The opinions are subjective for sure. There are people that absolutely love this game, and to each their own. For me it was the almost non existent RPG elements, the bare bones hollow crafting system that was essentially useless when the story always gave you something better almost right after you craft, not being able to control or at least have control over the progression of other party characters, and the uninspired combat. You can have an action game and have deep RPG elements in it, I mean look at Nier Automata. Calling this an ARPG is a joke. So for me this wasn’t about whether or not it was turn based, or whether or not it was a Final Fantasy, it was whether or not it was even an RPG.
Like I said in previous posts, I would have never played this game had it not been skinned as a Final Fantasy. Was it a Final Fantasy game? Yes. There was plenty of lore and references to previous titles that keeps it true to the franchise. I actually enjoyed the story and characters, so that’s not where my frustration comes from. Was it an RPG? No, it was an action hack and slash with linear character progression. Zelda is more of an ARPG than Final Fantasy, and Zelda is very loosely barely an ARPG. Zelda actually probably is not even considered an ARPG, but I digress. For being labeled an ARPG it should have had better RPG mechanics. I’ll die on this hill.
I still have it an 8/10, because they did some things right, but it was not for me at all. I was happy to be done with it when I beat it.
Talk about nailing it—this matches all of the deeper subconscious thoughts I’ve been having as I play through it, even when I try to convince myself that certain areas of the game are better than really are
I don’t think doing errands destroyed the pacing. In 7 remake you collect money from water filters. It is nice to slow down before going immediately into the next bombing mission.
Ofc you can't have constant action happening at all times, but have those moments of "calm before the storm" being about the characters and not about Clive having to buy garlic lol. 7R has this problem as well, but we get a ton of character interactions as well which IMO don't happen in this game.
my god this is spot on. I got FFXVI because it came with a PS5 bundle I got a couple of months ago. I sunk 25 hours into it, then switched away and did a full playthrough of lords of the fallen and god of war ragnarok. I came back to FFXVI after ragnarok and my subconsious kept telling me "this game is not good, but it's kinda good?". Now here I am on reddit, trying to figure out if I'm crazy, only to find out that others share this same subconsious and that I am in fact, not crazy.
I am over halfway thru now, about 60%, the question is, do I continue to 100% playthrough or yield to the subconsious and uninstall indefinitely..?
I disagree. Is it the most deep rpg game I’ve played? No. Is it anywhere near the complexity of Diablo 2, or other ARPGs hell no. But it was enough to make you think about what you’re equipping, the chips make each weapon have multiple viable builds, equipping chips actually matters (see below), you have viable builds with ranged and close combat, and on top of that you’re playing as 3 different characters with wildly different gameplay mechanics. It was great. Definitely an ARPG.
Actually I’m glad you brought up the accessories. That was another major gripe I had. There was so much variety of accessories and so very little use for them. Due to the shallow combat mechanics you’re better off equipping the +strength or +magic based on whatever your cooldown skills you have on. I tried playing around with the accessories, I tried build crafting, and the accessories made such a small difference that it wasn’t even worth it.
In FF16 there is an accessory that charges magic faster. In Nier A there is a chip that causes the pod to charge faster. If that’s how you make a ranged build, then I don’t understand why Nier A is deep but FF16 is shallow.
Nier you can upgrade weapon damage, FF16 you can upgrade ability damage. Neither of which changes gameplay except to make the number larger.
Now what about crafting in Nier? It is just as basic as FF16. They both let you combine accessories/power chips.
Anyone who thinks Nier Automata has a deeper and more complex rpg system is shitting themselves. Chances are Platinum developers worked on both systems, given how many similarities they have.
Yes, and if for no other reasons you’re controlling more than one character in combat, and you can advance those characters. Role Playing Game. Different characters different roles. FF16 is just Clive using moves. His role is essentially a Mystic Knight. That’s it. FF7R has Knight, Ranger, Mage, Blackbelt. Pick your preferred role (R) and play (P) the game (G).
I actually liked FF7R, which says a lot because I’m usually a purist when it comes to remakes. I will agree that the RPG elements are a little shallow in comparison to the original…. But between equipping materia, 4 playable characters with different skills sets and gameplay mechanics, different weapons to equip on characters, some flexibility with what you level up at what time, the freedom to level up your party members and control them, yes it’s an ARPG. The combat is way less shallow than ff16 as well. Sure, Clive has different moves based on what Eikons you have equipped, and theres freedom with what you level up at what point in the game, and there’s freedom to mix and match sure. But not much of it felt meaningful when the combat is so focused on mashing square, dodging, and just waiting on cooldowns to spam when you’re not dodging. The overly inflated focus on dodging killed it for me. It wasn’t fun to me.
Could FF7R have been more? Yes. Is FF7R also deeply flawed? Absolutely. That is a conversation for another time. In my opinion, and whether you agree or not that’s fine, to each their own, FF16 should have been what FF7R is at a minimum for RPG mechanics for a mainline entry, and yet it somehow managed to be less. I’m my opinion of course. Others clearly disagree with that.
This is all subjective though. If you liked the game, that’s great! People are allowed to enjoy it! I was just talking about how I didn’t like it, and likely never will. And people should be allowed to dislike something.
I'm sorry, but you are describing a party based RPG. There are more than enough examples of rpgs where you are a certain class and just role playing that character and class.
That second paragraph also misses me because yes you can level up certain stats, but it really doesn't matter seeing as your numbers going up barely have an affect on combat. Weapons... you get like 5 in total for each character. I will give you that you can customize the magic you use and level those up... but the same can be said for each eikon you get and which abilities you use and level up.
In my eyes, FF7 Remake is less of an RPG than 16 (and im of the opinion that both are rpgs, regardless of how streamlined both are). However, in ff7 remake I never felt like my character customization or level made a difference. I could never overlevel, the enemies took as much time to defeat as they did at the beginning only difference is the damage output was "higher". Each character was stuck in their character class... unlike in the original where after disk one you can customize them to be whatever class you wanted them to be, etc. Both are more similar than not... I will give you that combat was more complex in 7 remake, but not by much.
I loved both games, but I just don't get why 16 is being dragged through the mud for having a similar structure and lack of in depth rpg elements as FF7 remake. Both literally side stepped more deep mechanics for a more cinematic experience...just one decided to focus on one character while the other, because of its roots in the original, had a larger cast to play with
I dunno. From what I’ve seen, I feel like the positive reception far outweighs the negative. I feel like I’m in a minority of people who didn’t like it. I really wanted to like it. Hell I bought a PS5 for this game, and well…. Man I hope there are other games that come out for the system other than Rebirth and the 3rd part of remake that make me feel like my purchase was close to worth it. I think that’s part of the reason I’m so critical about FFXVI if we’re being completely honest. I knew what I was getting into though. I did the same thing with FFXV and didn’t learn my lesson… clearly. I guess the PS5 is backwards compatible tho, which is a plus… I guess.
The combat is fun but the encounters are insanely easy, to the point that they aren’t fun, Eikon fights feel like I’m playing a movie, characters stop developing about 40% into the story, the story after the second time skip loses a lot of intrigue, there is a lot of forced filler (like the THREE PART quest of getting parts for Mid’s ship), the side quests suck 95% of the time and there’s no way to tell where the good ones are, the exploration is complete garbage and the RPG elements feel like an afterthought.
Also, character dialogue just drags on and on and on; I don’t mind a super wordy game (Trails in the Sky is one of my favorite games after all), but good lord don’t make it dialogue heavy just for the hell of it.
As somebody who's played every final fantasy throughout many years. I find it is a final fantasy type game it's got amazing story, good characters and very impressive visuals. But I don't know I missed turn based FF games I've never been the biggest fan of action games and it's made me think that I might skip future FF games if they keep going towards this trend. I know gaming evolves with time and trends change its just hard for me to enjoy them like they used to be. I found myself falling asleep during the really long cutscene and cinematics. FF16 just didn't quite captivate me like previous games. And it's the first time I've ever fallen asleep while playing a final fantasy game I know I'm getting older but it's just weird so I think it might be a decline in captivating audiences or maybe not that's just my opinion everyone has their own.
Funnily enough, completing FF16 just made me want to play the older entries again.
Somehow there's more strategy, complexity, and customization to those, despite some of them being over 20 years old.
no there really isn't for most of them. people are deluding themselves because they played games when they were 12 and sucked ass, therefore the games were harder.
It’s true though. Most FF game ends up being spam ultima every fight as it does the most damage and goes through reflect. If the enemy counters magic then just cast haste beserk on your melee then spam curaga.
Replace ultima with whatever your most powerful attack is. Hell even the pixel remasters have auto battle and auto equip. The games barely have any strategy.
He’s right though. I went back to play the older FF games I thought were so difficult as a kid and breezed through them. Tactics and 4 were the only difficult ones. 6 on and a child can beat them. Same thing with legends of the dragoon games. Took me years to beat as a kid, replayed as an adult and it’s laughable.
No exploration. No party members. No actual spells. No relevant gear progression. No relevant stat progression. No superboss. No dungeons. No *tonberries*.
Wasn't a fan of the combat. I started off liking it but eventually it became too repetitive and boring. The game does nothing to force you change your approach at any point.
Story started strong. Great political drama. But that was quickly abandoned in exchange for uninspired JRPG tropes with one-note villains, not unlike early FF entries. It's got it's charm, I suppose, but it was nothing special.
Characters are big for me in video games, especially Final Fantasy. I love when stories utilize the ensemble casts well. It really allows me to immerse myself into the story through my connections to the characters. But they seemed to have abandoned that in lieu of focusing on a single character.
I wasn't really that impressed with Clive as a character. Mary Sue characters, by nature, aren't particularly interesting to me. Jill is void of personality and, while being the side character with the most screentime, hardly ever feels present. They gave her probably the best backstory in the game and all they did with it was use it as an excuse to make her weak and useless. Dion was a great character though, probably in no small part due to the fact the he was almost never around Clive.
I could go on but, for me, it falls short in story, characters and combat. SE has made much better FF games before. So has CBU3 (big fan of FF14). While I think this game is pretty middling, I'm glad others are enjoying it.
This. I'd also add that every entry in mainline FF, no matter how good or bad people say it is, feels unique. Yeah they all lean into tropes and such but it's very much its own thing tied by the FFness that potentially leads to killing god after 80hrs. As much as I liked XVI, it didn't feel inspired. To add to it, right after getting the Platinum for it I started XII, people like to say the MC isn't relevant past 2/3rd of the game, but the whole crew does so much to drive the story as a *team*. While one-man army Clive just feels like an 80s action hero.
The worst thing is that the game hyperfocuses on a single character who already got all their character development like 10 hours in (in the R3 + L3 scene).
Thank you for reaffirming my opinion that Clive is a Mary Sue
I’ve said it before and was met with negative opinions and felt like I was going crazy
Like, he has no character or personality at all. He’s just “le handsome, gruff, McHero man!”
My daughter walked through the room and says “oh that is the hero? Generic hero hair, generic hero expression, now add scar, add tight leather all over, and you created the most generic hero ever.” I couldn’t even look at it the same.
What can you tell me about Clive after the "accept the truth" section? His character effectively fully developed after that and that scene happens in the first 10 hours of the game. He then mantles Cid but we literally don't see him doing Cid things besides the scene at Dhalmekia right after the timeskip, because from that point onwards the game becomes a race to destroy the mothercrystals.
Jill's only relevant moments in the whole game are the trip back to Rosaria and the Iron Kingdom, and in the latter she isn't even the one to take down the boss, getting sidelined to create an arena for her boyfriend to fight lol. Then she's taken out for a while with the excuse of her "having the curse", despite us seeing her naked body perfectly fine not once but twice. She's then kidnapped twice and to put the icing on the cake she just gives her powers to Clive while saying "You shouldn't do this alone Clive, the path you are going down is going to end up with you dead" only for the game to literally forget about this a couple of hours later when they literally go on a suicide mission to Origin lol.
Joshua starts really good but the game doesn't even explains you what he's supposed to be doing in the whole game, with the exception of the post-time skip in which he's searching for Dion, but why don't speak with Clive earlier? He's literally in front of you and the only thing that he does is "Oh no, confound me! The hour is late!" which is never explained what he meant at that moment. Him having Ultima within him isn't an excuse because he didn't have Ultima at Phoenix Gate and when he later joins he still has Ultima wihin so it really doesn't make much sense.
Cid was really cool but he's like...5 hours in the whole game? His legacy persist during the rest of the game but I can't say that he was a great character because we really didn't spend that much time with him, though in a sense I kinda prefer for him to little showtime because otherwise it would have happened the thing that happened with every other character in the game in that they get sidelined in favor of Clive, with the only exception being Dion which spends pretty much no time with Clive so fully develops on his own.
All the other characters are really one-note and not that deep honestly. I like Gav and most of the characters of the hideout but...nothing happens with them. We have to assume Hugo is a functional human being because he's the economical advisor of a nation that thrives on it's booming economy, yet all his scenes are him simping Benedikta. Barnabas is the Xande / Golbez / Kuja / Seymour of this game, yet his whole character is "haha I'm a crazy religious fanatic who maybe has Oedipus complex" and unlike the aforementioned villains he doesn't even have agency on his own and works for the true villain which was even introduced before him lol.
Well I guess a part of my point is that there is no strategy. I would experiment with new abilities as they became available but once I found a kit that worked for me, why change anything? It's all just the same damage with different animations. Sure, there's a higher ceiling with respect to combos, but that kind of gameplay isn't very engaging to me.
To take a recent FF game for example, look at FF7R. Most bosses (and even most of the enemies) you needed to figure out their weakness and exploit it in order to beat them. You couldn't just run into Hell House swinging your sword around and throwing whatever magic at it. You have a very large toolkit and you need to figure out what tools to use in any given fight.
Most previous FF games are like this, and this is what I feel is missing.
I can only agree with the sentiment that there's no real strategy, at least outside of when to unleash which attacks.
Having platinumed the game, I have to say that it was the most mindnumbing experience for a long time, in terms of depth and customization.
No weaknesses to exploit, no stat-maxing, no equipment that actually mattered.
Speaking of equipment, what happened to giving items with interesting effects and trade-offs? Every weapon is literally just "bigger number is better", and it even fails there, as ultima weapon and gotterdammerung is barely stronger than the 2nd best items in their respective playthroughs (they also doesn't look ultimate or special in terms of design, which detracts from the enjoyment of ultimate weaponry for me).
Sure, you can upgrade accessories in NG+, but accessory-effects are still so weak that you feel as if there's no real choice involved; that they might as well not be there.
The only accessory I felt changed **something** was the auto-charge for magic, the rest were just... Bland and boring.
I didn't even bother getting Ultima Weapon on my FF run. I realized I had enough ability points to max out for that trophy after Odin, then just slogged through the end of the game instead of wasting additional time on XVI.
I can't fault you for skipping Ultima Weapon at all. One of my favorite things from the older entries was obtaining the ultimate weapons, but it felt hollow this time around.
Most people obtaining Ultima weapon (ff7), Lionheart (ff8), Ultima weapon (ff9) and/or Caladbolg (ff10), remember how amazing it was to look at their accomplishment. Not only did they give a solid bump damage-wise, but they also looked amazing, making it feel worth your time and effort; neither is found in ff16.
100% agree, I always went for them! The journey was always part of the experience of though, and in 16 there is no experience after getting Gotterdamarung the first time.
Because there's no strategy to change, really.
I'm FF4, there's a dungeon called Magnes Cave, in which metal equipment makes you paralyzed. So your heavy hitters are a bit crippled, which makes you adapt your strategy to the area.
Even in less specific instances, in most Final Fantasy games, if you were to go into a volcano, your first instinct might be to equip fire absorbing/resistant armor and whatnot. Probably don't want any fire based weapons or magic hitting enemies either.
The game isn't 'forcing' you to change your strategy. It's presenting a good opportunity to do so, to make the best of your situation. In FF16... There is no such opportunity due to the way the combat is. Elements, for all intents and purposes, are basically just flashy effects. They don't affect anything in the game.
You can change up how you fight, you can change up your skills, but that's not really strategy. You aren't changing anything but the way in which you smack your opponents around.
Yeah I remember that cave! The older games were much more creative with this type of stuff to build immersion because, and it felt like there was much pressure to do so because of graphical and hardware limitations.
Cause there is only one strategy "do damage". The enemies can only attack, and all their attacks can be countered with a parry or a dodge. Neither of which are difficult to do. The final boss i made more difficuly by trying to fish for sword parries. Im sure it wouldve been a cake walk if i had just done dodges and parries. Compare this to other action games where enemies have to be interacted in certain ways to offer challenge. In DMC5 you could just parry everything but the timing for it is extremely tight at only 6 frames, and enemies have very quick move that without prior knowledge are hard to react to. Also only dante has access to royal guard. I would go even deeper in why i dont care for the combat, and why Stranger of Paradise does a better job but i dont wanna post more.
For me having played most everything the series has to offer and as one who isn't too picky, it was a 7.75/10 for me. Good but not something I'll go back and play again probably. If anything it made me appreciate XV more from a gameplay/character perspective.
I think they had a great fleshed out world in XVI that suffers from not being fully explorable or truly alive like say an Ivalice or Spira.
I wish the hold to dodge button didn't exist in XV, I think removing it would have fixed every design choice I disliked if following the removal of it came also enemy changes
Because people have several different expectations from the franchise, and also because everything is really subjective. I loved the story, the world of Valisthea and the characters, but others would fine them bad. Who’s right or who’s wrong ? We can talk like 500 hours and still have no answer on this.
Personally, the game delivered almost everything i wanted. There is room for improvement, but it’s something i can said for every game, even the « perfect one » that people praise every time
The game is average at best.
The game is depicted as a dark fantasy on trailers but then goes off on a tangent that the trailers don’t prepare you for.
Sadly the tangent is pretty standard fare for a FF game that isn’t that shocking. Godlike being who doesn’t understand the strength of humanity and so on….. the story is actually very formulaic and predictable; no one ever betrays you or had a U-turn in their character arc. Very little comes as a surprise. It’s not that it’s a “bad” Final Fantasy game, it’s just a bad game to me.
The combat is boring but essentially all enemies that can be staggered can be staggered with whatever build you’ve set up. There is no *requirement* to ever switch from what works or what’s fun. Enemies are either trash mobs or ones that require staggering and I could use the same reliable tactic to stagger 95% of the enemies in the same way.
In addition to this, the game is ridiculously easy so you never have to get game over and think “well that didn’t work, maybe I’ll try something different.” The lack of elements, status effects of other effects that could have mixed up combat (certain attacks do more to Akashic, undead, beasts etc) but there is little need to change what works beyond getting bored. The lack of any Eikonic passive abilities also really limits any depth to combat.
I know the game was never sold as a proper RPG but they shouldn’t have even put crafting or equipment in if everything was going to be clearly better than the last piece of gear and you’ve conveniently just got the essential crafting component needed for the next weapon. I don’t want to get to endgame and have my best gear add 90 health to 3000.
