Final Fantasy XVI

[Mad Pierrot]

So similar to Noctis, Clive actually ages?

[kiak666]

Originally Posted by Mad Pierrot

So similar to Noctis, Clive actually ages?

Spoiler for Clive's age:

Yes. Clive is 15 in the flashback prologue, 28 in the beginning of the game, and 33 after another time skip.

[Sides]

Just finished the game. Game mechanic feels more like Tales of Arise more than anything else. Personally I think it is a good game. However bit disappointed about playable characters,

Spoiler:

early in game, the player controls kid Josh for a bit. So i was looking forward to control other characters down the line, but that never materialised...

Couple of things I like were
-how they streamlined how items/equipment work in this game. Unlike other RPG, there is no need to manage one's storage. This is probably one of the best design decisions they have made.
-no skill trees!
-no need to grind. Honestly one can take on enemies that are 10+ levels above one. Basically you can play the game any way you want, as an action game or RPG.
There are probably a lot of other good things FF16 either refined or introduce to the action rpg genre, that I probably forgot about.

A few bad things that stuck out
-too much visual effects during certain battles
-not every cutscene can be fast-forwarded or skipped
-QTE/ button bashing
-you cannot really cast magic spells...

It is definitely a game people should play, if they own PS5. It is a very good game that keeps the player engage most of the time.
However, to me 16 does not feel like a FF game, it has the same vibe as SoP:FFO. Both great games, but both lacking that special thing.

[relentlessflame]

I'm a bit late to the party in that I'm only about ~10-15 hours into the game now, but have some time off the next few weeks to hopefully make progress.

To be honest, there are a lot of things in this game that remind me that the staff from FFXIV (and Heavensward in particular) worked on this, so in that sense it does feel very much like a Final Fantasy game to me so far -- although in fairness, it's been quite a long time since I played another single-player FF game. In particular, the "dungeons" are structured almost *exactly* like FFXIV dungeons, with trash mobs, 2 mini-bosses, and a final boss, and then sometimes a trial after the boss. The open field maps are also feel like FFXIV open field maps, including the progression as you go to a city to do the MSQ, and then unlock a bunch of sidequests in that town. Plus, of course, the music -- you can absolutely tell it's Soken in both the music and sound direction. The dungeons where you seamlessly switch from normal music to combat variant are just like Alliance Raids in FFXIV. The combat is obviously different due to being action-oriented, but even then... if you just imagine the exact same enemies, but it had GCD, cast bars, and tells on the ground for their upcoming attacks, a lot of it feels like FFXIV there too. The enemies and NPC party members all seem to use the continued evolution of the Gambit system from FFXII.

As for the combat itself, to me it feels much more comfortable once you advance a bit further in the story. When you have more powers it becomes easier to stagger, which then makes it easier to do damage. The first few dungeons/bosses felt sometimes like intensive training on dodging and it took a bit of time at first to get into the rhythm of it. Meanwhile, it feels like you're just not doing much damage except during stagger (and you want to save up all your powers for stagger, so you're just doing basic combos). But then when you get more powers, you can afford to be more balanced, and take advantage of partial staggers to limit break and get to stagger more quickly, so the rhythm of combat changes. Plus, some of your later abilities help you restore HP, so you can play a bit more risky (and you also get used to the timing for dodging, of course). All in all, to me it feels good. I know a lot of people out there are saying it's too easy... but to me so far it feels like about the right balance considering that this isn't a series known for action combat, so you'll have a lot of newbies (or people who have only mediocre reflexes like me... lol). The only special accessory I'm using is the one to control Torgal because that's one level of micro-management that I don't need.

Anyway, so far I'm liking it. We'll see how it goes...

[Shadow5YA]

Finished my first playthrough.

Highlights are definitely the boss fights, writing, and acting, while I think the level design/world traversal (there needs to be a run toggle) and sidequests fall kind of flat.
It's not that the world is ugly, but at the same time I feel like a lot of the towns aside from the Hideout don't really stand out either.
For example, there's nothing about Martha's Rest that catches my eye other than being a place where I have to go to talk to Martha, just like Lostwing feels more or less like a hub I go to meet Quinten.

Definitely not my favorite FF world of all time, but all in all I'm glad it's as polished of a game it is compared how 13 and 15 were handled.

