exotic sounding but definitely a combination of letters I have never heard of before.
I'm not wild about XVI but FF really does seem damned if it does or doesn't when comes to character names. It gets mocked for the out there weather-themed names or mocked for a colorless name, lol.
@@cloudkitt really? Idk I feel like cloud and aerith, zidane and garnet, etc. are a lot cooler than just vaguely 1940s American names like Clive or Ethel. I mean maybe other people prefer more normal or familiar names, but I’m always cool with something a little more out there like a Cassius or Gaius
I feel like the combat has the exact opposite problem Yahtze is describing.
Clive’s abilities are so cracked at endgame some people are accidentally killing the final boss before it has a chance to change into phase 2.
This was definitely a problem for me. By the time that you unlock Ramuh you have enough Firepower to annihilate basically anything in your path. It doesn't help that you aren't limited to a single big-hit like judgment Bolt. I always had at least two of them and would swing them back to back whenever I staggered the enemy and I would deal with a huge chunk of their life. Discontinued progressively as you unlocked even more powerful abilities. Bahamut's abilities in particular are crazy good both as crowd control and dishing out a ton of damage when a biss is staggered.
He does have a history of not understanding combat systems in video games.
Well, this is Yahtze we are talking about. The man's combat abilities in video games are quite possibly some of the least inspirational imaginable. The man got his ass beat in Sonic Frontiers and he just didn't interact with 3/4ths of the combat mechanics and options he had.
I immediately knew he'd abhorrently downplay the combat in FF16 because he's just... really bad at combat in games. It didn't help him here because he's playing a Final Fantasy game. A franchise he just can't get through. But he actually finished this one so it definitely did something right.
It honestly would have been a lot better if he just didn't address details in combat whatsoever.
@@michaellochlann4797Final fantasy games have never really been hard, which is the thing.
People remember them being hard because they had less experience with the medium, but the critical paths of these games are generally pretty easy.
And, of course, the game has difficult challenges in it, and they are optional. In addition, the end challenge is system mastery via the score attack-like mode, just like how the end challenge in DMC is maximizing your Style Points.
@@michaellochlann4797 can't the same be said for any action game? You can quit3 literally button mash and win most l. The combos and shit you see people do are more for challenged not essential
I’m glad to see Clive Revile finally got the recognition he deserved. Unfortunately it’s a Final Fantasy game, meaning Ireland’s most underrated actor once more will be forgotten.
Clive is voiced by Ben starr and he’s from bristol
That "Clive as a Pokemon" gag, going from saying "Clivum Clivum" to "Clivatar Clivatar", is the closest I've ever come to spraying coffee all over my monitor.
"Story Focused" just means here's a bunch of cheat items to make the fighting easier, without us actually saying it's Easy Mode. I shamelessly took them, because I don't have to equip them, but they're in the inventory if I get stuck. As far as effecting how damage-spongy or not the enemy stats are, I don't think the "Mode" changes anything at all.
I played Action Focus Mode and Final Fantasy Mode without using those rings. It's straightforward if you're a solid action gamer.
So they can't just say Easy mode and Hard mode anymore in Final Fantasy? oh what times we live in...
you get all the accesories in both modes anyway; it's just that in story mode they're equipped by default
@sharkkebunni considering almost no other FF game even has difficulty settings, I don't really think there was a precedent for naming difficulty modes.
@@sharkkebunniright? What happened to the "equip this accessory to alter the gameplay" bit? What makes you think we're playing this game? If we wanted game of thrones we'd watch game of thrones!
I thought the reason Final Fantasy games had so much focus on the power of friendship was because it was something of a pioneer in having you control a full party of characters. If that is present with only one character it sounds a bit misguided.
You'd think so, but a big part of the story (my least favorite part honestly) is going out and helping the people of the various nations you visit and earning their trust and whatnot. Clive is a good friend to everyone, and that is surely the point of having that be such a big part of the story, just showing him as a selfless kind of hero who believes in people, unlike the God of this game who by and large is the opposite. The plot has a ton of depth but wants you to put effort into understanding it and I personally didn't mind that, but it could definitely turn off people less inclined to reading the extra lore pieces.
It sounds misguided if you never played the game.
It feels very weird in the game too. There are a lot of times where characters will weirdly go out of their way to not join Clive in the next part.
@@nswmeeuwes89like what? Characters don't join clive for boss fights because they can't keep up. Especially jill whose curse has progressed to the point she can't prime.
@@kyzersoze8408 your in a world OF MAGIC, FIGURE OUT A WAY TO KEEP UP.
To be fair to FF16...
Final Fantasy 4 also had a main hero with a normal English, if somewhat old-fashioned name: Cecil Harvey.
32 years since we've had a normally named protagonist? I honestly don't know why people are ribbing the name. When we've had (as named) weather system protagonists or generic fantasy sounding characters we get something -normal- and it becomes a joke.
To be even more fair to FF16, the people making it must have never played their own games, which were never "medieval fantasy". Robots and airships from game one.
@@MegaZetaWhich 16 has in spades. Just all in a fallen past.
Maria is also a main character, but she is from Final Fantasy II and so that helps even less. Technically, you have Sarah since the beginning of Final Fantasy IX but you don’t know that unless you really view the murals at Madain Sari. If we are really being lenient as to what constitutes the beginning of a story, Lulu from Final Fantasy X also counts as she joins when the game starts to let you battle enemies in general. Hope from FFXIII might count if it were not a guy’s name. Furthermore, in Japan one of the contenders of a main character in FFVI is called Tina, which turned into Terra. Furthermore, neither Tina Branford nor Terra Branford sounds that weird. Otherwise, Cecil Harvey is the only fully normal name from then until FFXVI and that is probably because they needed a knightly name.
@@MegaZeta Considering it was made by Business Unit 3, who make XIV... They are very aware of the robots and airships being in the series as a whole (hell XVI technically has them as well).
Yeah, my main issue with the change in combat is that it is clear the direction in the studio was make it DMC. Heck it's even why they poached some of the developers from it. The problem is that they clearly went from "Ok, port DMC combat." to "Well....make it DMC.....-ish".
And you can't really do "-ish" with that style of gameplay. You either go all in or not. This results in another "Torn between identies" bit.