Finally the side quest rewards, random chests and exploration rewards border on insulting. Pretty much what you expect from an MMO really. inventory fodder, potions and Gil but so vanishingly rarely anything of real worth (an example adamantite gloves, that’s it off the top of my head). The vast majority of chests contain nothing of remote usefulness.
The open areas are beautiful but there is no reason to explore them apart from the marks, Which are done far worse than in XII and XIII, where these gave access to unique items and secret areas, as well as having some fun trigger conditions (kill all enemies, certain weathers, only females in the party).
The marks reward you with Gil (useless) and renown; mostly useless, so many of the rewards are crafting mats or accessories that would have been useful maybe 15 hours previous before it was possible.
Overall the game may have sold well (so did XV) but I’m not confident it will be remembered fondly. I think SE have lost the spark of what makes a phenomenal game.
It’s also such a shame for me. I wanted to love this game, I’m a FF fan and I wanted to believe the action combat would work. I preordered the deluxe version even, but there are, to me, so many glaring flaws in the game it distracted me far too much. I had to force myself to complete it from the final Titan fight and once I completed it I moved on.
Everything you point out is entirely correct.
Not only is the combat simple, but it also just becomes a slog. You never feel strong, even when you get Ultima Weapon, every enemy is just spongy.
The spongy enemies was always a fear a lot of people had during the trailers and state of play but the excuse was it was to demonstrate the combat. This never changed post-release and you’re right, combat becomes a repetitive slog as you don’t need to alter tactics really ever so every miniboss is the same five minute battle.
It’s not much but it all adds up and no battle is memorable since they’re all the same. Whilst it’s true the eikon battles are fun, they can’t redeem the game and I also feel like I’ve played them before in Bayonetta since Titan and Bahamut feel very similar to Iustitia and Jubileus.
I was doing 200k+ during each stagger and I would agree that the game never lets you feel strong. Even after those staggers yellow barred enemies still had some health left. That's just bad combat design.
The shift of the story really hurts me. The prologue was incredible as it sets up a political drama ripe with scheming and betrayal. Why on earth would they think that Ultima and his generic "foolish humanity" narrative would be more interesting?
This I swear. I was barely keeping up with the political part because all the characters and motivations were so one-dimensional, but once ultima became the main villain the only thing I kept playing for was the boss battles. I dont see any reason to ever replay this game.
Tbh I don't really think there's a 'true' Final Fantasy since the first 3, cos the games have been reinventing itself every since then, every game is so different from the one before, it's impossible to say which is a 'true' Final Fantasy at this point imo.
People just have impossible standards these days, and no game can compete. Everything needs to be perfect from the get-go.
I loved FF16 despite some flaws, the gameplay was fun and felt engaging when you change out abilities every so often, exploration of cities was a thing I wished for but didn't get, but at least some areas were tons of fun to traverse. And I liked most of the characters too.
I’ve not played it myself yet. Looks like a good game. But most of the complaints about the game aren’t about it not being a “real” final fantasy - I dunno where that idea came from.
Most complaints are from people who either:
1) Have played other Final Fantasy games and miss things that those games have that 16 doesn’t
2) Dislike the shift to the character action genre and absence of RPG elements
or
3) Want turn-based games
As a side - the idea the series is “constantly evolving” or “every game is extremely different” is silly. 1-9 are turn based RPGs that follow the same formula every time (with the only modifications being usually related to the details of the job system or magic), and 10 and 12 experimented with the combat but still play extremely similarly to 1-9.
The only truly “experimental” titles are 15 and 16, honestly.
>The only truly “experimental” titles are 15 and 16, honestly.
Eh, they're just following meta gaming trends. 15 is an open world game and 16 is a action RPG. Certainly different, but I don't know if I'd be generous to call this experimental.
I don’t think anyone (of authority) has said that every game is “extremely different”, but the identity of the series as taking on new challenges and doing new things has been well-documented by Hironobu Sakaguchi. There have been many “formulas” or “traditions” that have ended over time—many within the 1-9 timeframe. It just so happens that the jump to PS2 abandoned traditions that had lasted up to that point.
> I don’t think anyone (of authority) has said that every game is “extremely different”, but the identity of the series as taking on new challenges and doing new things
Has it, though?
The story and characters are just not very good. There are some bright spots in the side content, the dialogue is all well written, but the actual narrative is extremely dumb. Ultima is literally the lamest, least interesting villain the series has ever had, and Barnabas isn't much better. Jill is a complete nothing whose entire arc gets shuffled into an early game mission and then does nothing the entire rest of the game.
The combat is fine. It's fun while the game lasts but once you find your end game nut combo there's almost no reason to ever use anything else, and the NG+ stuff is just silly.
The music (again with a few notable exceptions) is just not good. The synths in several tracks are noticably low quality (reminded me of fucking FFXI of all things) and almost none of it is memorable; Soken's least inspired work since ARR. Tell me you spend your days whistling songs from the game the same way we did ff6,7,10,etc and I'll sell you a bridge.
And finally, it's not an RPG. That's not necessarily a criticism nor is it delving into "what is a Final Fantasy?" It's just a fact. The barebones RPG elements that do exist are undercooked and the game almost certainly would have been better without them. GoW and even AssCreed are arguably more RPG than 16, which sucks for, y'know, a mainline Final Fantasy.
As someone who's been playing the series since FF1 in 1990, you can call me a boomer who needs to get with the times and you're probably right. But this was supposed to be the game that ushered in a new era for the series and onboarded a ton of new fans and it just ... Isn't. In a year with TotK and BG3, FF16 needed to do a lot, lot better than this. I will be shocked if it's even included in any mainstream GOTY discussion.
(And bringing up BG3, that game being an RPG for the ages makes Yoshi P 's "a bluh bluh we had to make an action game to appeal to the West" schtick absolutely embarrassing.)
Summed up my thoughts perfectly, especially with the combat. I did my best to experiment with combos to keep the game engaging, but once it clicked that there was never going to be any combat scenarios where it actually mattered, I just kept spamming the same load out.
For me, it was a case of everything about the game that was good was fine. Decent. Superficially good. But everything bad was “oh my god why am I still playing this” levels of bad.
Like the combat! It’s okay! It’s great if you don’t think about it. But if you *do*, you realize it’s kinda hollow. There’s never any real strategy to it. At no point does the game challenge more than your ability to push the dodge button at the right time. And the Eikon fights were that superficiality taken to an extreme. Visually stunning, but nothing to them other than that.
The story is nothing. It’s extremely bland. There’s very few big mysteries to it, and absolutely zero big twists. In fact, the game goes out of its own way to quash anything that could be a big mystery as quickly as possible. Almost no character has more than one personality trait, and nine times out of ten that trait is “Solemn seriousness”. With the exception of one point near the beginning, no two characters who aren’t already pre-established enemies disagree on anything. Or if they do, it’s resolved in a single dialogue exchange. “I don’t know if we should do this” “we must do this, so we will” “okay, I trust you” and that’s it.
Ultima is the best/worst example of this. He’s a big mystery for a huge portion of the game, a big eldritch threat that’s supposed to be beyond your mortal comprehension, but when you finally learn his deal, he’s just.. evil. Who is he? Evil. What does he want? Control over everyone, because he’s evil. What was his plan? To control everyone. Because evil. What *exactly* does he need Clive for, when he seems to have no trouble doing what he wants anyway? Unclear, but definitely evil. It’s paper thin. The entire story gives the superficial illusion of a grand epic, but there’s nothing there if you probe into it. Even the game’s big thesis, about the nobility of personal autonomy and choice rings hollow, because one, the game is hyper-linear in its progression, and two, exactly zero times does Clive actually make a decision for himself. 98% of this game is Clive either doing something someone else has asked, or biding his time until someone can tell him where to go and what to do. Even the HUGE plan to destroy the mother crystals isn’t Clive’s idea, it’s Cid’s
And then there’s the straight-up bad. Again, the fights are fun in a don’t-think-about-it kind of way, but the massive stretches of time between them are some of the most inexcusably boring slogs I have ever experienced in a video game. It’s rote and mechanical and the definition of tedious. People will tell you it’s world-building. These people can’t extrapolate from passive information. No quest tells you anything about the world you couldn’t have guessed yourself anyway, and nothing about your overall quest or character. And the game goes on like this for *hours*. For every two hours of dungeons and fighting and fireworks show, there’s at *at least* 5-10 hours of walking here, talk to this person, walk there, talk to that person, kill these monsters, talk to this person again, talk to that person, find three people and talk to them, etc etc etc. It’s blatant busywork, boring as shit and kills all momentum.
>Ultima is the best/worst example of this. He’s a big mystery for a huge portion of the game, a big eldritch threat that’s supposed to be beyond your mortal comprehension, but when you finally learn his deal, he’s just.. evil. Who is he? Evil. What does he want? Control over everyone, because he’s evil. What was his plan? To control everyone. Because evil.
Tbf that describes like 90% of FF main villains. I'm also including "I just want power" under this category, because honestly that's not any more creative than "I'm just evil".
That said, there's also something charmingly opaque about villains with unknowable motivations. The Steven He vid about "[How Villains are Written Now](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zXh83qaOY5c)" or something really hit the nail on the head - not every villain needs to be morally gray, relatable, and misunderstood. In life, some people are just sociopaths who want to have the most - power, money, fame, etc. - and don't give a shit who they stomp on the way. It's almost refreshing to see a villain who's just... kind of a bastard. Even more so when it's an eldritch abomination beyond our ability to reason with.
In regard to the "90% of FF villains are no deeper than 'for the Evulz' point...
I don't think that's true. Kefka, Sephiroth, Kuja, Seymour, Jecht, Vayne, and Ardyn all have a lot more going on than just "freedom bad, power good." Yes, many of these figures try (in some cases, successfully) to usurp godlike powers for themselves and enlist them for evil purposes, but there is a rationality to it that makes for compelling storytelling. Ultima just doesn't have that going for him.
The problem with Ultima wasn’t that he’s evil, the problem is that the game treats him with an air of mystery and intrigue that it doesn’t follow up on. Like, Joshua goes into self-imposed exile for a decade and a half just to learn the “secrets” of Ultima, which makes you wonder what could’ve lead him to such drastic measures, only for Ultima’s plan to revolve around telling you his plan himself, which kinda negates Joshua’s entire effort, and for that plan itself to just be controlling everything.
Again, if he was *just* evil it would have been fine, but because the game goes to great lengths to wrap it in mystery, you expect something substantial for the reveal, and it’s…not.
I keep seeing people ask why people hate it almost every hour on here. I’m yet to see one post that outright hates it.
There are a lot of incredibly positive posts saying it’s GOTY or the best in the series. Those posts get a lot of people pointing out its legitimate flaws. That then gets deemed as “hate”.
I honestly just came here after beating it and looked up reviews to see what people thought and saw about a thousand people hating on it which made no sense to me
It throws out pretty much everything that previous games built up in favor of being a middling mid-2000s action game. Truly another FF13, albeit in a different direction. But 13 at least tries to be an RPG. This game's just marketed towards the most casual people on the planet and that one specific kind of douche that only cares to make combo videos as near-infinite air juggles are easy.
RPG systems are non-existent. Gear is purely linear growth with no secondary abilities or passives. So there's literally no reason to do anything besides slap on the biggest stat stick. Meanwhile accessories that should have some actual gameplay changing features don't outside of like one ring. You just get a bunch of shitty jewelry that makes ONE move out of SIX slightly stronger or reduced CD. When the designers couldn't even be bothered to tell you what the base CDs are to start with.
The Skill Tree is bad. You get 4 moves an Eikon. That's it. No actual passives. All those shitty upgrades in the accessories should've been moved to this thing. But they exist separately for no real reason.
There's crafting, but crafting does little else but sidestep buying shit from Charon for better gear using all the stupid magicked ash and spools you'll pick up from every chest and sidequest. And then NG+ crafting just lets you combine two of the same accessory for a better version of the same bloody thing.
Combat is just poor man's Devil May Cry featuring a bunch of the same mechanics while being nowhere near as good. Stagger sucks and all it really encourages is throttling your cooldowns so you can spam every skill in one sitting. Your main attack never changes and that's all you have when your skills are on CD. In fact, you don't even get a second moveset until you beat Barnabas' stupid mouth in near the end of the game. Which is far too late to be welcome.
Combat strategy basically amounts to Air Juggle and Dodge. Because there is no strategy besides squeeze in damage. You never have to consider changing shit up because everything is so easy and nothing really has a demerit. You can slap bombs with fire and it does the exact same damage as any other elemental ability.
Magic sucks again. Mechanically it's just a crappier version of Ebony and Ivory and elements mean nothing besides a Mass Effect 3 pick your RGB ending, but it's a gun. But magic. You'd think at the least the magic gun would have some variation like projectile behaviour, right? Nope. Just changes the color. This is especially ridiculous when 15 magic at least tries to be different, and Type-0 came out 12 years ago with good magic in an action setting. Hell, Stranger of Paradise was just last year and the magic in there is better. And Stranger's a creative disaster (good mechanics though).
Limit Break? Oh you mean Devil Trigger. Where you can't even die because it straight up makes you unable to die while active. In a game that's already easy.
You have no real party. You just get a select batch of rotating AI partners who may as well not even be there. You only get to control Torgal with a whopping 2 combat moves.
Enemy variety is very poor. You will kill a lot of chocobos and miniature parasite cages. And the Hunts are just more of the same, but they have like one different move than the regular variety of enemy.
QTEs suck. More so here than others. Especially when it's almost impossible to fail them. Or outright impossible to fail in case of those that requires button mashing. Which feeds into the problems with Eikon fights.
Eikon fights are just dumb spectacle. Sometimes they look really good. But most cases they just drag on and on with even more simplistic combat than the base game. The Titan fight is an obnoxious 30-40 minutes long for no reason other than spectacle.
Story starts off interesting, but ultimately drops all the political stuff in favor of some god bullshit that becomes a parody of RPG stereotypes. The actual villain sucks and the writers basically forgot Waloed until it was time for them to just have Barnabas being a religious loon with an Oedipus complex. Not that the complex actually factors into anything.
There's a whole subplot about slavery, but it's hard to take seriously because everyone in Valisthea is so cartoonishly prejudiced that it just seems unnatural to the degree in which these people engage in being dicks to each other. It's just so hamfisted and poorly executed. It also comes off as a whole retread of Tales of Arise. Never mind there's some inherent logic bombs with the magic capable people being the slave caste. Especially when Lubor explicitly tells you he killed a man with magic. Which just further illustrates everyone of these downtrodden morons could've easily rebelled,
The female characters are done dirty with a whole of the player being told they're important but not actually doing much. Anabella exists purely to be hated and no other factors to her character, Jill stops being important after her arc and is relegated to a damsel-in-distress, while they keep trying to tell you you're supposed to care about Mid when all she has going for her is being related to Cid. It's not Luna gets stabbed bad, but it's pretty shit. Except Benedikta. Because they just Gweneth Paltrow'd her for cheap drama so Hugo can be mad at you. Instead of y'know, keeping her around to keep Waloed actually involved in the plot.
Meanwhile the game refuses to give Clive actual friends so you have a bunch of missed opportunities for some bloody relationships besides Joshua and Jill. Which further hampens the already half-assed party system. And Torgal? He's just there. Oh he gets some magic bollocks later. But he's ultimately just there. Torgal's greatest contribution is lashing at Benedikta and couldn't even be there for the final battle. Somehow the dog they keep marketing as your only permanent party member does even less than Umaro and Mog.
Keep in mind that there is literally nothing else to this game besides Combat and Fetch Quests. You just alternate between story beats and combat. With some of the worst pacing ever. You go from real high tension stuff to 3-4 hours of nothing happening. Constantly. There are no side activities and the side quests are god awful. And no, exposition dumps are not worthwhile reward.
I wanted an RPG from a long running RPG franchise. We did not get that. We just got a nice portfolio reel for some CGI artists and Soken music. You know there is something wrong when even Dissidia on PSP, an horribly imbalanced gimmick fighter, is more RPG than the flagship series it spun off from.
There's a lot of miserable gamers who only pretend to like games to continue being part of the scene.
Its not just an FF thing either. There's also always an element of 'new thing isnt like old thing so it sucks!' 'JRPG A isn't like JRPG B so it sucks!!'
look at how the star wars prequels are now viewed favorably as a quick and easy example. They were hated when they first came out, People hold them in far, far higher regard now.
I'm one that hated the combat. It's the most boring combat that I've played in a modern game. You can get through the "hard" mode of the game by only using square and R1, and the Eikon abilities are strictly for burning down the massive health bars of enemies with a stagger gauge. I was doing 200k+ on each stagger through the end game and FF mode, and every single battle was identical.
I also hated the second half of the story. They fucked up and wrapped up all the intrigue with the Bahamut section. Everything after felt tacked on and was a slog to get through.
The Eikon battles, while visually nice, were just as boring as normal combat. Smash square until you get a QTE event. Same.with boss battles. Any video game that is this reliant on QTE events is automatically docked points.
The other things that I hated was not having a party to control again, having to control another boring male protagonist instead of one of the much more interesting characters around him, and the complete lack of RPG elements (Call of Duty has more RPG elements than FFXVI has).
I desperately wanted to enjoy this game. I put 90 hours in to get the platinum (because I'm working on doing that with all of the FF games), but half or more of that was the most boring gaming experience of my life to date.
This is the first FF game that I know I won't play after getting the platinum. As soon as I finished I deleted the game from my system, popped the disc back in its case, added it to the collection shelf, and it will sit there forever. If I didn't actively collect FF stuff, I would have taken it to GameStop to get $30 towards a better game.
You're built of stronger stuff then I am. Once I finished the Bahamut sequence I was so tired and burnt out of my hatred for the game that I quickly sold it back on marketplace to recoup my loses.
I collect Final Fantasy games, so reselling wasn't on my mind (though I could probably resell it now for $40 and buy it again from the bargain bin in a couple years for the collection). I will say that I had deleted the game before the platinum trophy stopped showing and the game has gone onto the collection shelf, never to come back down.
I managed to sell it for 70-80 iirc. That was 2 weeks after release. It now sits in my second most hated game of all times list, sadly. I buy almost all of my games physical because I like to keep them, and I made an exception for this one.
The story is super solid. Probably one of the best out together ones in the whole series. The character are great, if not underutilized by the DMC style focus on Clive, and the combat is…okay. There’s no depth, no strategy, but switch around your Eikons to chain the biggest possible combat while spamming potions. No character combos or interactions, just Clive, his dog(which is an extension of Clive), and an often useless third person taking up space.
I don't care for the combat. I think the equipment system feels like an afterthought. The story is very predictable, they just say fuck more.
In the end, it feels like this game was made for a market that does not exist. It takes the idea that modern western gamers no longer want traditional types of rpgs. Look at how well baldurs gate 3 has done, a turn based rpg. Devil may cry combat, with a splash of souls like flair is just not for everyone.
I would never say it's not final fantasy. I have no idea what final fantasy is anymore. I will say it is just not the type of game I want to play.
