Final Fantasy XVI

Robby

Some interesting stuff in there including follow up on them takeing that approach to combat... and apparently being offended by the term "jrpg".

Cinder

An ANN article had an interesting take on it.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-games/2023-03-03/if-jrpg-is-a-dirty-word-its-america-fault/.195359

Thinking about it, I recall some bigger streamers with their bingo cards on Directs, and whenever the "jrpgs" came up it was often surrounded by cringe reactions so I can see where this is coming from.

Elden Ring was criticized for being "too Japanese."

what

Razh

Feels like they're kinda out of touch over at SE.

The fans of the genre never used the term in a derogatory fashion. In fact, if the rest of them are anything like me, their eyes light up when they see letters JRPG together.

I get US is a big market, and they need to sell their games, but it's really sad to read. Action games are the norm nowadays? Hell, why not turn FF into FPS, they must have seen those COD numbers.

Kitsune Inferno

@Razh I'd say that's a little revisionist. Fans of the genre reclaimed the word, but for the first few years of use, it was definitely a derogatory term. It didn't help that it came into use at a time when Japanese-produced RPGs were in a bit of a slump (2005-2010) and games like Oblivion and Dragon Age and Mass Effect were starting to take off and define the "western RPG", so there was this prevailing stereotype that Japanese RPGs were lesser.

I think nowadays our use of the term has evolved and it's often used by fans in celebration of a certain type of game that's usually turn-based, but even that's disingenuous, as action-based Japanese RPGs like the Mana games, Star Ocean, Tales of, etc., have been around for quite a long time as well, and yet people still argue whether From games are JRPGs. It's an ill-defined term at best, and a xenophobic one at worst.

Ultimately, I'm not all that hurt about FF16's direction. The lack of party members did bum me out at first, but I've always been excited by the FF games that break from the house style. I'm far more excited for the VIs and the IXs and the XIIs and the Tactics of the series than I am the 7s and 13s and 15s. I generally trust in Yoshida and think he's an excellent game designer, problematic statements on diversity (that may have been unfairly overblown) aside.

This has felt from the beginning like an auteur's Final Fantasy and it sounds like Yoshida made the game he wanted to make and hasn't really strayed from that vision. Outside of a highly understandable COVID delay, this is the smoothest development cycle we've seen for a Final Fantasy game in decades. It's also the shortest time an offline FF game has gone from farm-to-table in as much time.

It's also been textbook Final Fantasy from the start. I find a lot of the discourse about it being "not Final Fantasy enough" to be played out. Whether we like it or not, FF hasn't been truly turn-based since 2002, and the ATB system, while definitely turn based, should clue us in on what the series has been chasing for at least the last 30 years. And whether you chalk it up as an identity crisis or consider it an integral part of the series' DNA, no two Final Fantasies are alike: arguably, the FF games that most closely resemble each other are 3 and 5, and 11 and 14. Every other game has been its own thing carving out its own identity.

But that criticism is especially frustrating when combat aside, so much of the game feels familiar under the hood. This game feels like it belongs in Ivalice. Not only that, FF14 has a track record of reverence for the early games in the series, and Yoshida regularly calls out FF5 as inspiration. Plus not to mention the crystals and summons at the center of the story are classic FF iconography. Sure the gameplay might be a massive departure, but my three favorite FF games (IX, XII, and Tactics) all play in completely different ways.

I can see how the gameplay changes might turn people off to the game, but at the same time, it feels like such a weird take to call this game "out of touch", when it appears to be the most laser-focused production I've seen the series put out since the Sakaguchi days.

Satsuki

I just couldn't get into FFXV. This looks a little more promising. Although I'd have to buy a PS5. And I'm really worried that that dog might die.

In the meantime, I'm considering Octopath Traveler 2 for my JRPG needs.

Time Control Magician

As someone who remembers how different the combat was from FFX to X2 I Don’t personally mind how the combat is handled.

Just so long as the story is good and doesn’t do some cliche bullshit like killing off the main character.

