Submitted 1 month ago by szczuroarturo@programming.dev to games@lemmy.world
So i kinda want to buy FFXVI but looking through the opinions and reviews it stands somewhere between the worst final fantasy game ever made and second coming of jesus wit plot ranging from infantile dark fantasy to great story with deep engaging dark themes.
WHICH IS IT?
Okay, so I played through final fantasy 16 on PS5, and well… Let’s just say I’m not in any hurry to play through it again.
Once you’ve figured out how the combat works, there’s really no additional depth to it. The summon fights look spectacular but aren’t all that engaging. Lots of spectical, The game is absolutely gorgeous, but it’s so so shallow in gameplay. The side quests are extremely boring. The main story is ok too. They really tried to be a lot more serious like game of thrones, but still kept it like right below that mature line, so it felt like a half measure to me.
There is absolutely no depth to the weapons or equipment outside of ‘number go up’. There aren’t any elemental weaknesses in you or the enemies, so The only challenge comes from the actual fighting technique, perfect blocks perfect parries, and chaining together different summon powers. If you like the combat, you’ll enjoy doing the monster hunts, but there aren’t many hunts compared to other ff games.
Overall, the story is decent, if a little lacking in focus. I’d probably say it’s worth picking up on sale, but it is not really worth the current price tag at all. It really is a shell of a final fantasy game compared to the past games. It’s a great looking action game, but it’s shallow.
This is just my opinion, please if anyone reading this loves FFXVI don’t take it personally!
IMO: The story is ass, the visuals are spectacular (especially the Eikon fights), the soundtrack is amazing, and the gameplay is a weird combo of FFXIV and DMC5. If you’re not opposed to some game spoilers, I would really recommend watching a stream of the beginning of the game just to see what you’re getting into.
If you’ve played other mainline Final Fantasy, it’s very different gameplay-wise. Your party is AI controlled, and you only control the main character of the section (usually Clive). This really turned me off from the game tbh. The mainline story can really drag too, and the sidequests vary in quality so much I genuinely wondered if they had several different teams working on them and not communicating. The only ones I really liked were the hunts, because I think that’s the only time you as a player actually have to think about your moveset and how to tackle a boss.
If you can get it on sale, and you’re willing to sit through like…15h of intro to actually get to the main parts of the game, go for it. If you want something a bit shorter, but shows what modern Final Fantasy games seem to going towards, maybe try Final Fantasy 7 Remake. If you want a cleaner version of Clive’s gameplay, I recommend the Devil May Cry series, especially 5.
Geezus the story isn’t ass. I know you prefaced with it just being your opinion, but with a charged comment like that’s it’s hard not to want to push back.
That’s fine, you can disagree. But as someone who 100% the game (and somehow kept my sanity), I really do think anything that is outside of the Clive/Joshua/Rosfiels story is pretty weak, and that is like…35% of the game total.
I don’t want to get into spoilers, but I think all the Eikons outside of Dion are severely underutilized, and could have been much more impactful in the story. The whole Ultima payoff is also really not very well thought out with how it’s explained. That’s why I genuinely think the writers were segmented into different teams and were not communicating with each other.
The Rosfield-centred plot is genuinely great though, I really wish they had stuck mainly to that.
I asked my brother this who’s a huge fina fantasy fan and he says it’s the best story wise since 10. 13 is just boring, 15 is so convoluted and bloated. 12 is pretty good but the retread in Ivaice always felt like a cop out. 16 is the most consice FF story wise in years.
Disclaimer: I haven’t played it yet, but I have talked to people who have liked it and who have hated it.
The games is very good, but it’s not a typical Final Fantasy game. They have removed, or reduced the RPG elements, and made it a very good action game with good narrative. So, if you go in expecting an RPG like previous Final Fantasy games you won’t like it. If you just go in expecting a good action / adventure game with some RPG elements, you’ll probably end up liking it
I think this is where most of the divisive opinions come from. It’s a great game, but it’s really not a final fantasy RPG, so many people aren’t getting what they expected. Personally, I found it to be a enjoyable surprise.
