Final Fantasy XVI

I would rate FF XVI as:

  • < 5/10

    Votes: 28 19.4%

  • 6/10

    Votes: 17 11.8%

  • 7/10

    Votes: 36 25.0%

  • 8/10

    Votes: 42 29.2%

  • 9/10

    Votes: 15 10.4%

  • 10/10

    Votes: 6 4.2%
  • Total voters
    144
cormack12

cormack12

Gold Member
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Playtime: approx 55 hours
Completion: Main quest and all sidequests

'Finally' finished this. I did what I usually do and started this game, then dropped it to return to but I'm trying to actually finish games I have now before earning the right to buy new ones :)

Graphics
At a distance look really good. I played in performance mode on the Pro, but it does have the issue with really soft textures. Not sure if this is just an engine thing but it was a little bit worse than the Rebirth demo. It just spoiled some of the scenes that went in close. However, could really get some great looking environmental shots too. I thoiught the lighting and shadows were off on the larger 1 v 1 enemies which was disappointing (e.g. behemoth). Could really do with a patch to better marry the artstyle to the sharpness it craves.

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Narrative
Some really good VA, and the story hooked me early. But it's definitely a case of a really strong opening, a really strong 3rd quarter but with slogs between. It took effort to return to a few times during those more boring sections. Like most games these days could have been made tighter and better by dropping ten hours. Side quests seem to ramp up as well, and what really annoyed me was before the actual end fight, you have a penultimate fight where you return to your base then to immediately launch an attack and the game driops 16 side quests on you!!! And what was more annoying after doing them, was that these were all the side quests that added so much depth and lore to the companions (both party and non party), which were interesting! But the fatigue was real at that point. Was really disappointing,.

As for the main questline, it's not too complex. Blight caused by crystals. Need to go and destory crystals, each one has a guardian/boss associated with it. Benedikta was the tutorial boss, I really liked her and Kupka dynamic and felt they got rid of it too soon, and dragged out the revenge plotline way too much. But the titan fight was pretty cool. Clive was a good main character and Joshua when he reappeared was a strong ally. I felt Jills character got overpowered considering how much power she was shown to have.

Absorbing the eikons was fun but I do feel some of those abilities were a bit naff. The peripheral characters were not strong except maybe Lubor and Gav.

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Gameplay/Combat
Was difficult to build up useful abilities at first, and I thought the price of mastering them to reassign cross eikon was too expensive. You only really get to play with it the last portion of the game which pushes you to NG+ which I don't think will be worth it personally. It was relatively straightforward, some of the enemies were a bit spongey which meant the game turned into basically sword combo with Torgal, watch cooldown for ability. Once you got the stagger mechanic down though it became more straightforward especially against the bigger enemies. I don't thionk you ever felt 'powerful' though unless you hit a double crit stagger which was disappointing. The only other time was when a lot of enemies were thrown at you slightly underlevelled and you AOE'd them but yeah maybe NG+ gives you more scope to mess around.






The Eikon battles were a good idea, but needed more spectacle and mechanics. They fell flat of something like God of War, but the Bahamut fight and Titan were highlights. I found Ultima just a chore though.

Overall
The game has some very good highs, and a few real lows. I think overall it's worth persisting with the lows as the highs do have good payoff. I'd like to see more refinement of this direction they're taking and some more polish, and reign in some of the more tedious parts. And for gods sake dont leave all the character related side quests until the last moment, and activate them during half time of the finale fight.

What did you all think?
 
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Probably the worst mainline Final Fantasy game of all time. Stuffed with concepts and ideas that are never properly utilised or glossed over in favour of moving onto the next thing.

It's just a DMC game that wants to be A Song of Ice & Fire but fails to understand the appeal of that series.
 
Great game. 8/10
Bad pacing for those that do all side quests on the first run. If you focus on story and main side quests, it's ok.
Awesome music, and graphics on Pro are definitely up a bit.

Good luck with "finishing games before buying another" :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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Extremely disappointing and a low point for the series and for SQEX generally. I gave it a 7.5/10, trying to be as objective as I could and give credit where it's deserved, but ultimately did not enjoy it.