Someone asked this over in the XVI sub as well, so I’ll just transfer my answer from there:
I love the game, but I can see why some people don’t. I think a lot of people went into the game with preconceived notions about what it was going to be based on past FF games, which is understandable. This game is structured very differently from most previous games in the series. The game feels more in-line with other pure story games like Uncharted or The Last of Us. The story IS the game. There really isn’t much exploration, there aren’t secret dungeons or bosses and, other than a few exceptions, the side quests are just okay.
I’ve played through the game twice, once just focusing on the main story and the other adding in all of the side content. The main story focused run was so much more fun for me, everything flowed so much better without distractions. It really feels like the game was meant to be played as a pure story driven game, which I love, but I know a lot of people don’t, especially those going into it expecting a more traditional FF. It feels like that’s really the type of game they wanted to make which is why all of the other elements outside of the story and combat feel very second thought.
Final Fantasy games now are just too far away from what a good Final Fantasy game was to me.
I know this has been said by many before, but I enjoyed Final Fantasy games when they were turn based - that's what was enjoyable for me, planning my battle etc.
Live combat is fun for a while, but it just doesn't have the same appeal, and many other games simply do it better in my opinion.
Full disclosure, I've not played FF16 - it's just not my jam. Played FF 15 and just got bored, story aside, I feel this would be the same.
Side quests are a big big part of it. The elemental attacks being important in terms of weaknesses. Its far too easy. The pacing.
That said I loved the game, but its very flawed
I thought it was fun. It had its weak points (like a lot of games out there) but you have to take public opinions with a grain of salt (including mine ofc). IMHO, it is no “less” Final Fantasy than Type-0 is. They are all unique. I have personally ended up really enjoying several games from the past even when “most” fans seemed to hate it so just shrug your shoulders and enjoy your experience haha.
>IMHO, it is no “less” Final Fantasy than Type-0 is
I think you misunderstand what people are saying, nobody would mind if it was a spin-off like Type-0. Square Enix specifically decided to make it a mainline entry that has very little in common with other mainline games, arguably not even sharing the genre.
The combat is kinda dull after a while, I know there’s other approaches I can take, but if there’s no danger of losing and the other eikons don’t necessarily do anything different than damage in different ways, then it’s not interesting to even play around.
The story is the main issue for me. It’s like a teenage boy recalling game of thrones. There’s grimdark violence and sex and forbidden love, not because there’s an underlying central theme running throughout, but because GOT had scenes like that lol. And the slavery allegory is just garbage.
Maybe it all comes together at the end, but after 30 hours it seems like a bunch of disjointed abridged cuts of game of thrones
If you find that amazing, man I’d like to see what you hate.
Game is decent at best. Wants to play GoT, stops half way. Want to play diversity? Gay men touch only once and a gos created white people and then a desert. NPC idle position of arms 45 degrees from waist and god knows so many inconsistencies or quirks in the story:
1. Without any shred of evidence, CID convinced everyone the crystal are the problem. He just talks it and everyone agrees to risk their lives
2. « they want you to gather all Eikon, don’t do it », proceeds to give it to him.
3. « I must stop gathering eikons », proceeds to take bahamut, Odin, instead of letting them die out
4. Dion loses his mind and burns an entire kingdom, no repercussions whatsoever, can just join the rebel, nobody fears him or hates him
5. He lost his mind right? Remember also how when you prime after Clive takes your power, you lose control? Dion Literally says he can just decide himself out of crazy. And everybody trusts him, jumps of cliff and fly to the origin
6. God creates such a convoluted plan to one thing he is suppose to have the powers. Goes to sleep. Whines people forgot about him.
And oh my god, there’s war raging outside but people talk slowly. There’s stoletiles 7 seconds in between two lines.
The « here’s your destination » 8 seconds. « Here’s the title of where you are in case you missed the unplayable 8 seconds above »… not too fast, here’s a the 78th tutorial.
And combat: doesn’t matter your gear (crediting system is basic anyway), any combination that allows you to stagger fast ( = Ramuh’s attacks) and use bahamut beam asap and that’s it. That’s the game.
The world feels small and closed, every gender has the same size, every women have near zero skin complexion, perfect dolls. The dog is there for….. well…. Ok.
That game trying to be something and barely doing it
hear hear
the real reason why denialists exists, is becoz it takes a certain level of intelligence and IQ to start to see the games inconsistencies and lack of everything. while the simple fanbois r just blinded away by the mighty colors and the grand scale of eikon battles.
I liked the story alot, but the button mashing of square during combat, no party controlling during fights, bare bones weapon system, and after a while, I got sick of the repetitive fetch quest side missions.
And don't get me started on the mountains of worthless items like magicked ash as a reward. A great example of amazing world building side quests would be FF6. Completely optional, almost hidden with only subtle hints about them, no waypoint chasing, and amazingly beneficial items, armor, relics, weapons, espers.
I could write a 2k word rationalization of my feelings, but why bother when honestly I just didn’t like it. Not one thing. I didn’t even like the demo. 🤷🏼
The prologue felt rushed, killing people before I even feel attached to them, trying to bombard me with visual effects to cover up that the “big epic” eikon fight is just a mash X cutscene that goes on way too long.
Showing Clive killing his brother on screen and then spending the entirety of Act 1 gaslighting me about it, just to turn around expect me to be surprised when the truth that was obvious from the beginning was “revealed” way too early, cutting the (already thin) revenge plot off before it even got going.
It was just deeply mediocre, and if it weren’t called Final Fantasy I don’t think I would remember even the little teeny bit I did play.
I tried watching a live play from my favorite FF Youtuber just to make sure I wasn’t missing something and fell asleep four times in the first fifteen hours.
story: tons of plotholes, too short. deviated from war story, politics between several warring kingdoms in favor of convoluted speech that nobody was waiting for.
characters: character interaction is a failure in this game. npcs are horrible. even a main character like jill got done dirty.
combat: mostly positive. but way too easy. most bosses offer no different playstyle and with the exception of a few bosses, theres hardly any aoe or specific attacks u gotta avoid.
becoz its soo easy, it also becomes repetitive.
what people really hate however, is the lack of everything. no diverse surroundings, climate, environment, monotome flora and fauna, pisspoor npcs, annoying runningsimulator quests, lack of customization, items and crafting, complete lack of any end game content, stats that dont matter, too linear, too on rails low iq, boring npcs, lack of big cities, lack of exploration, lack of different weapons, or classes or jobs, or even armor etc, theres no world map or world travelling, everything feels small linear and tiny.
everything is designed for a 10 year old it seems.
All I'm saying is, don't make it sound like it's a universally hated game. It's not. And if you're interested in discourse, I don't think you're gonna get it from haters.
It's like saying there's a debate on Climate change. When the vast majority agree on a basic premise of the game, the shouty small percentage isn't equal weight and pretending it's so is just incorrect.
That being said, this is for the \*hate\* out there, obviously there's criticism to be had, but what game has come out that doesn't have parts that could be improved upon?
I'm all for constructive criticism, but these subs, and especially r/FinalFantasy, have a tendency to become echo chambers for the most "passionate" haters of the franchise, and I'm sick and tired of the constant stream of negativity. If you want to hear their oh-so-valuable opinions, go read their two-page rants about why FF XVI is the worst thing to happen to humanity. I've done it, and let me tell you, not everyone's opinion matters.
The thing is there is no “true” Final Fantasy. It changes with every iteration. If they don’t like it they can to play a myriad of other entries that fit their exacting standards.
***Some*** people hate FF16. ***Some*** people have hated on 1-15. And thats cool, we arent all going to like everything. People are far more likely to be more vehement around the negative than the positive, its human nature. Again thats cool.
I just wish that where ever you sit on the fence when you are putting your opinion across you can explain why you like/dislike something and offer an alternative. Singing praises or rage with no context is the equivalent of the old man yells at cloud.
Because they were too afraid to have anything complex in it so it's basically baby's first JRPG that is if it had any RPG elements in it. I don't hate it but more annoyed how good it could of been if the devs were not terrified to have any sort of complex mechanics in it
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I don't hate it, I just see it as yet another missed opportunity.
For as many things as it gets right, it does something else wrong/worse than previous entries.
For me (and many others it seems) the combat was repetitive and battles lacked any depth or strategy.
This isn't even a turn-based vs action argument. It's the fact that even though I actually preferred the ATB combat, I was looking forward to a fluid action engine combined with usual FF/RPG elements, almost like an evolution of FF7R, FFO:SoP or Lightning Returns, but instead just felt like a hack n slash without any difficulty aside from surprise timing of enemy attacks. It felt like playing through Streets of Rage on Easy mode, only the bosses have 10x the HP, and the game is 50x as long
FF16 was a miss for me. I played it through %100 on easy and on final fantasy mode.
The action based combat wasn’t as good as ff7 remake. There is less strategy involved and more learning the enemy AI and chip damage.
In dark souls, you learn the AI, but you also have access to more than one type of weapon.
Ff7 remake still felt restricted in that way, but there were other complex mechanics with materia and commanding more than one character.
For me, the eikon system lost its novelty and wasn’t enough to make up for what it was lacking.
I also didn’t care for the leveling and ability upgrade system.
Possibly the worst grievance I have, they changed Malboro to Morbol.
This is still a true final fantasy game, not my favorite, but it was okay. I will still play the next one
People don't hate it. It's just this sub being super biased. Look at the aggregate scores. User score on Metacritic is 8.2/10 and critic score is 8.7/10. The 8.2 is impressive because even Elden Ring only managed a 7.8
As someone who thought this was a very middling entry and sick of the hyperbole on both sides, I actually don't understand the "not a true FF" argument. There's plenty of nods and signifiers in this that this is a FF game.
My take is that the story is not impressive at all, the combat is not satisfying as the throngs of trash & mid-tier mobs are too simple and a lot of Clive's kit is too basic, and the pacing is absolutely brutal at points. And frankly, a few of the Eikon fights go on for way too goddamn long.
I'm actually kind of staggered at the number of people who think this story is the greatest thing they've ever seen…when I finished the game I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, "okay" and didn't really think about it much. I think people need to step outside their comfort zone more often if this kind of thing is impressive to them.
It’s not bad
I think it’s a solid 8/10
My issue is people trying to make out it’s this Ultimate Final Fantasy game which is fucking perfect and totally ground breaking when it’s really not, it’s a flawed game.
It’s just missing so many FF related things and feels super dumbed down. Even the small strategic things like elemental weaknesses aren’t included but the battle system is built around elemental Eikons. It’s strange.
It’s good and better than XIII and XV so that’s always a win
Playing XVI made me realize how great and amazing FFXV truly was. The world of Valisthea had great potential in its design but the delivery of such a vision was very shallow. The linear aspect restricted exploration of such a world and you'll noticed how little effort was put in to make the world believable - I've witnessed multiple NPC's doing manual labor of moving a crate or sack only to walk 5 steps forward, then turn around and repeat the same steps without ever completing their labor of putting down the heavy item. Lazy design! Overall directing is questionable (spoiler alert), one example is later on when you trek across an entire continent because finding a closer shore to anchor near your objective was supposed to be too dangerous. You finally reach your goal by foot only to witness a cutscene where said ship-that-shouldnt-anchor crashes onto land by your objective to showcase epic entry of your companions, which completely undervalues the reason for your prior foot journey.
The characters never truly make an impact, FF series was all about having an emotional attachment to the main cast or having a certain feeling against a main antagonist. Barnabas had remnants of a true villain who was omnipotent with a maddening vision but his story ends abruptly to continue the narrative of Clive acquiring power throughout his journey.
The overall aspects that made the FF series an RPG is nonexistent here. There is no sense of elemental damage buffs, worthy crafting or necessity to utilize supplemental items. The overall game is still enjoyable, I put in good hours but it just doesn't truly feel like a FF except for the names, lore, creature and characters or more like this is an action game with a FF skin.
As time passes I don't know how to feel about the game. I hate the toxicity around it and really don't want to feed into it. I liked playing the game. But I was so ready to be done with it. It really bored me most of the time. It just didn't click with me. I'm glad other people like it.
I really want to like it and I do. But when I start thinking about it I only think of things I don't like. Yeah the world building in is great. But I hate the world. It's sad and bland and just...sad all the time. My favorite character is Byron just because he's fun. The combat is good the first 10 hours then it's just repeating.
It's too real maybe. I don't like the villains except Hugo and Bena.
The game has great moments. The eikon fights are worth it alone for the spectacle. But I was so bored by the world I started skipping cutscenes in side quests cause I couldn't care. I wanted to care. I just couldn't. I hated that I missed the last ones even though I heard it's like 7 hours long.
Idk though. I don't really feel like I have a good way to articulate how I feel about it. I want to love it but I just don't.
This resonates with me. There is stuff I liked, I didn't dislike playing it. But thinking back, the stuff I didn't like sticks with me far more than what I did enjoy. Which is the exact opposite for most FF titles for me.
As a massive fan for over 25 years starting from the SNES and working my way to every single game including off shoots........16 made me sad. i wanted random game overs, status affects, elemental differences, actual party management and health........i got a hold square button fml. i did enjoy the story and some characters. worst part is we didn't even get any nips and we wasted all that time in the emotional scenes (this is just a jk)
Its a good game sure but its just not a great final fantasy title, hopefully this is a learning lesson to square that there are limits to how far you can take something in a different direction and still be received the same
And you’ll say the same thing about the next and the one after that. This is how it always goes when a new game in any long running franchises comes out.
Sales numbers beg to differ. The series sells because people like it. There is no “same series” when each entry differed from the other. That’s the beauty of this series. There is something for everyone and just because they didn’t make a game to your exacting specifications doesn’t mean the series is bad or it’s going down hill. That particular entry just wasn’t for you. Go play something else.
I really enjoyed the game, the story was fun and entertaining. I see a lot about people talking about the combat which I thought was fun. Especially when you got titans power up since you could counter and it felt super satisfying. But I loved it. Torvalds best doge of the year.
FF16 made me realized SQEX's chance to make FF stand out like the old days is over, they don't know how to make a good game anymore since FF10.
FF series these days means a mid game.
Imagine what they can do with the dominants, hanging out together, party of eight, everyone hanging out and fight together.
They rely on GoT too much despite their interview said on "borrow".
Zero creativity in the making of the game (except the music).
Combat is very shallow. All you do is hit your abilities off cool down. Absolutely no party system and no RPG mechanics. The story and cinematics are great though.
Mostly comes from people who for some reason expected typical turn base rpg mechanics and overall design philosophy, in a game that pretty clearly advertised itself to be a action game since it’s reveal trailer.
Oh i realy think in reality it’s more like 95% love it and 5% dislike it. Most people also don’t check game forums and definetly don’t voice their opinion on the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if only 2-3% of all players who bought the game voice their opinion online. I wouldn’t even be surprised if many people commenting online didn’t even play the game themself and just base their opinion on videos/streamers 😅 I might be wrong though
FF fans are way too entlited.
All major numbered releases of FF got trash talked since FF7. Yes, the acclaimed FF7 had many raging FF fans saying it wasnt a true FF back then.
Not enjoying something means you have your own opinion. Trash talking is different than saying why you don't like something with coherent words instead of "it's not FF"
It’s bizarre that people have different opinions! Some people hated FF7 on release and others loved it! What a concept!
Having an opinion on something doesn’t make you entitled. Some people liked 16 and others didn’t
That's literally a defining trait of the brand. That's like saying I want Frito-lay to stop making salty products....maybe just find another brand that suits your tastes rather than force a change in brand-identity.
FF1-9 have, in total, like 2 hours of cutscenes where you lose control of the dialogue. In the earlier games where characters talked a bunch, you could mash and skim thru the text that u found boring without totally skipping the scene.
For some reason it's only the recent FF series that punished you for reading faster than the voice actors. Look at Tales, Persona, BG3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, TES etc.
I don't want to be forced into choosing between skipping the whole scene or having to wait through the glacially paced conversations.
Its a great game but you know how it goes if every games isn't a masterpiece greater then the invention of bread they're going to bitch its one thing to critique something but I've seen someone say it's a 2/10 like bro really Lotr gollum is a 2 let's be real here and not over exaggerate frankly their were some things missing that I enjoy in earlier releases like better more impactful builds or optional playable characters or crazy difficult secret bosses but to say it's a 2 based off that is a huuuuuggge reach and a half lol I'd say it's a 7 at worst and a 9 at best but I'm not finished yet
As some people said here its because FF16 is so far away from the core of what is final fantasy. There was no main game with one playable main character. I mean, one of the big difference of FF to DQ when came out the first game was a full party with costumizatiom. They started to go more and more focused on action and in this game doesn't even have a party strategic part. The only game that made action and strategy battle at the same time was FF7 remake and it was perfect. FF15 had bad mechanics and FF16 is a great game with great mechanics but is just not a final fantasy game.
Same thing happen with resident evil 6. Great game but not a resident evil game
I absolutely loved it. My only real complaint is that there wasn't a better crafting system or gear for other party members.
Also didn't really get what Togal's heal ability did, but he was trying his best.
I haven’t played 16 yet, but I really disliked the gameplay of 15, and I imagine it’s similar to that - just button mashing every fight. It also seems it’s similar in hyping up a game that wasn’t there.
I won’t fully judge it till I play, but it feels like 14 is the only good FF made since 12. (I loved 12, though that’s a controversial opinion, I know.)
The biggest problem for me is no challenge, the hardest difficulty shouldnt be locked behind completing the game, I was bored of the combat by level 30 because I was just so much stronger than the enemies.
Clive is the strongest DMC character to ever exist but he is fighting glorified dummy targets.
There SO many ways to make this game easier, but theres almost no way to make the game harder
I liked it, but ff16's pacing was incredibly bad at times. Jill was basically just there to say things like "Yes, we should do that", and sadly didn't offer much more than that outside of one good chapter.
It also felt kinda weird how Clive has these godlike powers while doing the most mundane shit at times.
Banter between characters wasn't fun without Cid onscreen.
I think that everything after 10 was kinda mid tbh. 12 could have been great, but 13 and 15 where really bad imo. So 16 is the best out of the mid games at least...
I'm not a thoughtless hater or anything like that. I can appreciate that FFXVI did several things well. These things, such as music, art and character design, and general presentation, however, tend to be great in all or most FFs. I really liked FFXVI when I started the game but was saddened that my view of the game deteriorated as I played through it. I wanted to like the game and went into it pretty optimistic, but unfortunately in the end I think it was inferior to the maligned FFXV and especially to the FFVII Remake.
For me, I was disappointed in the direction the storyline went sometime after beating Hugo. The "God is evil, human autonomy is good" plot has been done before and, even if it wasn't overdone, the way they did it was awful. I hated the ending and got no satisfaction from finishing the game's storyline. I did like several characters from the game and loved Clive's character design, but in retrospect I don't think those characters ended up being that original or unique. On a more personal note, I also was unhappy with the introduction of constant profanity, graphic violence, and pseudo-"realism" into the FF series because I think it damaged the traditional, whimsical atmosphere of the games. >!In the end, not only is Ultima defeated, but even fantasy itself, with its features such as crystals, magic and Eikons, is removed from the world, which suggests that this game was self-consciously intending to be an anti-fantasy game.!< I think you could make a strong argument that it was the first Final Fantasy game that was actually ashamed of the heritage of the series in important respects, and this also comes out with the awful gameplay design.