Razh

@Kitsune-Inferno From my experience, people were either going wild about JRPGs or never played them and/or mocked the whole anime thing. Of course, I started paying attention around the time Baldur's Gate and FF7 were released. The slump you mention wasn't helped by the fact there were plenty of PS exclusives and that whatever did get ported to PC, for example, was a botched job, rendering many of the ported games barely playable.

I called the developers out of touch. Like I said, will probably play the game, because it looks interesting at least.

They talk about how people used the term JRPG in a derogatory fashion, and how the new audiences prefer action combat. Well neither of those is a good enough reason to remove the party on turn the game into a 3rd person action game. The party and the party dynamic in FF15 was one of the rare things about it that was widely praised. There was no reason not to develop that system further, giving the user more freedom in controlling the team as well as improving the action aspect of the combat.

No reason other than cutting cost and production time. This way we got an evolved combat for the franchise, that's still partly a devolution from FF15.
And where FF15 at least tried to add more importance to the team mates, FF16 drops that and is a single character focused story. Even DMC lets you choose a character here and there.

Just think there was a way to both satisfy the fandom and attract new audience. Might have taken a bit longer, sure. Although, accounting for the decline of SE, and what seems like a general loss of direction, maybe it's better that we didn't get that. Maybe a DMC clone with more story is a lesser of two evils? If they saved money and end up making a hit, then it means a studio, that makes all the other games you're more excited about, will survive and keep making them.

Time Control Magician

@Razh said in Final Fantasy XVI:

The party and the party dynamic in FF15 was one of the rare things about it that was widely praised.

After gamers bitched about how you were relegated only to four party member and how all of them were guys or rather “pretty boys”?

Razh

@Time-Control-Magician After some gamers bitched about it, yes. The team and the friendship was still one of the bright sides to the whole mess.

Not accounting that you had to watch a few anime episodes and get additional episodes to get everything out of it, of course.

FF16 might look promising in some aspects, but it's still made by the same company that frankensteined the crap out of something that could have been an awesome game. Can't be too optimistic.

Johnny B. Decent

.......Well, I'm excited for this game.

Cinder

What did FF15 do party-wise that was so amazing? The banter, the team combos, the relationship that became stronger than the one with your fiance? Swapping control to the other members didn't even come until 1.20 after the paid episodes with their mechanics were finished!

The scenario I read from some Ultimania for FF15 felt like a Final Fantasy, but the end product sure became something else. The game was also treated like a service, and I'll be glad if they never do that again.

Obviously different strokes for different people. I have trust in FF16's team because that team is what rescued FF14 and the brand instead of patching and praying like Tanaka's FF14 1.0 and Tabata's FF15. And they didn't even need to ask fans if they'd like to see Moogles in the game!

I was trying to find the trailer where Tabata introduced the happy idea of the "roadtrip with your bros" but I ended up finding this, which I thought was humorously accurate:

Razh

@Cinder Amazing? More like one of the rare good parts that kept the whole thing playable. I did play the Royal Edition, though. Rarely do I jump in a game early upon its release.

Speaking of relationship. Um, why wouldn't a relationship with 3 childhood friends, comrades in arms, be stronger than the one with a woman Noctis met a couple of times? That's one of the few parts that make actual sense, lol.

Just silly to me that the following title would ditch one of the parts that actually worked. Maybe we just aren't allowed to have good things. And by good things I mean a fusion between FF15, FFT and Vagrant Story.

Razh

Oh, just found out they're shooting a commercial for "Final Fantasy" in my hometown. There was a casting call couple weeks ago, guess that was it was for.
Parts of Braavos in GoT were filmed here too.

https://www.sibenik.in/foto/'final-fantasy'-sibenik-vraca-u-srednji-vijek-snima-se-promo-film-za-megapopularnu-igru/169336.html

Cinder

@Razh The narrative is all over the place and that's a big part of why it's upsetting. We're TOLD they're childhood friends and would give up their lives for him, but any building up of that before the present got relegated to media outside of the game because they said "it didn't fit the game," and you the player is given the game to build that emotional investment on this journey so it'd make sense.