I found this combat quite limiting. It gives you all these tools but only allows you to use a fraction of them at one time and you can't swap them out mid combat. So most of the time I just stuck to the one setup I liked. Some of the tools are clearly situational based but since most of the time you don't know what your're fighting prior to the fight I never have them ready. In the end I just don't use half the kit that's available.
In DMC I have access to all my tools all of the time so I use them all. It is why DMC 3 on the switch is the best version of that game.
@@BigFatOfFate I definitely would have used the counter-abilities in the game more often if they were readily available at all times (or at least always available while I had the Eikon equipped) instead of having to dedicate a whole slot for it. Those abilities are not that good during Stagger, making me wish I would have brought something else instead of Garuda's Rook Gambit or whatever else.
They didn't poach Ryota Suzuki, he left and applied for a combat job with CBU3
Idk what devs thought that would be a good idea because DMC combat has never, even at its best, been particularly popular.
@@conniescurse7325probably beacuse DMC combat requires some serious skill.
Something then general masses are...lacking in. So it only appeals to a smaller, more dedicated group of players.
As a FFV fan, I'm happy for all the Butts
What about spoony bards?
@@agenticex Funny you say that, because there's actually a character named Spoony Bard at the Hideaway when you first go there lol
As a Garou fan, I can't get enough Butt.
“I am butts from the town of lix! Damnit Tree, stop laughing at me!”
If I could improve the combat, I would lower the cooldown on the abilities so you can do them more often, make them do less damage, but add a combo meter that increases damage the more you press the attack and link combos together.
Currently about 80% of the damage you do to enemies is tied up in the Eikon abilities, which makes the combat be "Stagger your enemy, press Limit Break, then use all 6 Eikon abilities as soon as possible in the stagger window". Repeat until the game is over. I once read someone write about the combat "You beat up the last boss the exact same way you beat up the first boss", and that's exactly right, unfortunately.
I set up an Eikonic load out that uses almost all of the fastest cooldown things, just for fun, on my FF mode second play through. Wasn't actually any more efficient at killing trash or bosses but it was fun as heck.
I'd just swap everything out for DMC combat without even bothering to change anything about it. That'd be more fun and save a lot of development time.
Edit: and yes, even down to the protagonist dual wielding modern looking rocket launchers or modified 1911's and dancing like MJ. With no changes to the story to explain why.
I'd change the combat to massively reduce enemy health but also the player's health, and add a stamina bar. And make the dodging and parrying windows much less generous. Basically, make it more like a Souls game.
@@RufusOmega so strangers of paradise then.
That’s just how action games work in general. These games always gives you the freedom to do whatever you want in fights, which even includes just doing the same basic combo over and over again.
Which is great for replay value and player agency imo.
I believe one of the producers was the same guy who made a ton of side-quests in FFXIV as well, which is partially why most of them feels more at home in an MMORPG.
It's a shame that they have people writing such good story and lore, and then just shoving them in a corner with not enough incentive to go get them.
Same guy who did Heavensward....which meant we got the good bits of that expansion AND the bad bits of that expansion hahahah
After getting Odin and being capable of changing my main weapon, I realized this could have been a thing for every Eikon: Claws for Garuda, Fists for Titan, Spear fpr Bahamut, Rapier for Shiva and Staff for Ramuh.
Also, where the sh1t was the Eikon of water Leviathan? Only a couple of mentions in conversation and not a single lore entry from Tomes?
Yeah I was hoping each Eikon meant a new weapon type as well, I was rather let down it was only basically a circle ability as you could even place their skills on another Eikon if you've mastered that skill.
It wasn't said outright but it seems like whatever family was responsible for producing the dominant of Leviathan was wiped out and as a result the dominant for Leviathan ceased to be. Of course this is simply conjecture and there's always the chance that they may add DLC where we interact with whoever holds that power
If it's anything like FFXV there will be a bunch of dlc adding those later on alongside the rest of the story. Also a movie and an anime...
@@Quintessence4444It, in fact, has none of those things. There was no pre-planned DLC, and they're only now looking into making some from player demand. Plus no mobile games, movies, etc. It's a fully contained experience.
@@arof7605do you really mean to tell me, you HONESTLY believe that they created this game without the intention of adding dlc later down the road?
People said the same thing about kh3 and final fantasy 7 remake but oh...would you look at that.
The issue with the combat is that it was, as Yahtzee described, whaling away on the enemies feeling like you should be doing more damage.
The bigger issue is that you absolutely CAN do more damage. Like, a ridiculous amount of damage. Like so much damage that you can actually kill the final boss before he has a chance to enter his final phase. Just takes the right skill setup and you can absolutely trivialize any fight in the game. There-in lies the problem.
Villager: "Oh no! A gang of like 10 bandits are on their way to attack the town! What are we gonna do?"
Clive: "Well I could always do that thing where I wipe out the lot of them in under 5 seconds. Think that would help?"
This starts once you unlock the ability called Lightning Rod and your damage just gets even more obscenely game-breaking from that point on.
I think people overhype the value of lightning rod. it's not that useful against bosses until they're staggered. If they're not, the boss generally jumps to the other side of the goddamn arena the instant I use it.
@@Keira_Blackstone you can press lightning rod again to replace it. read the skill description in game
@@Keira_Blackstone Yeah, so you stagger them and then dump your load. Lightning Rod effectively makes every hit strike twice. This is particularly effective considering how damage ramps up during Stagger, scaling off the number of hits. For example, using Mega Flare at the start of a Stagger will deal less damage than using it towards the end of a Stagger. So yous tart with your weaker skills then finish with things like Zantetsuken and Mega Flare. Hell, if you're good enough (which I'm definitely not) you can land 3 lvl 5 Zantetsukens in a single Stagger.
True. You do way too much dmg for it to be relevant. Hard mode from the get go could have helped
I just want to say: I appreciate thay transition from round-bubble hand to "air quotes" hand at 5:10.
The game does have a "hidden" easy mode. Lightning Rod plus Will of the Wisp equals something like 60 stacks of dual elemental damage with an AOE effect.
Mobs and staggered enemies melt like a chocolate in a Texas summer
You forgot gigaflare in that combo.
@@Menroth. don't think I have it yet
I remember when an enemy taking a million hits to kill meant that either you were way too low-leveled to be fighting it or it was a secret, tougher-than-the-final-boss, really-no-point-but-bragging-rights super boss fight, but now it's apparently just the standard encounter. Not sure when or why some people decided "Hey, you know what this frantic, life-or-death struggle needs? To be really slow and tedious!"