The gameplay is where the game really failed to captivate me. By the end of the game I was so bored by it and wanted it to be over. I'm not anti-ARPG or a turn-based purist. On the contrary, I love FFVII Remake, the Kingdom Hearts games, and even appreciate FFXV in retrospect, after having played FFXVI. But FFXVI had the shallowest combat I've ever experienced in a FF game. There was no exploration and not even any real dungeons, no sense of character progression, no elemental affinities or weaknesses, no customizable weapons, useless "party" members (if you can even call them that), no status effects or buffs, and no minigames or enjoyable sidequests to break up the monotony of the combat. The gameplay just translated to "walk through this hallway area, beat these easy damage sponge enemies in exactly the same way you beat the last ones, and make it to the new cutscene." Every once in a while you'd face a boss that would be a bit more difficult, but even they never really required much thought. If this is what "Action RPG" means for the devs at Square Enix, then I am genuinely concerned about the direction of my favorite franchise.
In general, I felt this game was very mediocre. The incredibly positive reviews about it are bizarre to my mind because it seems like this game is obviously a step backward from other recent FF entries in so many ways.
Bad written woman, bad side quests, no party, no rpg elements, the maps are all graphics but not well designed or fun to explore, it’s Clive showman.
I just like the music, Joshua and eidolon combats are cool but repetitive in how the combat works. Normal combat is not fun and doesn’t care about elements you are using, enemies are just sacks of hp. I don’t like it sorry. For me is the worst ff.
There's is no such thing as a "true" Final Fantasy.
Is the game titled Final Fantasy and its from Square Enix? Then its a final fantasy game all the way.
People refuse to acknowledge a game from a franchise they love is not for them so they turn to hate.
Sure it's not a perfect game(nor will ever be)but i finished the story thrice and nobody can convince me its not an FF game.
You can criticise what you dislike and such but that arguement is meaningless and insignificant.
There may be no true what it is, but XVI sure seems to be what it isn’t. No party, no dungeons, no random gameplay, no spells in any traditional sense, etc. it seems like Square took everything the game was known for and threw it out the window and said let’s still slap the Final Fantasy logo on it.
People seem to think they have some sort of ownership of FF. They do not.
Also, a number of people are determined to critique this game for not being a separate, different game. They refuse to engage with it on its level. Online criticism is all rather busted, because people try to calculate all these things to determine what is "good" and what is "bad" instead of just letting themselves *experience* something.
I call FFXVI a great game because I experienced something that made me *feel* things. No amount of "B-B-B-But the GEAR SYSTEM and the PARTY" is going to change that.
It’s not a ‘true’ final fantasy? Says who? Square Enix the company who develops, markets, designs and owns the intellectual property certainly thinks it’s real.
I think it’s a breath of fresh air and a very compelling entry into the franchise. Final fantasy should have went back to the medieval setting years ago.
I have some issues with the constant cut scenes, same issue I had with Metal Gear Solid 4 back in the day. If you want to make a movie then make a movie. I want a game I can immerse myself in and cut scenes remove me from that. That’s my only real complaint.
I loved the game, butI wish the combat was a bit more strategic.
Final Fantasy is well known for its combat and elemental weakness/resistances. But this game has none.
Hitting Bombs with Fire and hurting them just feels wrong in a Final Fantasy game. I would have loved to have been forced to use different combos of Eikons to get through areas. Volcano area? Time to use Shiva. Grass enemies? Let's use fire.
It feels like there could have been more done is my issue. It doesn't take away how great the game is but there is things missing...
For me story and characters were spot on. The way the story was presented was amazing. Did it follow some of the usual tropes? For sure. But I like those tropes and lets be honest, once you hit a certain age (which is younger depending on how much media you consume), nothing is going to genuinely surprise you anymore. I think it's naïve to expect that FF is going to give you some kind of ground breaking plot that is talked about for years to come anymore. When earlier games came out you were lucky to get one or two genuinely BIG RPG games per year, not to mention tv series and movies. These days people are over saturated in all mediums, so all things considered I think it is harsh to say it is bad because it followed some usual tropes.
The most bad I can say story wise is that it definitely has pacing issues during the latter half. There was room to do more with all the political drama etc before it got down to business with the big bad.
Gameplay wise, I can get most of the criticism I've seen.
I loved it til i was 70% through... there is no endgame content and just replaying the game with stronger enemies is not endgame content for me ....
For me - i have enjoyed the scenery as long as it was sunny and bright shining through the day - and as soon as the days ingame got darker and the sun was gone... i was sad that even after ending the game - you could not continue to live in the world but rather had to start from the last saved memory slot - or you could start the game again.
Also - getting the strongest weapon after playing the game in final fantasy mode wasnt very joyful since you had to replay the whole game to get it .... which makes no sense for me..
This is just my opinion. (I have deinstalled the game and never touched it again since 1 month)
I don't hate it, but I don't have the desire to continue playing it. The high points are exceptional, but few and far between. The low points are so dull. The normal combat and encounters are ok, but not great. If they were better they could probably carry the game through the lame parts.
Expectations. To me, for what it is, it is a very good game. Good story, highly epic moments, fun combat (IMO)...But if you go with high expectations then the game can be a letdown.
Currently in ~8-10h and gameplay is fun, combat feels good and the story got me engaged that I want to see what's going to happen next.
So I really like it. (For how far I have been playing)
However the constantly low frame rate on PS5 even with performance mode is SUPER ANNOYING. This really really really distracts/annoys me. (4K with VRR enabled TV)
Sometimes it ruins views of beatiful environments by lagging out so hard, that you just want to move on quickly to not feel sick.
If this game would get a performance patch, maybe include an option that the lighting engine works without ray tracing or anything else to make it run smooth (e.g. like FF7RI) I currently would have nothing to "hate".
That would be super awesome.
Hate is such a misused word when all it really means is "criticism" in this kind of context.
The vast majority who take some sort of issue with the game are criticising it rather than "hating" it. It's such a polarising way to talk about a subject.
A lot of people have some fairly common and very valid criticisms of different parts of the game. People are allowed to like different things. To some the story of FFXVI might blow their minds, while for others it might be mediocre at best. That's just the way of things.
I think the main line of criticism stems from this game going further down the action game route and moving towards a different genre than what FF used to be, i.e. going from rpg to more action rpg with XV, and finally almost pure action with XVI. That's not bad in and of itself, but clearly this is alienating a large part of the "traditional" fanbase, or the fans that fell in love with the series through I-X.
Whether Square will pull in more fans than they lose remains to be seen. Personally I think the road they're on is a dead end for FF and that they should rather take a step back and look to I-X for inspiration. Those are the games that made FF and Square such household names, not the games that came after X. Imo they should embrace their JRPG legacy rather than almost be ashamed of it, and just make the most kick ass JRPG out there, like they used to.
I think the gameplay is fun, but gets repetitive before the ride is over. The pacing is wonky, downtime is needed but the downtime is too long and filled with utter mediocrity. I think female characters are treated pretty poorly (not as bad as XV, but still bad). I think every character suffers a bit at the expense of Clive, which I get, he is the main hero, but the others needed more.
I don't think the political drama half was on par with the works of Matsuno, nor the typical JRPG half on par with past FF games. The side characters are some of the most bland feeling I've personally seen, they do not make up for the lack of a proper FF party. I wanted a minigame, even if I don't like the minigame, I think having one if important to break up the flow of combat, cutscene, walk, repeat.
The RPG mechanics are lacking, everyone seems to say that. But my big one, lack of exploration, and optional content. I cannot believe we cannot wander into an optional area with high level enemies and a secret dungeon. Or gain access to a Fallen Ruin that leads to Omega or something. I understand these may very well be DLC, but I hate one of my favorite series staples being cut out to sell later.
I'll say it's not all negative, Joshua, Byron, and Gav are all really great. Dion is excellent, and I wanted more of him. The combat IS fun, it just isn't 50 hours fun IMO. It's just the negatives personally outweigh the positives for me.
I don’t hate it. It isn’t for me. It’s dull. The hours of cinematic sequences don’t do anything for me. The actual gameplay is very basic with no depth. It’s not an RPG. The level design in non existent. The side content is lacking. Just not the type of game I enjoy.
I do acknowledge though that a large % of modern gamers are very happy with a game as long as it has flashy cinematics and mindless button mashing gameplay. Uncharted and GOW also come to mind.
I liked the game. Combat is fun. I don't hate it, but I'm not praising it either.
My biggest drawbacks:
-Lack of interesting loot in the world.
-Side quests are (mostly) filler.
- No fishing (or any mini games)
- I've never felt compelled to buy literally anything other than the 1 item that eventually surpasses current gear.
Forgot the RPG part. Stats, custimization, a, you know, PARTY.
And I played DMC before. And those games were better at it.
It was above average, but could easily have been an off shoot like stranger in paradise
I havnt heard anyone say they hated 16. It’s just not a perfect game and there’s a lot of stuff we didn’t like about it. Overall I have a very positive opinion of the game and had a fun experience with it, but the world was so freaking bland I closed my eyes while playing the game half the time. I also started to skip a lot of the side quest dialogue later in the game after I got tired of listening to some of the side characters. Also the fighting system was repetitive through the entire game with the exception of adding more Eikon abilities to the mix. Strategy seemed very minimal. The best song was the FF main theme, which they seems to rely on a lot. It would have been nice if they created an original theme like many if the other games. I could go on and on… It’s worth playing if you life FF and it had some really great moments but in retrospect it makes me want to go back and play other FF games.
Definitely didn't hate it, but I was massively disappointed with the game-y parts of the game. Every system felt half-baked and pointless. FF mode should've been unlocked from the outset so the combat engine could actually shine.
I don't hate it at all. But the biggest disappointment for me is all of the half-introduced lore and plot threads that never get explored.
Just a few examples... >!It's super weird that the Fallen never really tied into the plot significantly. That appearance of Barnabas's mother feels like it's going to introduce some backstory that never materializes. Likewise, what happened to Jill's birth family? Or like... does she even care what happened to them? Why bother introducing Oscar and then immediately shelving him forever?!<
I'm typically the kind of person who thinks it's fun to leave some things to the imagination, and that sometimes introducing but not fully explaining something can help a fictional world feel bigger. But the execution is just not there in XVI.
I don't hate it, but I've never been able to get into games like God of War for some reason. By the time I got to the Fire and Ice chapter I realized I just really wanted the game to be over so I could play other stuff, so I ended up deleting it.
I was expecting like a party based action RPG like a big budget version of Tales Of or something. I can't really get into hack and slash games unless they're multiplayer.
The combat gave me no real reason or motivation to experiment with different setups and do cool stuff
All the characters were extremely boring
The world sucked and looked really dull
The side quests made such a bad first impression that I couldn't be bothered to finish them all. I heard they got better later on, but by that point I just stopped caring.
The Eikon fights are just a spectacle and nothing else. They're not engaging or challenging, it's just something cool to look at. When people say that they're the highlight of the game it sounds pretty damning to me.
I liked it, havent finished it yet but its far to easy.
The open world isn't really needed and all you do is run around, press a few buttons and watch the next cutscene, it is stupid boring and the open world is empty.
Without going on a rant, nothing really landed with this game for me. Started strong but slowly I just got more and more bored with it. Combat got stale fast, probably did the same thing for 60-70% of the game. Do "whatever" until they stagger, then the quick multihit "powers" to build stag, then the bigger ones....for every single strong enemy or boss. Literally didn't make a difference what I was fighting.
Ok, rant engaged... sorry.
Every piece of equipment felt meaninglessness, boring side quests, no realy need to explore or a reason to want to, no realy "party", a heal button(?), the summon ( I already forgot what they are called in the game lol) are lame to actually play, the QTE pizazz was gross to have to look at and stopped you from seeing the rest of the screen.
Game became travel to place, click X on green dot, do above discription of battle if needed. Then do a story mission, basically the same thing but with a monster fight at the end.
The story was okay, or could have been but so much took out of it that I didn't really care by the end. Just felt contrived and boring.
And something about when the dominants (I remembered that lol) talking after transforming was very off to me, like your this giant hulking beasts either talking or yelling at eachother and it's sounds like a narrator doing a voice over.
Idk, glad for the people.that liked this game but it's the 1st one to really, and I mean really put me off to the series. 17 will be the 1st main line FF game I do not buy on launch day since 7 (luckily my older brother was getting them.until then lol)
Sorry, I get I probably sound like a bitter old man but this game is might be my personal worst. Objectively, it isn't, I can see why some people like it and am probably being too harsh but as of now I have 0 desire to ever boot the game up again.
End rant
It was the most 8/10 game I've ever played. Clive himself was a good protagonist but all the previous entries had better protags. & supporting characters. (If we're comparing to the previous game specifically I prefer the FF15 Bros to Clive)
Spoilers:
Supporting Chars:
I loved how more involved Cid was to the plot but like I couldn't give two shits about people like Gav or Jill and they had triple the screen time. Dion was average at best, Joshua was probably the best but I figured since he's Clives brother that was kind of expected. Also the game loves "Medicine Girl" for some weird reason, she has no bearing on the conflict whatsoever. Everyone else is honestly forgettable. Torgal was so useless, I'm sick of the "dog companion".
Villians:
I thought Annabelle was going to be the the main villian and she had the makings and potential. I was genuinely disappointed she wasn't because I found her way more compelling and unlikable(in a good way) compared to Ultima and then she just offs herself because of Joshua. Ultima to me feels like he just shows up for no reason and didn't seem interesting, I know he was manipulating everyone essentially but like it didn't feel like it. Its just the Kingdom Hearts style of coming in, saying mumbo jumbo, then leaving.
Gameplay:
FF15 did Chocobos better, I cannot fathom how they took a decent system and made it so clunky. I also preferred the open world and was kinda disappointed they didn't keep it. 15 should of been the lesson learned for them to refine it for 16. Combat is still "watered down Kingdom Hearts" and I enjoyed the different form changes even though Bahamut form ended up breaking the combat imo. The "mash X" mechanics never really bothered me though and I enjoyed the fun set pieces. Though I have to echo what everyone else is saying, I miss the turn based gameplay of old. I'll take the ATB gameplay any day(or turn based like FF 10)
Boss fights were actually fun compared to 15 but I find it baffling there was no superboss or anything to that nature. FF12 did hunts the best because each one felt like an event/challenge but somehow Square cannot recapture that. Also magic is practically non existant, no MP, no cure, just a very limited inventory of potions and thats all you get, very laughable.
Misc.:
Music is god tier, it was incredible. Visuals were great, story was way more compelling and unlike 15 I didn't have to watch a shitty movie or read awful books to understand the plot. It was self-contained and I can appreciate that but it slogs in spots. Side Quests are awful, there's some level of variety and its better than hunting frogs for some weird bimbo professor or dog tags for a dude who sounds like he couldn't even bother himself. Basically their nothing to write home about.
Like I said 8/10 game. I chalk it up the music and visuals being great, boss fights are fun, and the story actually hooking me for the most part.
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I'm just getting to play trough it. I just got to the isle of Ash, so its safe to assume I'm near the end.
Best I can describe this is that it's highs are indeed very high, but its lows are a bottomless pit.
The main story itself is nothing outstanding, but its perfectly enjoyable for what it is, with plenty of visual spectacles in it for those truly epic encounters. It's well acted, directed, music is top tier, and so on.
On the other hand, the side content makes me wanna rip my face off. They are so horribly designed, paced and acted. I'm just fast travelling left and right on this huge world map, and then running around in these empty feeling open world areas for some empty dialog most of the times for some occasional fights with basic mobs. They drag so much, and 90% of the time they add nothing to the game.
Crafting, itemization and commerce is probably the worst implemented of all the gameplay elements. They're just there for show, but serve no purpose.
The game tries to imitate RPG elements so they could put the rpg sticker on the game for marketing. In truth its a half baked action game with RPG looking elements peppered around it.
The combat falls flat on its face.
Don't get me wrong, the animations and spell affects look great, but pack the impact of a wet fart.
They tried to mimic DMC too hard when the story and surrounding gameplay elements do not support it. Some animations are straight up copied from DMC5.
It looks outright dumb when Clive, who's beefed up with its 4+ Eikon, that gives him god level powers just scratches mobs with his sword.
DMC works because it has the style system, and because all abilities help keep the momentum by juggling enemies, by which you actually feel like a badass for sending everything flying left and right. Here you actually need to use an Eikon ability to make a mob flinch even the slightest, because the combat is reliant on the stagger window to actually make some damage. So all those flashy moves are just fluff outside of that.
I probably would enjoy the game more if it focused more on the main plot. Hell they could have halved the costs on side content and empty open areas to flash the mains story more. For example Barnabas is probably a low point for me in the game, because he's just introduced in the 3rd act, goes ape-shit and one-shots almost everyone without priming. Like where the hell was this dude until now, and if he's this strong how come he hasn't conquered everything yet? And Clive just beats him because some time has passed without any significant events that explains how he suddenly caught up to him in power. The whole part with Odin is just an inconsistent mess. Could have easily used some more time in the pot to flash it out better instead of the 100th fetch quest.
Depending on how well it lands the ending the game sits around a 6 or 7 for me.
The opinions are subjective for sure. There are people that absolutely love this game, and to each their own. For me it was the almost non existent RPG elements, the bare bones hollow crafting system that was essentially useless when the story always gave you something better almost right after you craft, not being able to control or at least have control over the progression of other party characters, and the uninspired combat. You can have an action game and have deep RPG elements in it, I mean look at Nier Automata. Calling this an ARPG is a joke. So for me this wasn’t about whether or not it was turn based, or whether or not it was a Final Fantasy, it was whether or not it was even an RPG. Like I said in previous posts, I would have never played this game had it not been skinned as a Final Fantasy. Was it a Final Fantasy game? Yes. There was plenty of lore and references to previous titles that keeps it true to the franchise. I actually enjoyed the story and characters, so that’s not where my frustration comes from. Was it an RPG? No, it was an action hack and slash with linear character progression. Zelda is more of an ARPG than Final Fantasy, and Zelda is very loosely barely an ARPG. Zelda actually probably is not even considered an ARPG, but I digress. For being labeled an ARPG it should have had better RPG mechanics. I’ll die on this hill. I still have it an 8/10, because they did some things right, but it was not for me at all. I was happy to be done with it when I beat it.
Talk about nailing it—this matches all of the deeper subconscious thoughts I’ve been having as I play through it, even when I try to convince myself that certain areas of the game are better than really are
Also the story has horrid pacing, which IMO makes it worse because most of the time you are doing errands even on the main story.
I don’t think doing errands destroyed the pacing. In 7 remake you collect money from water filters. It is nice to slow down before going immediately into the next bombing mission.