We're also TOLD about Noctis and Luna, but the player couldn't connect because it suffered from the (lack of) storytelling:

FF15 spoilers:

spoiler

You can make the argument that the wedding was more a formality for stopping the war, but they were written to be a romantic couple. Brotherly love with his boys, romantic love with his girl. It's insane to think that their relationship is "just a woman he met a couple times!"

edit: I've read some thoughts about why they weren't romantically involved and why it was platonic or strictly political. I think there's a lot of ways to express love (my parents are a neat example of this), so even if we strike out over the first half of those bullet points because they're duty-related, what gets me are the last 3 bullet points which are displays of emotion!

To an earlier conversation point, if we wanna ask "Why can't FF16 have a bonding party like FF15 did? It's so backwards" - in fairness we should wait for the game to come out first, but second, which is mainly my own thought about it, but it feels like this is a conflict of what the game is supposed to be to someone. I think a lot of people really valued the camping aspects and the realism of fighting and hanging out with buddies. I didn't really, but I get it.

Time Control Magician

I hate the idea of key story elements in a video game being relegated to optionally obtainable collectibles or apart of some extra media content.

Shiebs

@Johnny-B-Decent said in Final Fantasy XVI:

.......Well, I'm excited for this game.

Same here!!! The combat looks cool and the story brings Summons to the front and center and there’s a lot of extremely talented people with good track records attached to it

Shiebs

Kitsune Inferno

That video Shiebs posted cuts off (the livestream went down mid presentation). Here's the VOD with everything that was shown yesterday. It was a lot!

spoiler

Since it's such a long video, here are the rough points of the video containing gameplay footage.
11:00 is a brief story trailer
15:40 is an environment showcase
24:25 is an 'Eikonic Abilities' (main Clive gameplay) combat overview
30:00 is about ten minutes of live gameplay
47:30 is showing off the different 'difficulty' settings in combat (essentially the equippable accessories that make certain parts of combat easier)
1:00:00 is one last overview focuses on the 'Eikonic Clashes' (eikon vs. eikon)

Kitsune Inferno

State of Play in exactly 24 hours with 20 minutes of new footage. They are spoiling us with content.

Cinder

I'll be passing on it - not that I'm uninterested but I don't want my eyes to be too spoiled; I already made the personal cut-off some time ago! And I still haven't figured out my situation with how I'm going to play the darn game. I've been holding out on a (currently) non-existent PS5 pro and I already have the deluxe edition pre-ordered...

If you're watching it though, don't hold back and let us know how it goes!

Kitsune Inferno

This wasn't shown in the State of Play (but announced during it), but here's a sizzle reel of the theme song and some CG scenes.

This clip is the first time the game felt rather "anime" to me. Not that that's a bad thing, but should hopefully soothe some of the "it's not even Final Fantasy / it's a God of War clone" discourse.

Shiebs

I really can’t tell from the previews if people like the combat system or hate it

Kitsune Inferno

@Shiebs Were we watching the same previews?

I've literally heard nothing but near unanimous praise for the combat system from the previews.

In any case, holy crap, three weeks to go! It sounds like the demo is starting to appear (but unavailable for download) on PSN. For those not keeping up, the demo will cover the first two hours of the game and progress can be transferred to the final game when it launches. Judging by the previews, that more or less encompasses the entirety of the teenage Clive content, which has been promoted heavily, so that two hours should be absolutely packed to the gills.

Johnny B. Decent

By the way, reading the backstory, it seems that the Kingdom who is ruled by the Odin eikon/eidolon holder, they have a history of conflict with the Orcs and other beastmen. I wonder if that's going to play any part in this story?

Kitsune Inferno

@Johnny-B-Decent I have to imagine it will, at the very least on a sidequest capacity. I believe Waloed is more or less confirmed to have an open zone area based on the world map, so I imagine that place could be packed with interactions with some of the various beastmen tribes.

Kitsune Inferno

Final Fantasy XVI demo is live on PSN now! It consists of two parts.