It's not tedious if you actually need to play well, it's just a bit of a test of endurance. You don't just stand there shooting the enemy for 5 minutes; you spend 5 minutes trying not to die while you try to optimize your damage up-time because you have limited healing items and you can't take that many big hits. You also have the option to spec into aerials and counters if you want to evade and attack more proactively.
I've always been a big fan of the Souls games where a boss fight takes a couple minutes at most, but each boss fight will probably have you stuck for an hour or so because it takes dozens of attempts to get the patterns and strategy down. It doesn't waste your time with busywork.
@@jlev1028 Did you pay attention to a single thing I said? Of course not. If anything is padding the amount of content, it's side quests. This is a ridiculous criticism. Nothing takes that long to kill, but you have to give them enough HP that fights aren't trivialized. Why do you want short fights? The fight should be long enough that you don't just need to get lucky once or bring enough potions to win. You learn, and you overcome the challenge when you can repeat your success a few times consecutively. Either the game has to kill you for a single mistake, or they have to throw things at you enough times to test you. Otherwise there's no real challenge. Like the previous commenter pointed out, even Souls bosses take a few minutes to kill. If it only does two hard things once, even a Souls boss is easy. FF16 bosses aren't really longer than that if you don't count the kaiju fights that are half cutscene.
@@GameDevYalIn a souls game designed with failure as a mechanic, sure, but in an RPG context with either retry or load save and redo work, that style is just frustrating, especially if it interrupts the story they're trying to tell. I don't see an expectation of player failure in this story working either, and if it had been much harder in terms of incoming damage they absolutely would have had complaints. People see "I didn't die" but forget most of their close calls.
@@arof7605 >but in an RPG context with either retry or load save and redo work, that style is just frustrating, especially if it interrupts the story they're trying to tell
At which point why bother with gameplay at all? Gameplay can be engaging by itself, or it can be the half-mindless shore/filler you do to progress. "It's an RPG" is used way too much for delivering filler gameplay that doesn't feel meaningful by itself
I haven't played FF16, but FF7R too was close to being the real deal along the lines of Ultrakill, Doom Eternal, Sekiro, DMC. But they always have cold feet with going all the way and making the gameplay actually ask for something instead of just being what you do to progress
I think Yahtzee's slightly behind on how much we hate GAME OF THRONES now that the spinoff is doing just as well and people are making incest jokes all over again. Just like how "nobody liking Star Wars" only lasts as long as it takes for Disney to find a new cute puppet they can make a show about.
- Says that entire combat is just using skills when they are off cooldown
- Cries that enemies have a lot of HP and it takes him a lot to kill them
Like a clockwork.
"everyone has a dragon and not just the dippy white girl with the endlessly renegotiable nudity clause" 😂😂
Re: the bit at the end about choosing Story or Action Focus Mode
You actually do get to choose a middle ground.
Story Focus Mode puts on all of the Timely Accessories that make the action combat easier.
Action Focus Mode leaves all of them unequipped.
You still get the choice afterwards of equipping any number of the Timely Accessories that Story Focus Mode would put all of on.
These accessories do different things like simplifying attack combos, auto-healing, auto-dodging, giving you a bigger dodge window, and/or having the pet wolf attack on its own without needing input from you.
problem was this was specifically cleared up on the interviews and press releases but if you dont watch those it wasnt cleared up more in game
Thank you both for these explanations!
I had heard about those Accessories in lieu of difficulty modes.
I've heard of the Story vrs Combat selection.
I had no idea they were even connected... 😂
This thread makes it all make sense. 😎👍
@@greggreyes6869 The description when choosing modes tell you the difference between each mode.
A character who is more forgettable than Clive with a blander name is Jill. She is with you through most of the game, yet I often forgot she was there. I felt absolutely no connection when they confessed their love to each other.
The fact that there’s only one single moogle in this game according to the review might be the most damning testament of them all. That’s a tragedy
There was some trying-to-stay-positive review where they said that you wouldn’t know it was part of the series a chocobo appeared in one scene. Embarrassed of themselves, I guess
Agreed.
@@MegaZeta uh, what? Chocobos are everywhere. most of the random enemies are classic monster types from the franchise. and most of the major characters can transform into one of the classic summons that have been around in the games for decades. I understand them cutting back on moogles though- they clash a bit with the tone of the story.
*ignores literally every monster/spell/eikon in the game* “Oh man they didn’t put ANY final fantasy in this”
@@STOOPIDDUMBY oh I’m not saying there’s no classic final fantasy stuff. Just that there’s only one moogle. That is simply not enough moogle kupo
To be fair, I think Final Fantasy is allowed to do 'go to the element and beat the boss' considering I'm pretty sure it's the originiator of that trope.
I was going to mention Dragon Quest but typically that's demon pest control.
Wait a minute, did Yahtzee actually finish a mainline Final Fantasy game?
that's how you know it's good lol
@@Zadamanim or comically short in comparison to its predecessors.
@@tc5589-1final fantasy games are ever only like 30 ish hours if you don't do the million side things so the length is about the same
its an interactive movie... the game will finish itself if you leave it on long enough.
@@tc5589-1 its extremely long
I think the main reason why people skip so much dialogue in this game is 1. There’s a lot OF it. And 2. The BioWare face conversations just kills all interest.
Tbf "Bioware face" is a big problem in a lot of games when they don't want every interaction with NPC's to be an actual motion captured cutscene, it just becomes a lot more noticeable in games like FF16 when you go from amazingly animated to... well reused basic animation Bioware face land.
@@moonraven6145 True but my goodness it’s thick in this game. If you count the Hideaway sections in the Main quests, as well as all the sidequests, I’d say about 80% of the game is staring at BioWare face conversations.
@@AstonishingRed Yeah I see what you mean, it is rather jarring.
@@moonraven6145ff15 didn't have this problem. Every cutscene even the side ones felth much more animated.
@@harigovind7845 Oh, tbh I didn't played FF15 that much so maybe I never noticed, maybe it's a budget difference in that FF15 was probably a lot more expensive to make giving it's long dev cycle vs FF16, i'm just guessing though ^^.
Just like in inuyasha, a demon side-villain spends the whole plot grieving the loss of his own main arm and his dad's magic sword.
And regularly finding replacements, and then breaking them.
And then at the very end he says - I learnt how demons work! And regrows a new arm, with a brand new sword in it! And then slaughters the main villain, like Hercules burning the hydra's heads.