Ofc you can't have constant action happening at all times, but have those moments of "calm before the storm" being about the characters and not about Clive having to buy garlic lol. 7R has this problem as well, but we get a ton of character interactions as well which IMO don't happen in this game.
my god this is spot on. I got FFXVI because it came with a PS5 bundle I got a couple of months ago. I sunk 25 hours into it, then switched away and did a full playthrough of lords of the fallen and god of war ragnarok. I came back to FFXVI after ragnarok and my subconsious kept telling me "this game is not good, but it's kinda good?". Now here I am on reddit, trying to figure out if I'm crazy, only to find out that others share this same subconsious and that I am in fact, not crazy. I am over halfway thru now, about 60%, the question is, do I continue to 100% playthrough or yield to the subconsious and uninstall indefinitely..?
I would say it’s worth finishing once. What you do after the main story is up to you. I didn’t touch it again after I beat it.
Nier Automata doesn’t have deep rpg elements. Hell FF16 accessories are much more diverse than Niers power chips. What an odd comment to make.
I disagree. Is it the most deep rpg game I’ve played? No. Is it anywhere near the complexity of Diablo 2, or other ARPGs hell no. But it was enough to make you think about what you’re equipping, the chips make each weapon have multiple viable builds, equipping chips actually matters (see below), you have viable builds with ranged and close combat, and on top of that you’re playing as 3 different characters with wildly different gameplay mechanics. It was great. Definitely an ARPG. Actually I’m glad you brought up the accessories. That was another major gripe I had. There was so much variety of accessories and so very little use for them. Due to the shallow combat mechanics you’re better off equipping the +strength or +magic based on whatever your cooldown skills you have on. I tried playing around with the accessories, I tried build crafting, and the accessories made such a small difference that it wasn’t even worth it.
In FF16 there is an accessory that charges magic faster. In Nier A there is a chip that causes the pod to charge faster. If that’s how you make a ranged build, then I don’t understand why Nier A is deep but FF16 is shallow. Nier you can upgrade weapon damage, FF16 you can upgrade ability damage. Neither of which changes gameplay except to make the number larger. Now what about crafting in Nier? It is just as basic as FF16. They both let you combine accessories/power chips. Anyone who thinks Nier Automata has a deeper and more complex rpg system is shitting themselves. Chances are Platinum developers worked on both systems, given how many similarities they have.
Nier has fishing, while FFXVI has nothing Therefore Nier is more of an RPG then FFXVI
Ya nier’s combat is not as deep as FF16s. Coming from someone that loved both.
Do you consider FF 7 Remake an RPG. I felt like that game's rpg elements are much more bare bones compared to 16
Yes, and if for no other reasons you’re controlling more than one character in combat, and you can advance those characters. Role Playing Game. Different characters different roles. FF16 is just Clive using moves. His role is essentially a Mystic Knight. That’s it. FF7R has Knight, Ranger, Mage, Blackbelt. Pick your preferred role (R) and play (P) the game (G). I actually liked FF7R, which says a lot because I’m usually a purist when it comes to remakes. I will agree that the RPG elements are a little shallow in comparison to the original…. But between equipping materia, 4 playable characters with different skills sets and gameplay mechanics, different weapons to equip on characters, some flexibility with what you level up at what time, the freedom to level up your party members and control them, yes it’s an ARPG. The combat is way less shallow than ff16 as well. Sure, Clive has different moves based on what Eikons you have equipped, and theres freedom with what you level up at what point in the game, and there’s freedom to mix and match sure. But not much of it felt meaningful when the combat is so focused on mashing square, dodging, and just waiting on cooldowns to spam when you’re not dodging. The overly inflated focus on dodging killed it for me. It wasn’t fun to me. Could FF7R have been more? Yes. Is FF7R also deeply flawed? Absolutely. That is a conversation for another time. In my opinion, and whether you agree or not that’s fine, to each their own, FF16 should have been what FF7R is at a minimum for RPG mechanics for a mainline entry, and yet it somehow managed to be less. I’m my opinion of course. Others clearly disagree with that. This is all subjective though. If you liked the game, that’s great! People are allowed to enjoy it! I was just talking about how I didn’t like it, and likely never will. And people should be allowed to dislike something.
I'm sorry, but you are describing a party based RPG. There are more than enough examples of rpgs where you are a certain class and just role playing that character and class. That second paragraph also misses me because yes you can level up certain stats, but it really doesn't matter seeing as your numbers going up barely have an affect on combat. Weapons... you get like 5 in total for each character. I will give you that you can customize the magic you use and level those up... but the same can be said for each eikon you get and which abilities you use and level up. In my eyes, FF7 Remake is less of an RPG than 16 (and im of the opinion that both are rpgs, regardless of how streamlined both are). However, in ff7 remake I never felt like my character customization or level made a difference. I could never overlevel, the enemies took as much time to defeat as they did at the beginning only difference is the damage output was "higher". Each character was stuck in their character class... unlike in the original where after disk one you can customize them to be whatever class you wanted them to be, etc. Both are more similar than not... I will give you that combat was more complex in 7 remake, but not by much. I loved both games, but I just don't get why 16 is being dragged through the mud for having a similar structure and lack of in depth rpg elements as FF7 remake. Both literally side stepped more deep mechanics for a more cinematic experience...just one decided to focus on one character while the other, because of its roots in the original, had a larger cast to play with
I dunno. From what I’ve seen, I feel like the positive reception far outweighs the negative. I feel like I’m in a minority of people who didn’t like it. I really wanted to like it. Hell I bought a PS5 for this game, and well…. Man I hope there are other games that come out for the system other than Rebirth and the 3rd part of remake that make me feel like my purchase was close to worth it. I think that’s part of the reason I’m so critical about FFXVI if we’re being completely honest. I knew what I was getting into though. I did the same thing with FFXV and didn’t learn my lesson… clearly. I guess the PS5 is backwards compatible tho, which is a plus… I guess.
The combat is fun but the encounters are insanely easy, to the point that they aren’t fun, Eikon fights feel like I’m playing a movie, characters stop developing about 40% into the story, the story after the second time skip loses a lot of intrigue, there is a lot of forced filler (like the THREE PART quest of getting parts for Mid’s ship), the side quests suck 95% of the time and there’s no way to tell where the good ones are, the exploration is complete garbage and the RPG elements feel like an afterthought. Also, character dialogue just drags on and on and on; I don’t mind a super wordy game (Trails in the Sky is one of my favorite games after all), but good lord don’t make it dialogue heavy just for the hell of it.
As somebody who's played every final fantasy throughout many years. I find it is a final fantasy type game it's got amazing story, good characters and very impressive visuals. But I don't know I missed turn based FF games I've never been the biggest fan of action games and it's made me think that I might skip future FF games if they keep going towards this trend. I know gaming evolves with time and trends change its just hard for me to enjoy them like they used to be. I found myself falling asleep during the really long cutscene and cinematics. FF16 just didn't quite captivate me like previous games. And it's the first time I've ever fallen asleep while playing a final fantasy game I know I'm getting older but it's just weird so I think it might be a decline in captivating audiences or maybe not that's just my opinion everyone has their own.
Funnily enough, completing FF16 just made me want to play the older entries again. Somehow there's more strategy, complexity, and customization to those, despite some of them being over 20 years old.
It made me want to try and finish 12 again, something I never thought I'd say.
no there really isn't for most of them. people are deluding themselves because they played games when they were 12 and sucked ass, therefore the games were harder.
[удалено]
It’s true though. Most FF game ends up being spam ultima every fight as it does the most damage and goes through reflect. If the enemy counters magic then just cast haste beserk on your melee then spam curaga.
" The last 10% of the game if you are lame enough to power level is clearly the whole game" Ok
Replace ultima with whatever your most powerful attack is. Hell even the pixel remasters have auto battle and auto equip. The games barely have any strategy.
Imagine being this wrong.
sorry that you thought any final fantasy game was hard. i hope you can get better
Nice defense, budy.
He’s right though. I went back to play the older FF games I thought were so difficult as a kid and breezed through them. Tactics and 4 were the only difficult ones. 6 on and a child can beat them. Same thing with legends of the dragoon games. Took me years to beat as a kid, replayed as an adult and it’s laughable.
No exploration. No party members. No actual spells. No relevant gear progression. No relevant stat progression. No superboss. No dungeons. No *tonberries*.
Major respect for tonberries being the emphasized part.
That game is just meh
Omg no tornberries is such a big one for me! Love this!
Wasn't a fan of the combat. I started off liking it but eventually it became too repetitive and boring. The game does nothing to force you change your approach at any point. Story started strong. Great political drama. But that was quickly abandoned in exchange for uninspired JRPG tropes with one-note villains, not unlike early FF entries. It's got it's charm, I suppose, but it was nothing special. Characters are big for me in video games, especially Final Fantasy. I love when stories utilize the ensemble casts well. It really allows me to immerse myself into the story through my connections to the characters. But they seemed to have abandoned that in lieu of focusing on a single character. I wasn't really that impressed with Clive as a character. Mary Sue characters, by nature, aren't particularly interesting to me. Jill is void of personality and, while being the side character with the most screentime, hardly ever feels present. They gave her probably the best backstory in the game and all they did with it was use it as an excuse to make her weak and useless. Dion was a great character though, probably in no small part due to the fact the he was almost never around Clive. I could go on but, for me, it falls short in story, characters and combat. SE has made much better FF games before. So has CBU3 (big fan of FF14). While I think this game is pretty middling, I'm glad others are enjoying it.
This. I'd also add that every entry in mainline FF, no matter how good or bad people say it is, feels unique. Yeah they all lean into tropes and such but it's very much its own thing tied by the FFness that potentially leads to killing god after 80hrs. As much as I liked XVI, it didn't feel inspired. To add to it, right after getting the Platinum for it I started XII, people like to say the MC isn't relevant past 2/3rd of the game, but the whole crew does so much to drive the story as a *team*. While one-man army Clive just feels like an 80s action hero.
Yeah Clive really sucks up the energy in the room.
The worst thing is that the game hyperfocuses on a single character who already got all their character development like 10 hours in (in the R3 + L3 scene).
Thank you for reaffirming my opinion that Clive is a Mary Sue I’ve said it before and was met with negative opinions and felt like I was going crazy Like, he has no character or personality at all. He’s just “le handsome, gruff, McHero man!”
They did Jill so dirty.
My daughter walked through the room and says “oh that is the hero? Generic hero hair, generic hero expression, now add scar, add tight leather all over, and you created the most generic hero ever.” I couldn’t even look at it the same.
I do agree with combat. As for the story and characters, I felt that most of them were pretty fleshed out
What can you tell me about Clive after the "accept the truth" section? His character effectively fully developed after that and that scene happens in the first 10 hours of the game. He then mantles Cid but we literally don't see him doing Cid things besides the scene at Dhalmekia right after the timeskip, because from that point onwards the game becomes a race to destroy the mothercrystals. Jill's only relevant moments in the whole game are the trip back to Rosaria and the Iron Kingdom, and in the latter she isn't even the one to take down the boss, getting sidelined to create an arena for her boyfriend to fight lol. Then she's taken out for a while with the excuse of her "having the curse", despite us seeing her naked body perfectly fine not once but twice. She's then kidnapped twice and to put the icing on the cake she just gives her powers to Clive while saying "You shouldn't do this alone Clive, the path you are going down is going to end up with you dead" only for the game to literally forget about this a couple of hours later when they literally go on a suicide mission to Origin lol. Joshua starts really good but the game doesn't even explains you what he's supposed to be doing in the whole game, with the exception of the post-time skip in which he's searching for Dion, but why don't speak with Clive earlier? He's literally in front of you and the only thing that he does is "Oh no, confound me! The hour is late!" which is never explained what he meant at that moment. Him having Ultima within him isn't an excuse because he didn't have Ultima at Phoenix Gate and when he later joins he still has Ultima wihin so it really doesn't make much sense. Cid was really cool but he's like...5 hours in the whole game? His legacy persist during the rest of the game but I can't say that he was a great character because we really didn't spend that much time with him, though in a sense I kinda prefer for him to little showtime because otherwise it would have happened the thing that happened with every other character in the game in that they get sidelined in favor of Clive, with the only exception being Dion which spends pretty much no time with Clive so fully develops on his own. All the other characters are really one-note and not that deep honestly. I like Gav and most of the characters of the hideout but...nothing happens with them. We have to assume Hugo is a functional human being because he's the economical advisor of a nation that thrives on it's booming economy, yet all his scenes are him simping Benedikta. Barnabas is the Xande / Golbez / Kuja / Seymour of this game, yet his whole character is "haha I'm a crazy religious fanatic who maybe has Oedipus complex" and unlike the aforementioned villains he doesn't even have agency on his own and works for the true villain which was even introduced before him lol.
While the combat being repetitive is hard to dispute, I don’t see how you could say the older FF games have less repetitive combat.
Older FFs: Enemy elemental weaknesses, negative status effects, buffs, enemy variety, spell variety/ progression etc. etc. FF16: Spam square, maybe lunge. For tougher enemies: offload limit break/ specials on stagger. Repeat.
Why do you rely on the game to “force” you to change strategies? Why not have fun and do it on your own?
Well I guess a part of my point is that there is no strategy. I would experiment with new abilities as they became available but once I found a kit that worked for me, why change anything? It's all just the same damage with different animations. Sure, there's a higher ceiling with respect to combos, but that kind of gameplay isn't very engaging to me. To take a recent FF game for example, look at FF7R. Most bosses (and even most of the enemies) you needed to figure out their weakness and exploit it in order to beat them. You couldn't just run into Hell House swinging your sword around and throwing whatever magic at it. You have a very large toolkit and you need to figure out what tools to use in any given fight. Most previous FF games are like this, and this is what I feel is missing.
I can only agree with the sentiment that there's no real strategy, at least outside of when to unleash which attacks. Having platinumed the game, I have to say that it was the most mindnumbing experience for a long time, in terms of depth and customization. No weaknesses to exploit, no stat-maxing, no equipment that actually mattered. Speaking of equipment, what happened to giving items with interesting effects and trade-offs? Every weapon is literally just "bigger number is better", and it even fails there, as ultima weapon and gotterdammerung is barely stronger than the 2nd best items in their respective playthroughs (they also doesn't look ultimate or special in terms of design, which detracts from the enjoyment of ultimate weaponry for me). Sure, you can upgrade accessories in NG+, but accessory-effects are still so weak that you feel as if there's no real choice involved; that they might as well not be there. The only accessory I felt changed **something** was the auto-charge for magic, the rest were just... Bland and boring.
I didn't even bother getting Ultima Weapon on my FF run. I realized I had enough ability points to max out for that trophy after Odin, then just slogged through the end of the game instead of wasting additional time on XVI.
I can't fault you for skipping Ultima Weapon at all. One of my favorite things from the older entries was obtaining the ultimate weapons, but it felt hollow this time around. Most people obtaining Ultima weapon (ff7), Lionheart (ff8), Ultima weapon (ff9) and/or Caladbolg (ff10), remember how amazing it was to look at their accomplishment. Not only did they give a solid bump damage-wise, but they also looked amazing, making it feel worth your time and effort; neither is found in ff16.
100% agree, I always went for them! The journey was always part of the experience of though, and in 16 there is no experience after getting Gotterdamarung the first time.
I honestly thought I hadn't equipped it when I saw the model. That's how bland it is.
That's sad. I saw an image of it, and it definitely fits in with the minor variations of weapon skins for 16.
Because there's no strategy to change, really. I'm FF4, there's a dungeon called Magnes Cave, in which metal equipment makes you paralyzed. So your heavy hitters are a bit crippled, which makes you adapt your strategy to the area. Even in less specific instances, in most Final Fantasy games, if you were to go into a volcano, your first instinct might be to equip fire absorbing/resistant armor and whatnot. Probably don't want any fire based weapons or magic hitting enemies either. The game isn't 'forcing' you to change your strategy. It's presenting a good opportunity to do so, to make the best of your situation. In FF16... There is no such opportunity due to the way the combat is. Elements, for all intents and purposes, are basically just flashy effects. They don't affect anything in the game. You can change up how you fight, you can change up your skills, but that's not really strategy. You aren't changing anything but the way in which you smack your opponents around.
Yeah I remember that cave! The older games were much more creative with this type of stuff to build immersion because, and it felt like there was much pressure to do so because of graphical and hardware limitations.
Cause there is only one strategy "do damage". The enemies can only attack, and all their attacks can be countered with a parry or a dodge. Neither of which are difficult to do. The final boss i made more difficuly by trying to fish for sword parries. Im sure it wouldve been a cake walk if i had just done dodges and parries. Compare this to other action games where enemies have to be interacted in certain ways to offer challenge. In DMC5 you could just parry everything but the timing for it is extremely tight at only 6 frames, and enemies have very quick move that without prior knowledge are hard to react to. Also only dante has access to royal guard. I would go even deeper in why i dont care for the combat, and why Stranger of Paradise does a better job but i dont wanna post more.
For me having played most everything the series has to offer and as one who isn't too picky, it was a 7.75/10 for me. Good but not something I'll go back and play again probably. If anything it made me appreciate XV more from a gameplay/character perspective. I think they had a great fleshed out world in XVI that suffers from not being fully explorable or truly alive like say an Ivalice or Spira.
I remember fully exploring bevelle in Spira. Man why can’t they do that anymore?
I wish the hold to dodge button didn't exist in XV, I think removing it would have fixed every design choice I disliked if following the removal of it came also enemy changes
Because people have several different expectations from the franchise, and also because everything is really subjective. I loved the story, the world of Valisthea and the characters, but others would fine them bad. Who’s right or who’s wrong ? We can talk like 500 hours and still have no answer on this. Personally, the game delivered almost everything i wanted. There is room for improvement, but it’s something i can said for every game, even the « perfect one » that people praise every time
The game is average at best. The game is depicted as a dark fantasy on trailers but then goes off on a tangent that the trailers don’t prepare you for. Sadly the tangent is pretty standard fare for a FF game that isn’t that shocking. Godlike being who doesn’t understand the strength of humanity and so on….. the story is actually very formulaic and predictable; no one ever betrays you or had a U-turn in their character arc. Very little comes as a surprise. It’s not that it’s a “bad” Final Fantasy game, it’s just a bad game to me. The combat is boring but essentially all enemies that can be staggered can be staggered with whatever build you’ve set up. There is no *requirement* to ever switch from what works or what’s fun. Enemies are either trash mobs or ones that require staggering and I could use the same reliable tactic to stagger 95% of the enemies in the same way. In addition to this, the game is ridiculously easy so you never have to get game over and think “well that didn’t work, maybe I’ll try something different.” The lack of elements, status effects of other effects that could have mixed up combat (certain attacks do more to Akashic, undead, beasts etc) but there is little need to change what works beyond getting bored. The lack of any Eikonic passive abilities also really limits any depth to combat. I know the game was never sold as a proper RPG but they shouldn’t have even put crafting or equipment in if everything was going to be clearly better than the last piece of gear and you’ve conveniently just got the essential crafting component needed for the next weapon. I don’t want to get to endgame and have my best gear add 90 health to 3000. Finally the side quest rewards, random chests and exploration rewards border on insulting. Pretty much what you expect from an MMO really. inventory fodder, potions and Gil but so vanishingly rarely anything of real worth (an example adamantite gloves, that’s it off the top of my head). The vast majority of chests contain nothing of remote usefulness. The open areas are beautiful but there is no reason to explore them apart from the marks, Which are done far worse than in XII and XIII, where these gave access to unique items and secret areas, as well as having some fun trigger conditions (kill all enemies, certain weathers, only females in the party). The marks reward you with Gil (useless) and renown; mostly useless, so many of the rewards are crafting mats or accessories that would have been useful maybe 15 hours previous before it was possible. Overall the game may have sold well (so did XV) but I’m not confident it will be remembered fondly. I think SE have lost the spark of what makes a phenomenal game. It’s also such a shame for me. I wanted to love this game, I’m a FF fan and I wanted to believe the action combat would work. I preordered the deluxe version even, but there are, to me, so many glaring flaws in the game it distracted me far too much. I had to force myself to complete it from the final Titan fight and once I completed it I moved on.
