Fun, but Not Fulfilling - A FULL Review of Final Fantasy 16
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- Опубликовано: 13 июл 2024
- I've completed almost every Final Fantasy game to date and the Final Fantasy franchise has been on shaky grounds ever since the... "less successful" releases of Final Fantasy 13 and 15. Released on June 22, 2023, I played through the entirety of the game to answer the question, "How does Final Fantasy XVI stack up against the rest of the series?"
Surprisingly enough, Final Fantasy 16 feels like a return to the roots of the series where crystals, knights, and magic govern the land, where the main character must set off on an epic adventure to save the world. However, this is a new Final Fantasy for a new age, and Final Fantasy 16 has more portrayals of sex and graphic violence than any of its predecessors. Now, just adding more sex and violence doesn't make a game good, but it does help make the world feel more grounded and its characters feel more human.
Despite having a ton of sidequests, Final Fantasy 16 becomes a bit too formulaic, and much of its "optional content" revolves around travelling to another location, defeating a few enemies, and listening to some character dialogue. I'm thinking about making another video talking about this in detail because it's kind of surprising to me how having so much content can end up feeling bad, but I think part of the reason it became so tiresome to me was because there's really nothing to "do" beyond basic combat in Final Fantasy 16, and so it's really sink-or-swim for the game based on that.
I thought combat was pretty good. It wasn't particularly great, and it wasn't bad, but the more you get used to it, the more shallow it becomes, which is really unfortunate. With that being said, I really did enjoy my time playing, completing, and beating Final Fantasy 16, but with its linearity, limited party members, and lack of complexity, I think its replay value is lacking compared to previous Final Fantasy titles, even with its addition of epic kaiju boss battles.
Maybe the developers will add more side content in the future with the DLC, who knows? There's plenty of room for them to make a prequel or to explore the Fallen civilization...or maybe we'll get something set in the future. It'd be nice if we got more Eikons like Alexander to fit in with the likes of Ifrit, Phoenix, Garuda, Ramuh, Titan, Bahamut, Shiva, and Odin, and we're still missing some of the most iconic Final Fantasy monsters like Cactuars.
What do you think about Final Fantasy XVI, and what score would you give it? How does it compare to previous Final Fantasy titles? Let me know in the comment section below.
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0:00 - Disclaimer of a Jaded Player
1:05 - Review - Main Body
17:00 - Spoiler Zone - Story, Characters, & More
25:44 - Final Thoughts & Score 
Игры
My favorite part is the rationale for destroying the mother crystals was based on a guess. For all they know, the mother crystals were staving off the blight or even had no relation to the blight at all. As with the gameplay, I just really wish they just go full tilt onto the action genre instead of trying to awkwardly mediate with its RPG roots. While it's better than 15, you can tell that it's being held back as the abilities are designed around cooldowns rather than free flow that could've offered unique utility and mechanics.
The game has a lot of flare with great presentation and music, but the mechanics and storytelling are lacking.
Referencing Neon genesis evangelion, osama bin laden, doing most of the side quests and wondering why the combat was trivialized; some redditor just got bingo
You forgot to mention how a game that has beautiful vistas and scenery, spends what felt maybe 70% of its duration with an awful pink hue over every single area. This decision made everything look the same, and to me, killed all sense of art style, made tiring to look at it. I felt I had to push myself to finish it, and it feels even worst because it started so well! No cactuars, 6 is generous.
No cactuars? Tf???
The criticism about the combat seeming to have variety but then lacking depth does follow it having the same combat director as Devil May Cry 5, Ryota Suzuki, and a good number of moves are inspired by that series. In the DMC series, having a wide variety of attacks that move enemies around in different ways both on the ground and aerially makes sense as move variety is one of the biggest measures for the style meter score. If your main goal is to take out enemies as quickly and safely as possible, there's no longer a big incentive to juggle them in the air and do other fancy things.
I kind of want to look up more about FFXVI's combat now to see a deeper analysis.
12:16 actually I stopped using the Torgal charm after maybe 20 minutes and it only made the game better, since Clive wasn't shouting "get him boy" every 2 seconds and Torgal was still doing all his regular attacks, he just stopped doing the beyblade thing and the other "red attacks" that basically just move the enemy away from you.