DMC5 did this too. Japan likes their missing arm/multi-functional arm character arcs.
Okay, I just need to point out that isn't what happened with Hugo at all. Hugo had an issue that he couldn't regrow them because we took Titan's power. It isn't until he fully transforms that he was able to grow them back and as stated, fully transforming after losing the blessing takes a heavier toll on their body through the Curse and unless they have a strong will like Dion did, they also instantly lose control.
So Hugo's whole issue wasn't that he didn't know he could regrow his hands, but rather he should have been able to and it wasn't working.
So, I actually did enjoy FFXVI. It certainly isn’t the best FF game, nor is it a game of the year contender for me either, but it was enjoyable despite its flaws.
After the final credits rolled I sat for a moment to contemplate exactly how I felt about the game. There was a moment that fully crystallized my feelings (pun absolutely intended) where I had the thought, “man, I’d really like to play some Octopath 2 right now.” The new DMC-like Final Fantasy left me longing for a more traditional turn based RPG experience. That doesn’t mean that FFXVI was a negative experience, but it does mean that FF has lost something that made it special.
That's a hell of a scathing review isn't it? "Final Fantasy XVI: it made me want to play an Octopath Traveller game"
I've gotten hopelessly addicted to indie game Crystal Project for the last week or so, which basically is "FFV with a jump button". And basically no story, only gameplay. You might enjoy it if you want that true oldschool experience.
It's weird how Square Enix seems to WANT what FF started out as to be forgotten, both Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default have a lot of FF DNA (down to class outfits in BD being clearly based on FF counterparts) and could've easily been named something like Final Fantasy Job Hunt Chronicles for more sales thanks to the brand recognition, but they chose not to.
Yeah I never liked that Yoshi-P started ranting about JRPGs. Persona 5 is a really successful and well made JRPG and the dude just made it seem like they couldn't be successful nowadays. Here's to hoping we get a over the top big production JRPG by square in the next FF game since Atlus likes to stay anime.
That was my sense from watching all the pre-release material. It seemed like Square was producing this impressive RPG, but they weren't making a Final Fantasy game. Sort of like Heath Ledger; he created this amazing movie villain, but it wasn't the Joker.
We’ll SE is sticking with action combat now and making their side games more turn base for the fans that still like it. Honestly I loved the “dmc” combat and feel it’s the perfect choice going forward for ff games.
Every note of this review resonates with me perfectly, it's like you read my mind.
i don't know the final note about story mode and action mode sounds hollow since none of the story is sacreficed in action mode(at least more so than it is in the game over all your mileage may wary).
hardly the first game to add an easy mode and call it story mode.
@theguyyouhate I see it more as why the hell is there even a difficulty choice for a FF game in the first place. It feels so out of place
I would have liked some implementation of elemental weaknesses, beating up a fire boss with fire attacks just doesnt feel right
wait, there are no elemental weakness?
FF was the first jrpg to add them, how can they miss that?
@@CalebCrazyVampireBecause the combat’s main appeal is being able to use any load out of abilities you want. Some are better for mobs, some are better for nuking the stagger gauge, but if you’re willing to experiment, no ability (or any possible combinations) are truly “worthless”. Forcing in elemental damage and weaknesses will just encourage players to stick to one or two combinations, which would stifle the player’s ability/willingness to experiment with what they can do.
The thing I’ve learned from Yahtzee is that the perfect game is something that’s hard enough for me to brag about beating and short enough to meet my video deadlines.
And has boats + an interesting spin on the formula of games as a whole that tickles the imagination.
The stock photo for the dog almost made me fall out of my chair. Thank you for that. Great work, as usual.
For those wondering yes the protagonist of Final Fantasy V's name was Butz in Japanese. No that wasn't a joke he was making. The official name for him in English now is Bartz.
I mean, it sounds like he actually finished the game, which is pretty amazing for a FF. High(er) praise from that alone.
If you skip side quests which he obviously did this game can be beat in 30-40 hours, most straight forward FF
It sounds like he skipped all the optional quests, which would make that feat a lot easier.
Doing the fully optional side quests make the game take like 10x longer. My roommate dreaded the end of story missions because many hours of side bs awaited.
Tell me about it, I remember playing the 8th one years ago and giving up half way through when the gameplay got too tedious
Imagine developing a $100mil+ big sprawling mega production and then making the entire gameplay a corridor cooldown sponge grind.
I think this game REALLY suffers if you don’t do all the side quests. They really flesh out the world, help with the themes and characterization, and keep your abilities leveled up enough that you can kill enemies at a reasonable pace instead of it becoming a slog.
I love the game, but, as I’m writing this out, I’m realizing it’s probably not great design to have your game REQUIRE that you do the “SIDE” missions for you to get the proper experience.
It would also help if those side quests were more entertaining than watching paint dry.
I've had more fun clipping my toenails
As seen with the other commenter I think the biggest problem there is that not everyone CARES about gradual world building and characterization in a game selling itself on giant Kaiju battles. I love it personally, but not everyone does.
Maybe then they should design the side-missions in a way that actually makes them interesting to do. Witcher 3 does a lot of it's world-building in side-quests as well with the difference being that they are almost all incredibly well written and interesting and you're always excited to find a new one.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 TW3 is a good example, even though that game's main plot sucks.
I got so bored of the side quests but did them all anyway. I was not impressed with the world building at all but the chance to have two more seconds with Jill or Gav or Byron was nice, still not worth it, but nice to have.
Problem with XVI is even if the combat was absolute perfect, my own opinion not withstanding, the game is way to long for that gameplay. DMC did it right where it was about replayability on different difficulties, costumes, and characters. That even if that was added to XVI, the game is 3 times as long as it should be. And if you want to say an rpg like final fantasy should be that long, I’d say, than play like one!
Agreed, It did feel a little too long for how limited your basic abilities and Eikon skills were, didn't really help it's enemy roster felt rather small compared to other FF games so the game liked to throw "harder" versions of previous bosses at you in later dungeons which didn't help the game starting to feel a little repetitive towards the end, the Final boss made up for it due to it's sheer spectacle so at least the game ended on a high note.
Its great to find some like minded people, This is exactly what I've been saying. There's not enough meat on FFXVI bones to justify a run time of 60+ hours.
most other heavy hitters in this genre, (devil may cry bayonetta, metal gear rising, castelvania lords of shadow, the god of war games,) all range in the 8 to 12 hour mark. And for good reason, Its not coincidence.