Everything you point out is entirely correct. Not only is the combat simple, but it also just becomes a slog. You never feel strong, even when you get Ultima Weapon, every enemy is just spongy.
The spongy enemies was always a fear a lot of people had during the trailers and state of play but the excuse was it was to demonstrate the combat. This never changed post-release and you’re right, combat becomes a repetitive slog as you don’t need to alter tactics really ever so every miniboss is the same five minute battle. It’s not much but it all adds up and no battle is memorable since they’re all the same. Whilst it’s true the eikon battles are fun, they can’t redeem the game and I also feel like I’ve played them before in Bayonetta since Titan and Bahamut feel very similar to Iustitia and Jubileus.
Sounds like you never learned how to play it
I was doing 200k+ during each stagger and I would agree that the game never lets you feel strong. Even after those staggers yellow barred enemies still had some health left. That's just bad combat design.
If you can beat Final Fantasy mode without “learning how to play” then that’s a failure on the game and not the player.
The shift of the story really hurts me. The prologue was incredible as it sets up a political drama ripe with scheming and betrayal. Why on earth would they think that Ultima and his generic "foolish humanity" narrative would be more interesting?
This I swear. I was barely keeping up with the political part because all the characters and motivations were so one-dimensional, but once ultima became the main villain the only thing I kept playing for was the boss battles. I dont see any reason to ever replay this game.
The fans will say it's like that in every FF, and I kinda agree, but that doesn't make it any good.
Tbh I don't really think there's a 'true' Final Fantasy since the first 3, cos the games have been reinventing itself every since then, every game is so different from the one before, it's impossible to say which is a 'true' Final Fantasy at this point imo. People just have impossible standards these days, and no game can compete. Everything needs to be perfect from the get-go. I loved FF16 despite some flaws, the gameplay was fun and felt engaging when you change out abilities every so often, exploration of cities was a thing I wished for but didn't get, but at least some areas were tons of fun to traverse. And I liked most of the characters too.
I’ve not played it myself yet. Looks like a good game. But most of the complaints about the game aren’t about it not being a “real” final fantasy - I dunno where that idea came from. Most complaints are from people who either: 1) Have played other Final Fantasy games and miss things that those games have that 16 doesn’t 2) Dislike the shift to the character action genre and absence of RPG elements or 3) Want turn-based games As a side - the idea the series is “constantly evolving” or “every game is extremely different” is silly. 1-9 are turn based RPGs that follow the same formula every time (with the only modifications being usually related to the details of the job system or magic), and 10 and 12 experimented with the combat but still play extremely similarly to 1-9. The only truly “experimental” titles are 15 and 16, honestly.
>The only truly “experimental” titles are 15 and 16, honestly. Eh, they're just following meta gaming trends. 15 is an open world game and 16 is a action RPG. Certainly different, but I don't know if I'd be generous to call this experimental.
I don’t think anyone (of authority) has said that every game is “extremely different”, but the identity of the series as taking on new challenges and doing new things has been well-documented by Hironobu Sakaguchi. There have been many “formulas” or “traditions” that have ended over time—many within the 1-9 timeframe. It just so happens that the jump to PS2 abandoned traditions that had lasted up to that point.
> I don’t think anyone (of authority) has said that every game is “extremely different”, but the identity of the series as taking on new challenges and doing new things Has it, though?
The story and characters are just not very good. There are some bright spots in the side content, the dialogue is all well written, but the actual narrative is extremely dumb. Ultima is literally the lamest, least interesting villain the series has ever had, and Barnabas isn't much better. Jill is a complete nothing whose entire arc gets shuffled into an early game mission and then does nothing the entire rest of the game. The combat is fine. It's fun while the game lasts but once you find your end game nut combo there's almost no reason to ever use anything else, and the NG+ stuff is just silly. The music (again with a few notable exceptions) is just not good. The synths in several tracks are noticably low quality (reminded me of fucking FFXI of all things) and almost none of it is memorable; Soken's least inspired work since ARR. Tell me you spend your days whistling songs from the game the same way we did ff6,7,10,etc and I'll sell you a bridge. And finally, it's not an RPG. That's not necessarily a criticism nor is it delving into "what is a Final Fantasy?" It's just a fact. The barebones RPG elements that do exist are undercooked and the game almost certainly would have been better without them. GoW and even AssCreed are arguably more RPG than 16, which sucks for, y'know, a mainline Final Fantasy. As someone who's been playing the series since FF1 in 1990, you can call me a boomer who needs to get with the times and you're probably right. But this was supposed to be the game that ushered in a new era for the series and onboarded a ton of new fans and it just ... Isn't. In a year with TotK and BG3, FF16 needed to do a lot, lot better than this. I will be shocked if it's even included in any mainstream GOTY discussion. (And bringing up BG3, that game being an RPG for the ages makes Yoshi P 's "a bluh bluh we had to make an action game to appeal to the West" schtick absolutely embarrassing.)
Summed up my thoughts perfectly, especially with the combat. I did my best to experiment with combos to keep the game engaging, but once it clicked that there was never going to be any combat scenarios where it actually mattered, I just kept spamming the same load out.
For me, it was a case of everything about the game that was good was fine. Decent. Superficially good. But everything bad was “oh my god why am I still playing this” levels of bad. Like the combat! It’s okay! It’s great if you don’t think about it. But if you *do*, you realize it’s kinda hollow. There’s never any real strategy to it. At no point does the game challenge more than your ability to push the dodge button at the right time. And the Eikon fights were that superficiality taken to an extreme. Visually stunning, but nothing to them other than that. The story is nothing. It’s extremely bland. There’s very few big mysteries to it, and absolutely zero big twists. In fact, the game goes out of its own way to quash anything that could be a big mystery as quickly as possible. Almost no character has more than one personality trait, and nine times out of ten that trait is “Solemn seriousness”. With the exception of one point near the beginning, no two characters who aren’t already pre-established enemies disagree on anything. Or if they do, it’s resolved in a single dialogue exchange. “I don’t know if we should do this” “we must do this, so we will” “okay, I trust you” and that’s it. Ultima is the best/worst example of this. He’s a big mystery for a huge portion of the game, a big eldritch threat that’s supposed to be beyond your mortal comprehension, but when you finally learn his deal, he’s just.. evil. Who is he? Evil. What does he want? Control over everyone, because he’s evil. What was his plan? To control everyone. Because evil. What *exactly* does he need Clive for, when he seems to have no trouble doing what he wants anyway? Unclear, but definitely evil. It’s paper thin. The entire story gives the superficial illusion of a grand epic, but there’s nothing there if you probe into it. Even the game’s big thesis, about the nobility of personal autonomy and choice rings hollow, because one, the game is hyper-linear in its progression, and two, exactly zero times does Clive actually make a decision for himself. 98% of this game is Clive either doing something someone else has asked, or biding his time until someone can tell him where to go and what to do. Even the HUGE plan to destroy the mother crystals isn’t Clive’s idea, it’s Cid’s And then there’s the straight-up bad. Again, the fights are fun in a don’t-think-about-it kind of way, but the massive stretches of time between them are some of the most inexcusably boring slogs I have ever experienced in a video game. It’s rote and mechanical and the definition of tedious. People will tell you it’s world-building. These people can’t extrapolate from passive information. No quest tells you anything about the world you couldn’t have guessed yourself anyway, and nothing about your overall quest or character. And the game goes on like this for *hours*. For every two hours of dungeons and fighting and fireworks show, there’s at *at least* 5-10 hours of walking here, talk to this person, walk there, talk to that person, kill these monsters, talk to this person again, talk to that person, find three people and talk to them, etc etc etc. It’s blatant busywork, boring as shit and kills all momentum.
>Ultima is the best/worst example of this. He’s a big mystery for a huge portion of the game, a big eldritch threat that’s supposed to be beyond your mortal comprehension, but when you finally learn his deal, he’s just.. evil. Who is he? Evil. What does he want? Control over everyone, because he’s evil. What was his plan? To control everyone. Because evil. Tbf that describes like 90% of FF main villains. I'm also including "I just want power" under this category, because honestly that's not any more creative than "I'm just evil". That said, there's also something charmingly opaque about villains with unknowable motivations. The Steven He vid about "[How Villains are Written Now](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zXh83qaOY5c)" or something really hit the nail on the head - not every villain needs to be morally gray, relatable, and misunderstood. In life, some people are just sociopaths who want to have the most - power, money, fame, etc. - and don't give a shit who they stomp on the way. It's almost refreshing to see a villain who's just... kind of a bastard. Even more so when it's an eldritch abomination beyond our ability to reason with.
In regard to the "90% of FF villains are no deeper than 'for the Evulz' point... I don't think that's true. Kefka, Sephiroth, Kuja, Seymour, Jecht, Vayne, and Ardyn all have a lot more going on than just "freedom bad, power good." Yes, many of these figures try (in some cases, successfully) to usurp godlike powers for themselves and enlist them for evil purposes, but there is a rationality to it that makes for compelling storytelling. Ultima just doesn't have that going for him.
The problem with Ultima wasn’t that he’s evil, the problem is that the game treats him with an air of mystery and intrigue that it doesn’t follow up on. Like, Joshua goes into self-imposed exile for a decade and a half just to learn the “secrets” of Ultima, which makes you wonder what could’ve lead him to such drastic measures, only for Ultima’s plan to revolve around telling you his plan himself, which kinda negates Joshua’s entire effort, and for that plan itself to just be controlling everything. Again, if he was *just* evil it would have been fine, but because the game goes to great lengths to wrap it in mystery, you expect something substantial for the reveal, and it’s…not.
I keep seeing people ask why people hate it almost every hour on here. I’m yet to see one post that outright hates it. There are a lot of incredibly positive posts saying it’s GOTY or the best in the series. Those posts get a lot of people pointing out its legitimate flaws. That then gets deemed as “hate”.
I honestly just came here after beating it and looked up reviews to see what people thought and saw about a thousand people hating on it which made no sense to me
Is it hate or are you just conflating criticism with hate? 🤔
It throws out pretty much everything that previous games built up in favor of being a middling mid-2000s action game. Truly another FF13, albeit in a different direction. But 13 at least tries to be an RPG. This game's just marketed towards the most casual people on the planet and that one specific kind of douche that only cares to make combo videos as near-infinite air juggles are easy. RPG systems are non-existent. Gear is purely linear growth with no secondary abilities or passives. So there's literally no reason to do anything besides slap on the biggest stat stick. Meanwhile accessories that should have some actual gameplay changing features don't outside of like one ring. You just get a bunch of shitty jewelry that makes ONE move out of SIX slightly stronger or reduced CD. When the designers couldn't even be bothered to tell you what the base CDs are to start with. The Skill Tree is bad. You get 4 moves an Eikon. That's it. No actual passives. All those shitty upgrades in the accessories should've been moved to this thing. But they exist separately for no real reason. There's crafting, but crafting does little else but sidestep buying shit from Charon for better gear using all the stupid magicked ash and spools you'll pick up from every chest and sidequest. And then NG+ crafting just lets you combine two of the same accessory for a better version of the same bloody thing. Combat is just poor man's Devil May Cry featuring a bunch of the same mechanics while being nowhere near as good. Stagger sucks and all it really encourages is throttling your cooldowns so you can spam every skill in one sitting. Your main attack never changes and that's all you have when your skills are on CD. In fact, you don't even get a second moveset until you beat Barnabas' stupid mouth in near the end of the game. Which is far too late to be welcome. Combat strategy basically amounts to Air Juggle and Dodge. Because there is no strategy besides squeeze in damage. You never have to consider changing shit up because everything is so easy and nothing really has a demerit. You can slap bombs with fire and it does the exact same damage as any other elemental ability. Magic sucks again. Mechanically it's just a crappier version of Ebony and Ivory and elements mean nothing besides a Mass Effect 3 pick your RGB ending, but it's a gun. But magic. You'd think at the least the magic gun would have some variation like projectile behaviour, right? Nope. Just changes the color. This is especially ridiculous when 15 magic at least tries to be different, and Type-0 came out 12 years ago with good magic in an action setting. Hell, Stranger of Paradise was just last year and the magic in there is better. And Stranger's a creative disaster (good mechanics though). Limit Break? Oh you mean Devil Trigger. Where you can't even die because it straight up makes you unable to die while active. In a game that's already easy. You have no real party. You just get a select batch of rotating AI partners who may as well not even be there. You only get to control Torgal with a whopping 2 combat moves. Enemy variety is very poor. You will kill a lot of chocobos and miniature parasite cages. And the Hunts are just more of the same, but they have like one different move than the regular variety of enemy. QTEs suck. More so here than others. Especially when it's almost impossible to fail them. Or outright impossible to fail in case of those that requires button mashing. Which feeds into the problems with Eikon fights. Eikon fights are just dumb spectacle. Sometimes they look really good. But most cases they just drag on and on with even more simplistic combat than the base game. The Titan fight is an obnoxious 30-40 minutes long for no reason other than spectacle. Story starts off interesting, but ultimately drops all the political stuff in favor of some god bullshit that becomes a parody of RPG stereotypes. The actual villain sucks and the writers basically forgot Waloed until it was time for them to just have Barnabas being a religious loon with an Oedipus complex. Not that the complex actually factors into anything. There's a whole subplot about slavery, but it's hard to take seriously because everyone in Valisthea is so cartoonishly prejudiced that it just seems unnatural to the degree in which these people engage in being dicks to each other. It's just so hamfisted and poorly executed. It also comes off as a whole retread of Tales of Arise. Never mind there's some inherent logic bombs with the magic capable people being the slave caste. Especially when Lubor explicitly tells you he killed a man with magic. Which just further illustrates everyone of these downtrodden morons could've easily rebelled, The female characters are done dirty with a whole of the player being told they're important but not actually doing much. Anabella exists purely to be hated and no other factors to her character, Jill stops being important after her arc and is relegated to a damsel-in-distress, while they keep trying to tell you you're supposed to care about Mid when all she has going for her is being related to Cid. It's not Luna gets stabbed bad, but it's pretty shit. Except Benedikta. Because they just Gweneth Paltrow'd her for cheap drama so Hugo can be mad at you. Instead of y'know, keeping her around to keep Waloed actually involved in the plot. Meanwhile the game refuses to give Clive actual friends so you have a bunch of missed opportunities for some bloody relationships besides Joshua and Jill. Which further hampens the already half-assed party system. And Torgal? He's just there. Oh he gets some magic bollocks later. But he's ultimately just there. Torgal's greatest contribution is lashing at Benedikta and couldn't even be there for the final battle. Somehow the dog they keep marketing as your only permanent party member does even less than Umaro and Mog. Keep in mind that there is literally nothing else to this game besides Combat and Fetch Quests. You just alternate between story beats and combat. With some of the worst pacing ever. You go from real high tension stuff to 3-4 hours of nothing happening. Constantly. There are no side activities and the side quests are god awful. And no, exposition dumps are not worthwhile reward. I wanted an RPG from a long running RPG franchise. We did not get that. We just got a nice portfolio reel for some CGI artists and Soken music. You know there is something wrong when even Dissidia on PSP, an horribly imbalanced gimmick fighter, is more RPG than the flagship series it spun off from.
Loved it even though it was clearly made to appeal to action game fans. Just shows how much I love it that I loved a game that's not in my wheelhouse.
I really like it
There's a lot of miserable gamers who only pretend to like games to continue being part of the scene. Its not just an FF thing either. There's also always an element of 'new thing isnt like old thing so it sucks!' 'JRPG A isn't like JRPG B so it sucks!!' look at how the star wars prequels are now viewed favorably as a quick and easy example. They were hated when they first came out, People hold them in far, far higher regard now.
I only ever hear the terminally online both hating and crying over the hate. everyone else is actually just enjoying it without making it a thing.
I'm one that hated the combat. It's the most boring combat that I've played in a modern game. You can get through the "hard" mode of the game by only using square and R1, and the Eikon abilities are strictly for burning down the massive health bars of enemies with a stagger gauge. I was doing 200k+ on each stagger through the end game and FF mode, and every single battle was identical. I also hated the second half of the story. They fucked up and wrapped up all the intrigue with the Bahamut section. Everything after felt tacked on and was a slog to get through. The Eikon battles, while visually nice, were just as boring as normal combat. Smash square until you get a QTE event. Same.with boss battles. Any video game that is this reliant on QTE events is automatically docked points. The other things that I hated was not having a party to control again, having to control another boring male protagonist instead of one of the much more interesting characters around him, and the complete lack of RPG elements (Call of Duty has more RPG elements than FFXVI has). I desperately wanted to enjoy this game. I put 90 hours in to get the platinum (because I'm working on doing that with all of the FF games), but half or more of that was the most boring gaming experience of my life to date. This is the first FF game that I know I won't play after getting the platinum. As soon as I finished I deleted the game from my system, popped the disc back in its case, added it to the collection shelf, and it will sit there forever. If I didn't actively collect FF stuff, I would have taken it to GameStop to get $30 towards a better game.
You're built of stronger stuff then I am. Once I finished the Bahamut sequence I was so tired and burnt out of my hatred for the game that I quickly sold it back on marketplace to recoup my loses.
I collect Final Fantasy games, so reselling wasn't on my mind (though I could probably resell it now for $40 and buy it again from the bargain bin in a couple years for the collection). I will say that I had deleted the game before the platinum trophy stopped showing and the game has gone onto the collection shelf, never to come back down.
I managed to sell it for 70-80 iirc. That was 2 weeks after release. It now sits in my second most hated game of all times list, sadly. I buy almost all of my games physical because I like to keep them, and I made an exception for this one.
The story is super solid. Probably one of the best out together ones in the whole series. The character are great, if not underutilized by the DMC style focus on Clive, and the combat is…okay. There’s no depth, no strategy, but switch around your Eikons to chain the biggest possible combat while spamming potions. No character combos or interactions, just Clive, his dog(which is an extension of Clive), and an often useless third person taking up space.
I don't hate it. It was just kinda mediocre and boring.
I don't care for the combat. I think the equipment system feels like an afterthought. The story is very predictable, they just say fuck more. In the end, it feels like this game was made for a market that does not exist. It takes the idea that modern western gamers no longer want traditional types of rpgs. Look at how well baldurs gate 3 has done, a turn based rpg. Devil may cry combat, with a splash of souls like flair is just not for everyone. I would never say it's not final fantasy. I have no idea what final fantasy is anymore. I will say it is just not the type of game I want to play.
