This was... really not good.

A short form review for a short form experience, with a runtime of maybe four or five hours at best, Final Fantasy XVI's final DLC is a complete departure from what made the main title so good. Ultimately (heh) the issue with Rising Tide is that it's both not interesting and infuriating. The new locale Clive and the gang find themselves in is isolated much like the Echoes of the Fallen DLC. There's not much to do in the realm of exploring, and what you can poke around and interact with wasn't worth the price tag. The village and its populous are kinda just there with no real varied culture or intrigue to make me wish to interact with them further, and the setting chugs the Playstation 5 somehow to Bloodborne levels of framerate. The unfortunate thing for XVI here is that it is not Bloodborne and won't get a pass. I don't know, if I'm engaging with a civilization and its dominant unbeknownst to the greater world and largely lost to time, I'd like them to stand out just a little bit past their appearance?

The combat in Rising Tide frustrated me at similar levels as EotF did just before it, in that you're playing through a dungeon with raised difficulty levels (Which is okay!) however you're throttled by an inability to return to Outer Heaven and restock at any point. Now when you game over you can refresh potions... but this felt like a pretty annoying workaround. Bosses, namely the ultimate one, are genuine sponges taking a frustrating amount of time to defeat even if you're well equipped and geared for the task at hand. This was an issue I had with Rebirth and it rears its ugly head again here in the last bit of XVI we'll get. If I'm doing stagger damage of over two million... you'd hope to get a sense of vindication in healthbar removal moreso than you'll get in Rising Tide. Poorly tuned DPS checks, overwhelming mechanics that lack visual clarity, an enemy that is constantly flying away from you all in addition to the aforementioned sponge issue make for a resoundingly aggrivating experience.

For someone who was a massive fan of the main game in FFXVI and even had it as their Game of the Year for 2023, Rising Tide unfortunately tarnishes the legacy of an otherwise stellar title. It doesn't add much to the excellently crafted personas of Clive, Joshua, or Jill, as you get little in the way of conversation or captivating quotables, instead thrusting the player into a lukewarm time. I do not recommend Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide.

Infinite Wealth is a huge improvement from Y7 in a lot of areas, but it's also a downgrade in some others.

Starting with some positives first, the combat in this game is 10 times better than Y7's, I've always loved the combat in 7 but it's only after playing this game I realized how much could still be improved upon. The side content is HUGE, just Dondoko Island alone offers hours and hours of content, but there's a ton more minigames that are all really fun, like Crazy Delivery and Sujimon battles. The music in the game is in my opinion as good as Y7's, every single song is such a banger that I spent nearly an entire month after playing the game almost solely listening to this OST and no other music.

However, this game is lacking in some areas, most notably the story. The story is an absolute snooze by the latter half, some characters with a lot of potential feel barely explored at all (looking at you Wong Tou). To add to that, the substories and side content are given to you so early that if it wasn't for Kiryu's Bucket List, you'd have nothing new to do but the main story. You can be finished with all side content by around chapter 7 on Ichiban's side, leaving you with 4 chapters with nothing but the story which, like I previously mentioned, is not great by (a bit later than) this point, making the latter half of Ichiban's section just a bore. This is avoidable if you still haven't done all of the side content, which is likely, but the same cannot be said about the substories, as there is but a single substory you can unlock only after chapter 7.

Overall, as much as I complained about the story, this game is still a very much worthwhile experience. It's just an extremely rare case where the beginning and middle sections of a Yakuza game exceed the ending one.

Final Rating: 8/10

I will start with the positive... the additions of encounter toggling and enhanced movement on this are a huge improvement.

The game is still too "yeah just work it out" for my liking, I actually feel like this game would be nearly impossible for a first timer without a guide - what do you do next, guess, that's right head to a random house get a random item and workout who needs it - coming back to the save after a break...bet remember what you were doing.

The level curve on this is killer, it's pretty easy combat wise until the final fiend fight and then Chaos.

Chaos can suck my...well I can't say what but he can suck that.

20,000 HP, immune to all non melee damage and max heals every 8 turns.

I get having a challenging finale but I shouldn't feel forced to use a BS meta strategy of Haste and Temper spamming to compete it.

Decent 10 hour game and 13 year old me who couldn't beat this has finally been appeased.

This was... amazing.

I am typically a very 'that's not a game' boomer with more narrative driven games like this but bloody hell (very bloody in this games case is it good.

The sound design for this game is up their with the original Hellblade for me, from the narrators voice to the atmospheric sound and even some of the more gruesome folly.

The art style is beautiful but the game is also not afraid to go all in on disgusting as well.

Gameplay is enough to not feel like a walking simulator and it keeps you on edge without being a jump scare/horror game.

Although I got jump scared by a deer... 1 minute into the game.

Can you swear in backloggd review?

I feel like I need to swear to get my feelings of this game across.

Let's play it safe and just say fecking tedious.

Repetitive combat, letter delivery quests out the kazoo and a fast travel mechanic that the game stops you using most of the times you want to.

Pointless quest to go across multiple parts of an island you have explored multiple times to speak with your crew...sorry fast travel not available at this time.

The story is interesting enough but the pacing of it and the game in general is the equivelent of when you start writing a big word on paper and have to go really small in the last couple letters cause you went too big early on.

The second chapter of this game makes up about 30-40% of the total play time.

It's about a 30 hour game with 15 hours of it in the first 3 chapters and 15 in the remaining 6.

It gets the charm of the source material in areas and some of the the new additions are enjoyable but by about 20 hours in I was really forcing myself to finish this for the sake of completing it.