@@Nova-je6nq Agreed, tbh I thought that at the start it may have had a good pacing, as it's not long before you reached the first Mothercrystal, but after that I felt it became a lot more padded and they fell back on the "oh, looks like the borders closed to the next crystal, we better do some more fetch quests before it opens again" a little too much for my liking, the mid game is especially guilty of that.
@@Nova-je6nqkudos alone for mentioning those list of games 👍
If you think 30 hours is a long video game then you must only play Pokemon and shitty American 5 hour AAA games because 30 hours is fairly average but kinda short.
The fact that his name is Clive really tracks with the story though. His mother didn't want him. If you had a kid you didn't want, you wouldn't exactly name them something profound. :(
As much as Joshua is otherwise a normal name, that tracks to being closest to Jesus, so it subtly indicates he is the favored son (and will not the the traumatized protagonist who wishes to free slaves after character development). This is not just the case here - this was important in the first The World Ends With You game to hunt that Joshua was the Composer of Shibuya.
Funnily enough, Anabelle is also very plain for an antagonist, though she ends up being unimportant because of where she inserted herself into.
Only Elwin has a particularly weird name, and he turns out to be the weirdly principled man who wanted to dissolve the bearer system eventually, so in terms of matching up names with whatever role they play, FFXVI is stock standard at naming comvention-role correlations.
Heck, the actual antagonist is Ultima, befitting a god, and its most loyal follower (who is also Akashic) Barnabas, which is a name that exists but is very distinguished and fits a man who basically supports Ultima’s plan and spreads the Blight.
The biggest issue I have with this game is that when certain time jumps happen, interpersonal relationships get put on a time-out because the game must show the big character moments and not have them happen offscreen.
Also, Gav is the biggest ****blocker in all of gaming.
Some people may almost have expected him to interrupt on the beach scene, too =P
When I had only played the demo, I expected flashbacks of Clive's time as a slave to come later. Unfortunately they never came and meeting Annabella again fell kinda flat imo.
@@nswmeeuwes89I feel like that was done on purpose. If you go back to it after reaching the point where you meet with her again you kind of realized that she essentially threw away everything in order to gain what she already had, but was too blind to see.
Wow 20 seconds in and theres already a Stranger of Paradise roast, am i the only one who likes it 😂❤😅
yes
I did, it wasn't perfect but it was alright overall.
I liked It well enough. Even got the platinum.
The visuals are crappy, the music is forgettable, the story is both incredibly stupid and poorly told, and it also holds the distinction of having the absolute most abhorrent loot system to ever grace gods green earth.
But the core combat with its fast and satisfying gusto as well as its suprising depth, infused with the trademark fan favorite job system that provides for a great level of variation and experimentation gave strangers of paradise just enough of an edge to win me over.
It ain't perfect, hell by most qualifications it wouldn't even pass as a "good game".
but damn if it hasn't worked it's way into a soft spot in my heart
The Clive most familiar to me is Clive Anderson, who I only know from Whose Line.
"Welcome to Final Fantasy, the show where everything's made up and the cutscenes don't matter."
The name Clive just makes me think of Clive Anderson, which means I assume this game is just a long episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? so the experience points don't matter.
At the end of that battle, 5,000 XP to Ryan and 1 XP to Colin.
Lava Boy, Shark Girl, and their dog fight climate change, slavery, and God in this Game of Thrones/Dragonball Z inspired "masterpiece".
That is pretty hilariously accurate xD.
Some people call the combat too tedious and long, some call it too easy and short.
The shared problem between both camps is that whether you're mashing the murder button constantly until eventually it dies of embarrassment, or mashing the murder button and instantly wiping it off the face of the planet like a spiteful booger, either way, it's still the same problem: no matter how effective mashing the murder button is, it's still the only thing anyone's actually doing.
"You beat the final boss the same way you beat the first boss."
This complaint always seems to be the result of a rather shallow understanding of the system and of this particular subgenre of action games.
The system naturally prompts a lot of decision-making as to when to use certain abilities due to stagger, ability synergies, positioning, etc.
And for this particular subgenre, the goal isn't so much to overcome adversity (beat the opponent) but to refine mastery (maximize score). That's why the game includes the little star icons that show up on screen when certain actions are performed, and that's also why there's the score attack and bloody palace-like modes.
Damn, Half-Life 2 was actually a terrible game, cause I shot everything with a gun, bosses included. Had me fooled though
@@Lyoko1309Isn't one of the hallmark things of Half Life 2 how they used the environment and physics engine, including in Boss Battles?
What I can't stand is you are constantly knocking enemies back then running up to them knocking them back. It's like your consistently chasing down your knockdown opponent. The chocobos you can stun lock them by just holding down square release and repeat. They aren't fun to fight against. They all are reskinned enemies with the same exact attack patterns. The eikon fights can go way too long at times. Bahamut's fight was fun for the first 5 minutes. But then it became a complete chore that lasted around 25 minutes to beat. It got to the point where I was just frustrated and just wanted the damn fight to end. Plus their is absolutely no fear of death. Only time I ever died was the shooting of the eikon before it unleashed it's killing blow. Me personally the whole game was a chore to play.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 It's been a while, but I recall most of the bosses not being killed with physics gimmicks, just rockets and bullets. Most of the enemies, too, until you get the gravity gun, and even that isn't the weapon I'd default to.
My main gripe with this game is that the medieval fantasy setting was all over the place - wizards are slaves, unless they are super wizards, in which case they are considered really cool, but they are the ones that can do magic, unless you have a crystal which almost everyone does because they are literally dug up from the ground? I really didn't get a sense for how this society actually came to be, just that they decided to make an oppressed slave caste for melodrama reasons.
Also (SPOILER). At no point did we establish that the blight was in fact being caused by the mother crystals - Cid just says so, and we believe him. No-one I encountered seemed to say anything about the blight slowing down or anything as we took them out, and yet we just carry on doing it because some guy told us so. It's annoying to have this be the main driving force of the plot without being really examined.