The initial portion covers the first two or so hours of the game and progress will be carried over to the final game when it launches next Thursday. Note that the opening of the game is highly story focused and full of cutscenes, with only minimal gameplay features available to the player.

Upon completion of the main demo, a second demo is unlocked featuring "special battle content". I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this is the Garuda content shown back in February with a dungeon and handful of bosses from later in the game. This demo gives the player a much larger array of abilities to try out for themselves. This mode can't be saved, but gives players a taste of what the meat of the game will be like since that can't be fully expressed by the opening hours of the game.

I'll hold off commentary until I finish, but I'm halfway through the main demo I think and it's already a massive improvement over recent FF in its story presentation.

Kitsune Inferno

I was going to hold off on my thoughts because sometimes it feels like I'm talking to myself in this thread, but the demo utterly blew me away.

spoiler

andre

I want to play this so bad. I just don't have a PS5. I appreciate the write-up, Kitsune.

kevo_koma

@Kitsune-Inferno said in Final Fantasy XVI:

I was going to hold off on my thoughts because sometimes it feels like I'm talking to myself in this thread, but the demo utterly blew me away.

spoiler

Clive was the one who turned into Ifrit at the gate, right?

I've seen some videos where people seem to think there was 3rd person but It seemed pretty obvious its clive.

Kitsune Inferno

@kevo_koma There's juuuuuust enough reason to doubt.

spoiler

Cinder

I'm thinking real hard about rewarding myself with a PS5 after a crappy couple of weeks, so I'm sure I'll be here to discuss all that is great and wonderful with FF16 verrrry soon.

kevo_koma

@Kitsune-Inferno said in Final Fantasy XVI:

@kevo_koma There's juuuuuust enough reason to doubt.

spoiler

Time Control Magician

@kevo_koma said in Final Fantasy XVI:

spoiler

Nothing to understand even in reality parents can be especially evil towards their kids

kevo_koma

@Time-Control-Magician said in Final Fantasy XVI:

@kevo_koma said in Final Fantasy XVI:

spoiler

Nothing to understand even in reality parents can be especially evil towards their kids

I mean true. But I can't help but compare her to Cersei lannister. And even Cersei loved all her children.

Kitsune Inferno

I'm honestly really compelled by that character for a lot of reasons.

spoiler

Johnny B. Decent

I just hope we can kill her, in game.

Kitsune Inferno

My copy should get here tomorrow!

Shiebs

The review embargo is up soon, what do you guys think it will likely be scored at?

Time Control Magician

Is any good going to come from knowing that?

Kitsune Inferno

Looks like Metacritic is sitting at an 88. Lots of glowing reviews but the main sticking point for the harshers critics seem to be sidequests and story.

That last one might come as a shock but I ended up having some story elements leak to me a couple days back and to be honest, it's probably fair.

I should be able to play for myself later this afternoon and see for myself how things will end up going. I am still certain I'm going to love it dearly with some minor things that hold it back from my top spot.

kevo_koma

@Kitsune-Inferno said in Final Fantasy XVI:

I'm honestly really compelled by that character for a lot of reasons.

spoiler

Late to reply to this. But I understand your reasoning.

I am really curious to see what Clive truly feels about her.

kevo_koma

@Kitsune-Inferno said in Final Fantasy XVI:

Looks like Metacritic is sitting at an 88. Lots of glowing reviews but the main sticking point for the harshers critics seem to be sidequests and story.

That last one might come as a shock but I ended up having some story elements leak to me a couple days back and to be honest, it's probably fair.

I should be able to play for myself later this afternoon and see for myself how things will end up going. I am still certain I'm going to love it dearly with some minor things that hold it back from my top spot.

Looking forward to your review.
Feel free to spoil. I won't be playing it at least until next year on PC.

Kitsune Inferno

Still not done yet. I'm about 60% of the way done but there's a sequence around that point that just completely blew me away in sheer visual spectacle, not to mention all the tension building up to it and the aftermath. I have a lot of nitpicks but right now this game is about a 9.5/10 for me. I'm still not sure where it'll land on my FF list but it's definitely top 5 and could take my 2nd spot.