Combat is one button and one combo, forever. That alone is unforgivable. Kong Skull Island has more moves than this, literally. No elemental weaknesses or strategy of any kind present other than break the bar, then spam your abilities. Dodges can feel a bit satisfying but that's really all you have. Enemies are damage sponge, uninteresting, not challenging or aggressive, and barely react to hits. There are a few bosses that were enjoyable; probably not the ones you're thinking. Equipment management and economy don't exist. I didn't change equipment the whole game, and I mean that literally. Even with just 1 attack button the whole game, you don't even get different weapon types. Even the different elements you have are all the same shit, which has probably never happened in a FF game ever.

Story was total shit for the most part. Just not well done. Pacing was some of the worst ever. I was actively skipping / speed reading as much dialogue as I could, and skipping side quests that seemed brain dead which was nearly all of them, and it still felt like there was about 35 extra hours packed on my playthrough that an editor could have just cut out. There's maybe a solid 16 hour action game here that could have been something if they gave the combat some real depth. Music was a letdown since none of it is live instruments as far as I can tell, and this series deserves to have the highest standards in music. Lamplighter's League has higher quality audio recording. Let that sink in. Level design is terrible and completely uninteresting flat geometry with next to no meaningful exploration.

And large parts of the game are just straight plagiarized, uninspired and unoriginal which is one of the worst sins a creative can commit. You have the chance to make a mainline Final Fantasy game and you're just wholesale lifting stuff from Game of Thrones, Dragon Ball Z left and right, even lifting direct shots from the opening of Two Towers and using it when Ifrit is fighting and looking nearly identical to the Balrog.

It got its score because nothing is broken, the overall package works fine, with pretty good production values and some occasional glimpses of fun on a few bosses with a few of the powers like Bahamut and Odin being fun to use.
 
solid action game, shit Final Fantasy: 7.4/10

If you want an actual action RPG that's more Final Fantasy, get Stranger of Paradise. (which I would give 8.2 / 10).
 
The boss battles are a 10, a visual spectacle, one of the only times this gen I've been wowed. The side missions was really boring but I thought the rest of the game was great. 8-9/10
 
big empty world with nothing but go here and kill this quests. which would be okay if the fighting system wasn't lame and sparse.

horrible QTE filled chip boss battles that run on for hours for the "CINEMATIC" interactive movie gameplay..

even more dumbing down of weapons and inventory than previous FF games.

Last "stage" was copy and paste BS. its like one day someone said okay we have to close this up in a week ..do what you can.

all in all the absolute worst FF ever made and big steaming pile of .....

shit-jeff-goldblum.gif
 
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I played through it and finished it last year. There was a lot of spectacle but ultimately it was a very forgettable FF game. Shame it came out so close to FF7 Rebirth
 
Only played the demo.

It has polish. Character movement, combat etc feels good.

But by the god its boring as hell. No interest in subjecting myself to it. So many cutscenes, cutscenes disguised as boss fights, conversations that go on for too long etc.

Only 1-2 legit battles in 2-3 hrs, those too didn't feel amazing as it could have been.
 
I strongly suspect this game started as some DMC-style FF spinoff title that would've consisted of just the main story levels + boss battles. Then they decided to rework it into a mainline game so they pumped it full of FF XIV A Realm Reborn slop.

5/10 for me, probably the most bored I've ever been with a mainline FF game. I thought it was a failure as an action game and as a JRPG

Enemies DONT FIGHT BACK. They just sit there like training dummies while you cycle through your moves off cooldown slowly chipping away at their health, it's so boring most of the time. I was all for the switch to action combat but FFS not like this.

The story was OK. But for every riveting Game of Thrones inspired dramatic scene, there are 10 others where they all stand there like bored mannequins dumping useless info on you.



Most of the game has that "A Realm Reborn" structure where it's like:

- arrive at the next outpost

- talk to the guy with the quest marker on his head, who yaps about some retarded local problem you don't care about

- quest marker appears on 3 other NPCs, talk to each of them to get some clue

- AH HA! It was some bandits in that cave just outside of town!