I feel like the themes of slavery were so poorly handled that it shouldn’t have even been a plot point. The game would’ve been the same without them or with them; as they didn’t handle it with much nuance and doubtfully had the writing chops to do so. While the Boss Battles with summons are spectacles, they can get really dull the more you fight bosses. I would say it’s a mix of infantile oppressive fantasy to occasional brilliant scenes that made me question why this game was overall so-so. Those strong moments of writing never stuck around long enough to make a greater impact; it made me feel like two people were responsible for the writing of this game, and the worse writer won more often.
As someone who adores the thirteen trilogy so much that I play through all three games several times a year and model my wardrobe and aesthetic off of it, I can respect there would be people that absolutely hate the game, but it hurts a bit inside.
Hmm…I just think the direction they took with Lightning and the other characters wasn’t ideal and the moment to moment gameplay was not the best; I said nothing about outright hate for the game. Furthermore, I only feel disdain for real things that could actually cause harm to the world.
GREAT. I played much of it on PS5, and now that it’s out on PC I can play it with staggeringly better performance (granted, with a 4080 and 5800x3d).
Story is dark as shit, feels pretty Game of Thrones inspired in some ways. Compelling, though, and plenty of good and inspiring stuff to balance out the doom and gloom.
Combat is insanely fun. Graphics are stunning. Music is wonderful. Landscapes are full of cool high fantasy stuff. And the chocobos are quite handsome…
I loved ff16, some people don’t like the batte system, but I found it to be really fast paced, and made me feel like I was a badass. The story us pretty good, in my opinion.
On the flip side, my friend played it and said it was fun, but the story was predictable.
It reminds me in a lot of ways of FFXIV. It was made by a lot of the same people so that’s no surprise. It’s fairly dark but it’s a good story. The expansions are way too short - I had hoped they’d add more depth to some of the back story.
I enjoyed the game a lot in spite of its shortcomings. It doesn’t have as much “extra stuff” to do as many other final fantasies but the core game is solid.
I ended up picking up the PC version to play through again. The PS5 version is held back a lot by the platform.
Treat it objectively and ignore that it’s a Final Fantasy game.
I loved it. Everything from the story to the music to the combat. I bought and played through both DLCs as well. For me, it is the perfect mix of a great movie and great video game.
Really enjoying it so far.
I was initially saddened to hear it was going to follow in the steps of 15 and be an action based rpg, and I thought 15 was brain dead “warp strike simulator” with horrible story pacing and poor characters (until last 5% of the game).
This game though has simple but effective action combat with enough variety to be fun and the characters and pacing are a joy.
I still wish we could get some FF games like 7 or 9 where there is depth to equipment, magic and turn based combat, but jrpgs have been iterating away from complex battle systems and sell well so can’t see them going back.
I still think FF7 was the pinnacle as material mixing and matching with equipment was really simple and super fun.
Anyway rnat over, FF16 is good, recommend it.
Overall I enjoyed it, but I’d say it’s probably a mid-tier FF if you we are taking them all as a whole. So, to me, it’s a solid RPG and a solid game, but it doesn’t redefine anything, necessarily.
But I definitely enjoyed it.
I had seen some complaints that you “only get one sword! It’s dumb!” And I don’t know where that came from: you craft lots of swords. Maybe they are upset you only use a sword as your primary melee weapon? To which I might point out Cloud, Squall, Tidus, Lightning, most FF protagonists in games without job systems. It’s a sword plus magic like most FF games.
Maybe the complaint is that you don’t get to use other characters since they mostly just do their own thing. OK, sure. But also, that’s the game. If they’d have just lifted the FF7 combat people would bitch about that, too. It’s like a no-win situation.