Greg

Oh dear.

This game may not be very good. Even if NG+ is everything it should have been, there's not much saving the virgin playthrough aside from spectacle.

I have three more Stages to go but I don't think it can provide anything it hadn't already revealed in terms of interesting gameplay by hour 20.

andre

That's a shame. You seemed pretty hyped for it. I've heard the combat is way too shallow.

Greg

Exactly that.

I've done the exact same rotation for the past 25 hrs and there doesn't seem to be any reason to change it. It works in every trash pull and most bosses.

I'm at the last boss and haven't changed anything since I got Titan.

Satsuki

That's a shame. Are the characters/story up to snuff?

Kitsune Inferno

I don't disagree that the Phoenix <-> Garuda kit work a little too well together, but I'm having a lot of fun with Bahamut.

I think Phoenix/Garuda/Titan is likely the safe option that can handle most situations, but summons like Bahamut and Ramuh are more "hey, this is neat".

Making you change up your eikons from battle to battle wasn't part of their design philosophy. Though I wish there were more incentive to do situational builds (there's one enemy about 20% of the way through that forced me to change up my aerial attacks, but I haven't seen much of anything like that since), I think the idea was to make everything more or less viable.

I think there's variety there if you look for it, you just have to experiment. I unlocked a move for Phoenix that I wrote off early until I combined it with one of Garuda's moves around midgame and it became a cornerstone for my build. I thought that was an absurdly quick way to get enemies to Stagger, but then Bahamut comes along and now in combination with those moves, I can more or less stagger enemies three times as fast as I could before, but the tradeoff was some of the raw damage that comes with the Titan skills.

Greg

@Satsuki

It began with a smorgasbord of intrigue and most of it winds up being simplistic.

・Why did X make all these wildly insane and violent choices regarding their family? Were they being manipulated from the shadows? Did they have a compelling backstory? Were they actually an ancient Dominant hinted at in the story?

No. They er...'didn't like being made fun of'.

O....kay?

・What is Y's motivation for their major role in the story that leads to poor choices? One-note 'me sad cuz girlfriend killed'.

・Why did Z betray humanity? Cuz they miss Mommy? (Sephy-lite)

There is only one reason the game's story could be considered remotely complex: it dumps you in the middle of it.

That's all.

That's not a bad thing necessarily. It cuts out a lotta time and hopefully things ramp up from there.

But as soon as I memorized what each faction actually was:

One duchy
One republic
One 'kingdom'/'religion'
One empire
One kingdom
One neutral zone
One free-city

And had the basic idea of their leaders, the story (as dictated by character actions/motivations surrounding the MC) became almost laughably simple.

For all the pomp and circumstance regarding the detail poured into faction movements, after about 20hrs in it all just becomes 'we don't like them so we're doing this'

...kay? Not a bad thing but like, that's not exactly even within range of the kind of faction movements you'd see in GoT which this game clearly wishes it were.

It winds up being 'Game of Thrones for Kids' with a healthy dose of f-bombs.

Haven't beaten it yet. One stage to go for last boss. At least the villain's motivation remains interesting albeit largely conveyed via the psychobabble we've all come to expect from modern SE.

So yeah, no glowing recommendation for the story yet. Tons of nice little callbacksto lines from early in the game which is really professional of them, but wow, they wanted GoT but it's glaringly obvious why Sanderson or Martin can only write those stories after taking notes for ＹＥＡＲＳ.

Kitsune,

Precisely what you said about needing more reason to change the kit. I expected ＴＯＮＳ of that but...yeah...no reason to. I have an armory of accessories and have yet to unequip the exp, gl, ap boosts. Huh??

You're entirely correct. There is variety. Tons of it! But I have zero impetus to explore or toy with it because what I use not only works, but works well.

It reduces the non-stagger waves to:

Phoenix AoE->Gather->Titan Aoe->Garuda Swoop->Cleanup w/ Torgal

It's fast, powerful, efficient, and intuitive.