Were you paying attention to the story? The mother crystals were draining the aether from the land because they were shards of Ultima, who wanted Clive to destroy them so he could use his world reforming magic after all shards combined with him. The blight is a result of the world losing aether.
i completely agree on the spoiler section. The way the just accepted the fact without mush thought bugged me out so much, especially considering the extreme things they do to solve this. About the setting i think it does actually make sense. The higher ups fear the power of the magic wielders, so they create a society where they are malnourished, uneducated and subjugated
(with the act they made when the new age was born), and instead the powerful magic wielders were made to be aristocrats in position of power, so that it would have been unlikely for them to rebel and also serve their country, meanwhile defending their position of power. I found it kind of smart
"How the society came to be" - that question is answered in a book once owned by an now dead Waloeder guy that Clive has to fetch for Vivian in one of the very last side quests.
@@25cats I literally just explained it. But for you, Ramuh is a wise elder Eikon. Cid even states before his death that he knows who Ultima is and what he wants. Ramuh would know what the crystals are doing, hence his desire to destroy them. It makes perfect sense if you pay attention to what is happening. Bearers are seen as impure because they freely wield magic without crystals, which is the norm. Consider it a mark of classism in history, seeing people break traditions because they are different.
@@silenceundying Yes, which is something we discover at the END - my motivation needs to be BEFORE I take the actions and it need to be more credible than just some guy saying so, especially as the equally valid "but since the blight is happening far away from the crystals, does that mean the crystals are holding it back" idea exists with that information.
Piece of advice. Only do the side quests marked with a "plus sign". They are the ones that give you good rewards.
or you know if your going to play a rpg do them all? honestly so much good world building and lore is in those sidequests
@@michaelhammond1389 I think that depends on your level of personal engagement. Like, if you aren't totally feeling the combat or whatever, it's singularly possible that trying to do every single side quest in an RPG will cause you to burn out and never finish it, you know?
@@michaelhammond1389 The side quests in this game are from the Ubisoft model, not the Witcher III model. They are worth skipping over.
@@jkitty542 Square Enix made a very expensive game, where is more rewarding skipping content.... what a masterpiece of a game.
most of the normal ones give shit rewards, but the lore and world/character building is the actual reward.
I am actualy liking FF16, but it feels like one of those games I'll forget about after it's done, with the only real reminder being the spectacle of the giant Esper battles.
(Call them Eikons all you like)
There's actually a good lore reason for Eikon, but funnily enough it's Esper in the German localization, possibly due to a German company named Eikon.
@@arof7605 They also pronounce "eikon" like a German word (at least in FF14) and not like a Japanese word, which was always strange to me. At some point they decided to call them "eikons" and have it pronounced the same way a word would be romanized from Japanese by "aikon" would be, instead of just calling them "aikons". Either that or they couldn't get the voice actors to understand and threw in the towel and didn't bother changing the spelling to match the dense voice actors' pronunciation. (I have no idea when they started calling espers "eikons" or when the voice acting first told you how to pronounce the word, but i was very annoyed by it as I played FF14).
Even though the name "Clive" is relatively uncommon here in the States, it's still not an "exotic" name and is very much just the name of some dude.
It's an exotic name if you're Japanese
Final scam xvi has more in common with the likes of Crisis Core and Lightning Returns. Where is the direct control of party members? They suggested in an interview without AI control the game would be "inaccessible" to many, a strange thing to say.
The funny thing about the combat system. After watching the combat director played and seeing his prefer playstyle, it clicked to me after seeing all the available Eikon ability. There are 3 active Eikon abilities involved precision counter and 2 innate Eikon abilities that also about precision countering. All 3 activate precision counter abilities get reduce cooldown and deal quite a bit more damage if you land them. So yea, it not hard to see what type of playstyle the game leaning toward, pretty heavily, considering the reward from them. There also an accessory that buff your default precision dodge, don't use it though, it shut off your range counter for some reason. Also, the dev might be aware of how bloated the hp for regular mobs are, maybe that why they gave you an ability that one shot all the regular mobs in the arena in late game and in ng+.
Lol, considering that the main player issue for FF XVI is that you are SO POWERFUL that players are skipping boss entire phases without even being aware of it, even at max difficulty, because of how easy it is to melt them. Saying that this game has spongy enemies is a clear "skill issue" thing.
I like that very subtly Ben is revealing that he is also not that skilled at involved RPGs if this and Chrono Trigger mean anything, given that there he tried Ayla/Robo/Crono and was stuck at a particular boss
people keep saying that it’s like game of thrones with attack on Titan or Godzilla but in reality it’s actually game of thrones and you pause every hour or two to play Asura’s Wrath
That sounds amazing
@@alexlee4154 it is. yahtz didn't give the most glowing of reviews, but i highly recommend the game myself, for however much that's worth
You must click the CC button at the start! It pops up the whole script in one page and is hilarious.
I just consider it more “gritty medieval reality”
Better than just saying “game of thrones”. Like how every game that tries to be hard gets called “dark souls like”
It’s has some aspects similar but they ain’t the same
I had more The Witcher vibes tbh, especially if an NPC was an asshole to Clive for being a marked Bearer but still wanted a fetch quest done for them, in the same way as an NPC to Geralt would act.
Also, Game of Thrones is an ensemble cast where there is no protagonist, but rather focused-upon people. For most of The Witcher Gerald (and Yennifer and Cirri) are the protagonists.
"Clive" immediately invokes Clive Owen for me. Which doesn't really mesh with Yahtzee's idea of Clive.
Since when do we hate Game of Thrones? Sure, the last season distinctly suffered from not being based on a published book, but it's not like it was Battlestar Galactica Season 4 awful. It hardly ruined the whole thing. And honestly, I'll take a rushed, underwritten final season over waiting 12 years for the next book.
This is the narrative a lot of Game of Thrones antis run with to justify their dislike of the show. After years of catching shit for not watching an overhyped TV "phenomenon," they (think they) can now say that the show was not very good after all and that they are vindicated by how many people don't want to rewatch it. As someone who appreciated Yahtzee's joke about the unnecessary nudity, I sympathize with them, but I think they're not only being dishonest about popular opinion but also setting themselves up for disappointment when House of the Dragon takes off. Expect "That show is different though, people still hate Game of Thrones!" cope within the next five years lol.
Really surprised at him thinking the enemies are damage spongey, if you use your abilities properly and take advantage of stagger all but the optional hunts go down in no time flat.
