I’ve seen a lot of positive praise and sentiment for XVI even from longtime fans and I find that worrying. I finished the game and thought it was a solid 5/10 at best and was happy for it to be over. The game felt closer to Genshin Impact than it did Final Fantasy.
The music was generally quite good and the eikon battles were a fun and new take, but just about everything else I found lacking.
spoiler
- The main story retreads themes that have been told many times and offers nothing unique. It’s clear early on we are on a quest to collect the rings of power to fight the big bad who thinks the only solution to the problem is starting over.
- Most characters were flat and uninteresting
- Combat was very simple and unengaging. It was simply not fun. You can only use about a quarter of the abilities you collect (not that theres many more youd find useful enough to use anyways)
- Crafting/itemization was pointless
- MMO-tier side quests (ironic considering XIV has some interesting ones)
- Story format is lifted straight from XIV as all “engagement” quests (ones with the red crossed swords on the map) are the same as XIV dungeons (trash, minor boss, trash, minor boss, trash, major boss)
- Empty world with no incentive for exploration
- Minimal play style variety despite the different eikon flavors
- No class system (I would have expected something listed as a “role playing game” to have some sort of class system)
- No party system in any form
Overally, fairly worried about the franchise since so many people are over the moon as it implies we might be getting more of the above. It feels like XVI took heavy inspiration from XIV but did a worse job at the highlights of XIV (story, job/battle system) and straight up copied some of the bad parts of XIV.
Now that it’s been a few weeks, hopefully more people have finished the game. What are your thoughts?
Really fell flat for me, riddled with bad animation, fetch quests, boring dialogue, pointless crafting etc.
I really did enjoy the first hour or so, but tbh even the combat - which people praise - wasn’t even as good as stranger of paradise in depth or complexity. You spent most of your time doing the same combo waiting for cool downs.
Hitting attack or dodge repeatedly isn’t satisfying depth, not to mention the dodge just automatically saves you as long as its timed right the direction means nothing.
Side quests were pretty unbearable, in my whole life I’ve never skipped cutscenes, I skipped them all on the last 12 side quests because the voice/animation were so boring and I knew I’d be rewarded with either gil of crafting materials, both of which I had in abundance and nothing to spend it on.
If you want to lock a “super hard” mode behind ng , then fine, but the “Action focused” mode was so easy that it’s insulting to lock the harder mode out, nobody wants to play a game twice to enjoy it and especially not one that’s 50 hours long.
Overall, very disappointed, after seeing people rave about yoshi I thought it could be good but it was just too close to an MMO in quest design.
Edit: Oh and having no elemental or status effects in a game in which every eikon has a theme and you fight marlboros which do bad breath is just so lazy. The system was oversimplified, not complex, everything the enemy did was just a pure subtraction, nothing else. I just can’t understand how they’ve released such a plain experience.
(No spoilers)
I enjoyed it. This game for most people will land between a 7/10 to a 9/10. The music, story, and combat were all excellent for me but make no mistake. There are deep deep flaws in this game, especially on the “rpg” side of things.
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Using FFXVs open world as an excuse to make this game zone based makes no sense after playing it. The benefit of zones is that you get to add dense content to these hand crafted maps but the zones in this game are far more uninteresting and dead than XV since they basically did nothing interesting with them.
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The party system is just horrible. Yes Torgal is a good boy and all but the parts where you had two additional party members made the game feel so much more alive. Even from a gameplay perspective they took aggro away from you and contributed dps. Having large sections of the game where you’re alone with just Torgal is so bad and even thematically makes no sense.
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I don’t get why they couldn’t add even basic shit like elemental advantage/disadvantage. FF7R already shows you can do this. It’s just plain lazy and using the excuse of “it makes the game harder” is baffling.
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Locking the hard difficulty behind NG+ is such a poor way of padding out a game. It’s already statistically proven a vast majority of players don’t even bother NG+ and locking something thing like that behind a 40 hour grind is sad. I much would’ve preferred having a hard difficulty on my first play through.
Ultimately I’ve come to terms that most of the things I don’t like in this game are design decisions they brought in from FFXIV (zones, no elemental affinity, lack of party, most side quests, etc). 95% of the things I did enjoy were game mechanics not from XIV. It’s clear to me that their approach to game design from their time as MMO devs do not compliment this game. The more they stepped away from it, the better it got. But the parts that doubled down on it were very lackluster.
Criticisms aside, this game is still a 9/10 for me and sets up good ground work for their next game. And if it makes anyone feel better here, CBU3 are usually very aware of criticisms and I’m sure they’ll address it one way or another.
I’m 76% through the main quest (as per the PS5 game screen). Done all side quests so far. This is my first FF game, overall it’s a solid 8/10 for me. The combat is fine, chaining combos and abilities are fun but it took the game a while to gain some of the abilities. The story began strong but as it progressed I started losing interest just because it felt very repetitive. The side quests were a mixed bag. I liked some, while some were too MMO inspired. I think the weakest component of the game are the gear and itemization. It feels like an afterthought. You get some upgrades through the main or side quests but they don’t feel much different as most of the enemies are sponges.
spoiler
Cid was a fantastic character but after him there wasn’t any good interaction with the rest of the characters. Jill just exists besides Clive and that’s it. Most of the core characters are kinda one-note, so most of the interactions are in the form of fetch quests. I think Blackthrone is an odd one where he has some unique quests.
The combo like I said too me a while to get going, but after gaining some abilities it was fun experimenting chaining combos and abilities and getting the stagger bar down as quickly as possible.
The Eikon fights while generally a spectacle was nicely done. I enjoyed all of them.
Overall, I think this game could be shorter. Even the main quests has some filler and definitely there are pacing issues dropped after every pivotal moments.
I haven’t played it yet, as I don’t have a PS5, but it’s funny seeing on 4chan, people looking back at ff13 and realizing it really was much better than they gave it credit.
I thought the main story was overly long. You could remove Mid and everything you do related to her to cut a lot of fat off of it. Most of that feels like an anime filler episode. And yet they still couldn’t find time to let Jill be a character for more than two scenes.
I also thought the gear and crafting systems were some of the worst I’ve seen. Whats the point of a crafting system that linear.