[cyberdemon]

Shame this didn’t at least get nominated for goty

[Kanon]

Super late to the party, but I finally played the game. I was waiting for the performance mode to be improved/fixed, but seeing that they made no changes even with the DLC release, I just gave up on it. And honestly, it was nowhere near as bad as I expected (I thought it'd be Jedi Survivor level of awfulness). Lot of frame drops during exploration and you could tell the resolution was low, but overall it didn't bother me too much. Framerate was solid during the fights and that's what mattered the most to me.

Given what I had been hearing those past six months, I honestly wasn't sure I would like it. The comparison with Game of Thrones particularly bothered me (because I hate GoT), and honestly, other than the tone being a bit more mature than in previous entries, it totally felt like Final Fantasy to me. Much more than XII and XV did. The main plot was even about killing God, it doesn't get more Japanese than that

Although I play games mostly for the story, the beginning was a bit tedious, it felt like I was playing five minutes and then watching cutscenes for 15 minutes, over and over again. This went on for around 10 hours, and then thankfully the game opened up a bit more, and by the end you had a ton of side stuff to do. First side-quests were lame but the last ones were pretty good and added to the story.

Gameplay was pretty nice. I used the cheat ring that prompts you to press R1 because I could never really tell which attack could hit me or not. I could have probably gotten by without it, but I wasn't looking for a challenge. Pretty much never used potions as a result.

Really loved the story. It really felt like a Final Fantasy story to me, with a lot of likable characters and quite a bit of romance. Clive and Jill are in the top 3 FF couple to me. Focusing on Eikon/summons was a great idea, and they've really done them justice. Ifrit has pretty much always been a beginner's summon (even the tutorial boss in FFVIII) so it was nice to have him be the MC. I think most people would have chosen Bahamut instead, who is by far the most popular.

Graphics were a mixed bag. Sometimes the game could look gorgeous, and sometimes ugly. I wasn't a fan of the decision to cloud the sky for the entire last third of the game. It made every area look worse, especially the desert which was gorgeous when the sun was up.
Where the game impressed though is definitely the boss fights. They are the most spectacular I've seen this generation, sometimes I couldn't even believe my eyes. So many visual effects used it was crazy. I also enjoyed how over the top and hot blooded they were, I was sometimes thinking to myself this game was actually a battle shounen. Favorite were Titan and Bahamut, with a preference for the latter.

It took me a while, but I'm really glad I played it. IMO it should have been nominated for GOTY instead of Spider-man 2 (which was solid but that's about it) for the boss fights alone.

Pondering whether to buy the DLC or dive into GOW Valhalla now.

[kiak666]

YouTube

https://youtu.be/aveDvd66clk

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Spoiler for FFXVI Ending:

That last scene in the trailer, could it be that this DLC will change the ending of the game?

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by kiak666

Spoiler for FFXVI Ending:

That last scene in the trailer, could it be that this DLC will change the ending of the game?

That would be nice, the original ending was a bit too ambiguous for my taste.

[Tactics]

The DLC should change the ending.

Initial ending happened because Clive only managed to even with Ultima's roster.
Assuming Leviathan will be Clive-only, it should provide him enough power for less obscure ending.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Tactics

The DLC should change the ending.

Initial ending happened because Clive only managed to even with Ultima's roster.
Assuming Leviathan will be Clive-only, it should provide him enough power for less obscure ending.

The thing is...

Spoiler for Ending:

The reason it ended this way was that it was impossible even for him to hold all of Ultima's power in the first place. Adding one more power should technically only make things worse.

[Tactics]

We saw Torgal developed its own strength into eikon-like form, so there's hope for Clive depends on how Leviathan written;
Especially with Leviathan somehow omitted from Ultima's roster and this trailer have Ultima said Leviathan is the most profane among eikons.

Looking at interview, they said:
- The DLC take place before final battle;
- The ending will be same;
- They included new mode with the DLC.

We saw Mythos with Clive garb at the end of trailer, most believes it is new opponent for new mode, result of Clive adding Leviathan, accessing Ultima true form.

[Tactics]

Overall a mid DLC.

If your primary interest is story, this DLC might not worth it.
If you like combo flexing or no damage run, this DLC worth it.

This DLC reward basically Megaman Buster (Leviathan) and Nero's Devil Trigger (Ultima Form) from DMC V adapted to Final Fantasy.
Leviathan is nice, skippable non-game breaking addition, while Ultima Form is, similar to Nero's DT, provide significant boost, can be unlocked after you got all Eikons but not necessary to clear the game.