Especially when some of the fully upgraded ultimates will literally just wipe a pack of trash mobs in one hit and usually come off cooldown as you travel between combat encounters. I headed into almost every non-boss fight in the mid to late game just melting the first wave of non-elite mobs with a single Flames of Rebirth and finishing the elites quickly with the rest of my kit.
that's the problem i have with people saying it's a square button masher. If you don't learn how to play the game it becomes an absolute slog. It's like playing Dark Souls and not equipping the estus, then complaining the enemies do too much damage... the game hands you the tools to make it fun, so use them. One thing i don't like tho, when you become very proficent at combat the game becomes A LOT easy. I would have appreciated an hard mode straight out the gate instead of locking it behind a new game plus.
@moenie I think part of the problem I am now realizing with this game is that it is too easy to "win" from what I have seen most people don't die even from more difficult encounters and even when you die it is barely a punishment, reviving you at a checkpoint in the middle of the fight with a full stock of potions. If players, especially story focused ones, can beat the game by just doing the basic combo and dodge over and over again why change anything when there is no obvious incentive to?
@@gangwolfgamer yeah that’s what im saying. The game is too easy so there’s no incentive for people to actual learn to play it. The incentive should be “the battle is taking way too long, maybe i should sprinkle a combo there and there instead of just attacking and evading” but since taking too long is not seen as “punishment” for the average player, they just stick to what they know. The game as a whole seems very very scared to be challenging in any meaningful way, and even when you actually lose you just restart with so many buffs you don’t have to learn the fight anymore, just tank it. Adding a hard mode for people who actually are proficient at videogames would have gone a LONG way… too bad.
@@duncanmacleod6274Yeah, but "staggering" is the worst thing Final Fantasy has come up with this decade and it won't fucking go away.
Part of me is a bit disappointed Yahtzee didn't just use a picture of Clive Owen's face to illustrate the protagonist, but I guess the jokes about his hair wouldn't have worked so well then.
When I first saw the trailer for this game I thought it looked like a ripoff of Game of Thrones/Dark Souls/Witcher/Berserk/any other edgy dark fantasy story they could possibly steal from. Thanks for letting me know I wasn't too far off.
Every single part of the combat is a diet version of dmc5. A ranking system that doesn't mean shit if you're not in arcade mode, a focus on mobility and timing, hell the circle button is literally just the style button. It's still good, but it's what you'd play if dmc was too much for you
no Yatzee
You see Story is actually - I've never played a video game in my life before mode
And Action mode is - We don't know how to balance difficulty so we couldn't just call it Normal mode
and the locked Final Fantasy Mode - The Real Game starts now Mode
@@cookieface80 wow so its
baby mode
Easy mode and
Final fantasy mode
@@cookieface80Not true. The speedrun of Story Mode is currently about an hour shorter, even not using rings. The fights are actually shorter from stats.
I think my problem with the game is that it...feels like it wants to be Devil May Cry because no one likes turn based combat anymore supposedly. But it feels like a half assed DMC combat system. Also, there is no open world to explore. It feels like Strangers of Paradise or FFX where you just have zones that you warp to and I can't really get behind that. Granted, I'm only about 10 hrs in. So maybe there is more to unlock, but things don't seem promising. If PSN weren't dicks with their refunds, pretty sure I would've just waited until it went free to play on the PSN+.
It's a bummer they go back to a fantasy setting, and don't also go back to fantasy monster elements. It's one thing i miss from old school RPG's was the enemy variety. You used to go from fighting bandits to fighting bees. Or a giant tentacled plant that was named after a pack of cigarettes.
You fight those monsters too, Wtf are you talking about?
The enemy variety isn't what I'd call amazing in this game, at least along the critical path, but there are bees, bandits, and marlboros ("morbols"), as well as slimes, eye monsters, bombs (those fire things with faces), dragons, gryphons, minotaurs, chimaeras, goblins, etc.
I’ve watched a lot of fifferent reviewers and retrospective channels and I really start to get an idea of what makes them tick.
For Yahtzee it’s the consistency of the story. If something is completely tonally inconsistent, it wont matter how fun the game is Yahtz will punt it from the highest building.
That reminds me of one of his reasons for liking Dark Souls, as he appreciated the narrative consistency of having places with designs way too tall for normal people specifically because those places were made for giants rather than normal people.
Which is invalid way of reviewing anime-like stories. Their strenght is many falvours of storytelling. FF16 sin tho is that it starts sour-sweet chicken, becomes sour-sweet with hot sauce... and in the end turns to white bread.
@@olotocolo well, unbiased reviews are a myth, at least in my eyes. Everyone has some kind of bias, that’s just how the human brain works. That’s why I watch multiple different channels.
I said this with FF 15, I'll say it with FF 16. As someone who plays "Tales of" games I like it when you can get a friend or 3 to couch co-op the otherwise AI party members in Action RPGs. Even DMC 3 all the way back on the PS2 had the ability for a pal to play Vergil in the final boss fight if you have a 2nd controller plugged it
What's interesting about Clive is that that same thing was present but averted earlier on in the series - Terra from FF6 is Tina in Japan.
Good to see Clive Warren's still getting work.
Watching people play this game makes me think, Bruh I could be getting good at combat in anything else with no RPG elements (Ninja gaiden, DMC, Bayonetta)
honestly i wish the final fantasys would go back to just turned based. haven't really enjoying any of the recent ones as much
Maybe try Chained Echoes? Has a lot of that classic snes/gba rpg feel
Maybe try the Octopath traveler games as well, it's got a very good combat system. The story/stories aren't quite old FF quality, but it scratches an itch for me.
Bravely Default games are also pretty good.
Thank god they aren't turn based anymore. Worst combat implementation in gaming history. Final fantasy woild sell even less lmao
The problem is they experimented with happy mediums and XII was great and the combat was probably the best part of XIII, and then they went whole hog down the "action RPG" route, but forgot to flesh out the RPG part because they're too busy making the combat a "spectacle."
@@kyzersoze8408Persona proves otherwise
I can see this being on the blandest list the "exploration" deserves special mention
Was exploration ever brought up as a selling point though? Because I distinctly remember them saying that this was not going to be open world anything like that so it kind of makes sense that exploration wasn't really a thing
@@magicman25103if it's not a selling point, why have it at all then? To waste time and annoy the player?
About 70% of this games open areas could be cut and absolutely nothing of value would be lost.
@@Nova-je6nqEvery section of each map is used for a side quest or hunt at some point and time, and the areas that don't contain the challenge arenas.
They're pretty small areas overall.