I do agree though that you only have 2 slots, because 1 slot for me was always dedicated to the berserker ring first and the genji gloves in the endgame and ng+
Yeah, I stopped using the Torgal charm towards the end of the game too and used the Berserker Ring + Genji's Gloves lol. I just looked it up and apparently the Berserker Ring is a nerf to precision counter damage though? lol, if that's true, I shouldn't have expected any different.
great video!
I really enjoyed this game from start to finish. It's definitely not perfect, but I truly felt a sense of enjoyment playing this game two times through. I hear a lot of people talking about the combat being one of the downsides, but I couldn't disagree more; I feel the combat is one of the games biggest hits. With that said, some of the interactions could be more clear. For example, the game doesn't tell you that Torgal's heal effect only regenerates gray health. If you've played any fighting games in the past 10 years, you'd know that gray health is an amount of health that can be recovered over time after you take damage. Torgal's heal will regenerate your missing gray health, which means it's not good to spam, but it is good to use after you take damage. Instead, you, and nearly EVERY other person criticizing Torgal are using him sub-optimally. Each of his commands have a purpose, but again, the game doesn't explain it very well. If you spent time in training mode, you'd realize how much Torgal changes the combat. Sic is his basic attack, however if you use Sic after a charged or magic attack, it upgrades to Precision Sic, which is the juggle move that you see. This juggle allows you to do near endless combos, and yes, with practice, you can juggle enemies near indefinitely. For example, do your basic bnb combo finished with a magic attack > Precision Sic, then jumping charged attack to do air juggles, or if that's too hard, just use Phoenix Shift and start air combos after that. Not only that, but Ravage actually slams enemies to the ground like Clive's downward airthrust move, but another thing they don't tell you is that damage increases EXPONENTIALLY the higher you are in the air. Heck, Clive's downstrike move does the same thing, the higher you are, the more damage it does, and it even changes to a flaming version after you reach a certain height. The combat in this game allows you to be linear, which is boring, or let your imagination run wild if you put in the time to get good with it. If you're expecting to just become a god at the combat without practicing, or only aiming to get better in a linear fashion, then yeah, the combat will seem dull. But if you start looking at moves like "I wonder if I can combo it like this?" then you open a world of opportunities. When you unlock Odin in the end game, this changes even more because he has a move that allows you to cancel the animation of any attack in the game, allowing you to essentially say the sky is the limit on what you can do, it's really up to your imagination.
I pretty much agree with you on everything except the combat. They made the combat easy so that it's simple enough for everyone to pick up, but for those who want to do complex combos and take your skills to the limit, the mechanics are there for you to do so. If your combat experience was "I'm just waiting for my skills to come back up" then that's your own linear approach to the combat, but if you put in the work, you can do some amazing things. The combat changed so much that I couldn't figure out which style I liked to play the most. When you unlock Titan, you suddenly become a counter God, when you unlock Garuda, the sky is the limit, Odin allows you to slow down time and keep enemies in place, and Bahamut is the very definition of "I'll get stronger by dodging attacks until my skills comeback and blow up everyone." I mean, with Bahamut's ability, you literally don't have to focus on combos, all you do is dodge until you charge up Megaflare (and each successfully precision dodge instantly gives you one, so you can literally dodge up to 4 times instantly and be fully charged" and then you just spam your abilities and everyone dies. But if you fail your dodges, your Megaflare bar gets drained, so it's not without the risk. The playstyle you choose is literally up to you.
I've ranted long enough, I do agree with everything else you said though. The story was decent, the music was God Tier, some mechanics like Crafting were completely useless, and MOST of the accessories are worthless, excluding Berserker Ring, which is another game changer because it gives you a buff so powerful that it changes how you fight.
I think elden ring raised everyone's expectations to the the point everyone is spoiled
ER was mid
Guardian Forces made more sense and served a better purpose imo. If they redid 8, they should adapt some ideas from 16
Very epic
I was amongst the first and only voices in comments sections and forums I saw that was not impressed with XVI and thought it was bland and disapointing and cliche. But would the fanboys have it? Noooooo. They pile on me as if I'm some villain and a few months later what do I find? Perspective and criticism beginning to creep into the video-essay sphere and it feels so vindicating.