No change to ending. It stays same. Really make you wish there's "Vergil" for Clive, so this game can have "Special Edition".

[Kanon]

I'll pass then. I was only interested in it for the story.

[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I'll pass then. I was only interested in it for the story.

Yoshi P explicitly said he wanted to avoid following FF15's route where you needed DLC for the complete story.

https://noisypixel.net/final-fantasy...al-fantasy-xv/

Regarding the DLC announcement, was it expected that the DLC for Final Fantasy XVI would come at launch, or did that come after the reception, and you thought there’s more to be told here?

Yoshi P: It was probably about eight years ago when I first started developing a concept for Final Fantasy XVI. It was just myself, the main director, Takai-san, and the creative director, Maehiro-san. The three of us talked about what kind of story we wanted to create, what type of systems we wanted to implement, and how many Eikons-versus-Eikons battles we wanted to have in the game. And we started with eight elements, so eight battles. But as we got further into those discussions, we realized after looking at the schedule and production costs we wouldn’t have enough to make all the battles. So we decided to make one of them a lost Eikon, and that became Leviathan, the lost.

But the plan was that Eikon would always exist. And, if, by chance, we got the opportunity to make a DLC after the game was released, then that would be the story that we would tell. With the development of Final Fantasy XVI, the one thing that I really wanted to avoid was creating a game that, at launch, wasn’t complete and that you would need to play DLC to understand the main scenario. I did not want to do that.

We had Final Fantasy XV, which was released before XVI, and they announced four DLCs but had to cancel two. There were parts of the story that you couldn’t get unless you played the DLC. That is something that, from the beginning, we didn’t want to happen for Final Fantasy XVI.

We wanted to have a full, complete experience with the main game. As we got closer to the main game’s release, we received responses from the media and players from the launch events and demo, which was very good. Seeing that, I thought, “Okay, maybe this response is going to be good. This may be a chance for us to explore the idea of doing DLC.” Taking that and talking to the team, we already had this idea for Leviathan that we could bring in and incorporate into the DLC.

[Tactics]

IMO Yoshi-P is playing it too safe for XVI.

From structure it feels awkward to be regularly whispered "All of this is inconsequential" through presentation.
I get that he wanted to build trust with no must buy DLC but he himself is project leader of FF with 3+ expansion pack. Not to mention that, despite XV poor state, Episode Ardyn is well-received.

Then again, Leviathan being Mega Buster for Clive made me wonder if there's talk like:

"Speaking about DLC ..."
"Let's make Odin our local Vergil"
"It have to be not important to storyline"
"OK. DMC V have Mega Buster"
"Leviathan then."

[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Tactics

Not to mention that, despite XV poor state, Episode Ardyn is well-received.

Only from the few who did buy it.

In general, DLC sales continued to decline with each release as time passed. The majority of people who did buy XV had already moved on.

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by Shadow5YA

Only from the few who did buy it.

In general, DLC sales continued to decline with each release as time passed. The majority of people who did buy XV had already moved on.

Not a problem, because his popularity is enough to speak that his DLC works despite XV reception.

By XIII-2 and XIII-3, anyone should be able to understand that FF DLC can only targeted either loyal or hardcore players.
If I'm not into FF, I won't bother with Episode Ardyn because initial game already got bad reviews ignoring it superb, symbolic conclusion, so do with Rising Tide that most reviewers enjoyed it are those experienced in no damage run that value Leviathan and Ultima Form.

I knew XIV Team can make it rewarding on story aspect even without changing the ending. Thus I found Rising Tide a missed opportunity.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Shadow5YA

Yoshi P explicitly said he wanted to avoid following FF15's route where you needed DLC for the complete story.

https://noisypixel.net/final-fantasy...al-fantasy-xv/

That's not my issue. The story of the DLC just seems genuinely weak based on players' feedback, and I'm talking about players who loved FFXVI.

And while I don't mind them not changing the ending, Clive having an additional Eikon + Ultima form changing absolutely nothing for the final fight is disappointing. Could have at least tweaked the fight a bit and have Ultima comment on it.

[cyberdemon]

I wouldn’t mind something like x-2 ending. Something that doesn’t change but simply expands based on how much you completed