- go kill bandits and turn in the quest

- get rewarded with some crafting material you already have 1000 of and nothing to use it on because the crafting system is COMPLETELY POINTLESS

- new quest marker appears on another NPC's head….



Fuck that. I finally dropped it around the 70% mark and it'll remain as the only mainline FF game I haven't finished.
 
I like it, much, the artstyle kept me hooked until all content done. and would play again someday, knowing that there is good NG+ and new summon for NG+.
 
10/10. My second favourite in the series just behind XV.

Please, don't hate on me. It's just my personal opinion.
 
I also finally finished the game, a few weeks ago.

I'll keep this short: The first 2 hours of the game are THE highlight of the game, for me. Everything after that is a notable detraction from what could've been a great experience. Lots of potential wasted on overwhelmingly lackluster fluff.

7/10
 
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It's a 7/10 at best. It has good graphics, fairly interesting story, and awesome music. The gameplay and pacing is all over the place though. Was having a good time by the middle, but just wanted it to end by the time I neared the finish line. Remake and Rebirth are both much better.
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
I thought it was a failure as an action game and as a JRPG
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Pretty much this. It half-asses the action game part and it half-asses the RPG part, so you get a simplistic and braindead take on the DMC formula, but also an "RPG" system without any real depth or flexibility. It's like they changed their minds halfway through development and either turned an RPG into an action game or the other way around.
 
Gaiff said:
10/10 soundtrack
10/10 visuals
10/10 setpieces
8/10 voice acting
2/10 story
3/10 side quests
4/10 gameplay

6/10 overall
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C'mon the story is Final Fantasy levels of cringe from start to end, If this is a 2/10 almost every other FF game must be below 5 in your opinion.
 
Final Fantasy was my favorite series, so this one is 4/10 max. Very boring game, uninteresting story, bad progression system, spunge enemies, lame side quests, characters that get killed of early for dramatic effect, ending was really lame.
It had pretty graphics, good voice acting and best of all it had a great demo😆
 
What a nice read this was. Bravo. It is rare for me to find nuanced opinions like yours in this forum.

I largely agree with you. But despite its flaws, I enjoyed this game very much. It's been a while since I played it though, but in retrospect I give it an 8/10. I will replay it for the platinum after I've finished Death Stranding 2.
 
Another blunder from square, a good first part but then the game went into shit between pace and story.

Not good enough as a jrpg (like at all) not good enough for an action game because there was no challenge.



6\10 because some combat and boss fights were fun in the end, some of the music was great and some of the graphic were nice for a japanese developer.
 
I am very critical of this game despite enjoying my time with it. The story falls apart mid way through and the time skips are a really lazy way to move the story along. My favorite side character dies.

As you unlock more powers the game reveals itself to be an extremely shallow action game. All you really have to do is dodge and wait for cooldowns on abilities and just spam them.

Some good spectacle here and set pieces, the early parts of the game are visually stunning, but starts to fall off mid way through. The side quests are mostly trash.

Honestly though, I don't regret playing it, but I will likely never play through it again or get the dlc. One and done type of game imo.

7/10 from me and that's being generous.
 
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Definitely the most enjoyable FF since 12, although not quite as good as some of the best (6 -> 10). The first half was great, second half was disappointing. Left feeling like a 7.5/10.

After playing Expedition 33 though, which blew me away, I didn't realize how low I let my standards get. My score for FFXVI retroactively changed to a 6/10.
 
One of the best 6/10 I ever played. It's above average but doesn't do anything great and is utterly unmemorable.

The story is a big pile of wordy nothing, they wanted to do the whole GoT thing but couldn't stick the landing. It's an aimless game with very mediocre but flashy combat.
 
7/10 from me.
Amazing start - went dead in the middle - finished strong. Getting through the middle part was a challenge but im glad i did. Loved the combat
 
Gaiff said:
Pretty much this. It half-asses the action game part and it half-asses the RPG part, so you get a simplistic and braindead take on the DMC formula, but also an "RPG" system without any real depth or flexibility. It's like they changed their minds halfway through development and either turned an RPG into an action game or the other way around.
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It's frustrating because it could've been really cool if they planned it better and put more thought into it.