Gameplay: watered-dowm DMC + watered-down FFXIV. You’ll be spamming a base combo and using “rotations” as they pop. It can be a little more.complicated than that but even normal raid tiers in FFXIV require more thought than any fight in FFXVI
Story: couldn’t tell ya, gameplay was so shit I sincerely regretted buying the game physically, as I was too lazy to return to the store to return it in time
I loved it. The story is engaging and EXTREMELY well told.
The combat starts barebones and gets more engaging as you unlock more abilities. It stays simplistic enough that you can mix and match to your style, but there are enough different loadouts for you to try different play styles. With ability cool downs, it kind of feels like the ATB system merged into an action game at times.
Side content isn’t great and it’s pretty easy. Although it’s worth it for the narrative additions to the story.
DLC wasn’t great. The first one was a missed opportunity for some arena type fights and new dynamic elements. It ends up being uneventful.
The second DLC is better, but they end up making parts of it WAY to hard.
I fucking hate roman numerals; the whole time I thought y’all were talking about ff14, not ff16
Do not worry brother. Carthage will remember your sacrifice in posting this take.
Four is one before five, or IV
Carnelian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I genuinely hate it lol, as do all of my friends IRL.
We’re all huge into 14, which was produced by the same team. I mention it because there’s a ton of overlap with 14. The cinematography in the cutscenes and even the emotes the characters use feel lifted straight from the older game. The structure of the combat segments is also uncannily similar, they feel a lot like 14 dungeons. So, my group generally felt like the game got stale really quickly, which colored our impression as a whole.
The moment-to-moment gameplay also feels like a hyper simplified version of the “rotation” system in 14. You have a basic filler combo, and larger more powerful moves that can only be used again after a long cooldown timer. I found it to be under-stimulating, even after unlocking a few more things.
The story was awesome in the segments covered by the free trial, but then everything after that just kind of slipped off my brain. More than anything, I remember side quests in particular were really boring to the point where it felt like a joke.
We were really hyped and really really wanted to like the game when we first heard about it, and we were super hyped after playing the demo, but in the end it just felt like a really unpleasant slog to actually play.
At the same time however I can totally see why people do really enjoy the game. I think it’s a divisive release, and often the people who love/hate it will cite the exact same things but paint them in a different light. I ultimately wouldn’t not recommend the game, I think $50 is a really fair price for it too for what you’re getting
SoJB@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Yea it’s kinda ass.
A 3070FE with no CPU bottleneck should not chug this game at 40fps on low settings with “ultra performance” DLSS at 3440x1440. Do better, devs.
Besides that, your complaints are 100% on point. As someone who had 2700 hours in FF14 before quitting, it’s clear they overlocked the engine to its limits and simply patched together whatever they could.
I called it as soon as they gave the FF16 project to Yoshi-P. He did the best he could with the tools he was given, and the only tool he knows is FF14.
We expect this man to produce a stellar mainline FF game while actively being the producer of the best MMO on the market while trying to finish multiple industry-leading expansions?
Square Enix is yet another example of corporate suicide by deliberate mismanagement.
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 month ago
FF14 has sort of an unwritten rule, that you should ignore all side quests that are represented with the plain gold circle. They’re not even worth the time for XP and rarely have anything interesting happen in them. It’d be interesting if the same rule applies for FF16.
GladiusB@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What do you do in FFXIV? Like I can’t look at a stand alone and expect the same. I even liked SOME of Strangers of Paradise just because of the job skill tree. It was what they embarked on back in ARR and it never happened.
But the demo for XVI and the crossover event was decent. I loved the Ifrit fight and the cave flight part. I am not sure about it though. If I could have done PC as the demo I would have bought it. But waiting 6 months is ass.
Carnelian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Sorry, I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. The games being too similar is an issue, not something I wanted
cyd@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s wild how CBU3 dumped FF14 design straight into FF16 and decided it was good enough. MMO gameplay makes a lot of design compromises to accommodate for the multiplayer shared-state world, network latency, etc. None of which make sense for a single player offline experience.