You wouldn’t believe how common Akira is, Yatz
C l i v e and T i n a should clearly hook up based on the strength of their incredibly exotic names.
Not only did it “borrow from GOT” but it’s clear the developers only watched the show because the Bahamut attack scene literally has shots taken directly from the final season. There’s even an adorable urchin who somehow survives while thousands are nuked by dragon fire.
Bahamut vs Alexander in FFIX.
I love this game, but I also love FFXIV and this just feels like a version of that tweaked for single-player. In fact, doing the side quests in this game made me want to do the sidequests in FFXIV since each sidequest here, despite being a "go here, do this, come back" quest, actually helped me understand the world or the people a little more as I went along. (I know XVI was developed by Square's CBU3 and Yoshi-P, so it was pretty much just going to be an evolution of what they've learned from XIV).
Also, as someone who never watched or cared for Game of Thrones, all of those references went over my head. I just saw this as a Dark Fantasy setting thay didn't have all of the fantastic elements and had *a lot* to say about the politics of war, scarcity, slavery, and the tactics of people in power that sustain their power.
The more I see of the game the more I think it would have been more dignified to just make itself an animated series. Or go the asura route. Every bit of gameplay I see looks like a game that REALLY would rather you don't play it.
Idk, AAA games have been increasingly treating us like morons and I'm concerned this one's the next step.
@chukyuniqul Personally, I appreciate the combat in game, especially the hunts and boss fights because of how much of a spectacle they become. Where it suffers in those fights are the cinematic moments that stop what you're doing to do a QTE or a when the game turns into a rail shooter. It's a fun spectacle and a solid experience once, but I wish those parts could be removed on a second playthrough of them.
@@GayBearBro2 clearly whoever made the final calls for the game didn't appreciate it as much, seeing as brownie points with game journos were more important than making sure people engage with that system.
Meh, personally, in a vscuum, it is an improvement from 15's combat which genuinely msde me go "HAHAHAHA NO" before forcing its lips off my dick. I loathe when games seem to try and suck me off for doing nothing. It is creepy for one and insulting for another and concerning for a third. Makes me wonder why the game is sucking me off so hard, what it's hiding. At least with something like lost arc it's clear, it wants me to pay it money so it will keep doing it. In comparison ffxvi's combat on its own makes it clear where we stand. It wants me to go through the game while also getting across some adversity. Where that falls apart is when the game denies me control over the difficulty should I find it too easy, gives me s horrid ratio of gameplay to story and peppers what little gameplay is there with meaningless cutaways that only serve to strain my connection to my character.
At the end of the day, my concerns about what 16 heralds are mine alone. I am free to share them as others are free to ignore them. And if they come true, well shit I get to do just my favorite thing and say "toldja so".
I felt that way during a lot of the combat, especially when Stagger wears off.
"And now begins the mechanical dance-off as the enemy goes into hyper-megadrive, firing AoE ground attacks and lasers while you get out of the markers for a few seconds before continuing the attack."
One thing I liked was there were a few mechanics that you could dodge by simply jumping over them like a platformer game. You didn't have to, you can Precision Dodge them as usual, but you could jump too!
@garitobee7541 Third dimensions is something I often forget about in Action RPG's. Hoarah Loux's stomps in Elden Ring were the bane of my existence until I remembered I could jump.
Game was a 9/10 for me, Clive is an amazing protagonist, is true that the pacing gets annoying with those sidequest, but endgame side quest are good, the boss battles are insane, I definitely enjoyed my time with this game a lot
The side quests really & truly are the make or break for 16. The game was phenomenal for me, but I had to stop often because when 10+ side quests all pop up at once, it really kills motivation to keep going. Even when they have great lore & worldbuilding, so IDK how people enjoy Baldur's Gate or games like that which are going to have 3 times as much of that sort of dialogue.
The combat is so mediocre though. Yeah it’s flashy, but it’s barebones asf regardless of how many ikon abilities you get. The shit doesn’t have the complexity of a bayonetta let alone dmc, so why did they try to emulate that’s style of combat?
imo gamming industry today basically applies shiny new coats of paint on top of gameplay we had 10-20 years ago (and in most cases was even better back then due to not having to work in all platforms).
2:34 my favorite part...
Sad thing that it seems (from playtroughs i've seen), that some of the optional side quests are really good and important for world/character building. While many are just fetch quests so there's a good chance Yahtzee skipped most of them to keep the deadline.
So it's the "it gets good after 20 hours- argument"?
Personally, I am 7 Eikon powers in and I find the story painfully generic. And the combat is fun at first but lacks either interesting fights outside bosses or more abilities. 3 per Eikon isn't enough.
And dear Lord are the side quests boring. It's like I'm playing XIV that's how MMO-y they feel.
You even collect elemental Pokémon through your journey yet you have no elemental weaknesses.
Or how the overworld feels as dead as XIV's. You can really, really tell it was made by the same people. For better or worse.
@@TheOneGreat No it is not, that is why i specifically didn't wrote "it gets good after XX hours" just to make sure no one thinks i made that argument that i didn't.
I don't really think it was even an argument, just my opinion about the bad dramaturgy of the game.
@Payadopa unfortunately the best side quests with the best character moments are locked off if you dont complete the right prerequisite side quests as well. It's a bit of a pisser
Still love the game, though
@@melanp4698as if remakes side quests were any better right.
The problem is you have to pace things properly if you want them to be effective. If one of the main quests Yahtzee was talking about took you somewhere and promises lore, intrigue, and rewards for branching off, then you might at least check out the side quests. But when you drop off 5 beaver anuses to a man and he asks you to go back out for 5 beaver rectums, there's no incentive to do them, even if there is a reward down the line.
action focused mode doesn't remove the story lmao
I like the name Clive, don't know why, but it sounds cool to me. It's actually one of my go to name for Character creation anyway
A bit over half way to the Final Fantasy XXX
I wish devs realized there was more to the Middle Ages than just Western Europe.
Agree with a lot of the criticism but the combat is pretty great if you’re good at games like dmc / Bayonetta
@@omensoffatenope the problem is Just that the game is too easy but the depth Is there
@@omensoffate not true. It has a pretty good amount of depth
@@omensoffateIt's lacking in breadth (number of options), but it does a solid job with its depth (decision making process for those options).
"Game of Thrones but everyone has dragons now."
Yahtzee, you're not gonna believe this....