Agreed. This game lacks so much style its not even funny. Makes all the games 10 and below look Hella good, especially with art direction and being FANTASY not generic af
@@DonutSwordsman i really miss that final fantasy quirkyness. It sounds like the ff7 remake is keeping it alive but as far as original entries i don't think i've gotten it since...12? Holy shit it has been forever.
@@Pontif11 I wouldn't even say 7R is all that 'quirky' its corporate fluff AF, and they can't even commit to the spirit of the original. it throws me off.
You should review Xenoblade series.
I'd like to point out not everything is shonen because it contains similar archetypes and plot progression. Even seinen can contain them, as those that are not specifically what make shonen and seinen what they are just because one has become oversaturated with what's popularized in the genre.
Ff10 was the last good one imo. At least tactics ogre and fft is coming out
Tactics Ogre Reborn came out last year, but I haven't heard anything about an FFT re-release
FF14 was good.
have you tried 12? it's pretty good
Dragons dogma was a better final fantasy game lol
SPOILER WARNING, don't read if you haven't played the game
I want to address some points about Ultima, since I think he's the most well-written character in the game and almost everything he does makes sense from his pov (keep in mind some of these are just my theories or theories I read online and made sense to me):
- About Ultima "being alone", it's not that he is an amalgamation of the consciousness of all his people, but the "Ultima race" as a whole is basically a hive mind, which is why they use WE and I interchangeably. Also we could say that its ability to fuse back into one being with all the others is a direct effect of this hive mind, since we're in a fantasy world
- I think you misunderstood part of Ultima's plan, as he didn't want to merge with all humanity, he just wanted to take over Clive's body and then kill off the rest of humanity, throwing them away like you would do with a used tool that you don't need anymore. I like to recap this whole situation as "Ultima basically experiences what happens in every sci-fi story involving AI: the Ai becomes intelligent and independent and rises against his creator"
- it's not that Ultima didn't know it was possible to live even in the blight, it's that he didn't want to: his race INVENTED magic, he is this powerful BECAUSE of magic, but in the Blight magic can't exist, so he can't live in there unless he accepts turning back to a "regular mortal" even though I'm pretty sure his body is made 100% of magic at this point, so maybe it really is impossible for him, which leads me to my next point
- the world Ultima wishes to create is one where he can use as much magic as he wants without having to worry about the blight, that's his plan. It's very childish, because the solution could have just been "yo dude, stop using magic" but he threw a tantrum and decided "no I wanna use magic, I'd rather destroy the world and make a new one rather than stopping"
- this is not really a correction of something you said, I just wanted to add it: Clive is Mythos, which was supposed to become the mortal body of Ultima, aka God, and he is willing to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity, which he does, dying at 33 years of age... ring any bells?
- the only thing that doesn't make sense about Ultima's behavior is not even about his behavior, it's about how the writers decided to introduce him. The first time we see him, he is wearing a hood and Clive is 15, Then, 13 years later, we see Joshua with the SAME hood, and then we see Ultima again with still the same hood. Now the question is: is there REALLY a single hood design in the world of Valisthea?
I can see Ultima being a hive mind, sure.
> I think you misunderstood part of Ultima's plan, as he didn't want to merge with all humanity, he just wanted to take over Clive's body and then kill off the rest of humanity, throwing them away like you would do with a used tool that you don't need anymore.
It depends on what going "Akashic" means and what happens to someone's "will" after the fact. I wouldn't be surprised if the "will" just returns to a form of energy that Ultima would make use of, so by completing the Ultima Instrumentality Project (tm), all of humanity would "merge" with Ultima, though not in a form we recognize it
@@LastProtagonist I interpreted "going akashic" as just him getting more slaves for his plan, but once his world was ready he woulde've thrown away said slaves since he didn't need them anymore, plus maybe getting back all the ether they absorbed, but I can't tell what would happen to their "wills" since they weren't created by Ultima (and we know this because humanity's will was the one thing that ruined his plan and that he didn't account for, aka Logos) and not once does the game mention the afterlife, so who knows, maybe they'll expand on that in a DLC?
...oh no, it's Elden Ring all over again!