I want choice of party composition/ways to customize party member behavior, meaningful gear that isn't just a tiny attack/defense boost from the previous one, different weapon types, interesting passives, interesting things to craft, etc. I want to see nerds on FF message boards arguing over their favorite character builds and party members. I want to see people weeks after release still figuring out interesting skill synergies and wacky broken things to try out.

All the RPG elements are so shallow and half baked. Like they just wanted to tick off some boxes in order to justify calling it Final Fantasy XVI and charging $70 for it.
 
People defending because of gameplay….what gameplay? You mean that rotation shit you see in MMOs? Go play some real single player RPGs.

The game goes for the 'combat' but doesn't get that right, either. It misses out on the story, it misses out on the NPCs, it misses out on gameplay.

Even the visuals run like shit unless you have a high end PC.

They fucked this up and they fucked up XIV with that AWFUL Dawntrail expansion.

These guys started well with FF XIV 2.0 and I was there for it but now they're completely different. They made their cash and got cocky. Fuck these guys I'm not buying the next FF XIV expansion or XVII unless I see some indications that they learned their fuckin' lesson.
 
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I just want to point out, that a major plot point in this game is the main antagonists' entire goal for like 6 years is hurting the protagonist's feelings. Then he fails one time and gives up on that in favour of just gaslighting him that he did hurt his feelings instead.
 
Worst FF. Mediocre action game.

Story, setting and VA really hooked me at first.
Then it all quickly fall flat except for VA.

Combat becomes quickly dull and repetitive.
Eikons battle are visually impressive but nothing more than glorified soulless QTE.
No real RPG mechanics which for a Final Fantasy titles baffles me.

Game looks good but that's not a factor in my games' enjoyment.

I am nice guy so I give it a 6.
 
Thanks OP for posting your thoughts on FF16 with actual depth and reasoning. Too often on Gaf people bash the shit out of the game without explaining anything - ie "not my Final Fantasy" or "game sucks". It's so hard to figure out who is bashing a game just to bash it, or if they legitimately even played it at all. To me, it's a 7.5-8. As a huge lifelong Final Fantasy fan, I was disappointed with the pacing in much of the middle game, I agree they could have hacked 10 or so hours off the game. The story was phenomenal to me, and I'm glad they decided to go dark with this one. While a lot of people want turn-based back, I don't, it's tiring. I think with some polish and additions from other battle systems (ff7 remake, and 13), the battle system could be incredible, but as it stands it's mediocre to me. Once you figure out how the mechanics work, it's way too easy. Like I said, 7.5-8 overall for me, and I'm hoping it did enough for Square Enix to move forward with 17.
 
It's like a 6.5/10.
+ The visuals during cutscenes are fantastic and the set pieces were some of the coolest since GOW3
+ The music is good but not great IMO. Some highlight tracks but a lot of it is a bit generic (though it fits well)
+ The voice acting was solid and the dialogue was an improvement over previous games, first mainline FF that's not pure cringe when you play with English voice acting IMO.
+ The active lore feature was really well done, I hope we see it in more games moving forward

- The actual plot starts really interesting but starts to fall apart after you meet up with Joshua
- The in game visuals are nice but not enough to justify how poorly it runs on base Ps5
- The combat is somewhat fun at first but it's way too simplistic and they force you to play on easy mode during your first playthrough.
- The "RPG" part of the game: The world design, quest design, gear and crafting, character building, dungeon design, etc is straight up garbage. Like proper 4/10 territory.


protonion said:
They made a very expensive DMC clone and just named it FF16 for some reason.

The most soulless game ever. I finished it and cannot recall a single thing.
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It's not a good DMC clone though.
A proper DMC clone would have deeper combat with way more combos. It would also have at least like 3-4 different weapons, all with their own unique movesets, combos and unlockable skills. Not to mention actual difficulty modes.
 
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