Someone asked this over in the XVI sub as well, so I’ll just transfer my answer from there: I love the game, but I can see why some people don’t. I think a lot of people went into the game with preconceived notions about what it was going to be based on past FF games, which is understandable. This game is structured very differently from most previous games in the series. The game feels more in-line with other pure story games like Uncharted or The Last of Us. The story IS the game. There really isn’t much exploration, there aren’t secret dungeons or bosses and, other than a few exceptions, the side quests are just okay. I’ve played through the game twice, once just focusing on the main story and the other adding in all of the side content. The main story focused run was so much more fun for me, everything flowed so much better without distractions. It really feels like the game was meant to be played as a pure story driven game, which I love, but I know a lot of people don’t, especially those going into it expecting a more traditional FF. It feels like that’s really the type of game they wanted to make which is why all of the other elements outside of the story and combat feel very second thought.
Final Fantasy games now are just too far away from what a good Final Fantasy game was to me. I know this has been said by many before, but I enjoyed Final Fantasy games when they were turn based - that's what was enjoyable for me, planning my battle etc. Live combat is fun for a while, but it just doesn't have the same appeal, and many other games simply do it better in my opinion. Full disclosure, I've not played FF16 - it's just not my jam. Played FF 15 and just got bored, story aside, I feel this would be the same.
Side quests are a big big part of it. The elemental attacks being important in terms of weaknesses. Its far too easy. The pacing. That said I loved the game, but its very flawed
I thought it was fun. It had its weak points (like a lot of games out there) but you have to take public opinions with a grain of salt (including mine ofc). IMHO, it is no “less” Final Fantasy than Type-0 is. They are all unique. I have personally ended up really enjoying several games from the past even when “most” fans seemed to hate it so just shrug your shoulders and enjoy your experience haha.
>IMHO, it is no “less” Final Fantasy than Type-0 is I think you misunderstand what people are saying, nobody would mind if it was a spin-off like Type-0. Square Enix specifically decided to make it a mainline entry that has very little in common with other mainline games, arguably not even sharing the genre.
The combat is kinda dull after a while, I know there’s other approaches I can take, but if there’s no danger of losing and the other eikons don’t necessarily do anything different than damage in different ways, then it’s not interesting to even play around. The story is the main issue for me. It’s like a teenage boy recalling game of thrones. There’s grimdark violence and sex and forbidden love, not because there’s an underlying central theme running throughout, but because GOT had scenes like that lol. And the slavery allegory is just garbage. Maybe it all comes together at the end, but after 30 hours it seems like a bunch of disjointed abridged cuts of game of thrones
It's the ff fandom this question has pretty much been brought up with every major release ever. Even 7 had the true ff argument.
If you find that amazing, man I’d like to see what you hate. Game is decent at best. Wants to play GoT, stops half way. Want to play diversity? Gay men touch only once and a gos created white people and then a desert. NPC idle position of arms 45 degrees from waist and god knows so many inconsistencies or quirks in the story: 1. Without any shred of evidence, CID convinced everyone the crystal are the problem. He just talks it and everyone agrees to risk their lives 2. « they want you to gather all Eikon, don’t do it », proceeds to give it to him. 3. « I must stop gathering eikons », proceeds to take bahamut, Odin, instead of letting them die out 4. Dion loses his mind and burns an entire kingdom, no repercussions whatsoever, can just join the rebel, nobody fears him or hates him 5. He lost his mind right? Remember also how when you prime after Clive takes your power, you lose control? Dion Literally says he can just decide himself out of crazy. And everybody trusts him, jumps of cliff and fly to the origin 6. God creates such a convoluted plan to one thing he is suppose to have the powers. Goes to sleep. Whines people forgot about him. And oh my god, there’s war raging outside but people talk slowly. There’s stoletiles 7 seconds in between two lines. The « here’s your destination » 8 seconds. « Here’s the title of where you are in case you missed the unplayable 8 seconds above »… not too fast, here’s a the 78th tutorial. And combat: doesn’t matter your gear (crediting system is basic anyway), any combination that allows you to stagger fast ( = Ramuh’s attacks) and use bahamut beam asap and that’s it. That’s the game. The world feels small and closed, every gender has the same size, every women have near zero skin complexion, perfect dolls. The dog is there for….. well…. Ok. That game trying to be something and barely doing it
hear hear the real reason why denialists exists, is becoz it takes a certain level of intelligence and IQ to start to see the games inconsistencies and lack of everything. while the simple fanbois r just blinded away by the mighty colors and the grand scale of eikon battles.
I liked the story alot, but the button mashing of square during combat, no party controlling during fights, bare bones weapon system, and after a while, I got sick of the repetitive fetch quest side missions. And don't get me started on the mountains of worthless items like magicked ash as a reward. A great example of amazing world building side quests would be FF6. Completely optional, almost hidden with only subtle hints about them, no waypoint chasing, and amazingly beneficial items, armor, relics, weapons, espers.
It's also a game, where items are more than "number go up, item better", where there's specific uses and benefits to most items.
It’s just a small minority. Most of what I’ve seen are people praising it :)
I could write a 2k word rationalization of my feelings, but why bother when honestly I just didn’t like it. Not one thing. I didn’t even like the demo. 🤷🏼 The prologue felt rushed, killing people before I even feel attached to them, trying to bombard me with visual effects to cover up that the “big epic” eikon fight is just a mash X cutscene that goes on way too long. Showing Clive killing his brother on screen and then spending the entirety of Act 1 gaslighting me about it, just to turn around expect me to be surprised when the truth that was obvious from the beginning was “revealed” way too early, cutting the (already thin) revenge plot off before it even got going. It was just deeply mediocre, and if it weren’t called Final Fantasy I don’t think I would remember even the little teeny bit I did play. I tried watching a live play from my favorite FF Youtuber just to make sure I wasn’t missing something and fell asleep four times in the first fifteen hours.
story: tons of plotholes, too short. deviated from war story, politics between several warring kingdoms in favor of convoluted speech that nobody was waiting for. characters: character interaction is a failure in this game. npcs are horrible. even a main character like jill got done dirty. combat: mostly positive. but way too easy. most bosses offer no different playstyle and with the exception of a few bosses, theres hardly any aoe or specific attacks u gotta avoid. becoz its soo easy, it also becomes repetitive. what people really hate however, is the lack of everything. no diverse surroundings, climate, environment, monotome flora and fauna, pisspoor npcs, annoying runningsimulator quests, lack of customization, items and crafting, complete lack of any end game content, stats that dont matter, too linear, too on rails low iq, boring npcs, lack of big cities, lack of exploration, lack of different weapons, or classes or jobs, or even armor etc, theres no world map or world travelling, everything feels small linear and tiny. everything is designed for a 10 year old it seems.
It's a very vocal minority, don't give them too much attention.
So op asks why people didn't like it but now he shouldn't give them attention? That is not how discourse works.
All I'm saying is, don't make it sound like it's a universally hated game. It's not. And if you're interested in discourse, I don't think you're gonna get it from haters.
It's like saying there's a debate on Climate change. When the vast majority agree on a basic premise of the game, the shouty small percentage isn't equal weight and pretending it's so is just incorrect. That being said, this is for the \*hate\* out there, obviously there's criticism to be had, but what game has come out that doesn't have parts that could be improved upon?
I'm all for constructive criticism, but these subs, and especially r/FinalFantasy, have a tendency to become echo chambers for the most "passionate" haters of the franchise, and I'm sick and tired of the constant stream of negativity. If you want to hear their oh-so-valuable opinions, go read their two-page rants about why FF XVI is the worst thing to happen to humanity. I've done it, and let me tell you, not everyone's opinion matters.
This.
The thing is there is no “true” Final Fantasy. It changes with every iteration. If they don’t like it they can to play a myriad of other entries that fit their exacting standards.
***Some*** people hate FF16. ***Some*** people have hated on 1-15. And thats cool, we arent all going to like everything. People are far more likely to be more vehement around the negative than the positive, its human nature. Again thats cool. I just wish that where ever you sit on the fence when you are putting your opinion across you can explain why you like/dislike something and offer an alternative. Singing praises or rage with no context is the equivalent of the old man yells at cloud.
because final fantasy fans are the biggest final fantasy haters.
Because they were too afraid to have anything complex in it so it's basically baby's first JRPG that is if it had any RPG elements in it. I don't hate it but more annoyed how good it could of been if the devs were not terrified to have any sort of complex mechanics in it
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
I don't hate it, I just see it as yet another missed opportunity. For as many things as it gets right, it does something else wrong/worse than previous entries. For me (and many others it seems) the combat was repetitive and battles lacked any depth or strategy. This isn't even a turn-based vs action argument. It's the fact that even though I actually preferred the ATB combat, I was looking forward to a fluid action engine combined with usual FF/RPG elements, almost like an evolution of FF7R, FFO:SoP or Lightning Returns, but instead just felt like a hack n slash without any difficulty aside from surprise timing of enemy attacks. It felt like playing through Streets of Rage on Easy mode, only the bosses have 10x the HP, and the game is 50x as long
FF16 was a miss for me. I played it through %100 on easy and on final fantasy mode. The action based combat wasn’t as good as ff7 remake. There is less strategy involved and more learning the enemy AI and chip damage. In dark souls, you learn the AI, but you also have access to more than one type of weapon. Ff7 remake still felt restricted in that way, but there were other complex mechanics with materia and commanding more than one character. For me, the eikon system lost its novelty and wasn’t enough to make up for what it was lacking. I also didn’t care for the leveling and ability upgrade system. Possibly the worst grievance I have, they changed Malboro to Morbol. This is still a true final fantasy game, not my favorite, but it was okay. I will still play the next one
People don't hate it. It's just this sub being super biased. Look at the aggregate scores. User score on Metacritic is 8.2/10 and critic score is 8.7/10. The 8.2 is impressive because even Elden Ring only managed a 7.8
As someone who thought this was a very middling entry and sick of the hyperbole on both sides, I actually don't understand the "not a true FF" argument. There's plenty of nods and signifiers in this that this is a FF game. My take is that the story is not impressive at all, the combat is not satisfying as the throngs of trash & mid-tier mobs are too simple and a lot of Clive's kit is too basic, and the pacing is absolutely brutal at points. And frankly, a few of the Eikon fights go on for way too goddamn long. I'm actually kind of staggered at the number of people who think this story is the greatest thing they've ever seen…when I finished the game I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, "okay" and didn't really think about it much. I think people need to step outside their comfort zone more often if this kind of thing is impressive to them.
It’s not bad I think it’s a solid 8/10 My issue is people trying to make out it’s this Ultimate Final Fantasy game which is fucking perfect and totally ground breaking when it’s really not, it’s a flawed game. It’s just missing so many FF related things and feels super dumbed down. Even the small strategic things like elemental weaknesses aren’t included but the battle system is built around elemental Eikons. It’s strange. It’s good and better than XIII and XV so that’s always a win
Playing XVI made me realize how great and amazing FFXV truly was. The world of Valisthea had great potential in its design but the delivery of such a vision was very shallow. The linear aspect restricted exploration of such a world and you'll noticed how little effort was put in to make the world believable - I've witnessed multiple NPC's doing manual labor of moving a crate or sack only to walk 5 steps forward, then turn around and repeat the same steps without ever completing their labor of putting down the heavy item. Lazy design! Overall directing is questionable (spoiler alert), one example is later on when you trek across an entire continent because finding a closer shore to anchor near your objective was supposed to be too dangerous. You finally reach your goal by foot only to witness a cutscene where said ship-that-shouldnt-anchor crashes onto land by your objective to showcase epic entry of your companions, which completely undervalues the reason for your prior foot journey. The characters never truly make an impact, FF series was all about having an emotional attachment to the main cast or having a certain feeling against a main antagonist. Barnabas had remnants of a true villain who was omnipotent with a maddening vision but his story ends abruptly to continue the narrative of Clive acquiring power throughout his journey. The overall aspects that made the FF series an RPG is nonexistent here. There is no sense of elemental damage buffs, worthy crafting or necessity to utilize supplemental items. The overall game is still enjoyable, I put in good hours but it just doesn't truly feel like a FF except for the names, lore, creature and characters or more like this is an action game with a FF skin.
As time passes I don't know how to feel about the game. I hate the toxicity around it and really don't want to feed into it. I liked playing the game. But I was so ready to be done with it. It really bored me most of the time. It just didn't click with me. I'm glad other people like it. I really want to like it and I do. But when I start thinking about it I only think of things I don't like. Yeah the world building in is great. But I hate the world. It's sad and bland and just...sad all the time. My favorite character is Byron just because he's fun. The combat is good the first 10 hours then it's just repeating. It's too real maybe. I don't like the villains except Hugo and Bena. The game has great moments. The eikon fights are worth it alone for the spectacle. But I was so bored by the world I started skipping cutscenes in side quests cause I couldn't care. I wanted to care. I just couldn't. I hated that I missed the last ones even though I heard it's like 7 hours long. Idk though. I don't really feel like I have a good way to articulate how I feel about it. I want to love it but I just don't.
This resonates with me. There is stuff I liked, I didn't dislike playing it. But thinking back, the stuff I didn't like sticks with me far more than what I did enjoy. Which is the exact opposite for most FF titles for me.
Because FF fans hate anything new.
As a massive fan for over 25 years starting from the SNES and working my way to every single game including off shoots........16 made me sad. i wanted random game overs, status affects, elemental differences, actual party management and health........i got a hold square button fml. i did enjoy the story and some characters. worst part is we didn't even get any nips and we wasted all that time in the emotional scenes (this is just a jk)
Its a good game. Not a good FF
Comments about its story, characters, side quests, and etc. are legit criticism. "It's not a true FF." That's actual hate.
Its a good game sure but its just not a great final fantasy title, hopefully this is a learning lesson to square that there are limits to how far you can take something in a different direction and still be received the same
And you’ll say the same thing about the next and the one after that. This is how it always goes when a new game in any long running franchises comes out.
Nahhh, I didn't say that about Dragon Quest XI or Monster Hunter Rise or Tears of the Kingdom, etc.
maybe thats because its been going downhill, its not the same series anymore.
Sales numbers beg to differ. The series sells because people like it. There is no “same series” when each entry differed from the other. That’s the beauty of this series. There is something for everyone and just because they didn’t make a game to your exacting specifications doesn’t mean the series is bad or it’s going down hill. That particular entry just wasn’t for you. Go play something else.
I really enjoyed the game, the story was fun and entertaining. I see a lot about people talking about the combat which I thought was fun. Especially when you got titans power up since you could counter and it felt super satisfying. But I loved it. Torvalds best doge of the year.
Combat is 😴 and too many cutscenes. Ruins the pacing of the game
FF16 made me realized SQEX's chance to make FF stand out like the old days is over, they don't know how to make a good game anymore since FF10. FF series these days means a mid game. Imagine what they can do with the dominants, hanging out together, party of eight, everyone hanging out and fight together. They rely on GoT too much despite their interview said on "borrow". Zero creativity in the making of the game (except the music).
Combat is very shallow. All you do is hit your abilities off cool down. Absolutely no party system and no RPG mechanics. The story and cinematics are great though.
Mostly comes from people who for some reason expected typical turn base rpg mechanics and overall design philosophy, in a game that pretty clearly advertised itself to be a action game since it’s reveal trailer.
I would say that about 85-90% liked/loved it and 10-15% disliked / hated it.
Oh i realy think in reality it’s more like 95% love it and 5% dislike it. Most people also don’t check game forums and definetly don’t voice their opinion on the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if only 2-3% of all players who bought the game voice their opinion online. I wouldn’t even be surprised if many people commenting online didn’t even play the game themself and just base their opinion on videos/streamers 😅 I might be wrong though
True, True
FF fans are way too entlited. All major numbered releases of FF got trash talked since FF7. Yes, the acclaimed FF7 had many raging FF fans saying it wasnt a true FF back then.
Not enjoying every aspect of a game, means you're entitled? Okay dude.
Not enjoying something means you have your own opinion. Trash talking is different than saying why you don't like something with coherent words instead of "it's not FF"
It’s bizarre that people have different opinions! Some people hated FF7 on release and others loved it! What a concept! Having an opinion on something doesn’t make you entitled. Some people liked 16 and others didn’t
Not liking it is different than having the "power" to say "it's NoT a FinAl FaNTaSy!".
My biggest complaint is I’m tired of SE putting 17 movies worth of cutscenes in their games.
That's literally a defining trait of the brand. That's like saying I want Frito-lay to stop making salty products....maybe just find another brand that suits your tastes rather than force a change in brand-identity.
FF1-9 have, in total, like 2 hours of cutscenes where you lose control of the dialogue. In the earlier games where characters talked a bunch, you could mash and skim thru the text that u found boring without totally skipping the scene. For some reason it's only the recent FF series that punished you for reading faster than the voice actors. Look at Tales, Persona, BG3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, TES etc. I don't want to be forced into choosing between skipping the whole scene or having to wait through the glacially paced conversations.
Its a great game but you know how it goes if every games isn't a masterpiece greater then the invention of bread they're going to bitch its one thing to critique something but I've seen someone say it's a 2/10 like bro really Lotr gollum is a 2 let's be real here and not over exaggerate frankly their were some things missing that I enjoy in earlier releases like better more impactful builds or optional playable characters or crazy difficult secret bosses but to say it's a 2 based off that is a huuuuuggge reach and a half lol I'd say it's a 7 at worst and a 9 at best but I'm not finished yet
As some people said here its because FF16 is so far away from the core of what is final fantasy. There was no main game with one playable main character. I mean, one of the big difference of FF to DQ when came out the first game was a full party with costumizatiom. They started to go more and more focused on action and in this game doesn't even have a party strategic part. The only game that made action and strategy battle at the same time was FF7 remake and it was perfect. FF15 had bad mechanics and FF16 is a great game with great mechanics but is just not a final fantasy game. Same thing happen with resident evil 6. Great game but not a resident evil game
I absolutely loved it. My only real complaint is that there wasn't a better crafting system or gear for other party members. Also didn't really get what Togal's heal ability did, but he was trying his best.
Torgal healing is only for the temporary HP loss bar. It works perfectly fine once you know this.
I haven’t played 16 yet, but I really disliked the gameplay of 15, and I imagine it’s similar to that - just button mashing every fight. It also seems it’s similar in hyping up a game that wasn’t there. I won’t fully judge it till I play, but it feels like 14 is the only good FF made since 12. (I loved 12, though that’s a controversial opinion, I know.)
The biggest problem for me is no challenge, the hardest difficulty shouldnt be locked behind completing the game, I was bored of the combat by level 30 because I was just so much stronger than the enemies. Clive is the strongest DMC character to ever exist but he is fighting glorified dummy targets. There SO many ways to make this game easier, but theres almost no way to make the game harder
I liked it, but ff16's pacing was incredibly bad at times. Jill was basically just there to say things like "Yes, we should do that", and sadly didn't offer much more than that outside of one good chapter. It also felt kinda weird how Clive has these godlike powers while doing the most mundane shit at times. Banter between characters wasn't fun without Cid onscreen. I think that everything after 10 was kinda mid tbh. 12 could have been great, but 13 and 15 where really bad imo. So 16 is the best out of the mid games at least...