Jill doesn't have to be girlboss, I think more so she trusted Clive and didn't want him to worry about her/get distracted. I'm sure this conflicts with having party members, but remember this is not a story about party members, it's a story about Clive. This was stated many times by Yoshi-P. Jill maintaining her meek personality while still growing in character is perfectly reasonable, yet we see so much of the opposite that one game taking this approach is fine. She never wanted to fight, she wanted to stop a specific individual from hurting others.
Many characters did not get a lot of time and felt shorted, but that is because it was not a story about them. It is about Clive. Think of it how Devil May Cry approached storytelling (as in limited and focused), as it's a character action-game more than a FF.
Jill doesn't have to be on par with Clive but she DOES have to be on par with Joshua and Dion, who are Dominants just like her. That the game instead equates her with Tarja, a non-Dominant NPC, tells us all we need to know about the sheer disrespect the writers have for her role in the story, despite her supposed importance vis a vis Clive as well as the amount of marketing dollars they spent trying to pretend all 7 dominants are equally important to the story.
"This is a story about Clive" and yet the story managed to let Dion and Joshua have a story away from Clive, meanwhile the political intrigue scenes never once mention "hey this crazy guy is going around blowing up mothercrystals, should we maybe do something about him before invading another country with a functioning mothercrystal that he also might destroy?" Also not forgetting that it is Jill herself who debunks your theory, when she's the one constantly saying to Clive that "this isn't just your fight, Clive. It's ours." Jill wasn't dragged into fights by Clive, she chose to do it. Even her motivation speech about killing Imhreaan is so she can put her past behind her in order to continue fighting by Clive's side. So where did this "she never wanted to fight" fantasy of yours come from?
@@themisheika Joshua barely had a role in the story and all he was up to, as said in the video, was never delved into. None of the other characters had their stories delved into other than cutscenes showing what each party, individual was up to. You have to have that for narrative coherence. YOU think Jill is lesser than other characters despite her being in Dominant battle, being in the party and sharing time with Clive in scenes. For obvious reasons she was not shown a great deal considering she was a slave and going into that backstory is completely removed from Clive and the greater narrative.
Joshua pops in and out of the story. Dion...if you think he had that much time on screen than others. I'm sure that was in part to have a sexually diverse character, but I don't think he was any more important than the fact of his relation to the kingdom he was a part of.
Your going into narrative problems with the game. That's not related to your complaint of Jill, but poor execution and rationale. Your also quoting the English version of the script when the Japanese does not try and paint it constantly by saying "us", "we", "everyone", ect.
I don't think you can read effectively, so go back and be sure you do so. I said her purpose was to defeat Imhereaan, foil the church. Once she achieved that, her role in the conflict was done in any direct manner, but was still alongside Clive. There was not final battle with all the characters, it came down to Clive and Ultima.
@@blumiu2426 Joshua, despite "barely" being in the story, still had more impact on Clive and the story than Jill, same with Cid as well. Jill, despite supposedly having the most time being with Clive, mostly stands there and does or says nothing even when she could have (when Cid and Clive talk during their Drake's Head mission, when Cid fell, when Cid was dying, when Clive and Joshua battled Dion). It's like her entire role is "stand there and look pretty" outside of that one(1) Iron Kingdom arc, which was used afterwards as an excuse to make her so weak she gets kidnapped and then bed-bound for most of the second-half (despite Joshua forcing himself to carry on his mission while literally coughing up blood and having an Ultima clone inside him), then finally depowered so that she doesn't get to join the final battle (despite Dion, while also depowered, still getting to go). Just because Dion and Joshua died before the final battle with Ultima doesn't mean they weren't given char agency and choosing to confront Ultima on their own terms, unlike Jill, who also had her life ruined by Ultima setting off Ifrit inside Clive 18 years ago. So it's not just ME who think Jill is lesser than other Dominant chars, but the game itself. You ignoring the blatant misogynistic writing says more about you than me. And considering you have such low standards as to accept Jill's being there despite doing very little to be worth the screen time she's there for, it's clear you think the bare minimum of "being there" means it's perfectly fine for the writers to do her story dirty like they did. Joshua and Dion weren't there a lot, but that Jill still did less than them combined that is for herself (basically, only that one(1) iron kingdom arc), just shows everyone that she was treated horrendously by her writers. And it isn't even Maehiro's first time being such a misogynist writer either.