But man, if you throw an end-game Chimera at me and I can take it down w/o breaking a sweat....I dunno, maybe it's the 8000hrs of FF14 informing me of their mechs but it's just way too simplistic in terms of what's expected from the player. It's almost like, who were they making the game for? Was it intentionally dumbed down to accomodate straight-up ATB-based players? But like, how is that even possible because I imagine if you use even 1 of the cheat rings, the game basically plays itself.

Anyway, you are completely correct. I can see the layers of complexity and tweaking builds w/ accessories. But if you're not going to demand the player use those interesting tools....why bother?

The game just seems like an amalgamation of extremely vanilla compromises without committing to challenging gameplay we've come to expect from the series.

Kitsune Inferno

Can't say I've ever gotten much challenging gameplay out of the series myself if I'm being honest with myself. Even the best of the games have rather trivial combat systems when you break them down like that. You could make a similar argument for Final Fantasy V: it's entirely possible AND practical to beat the entire game using nothing but the Wind Crystal jobs. The occasional new weapon might tempt you to try a Dragoon or something, but most bosses can be taken out with Level 2 Black Magic pretty handily, Warriors can equip almost anything, and White Mages never go out of style, so why bother with the other 20 or something jobs?

I do think that FF16 shoots itself in the foot a bit with its equipment selection which is basically a whole lot of junk. There are the accessories that make different skills do increased damage but they're so pointless and so plentiful that they just clog your inventory, while there is literally no difference between weapons other than stats (why are you throwing three new weapons at me, craftsman? Two of them are literally pointless) and the one time I got a sword with different attack and stagger damage, there was no equal and opposite sword to make the choice interesting.

I still enjoy the combat, but I'm not as skilled a player as you seem to be (I struggle a bit with the dodge mechanics so I keep the Focus Ring on for safety and I just gave up entirely on Torgal mechanics for this playthrough). It would be fair to say that the game is easy and definitely balanced toward players who aren't good at action games (like me!) and I think it would be fair to have wanted the option of a more difficult experience out the gate instead of restricting it to new game plus.

That said, I'm not done with the story (only about 75% of the way through but most of the table's been cleared sans a couple of villains), so I can speak to that a little. The overarching story is okay, to a point, I will agree with Greg at most points that it's undercooked. By far the most intriguing plot point (Dion Lesage is the MVP of the entire game thus far nobody come for him) comes to a head around the 64% mark and immediately ends with the biggest one-two punch of "reveals" that suck the majority of the air (or heh, aether) out of the story.

I wouldn't say it's "not-very-good" but rather that it's "flawed but engaging". By standards of the series, I'd still rank it closer to the top despite its flaws, but not nearly as strong as FF6 or FF9, certainly not FF Tactics. But where it shines for me is with Clive, who is still in the running as my favorite protagonist in the series, and I personally feel really engaged by the supporting cast. I don't mean the other dominants the game marketed as major characters (which sans Clive, Cid, Dion, and maaaaybe Jill has been an utter letdown) but the supporting characters that run the hub. It can come across as filler at times when you want to get to the next Eikon fight, and there's an egregious stretch around the 70 percent mark where you URGENTLY HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE but the game throws a bunch of sidequests at you WHEN YOU HAVE SOMEWHERE YOU REALLY NEED TO BE RIGHT NOW. There's a good lull in the story right after this, why couldn't they pop then?

I'll weigh in on this aspect more when I finish the game and have some time to separate my thoughts, but there's a found family vibe that I resonate with to the hub and some of the surrounding villages. Like, there's a LOT that needs unpacking there considering the really boneheaded approach to diversity all things considered, but I resonate with the story a bit more strongly from an LGBTQIA+ perspective (to be clear--that's 100% my "interpretation" based on personal takeaways, does not seem to be writer-developer intended at all) as well as a sort of generational/family trauma story.

That latter read is precisely why 64% makes me so mad, but I'll dive deeper when I have the opportunity to digest the whole game and unpack the fallout from wasting the game's BEST antagonist.