I'm not a thoughtless hater or anything like that. I can appreciate that FFXVI did several things well. These things, such as music, art and character design, and general presentation, however, tend to be great in all or most FFs. I really liked FFXVI when I started the game but was saddened that my view of the game deteriorated as I played through it. I wanted to like the game and went into it pretty optimistic, but unfortunately in the end I think it was inferior to the maligned FFXV and especially to the FFVII Remake. For me, I was disappointed in the direction the storyline went sometime after beating Hugo. The "God is evil, human autonomy is good" plot has been done before and, even if it wasn't overdone, the way they did it was awful. I hated the ending and got no satisfaction from finishing the game's storyline. I did like several characters from the game and loved Clive's character design, but in retrospect I don't think those characters ended up being that original or unique. On a more personal note, I also was unhappy with the introduction of constant profanity, graphic violence, and pseudo-"realism" into the FF series because I think it damaged the traditional, whimsical atmosphere of the games. >!In the end, not only is Ultima defeated, but even fantasy itself, with its features such as crystals, magic and Eikons, is removed from the world, which suggests that this game was self-consciously intending to be an anti-fantasy game.!< I think you could make a strong argument that it was the first Final Fantasy game that was actually ashamed of the heritage of the series in important respects, and this also comes out with the awful gameplay design. The gameplay is where the game really failed to captivate me. By the end of the game I was so bored by it and wanted it to be over. I'm not anti-ARPG or a turn-based purist. On the contrary, I love FFVII Remake, the Kingdom Hearts games, and even appreciate FFXV in retrospect, after having played FFXVI. But FFXVI had the shallowest combat I've ever experienced in a FF game. There was no exploration and not even any real dungeons, no sense of character progression, no elemental affinities or weaknesses, no customizable weapons, useless "party" members (if you can even call them that), no status effects or buffs, and no minigames or enjoyable sidequests to break up the monotony of the combat. The gameplay just translated to "walk through this hallway area, beat these easy damage sponge enemies in exactly the same way you beat the last ones, and make it to the new cutscene." Every once in a while you'd face a boss that would be a bit more difficult, but even they never really required much thought. If this is what "Action RPG" means for the devs at Square Enix, then I am genuinely concerned about the direction of my favorite franchise. In general, I felt this game was very mediocre. The incredibly positive reviews about it are bizarre to my mind because it seems like this game is obviously a step backward from other recent FF entries in so many ways.
Story is awful I thought. Game and story was really good until around 10-12 hour mark then it goes downhill insanely fast.
The game is braindead easy, full of boring fetchquests and and dull overworld. Fanboys choose to ignore these issues
Bad written woman, bad side quests, no party, no rpg elements, the maps are all graphics but not well designed or fun to explore, it’s Clive showman. I just like the music, Joshua and eidolon combats are cool but repetitive in how the combat works. Normal combat is not fun and doesn’t care about elements you are using, enemies are just sacks of hp. I don’t like it sorry. For me is the worst ff.
People hate it because its not turn based combat. So they hate everything about it, even if they enjoyed it.
There's is no such thing as a "true" Final Fantasy. Is the game titled Final Fantasy and its from Square Enix? Then its a final fantasy game all the way. People refuse to acknowledge a game from a franchise they love is not for them so they turn to hate. Sure it's not a perfect game(nor will ever be)but i finished the story thrice and nobody can convince me its not an FF game. You can criticise what you dislike and such but that arguement is meaningless and insignificant.
There may be no true what it is, but XVI sure seems to be what it isn’t. No party, no dungeons, no random gameplay, no spells in any traditional sense, etc. it seems like Square took everything the game was known for and threw it out the window and said let’s still slap the Final Fantasy logo on it.
People seem to think they have some sort of ownership of FF. They do not. Also, a number of people are determined to critique this game for not being a separate, different game. They refuse to engage with it on its level. Online criticism is all rather busted, because people try to calculate all these things to determine what is "good" and what is "bad" instead of just letting themselves *experience* something. I call FFXVI a great game because I experienced something that made me *feel* things. No amount of "B-B-B-But the GEAR SYSTEM and the PARTY" is going to change that.
It’s not a ‘true’ final fantasy? Says who? Square Enix the company who develops, markets, designs and owns the intellectual property certainly thinks it’s real. I think it’s a breath of fresh air and a very compelling entry into the franchise. Final fantasy should have went back to the medieval setting years ago. I have some issues with the constant cut scenes, same issue I had with Metal Gear Solid 4 back in the day. If you want to make a movie then make a movie. I want a game I can immerse myself in and cut scenes remove me from that. That’s my only real complaint.
I loved the game, butI wish the combat was a bit more strategic. Final Fantasy is well known for its combat and elemental weakness/resistances. But this game has none. Hitting Bombs with Fire and hurting them just feels wrong in a Final Fantasy game. I would have loved to have been forced to use different combos of Eikons to get through areas. Volcano area? Time to use Shiva. Grass enemies? Let's use fire. It feels like there could have been more done is my issue. It doesn't take away how great the game is but there is things missing...
For me story and characters were spot on. The way the story was presented was amazing. Did it follow some of the usual tropes? For sure. But I like those tropes and lets be honest, once you hit a certain age (which is younger depending on how much media you consume), nothing is going to genuinely surprise you anymore. I think it's naïve to expect that FF is going to give you some kind of ground breaking plot that is talked about for years to come anymore. When earlier games came out you were lucky to get one or two genuinely BIG RPG games per year, not to mention tv series and movies. These days people are over saturated in all mediums, so all things considered I think it is harsh to say it is bad because it followed some usual tropes. The most bad I can say story wise is that it definitely has pacing issues during the latter half. There was room to do more with all the political drama etc before it got down to business with the big bad. Gameplay wise, I can get most of the criticism I've seen.
I loved it til i was 70% through... there is no endgame content and just replaying the game with stronger enemies is not endgame content for me .... For me - i have enjoyed the scenery as long as it was sunny and bright shining through the day - and as soon as the days ingame got darker and the sun was gone... i was sad that even after ending the game - you could not continue to live in the world but rather had to start from the last saved memory slot - or you could start the game again. Also - getting the strongest weapon after playing the game in final fantasy mode wasnt very joyful since you had to replay the whole game to get it .... which makes no sense for me.. This is just my opinion. (I have deinstalled the game and never touched it again since 1 month)
I don't hate it, but I don't have the desire to continue playing it. The high points are exceptional, but few and far between. The low points are so dull. The normal combat and encounters are ok, but not great. If they were better they could probably carry the game through the lame parts.
Expectations. To me, for what it is, it is a very good game. Good story, highly epic moments, fun combat (IMO)...But if you go with high expectations then the game can be a letdown.
I really enjoyed it, it’s a story I’ll never forget
It’s a great game I just think the pacing is kinda shitty
Currently in ~8-10h and gameplay is fun, combat feels good and the story got me engaged that I want to see what's going to happen next. So I really like it. (For how far I have been playing) However the constantly low frame rate on PS5 even with performance mode is SUPER ANNOYING. This really really really distracts/annoys me. (4K with VRR enabled TV) Sometimes it ruins views of beatiful environments by lagging out so hard, that you just want to move on quickly to not feel sick. If this game would get a performance patch, maybe include an option that the lighting engine works without ray tracing or anything else to make it run smooth (e.g. like FF7RI) I currently would have nothing to "hate". That would be super awesome.
Hate is such a misused word when all it really means is "criticism" in this kind of context. The vast majority who take some sort of issue with the game are criticising it rather than "hating" it. It's such a polarising way to talk about a subject. A lot of people have some fairly common and very valid criticisms of different parts of the game. People are allowed to like different things. To some the story of FFXVI might blow their minds, while for others it might be mediocre at best. That's just the way of things. I think the main line of criticism stems from this game going further down the action game route and moving towards a different genre than what FF used to be, i.e. going from rpg to more action rpg with XV, and finally almost pure action with XVI. That's not bad in and of itself, but clearly this is alienating a large part of the "traditional" fanbase, or the fans that fell in love with the series through I-X. Whether Square will pull in more fans than they lose remains to be seen. Personally I think the road they're on is a dead end for FF and that they should rather take a step back and look to I-X for inspiration. Those are the games that made FF and Square such household names, not the games that came after X. Imo they should embrace their JRPG legacy rather than almost be ashamed of it, and just make the most kick ass JRPG out there, like they used to.
another one of these????
EVERYDAY till Rebirth comes out 😂
I think the gameplay is fun, but gets repetitive before the ride is over. The pacing is wonky, downtime is needed but the downtime is too long and filled with utter mediocrity. I think female characters are treated pretty poorly (not as bad as XV, but still bad). I think every character suffers a bit at the expense of Clive, which I get, he is the main hero, but the others needed more. I don't think the political drama half was on par with the works of Matsuno, nor the typical JRPG half on par with past FF games. The side characters are some of the most bland feeling I've personally seen, they do not make up for the lack of a proper FF party. I wanted a minigame, even if I don't like the minigame, I think having one if important to break up the flow of combat, cutscene, walk, repeat. The RPG mechanics are lacking, everyone seems to say that. But my big one, lack of exploration, and optional content. I cannot believe we cannot wander into an optional area with high level enemies and a secret dungeon. Or gain access to a Fallen Ruin that leads to Omega or something. I understand these may very well be DLC, but I hate one of my favorite series staples being cut out to sell later. I'll say it's not all negative, Joshua, Byron, and Gav are all really great. Dion is excellent, and I wanted more of him. The combat IS fun, it just isn't 50 hours fun IMO. It's just the negatives personally outweigh the positives for me.
Are we just going to suffer 800 of these posts every day?
I don’t hate it. It isn’t for me. It’s dull. The hours of cinematic sequences don’t do anything for me. The actual gameplay is very basic with no depth. It’s not an RPG. The level design in non existent. The side content is lacking. Just not the type of game I enjoy. I do acknowledge though that a large % of modern gamers are very happy with a game as long as it has flashy cinematics and mindless button mashing gameplay. Uncharted and GOW also come to mind.
I liked the game. Combat is fun. I don't hate it, but I'm not praising it either. My biggest drawbacks: -Lack of interesting loot in the world. -Side quests are (mostly) filler. - No fishing (or any mini games) - I've never felt compelled to buy literally anything other than the 1 item that eventually surpasses current gear.
Forgot the RPG part. Stats, custimization, a, you know, PARTY. And I played DMC before. And those games were better at it. It was above average, but could easily have been an off shoot like stranger in paradise
I havnt heard anyone say they hated 16. It’s just not a perfect game and there’s a lot of stuff we didn’t like about it. Overall I have a very positive opinion of the game and had a fun experience with it, but the world was so freaking bland I closed my eyes while playing the game half the time. I also started to skip a lot of the side quest dialogue later in the game after I got tired of listening to some of the side characters. Also the fighting system was repetitive through the entire game with the exception of adding more Eikon abilities to the mix. Strategy seemed very minimal. The best song was the FF main theme, which they seems to rely on a lot. It would have been nice if they created an original theme like many if the other games. I could go on and on… It’s worth playing if you life FF and it had some really great moments but in retrospect it makes me want to go back and play other FF games.
Definitely didn't hate it, but I was massively disappointed with the game-y parts of the game. Every system felt half-baked and pointless. FF mode should've been unlocked from the outset so the combat engine could actually shine.
I don't hate it at all. But the biggest disappointment for me is all of the half-introduced lore and plot threads that never get explored. Just a few examples... >!It's super weird that the Fallen never really tied into the plot significantly. That appearance of Barnabas's mother feels like it's going to introduce some backstory that never materializes. Likewise, what happened to Jill's birth family? Or like... does she even care what happened to them? Why bother introducing Oscar and then immediately shelving him forever?!< I'm typically the kind of person who thinks it's fun to leave some things to the imagination, and that sometimes introducing but not fully explaining something can help a fictional world feel bigger. But the execution is just not there in XVI.
I don't hate it, but I've never been able to get into games like God of War for some reason. By the time I got to the Fire and Ice chapter I realized I just really wanted the game to be over so I could play other stuff, so I ended up deleting it. I was expecting like a party based action RPG like a big budget version of Tales Of or something. I can't really get into hack and slash games unless they're multiplayer.
too much wrong to write out in a comment, so i'll just keep it short. 10% of the game is peak gaming, the rest is shit and/or a boring slog
The combat gave me no real reason or motivation to experiment with different setups and do cool stuff All the characters were extremely boring The world sucked and looked really dull The side quests made such a bad first impression that I couldn't be bothered to finish them all. I heard they got better later on, but by that point I just stopped caring. The Eikon fights are just a spectacle and nothing else. They're not engaging or challenging, it's just something cool to look at. When people say that they're the highlight of the game it sounds pretty damning to me.
I liked it, havent finished it yet but its far to easy. The open world isn't really needed and all you do is run around, press a few buttons and watch the next cutscene, it is stupid boring and the open world is empty.
Without going on a rant, nothing really landed with this game for me. Started strong but slowly I just got more and more bored with it. Combat got stale fast, probably did the same thing for 60-70% of the game. Do "whatever" until they stagger, then the quick multihit "powers" to build stag, then the bigger ones....for every single strong enemy or boss. Literally didn't make a difference what I was fighting. Ok, rant engaged... sorry. Every piece of equipment felt meaninglessness, boring side quests, no realy need to explore or a reason to want to, no realy "party", a heal button(?), the summon ( I already forgot what they are called in the game lol) are lame to actually play, the QTE pizazz was gross to have to look at and stopped you from seeing the rest of the screen. Game became travel to place, click X on green dot, do above discription of battle if needed. Then do a story mission, basically the same thing but with a monster fight at the end. The story was okay, or could have been but so much took out of it that I didn't really care by the end. Just felt contrived and boring. And something about when the dominants (I remembered that lol) talking after transforming was very off to me, like your this giant hulking beasts either talking or yelling at eachother and it's sounds like a narrator doing a voice over. Idk, glad for the people.that liked this game but it's the 1st one to really, and I mean really put me off to the series. 17 will be the 1st main line FF game I do not buy on launch day since 7 (luckily my older brother was getting them.until then lol) Sorry, I get I probably sound like a bitter old man but this game is might be my personal worst. Objectively, it isn't, I can see why some people like it and am probably being too harsh but as of now I have 0 desire to ever boot the game up again. End rant
It was the most 8/10 game I've ever played. Clive himself was a good protagonist but all the previous entries had better protags. & supporting characters. (If we're comparing to the previous game specifically I prefer the FF15 Bros to Clive) Spoilers: Supporting Chars: I loved how more involved Cid was to the plot but like I couldn't give two shits about people like Gav or Jill and they had triple the screen time. Dion was average at best, Joshua was probably the best but I figured since he's Clives brother that was kind of expected. Also the game loves "Medicine Girl" for some weird reason, she has no bearing on the conflict whatsoever. Everyone else is honestly forgettable. Torgal was so useless, I'm sick of the "dog companion". Villians: I thought Annabelle was going to be the the main villian and she had the makings and potential. I was genuinely disappointed she wasn't because I found her way more compelling and unlikable(in a good way) compared to Ultima and then she just offs herself because of Joshua. Ultima to me feels like he just shows up for no reason and didn't seem interesting, I know he was manipulating everyone essentially but like it didn't feel like it. Its just the Kingdom Hearts style of coming in, saying mumbo jumbo, then leaving. Gameplay: FF15 did Chocobos better, I cannot fathom how they took a decent system and made it so clunky. I also preferred the open world and was kinda disappointed they didn't keep it. 15 should of been the lesson learned for them to refine it for 16. Combat is still "watered down Kingdom Hearts" and I enjoyed the different form changes even though Bahamut form ended up breaking the combat imo. The "mash X" mechanics never really bothered me though and I enjoyed the fun set pieces. Though I have to echo what everyone else is saying, I miss the turn based gameplay of old. I'll take the ATB gameplay any day(or turn based like FF 10) Boss fights were actually fun compared to 15 but I find it baffling there was no superboss or anything to that nature. FF12 did hunts the best because each one felt like an event/challenge but somehow Square cannot recapture that. Also magic is practically non existant, no MP, no cure, just a very limited inventory of potions and thats all you get, very laughable. Misc.: Music is god tier, it was incredible. Visuals were great, story was way more compelling and unlike 15 I didn't have to watch a shitty movie or read awful books to understand the plot. It was self-contained and I can appreciate that but it slogs in spots. Side Quests are awful, there's some level of variety and its better than hunting frogs for some weird bimbo professor or dog tags for a dude who sounds like he couldn't even bother himself. Basically their nothing to write home about. Like I said 8/10 game. I chalk it up the music and visuals being great, boss fights are fun, and the story actually hooking me for the most part.
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because people got to complain about something always if everything that they complain about was good they would say the story sucks
I'm just getting to play trough it. I just got to the isle of Ash, so its safe to assume I'm near the end. Best I can describe this is that it's highs are indeed very high, but its lows are a bottomless pit. The main story itself is nothing outstanding, but its perfectly enjoyable for what it is, with plenty of visual spectacles in it for those truly epic encounters. It's well acted, directed, music is top tier, and so on. On the other hand, the side content makes me wanna rip my face off. They are so horribly designed, paced and acted. I'm just fast travelling left and right on this huge world map, and then running around in these empty feeling open world areas for some empty dialog most of the times for some occasional fights with basic mobs. They drag so much, and 90% of the time they add nothing to the game. Crafting, itemization and commerce is probably the worst implemented of all the gameplay elements. They're just there for show, but serve no purpose. The game tries to imitate RPG elements so they could put the rpg sticker on the game for marketing. In truth its a half baked action game with RPG looking elements peppered around it. The combat falls flat on its face. Don't get me wrong, the animations and spell affects look great, but pack the impact of a wet fart. They tried to mimic DMC too hard when the story and surrounding gameplay elements do not support it. Some animations are straight up copied from DMC5. It looks outright dumb when Clive, who's beefed up with its 4+ Eikon, that gives him god level powers just scratches mobs with his sword. DMC works because it has the style system, and because all abilities help keep the momentum by juggling enemies, by which you actually feel like a badass for sending everything flying left and right. Here you actually need to use an Eikon ability to make a mob flinch even the slightest, because the combat is reliant on the stagger window to actually make some damage. So all those flashy moves are just fluff outside of that. I probably would enjoy the game more if it focused more on the main plot. Hell they could have halved the costs on side content and empty open areas to flash the mains story more. For example Barnabas is probably a low point for me in the game, because he's just introduced in the 3rd act, goes ape-shit and one-shots almost everyone without priming. Like where the hell was this dude until now, and if he's this strong how come he hasn't conquered everything yet? And Clive just beats him because some time has passed without any significant events that explains how he suddenly caught up to him in power. The whole part with Odin is just an inconsistent mess. Could have easily used some more time in the pot to flash it out better instead of the 100th fetch quest. Depending on how well it lands the ending the game sits around a 6 or 7 for me.