A game by and for sickos. Someone claimed before release that the game had the soul of a PS2 game, and that remark is spot on: The game is irreverent and dead set in its ways, a collection of "things we find cool" by the devs but with the backing of the production values of an AAA game behind.
The game is certainly flawed, deeply so depending on who you ask, but is at the same time more than the sum of its parts. The potent combat system synergizes excellently with the boss fights—both big and "mini"—that all display an incredible level of polish and design variety that makes every encounter fun and unique, with the Eikon battles delivering a sense of spectacle and bombast unseen since Asura's Wrath that will definitely be remembered for years to come. On the other hand, the non-boss enemies feel like they are just there to be mowed down by the player, offering little challenge or complexity that can make some encounters that feature them in droves fairly dull. Speaking of challenge, the main story could use with an up in difficulty since most battles end up being fairly easy, with the real challenges being relegated to the S-rank hunts. I feel like they might have wanted to not alienate audiences used only to the turn-based FF games by making the game too hard for them, but considering the numerous accesibility options it offers it feels rather pointless. Still, even though often easy the battles are still plenty of fun due to all being excellently designed, so it's not that big of a deal for me personally.
The story is perhaps what might end up being most divisive about the game—hard to say why without spoilers, but I feel like enjoyment of it will come down to how much the player is willing to accept the classic JRPG viring into a more symbolic thematic narrative in its second half. The sidequests as well contain multitudes: Good in stories and questlines to the point where I would consider them MUST play due to how they end up carrying a good chunk of the thematic punch of the main story, but their gameplay design amounts to nothing more than "go here, fetch this, kill this mob" which, paired with the excessive amount of them and how weirdly paced they are delivered to the player, often makes it a slog to go through them. A big part of what makes XVI's story special is the powerful sense of community that builds up with its excellent supporting cast—this is a game about saving the world that will always make you remember the kind of people who make up that world that you must save—, and considering this cast is almost entirely developed in sidequests, their poor design might end up making it so that many players elect to ignore such a big part of the game due to tedium. Speaking of characters, I share the criticisms many have made regarding the writing around the main story's female characters, as they often feel like they are only going through the motions of "generic dark fantasy suffering evil woman writing", and sidelining supposedly main heroine Jill for large parts of the game. This criticism however does not apply to once again the characters present in the supporting cast through sidequests, who are all very good.
And finally, while Soken's soundtrack for the game is excellent all the way through, his work in FFXIV proves that he is at his best when given the freedom to explore different musical genres and sounds, so I can't help that feel disappointed that he clearly wasn't given that freedom here: An understandable and appropriate decision since the point was to make a tonally consistent soundtrack—succesfully so—, but one that I can only wish had been less constraining on Soken's output. Props as well to Koji Fox and the team's loc efforts, bringing in the excellent writing they displayed for a decade with XIV to the same effect in this game as well.
If CBU3 makes another action FF game—be it a FFXVI-2, FFXVII or whatever else—, hammering on these issues would lead to an all-timer of a game. For now, however, what we have is a game that is pretty damn great in spite of its issues, but that will nevertheless be divisive among fans. But still, a divisive game is a good game, as it showcases the idiosyncrasy to make something interesting, and FFXVI has that in spades.
The game is certainly flawed, deeply so depending on who you ask, but is at the same time more than the sum of its parts. The potent combat system synergizes excellently with the boss fights—both big and "mini"—that all display an incredible level of polish and design variety that makes every encounter fun and unique, with the Eikon battles delivering a sense of spectacle and bombast unseen since Asura's Wrath that will definitely be remembered for years to come. On the other hand, the non-boss enemies feel like they are just there to be mowed down by the player, offering little challenge or complexity that can make some encounters that feature them in droves fairly dull. Speaking of challenge, the main story could use with an up in difficulty since most battles end up being fairly easy, with the real challenges being relegated to the S-rank hunts. I feel like they might have wanted to not alienate audiences used only to the turn-based FF games by making the game too hard for them, but considering the numerous accesibility options it offers it feels rather pointless. Still, even though often easy the battles are still plenty of fun due to all being excellently designed, so it's not that big of a deal for me personally.
The story is perhaps what might end up being most divisive about the game—hard to say why without spoilers, but I feel like enjoyment of it will come down to how much the player is willing to accept the classic JRPG viring into a more symbolic thematic narrative in its second half. The sidequests as well contain multitudes: Good in stories and questlines to the point where I would consider them MUST play due to how they end up carrying a good chunk of the thematic punch of the main story, but their gameplay design amounts to nothing more than "go here, fetch this, kill this mob" which, paired with the excessive amount of them and how weirdly paced they are delivered to the player, often makes it a slog to go through them. A big part of what makes XVI's story special is the powerful sense of community that builds up with its excellent supporting cast—this is a game about saving the world that will always make you remember the kind of people who make up that world that you must save—, and considering this cast is almost entirely developed in sidequests, their poor design might end up making it so that many players elect to ignore such a big part of the game due to tedium. Speaking of characters, I share the criticisms many have made regarding the writing around the main story's female characters, as they often feel like they are only going through the motions of "generic dark fantasy suffering evil woman writing", and sidelining supposedly main heroine Jill for large parts of the game. This criticism however does not apply to once again the characters present in the supporting cast through sidequests, who are all very good.
And finally, while Soken's soundtrack for the game is excellent all the way through, his work in FFXIV proves that he is at his best when given the freedom to explore different musical genres and sounds, so I can't help that feel disappointed that he clearly wasn't given that freedom here: An understandable and appropriate decision since the point was to make a tonally consistent soundtrack—succesfully so—, but one that I can only wish had been less constraining on Soken's output. Props as well to Koji Fox and the team's loc efforts, bringing in the excellent writing they displayed for a decade with XIV to the same effect in this game as well.
If CBU3 makes another action FF game—be it a FFXVI-2, FFXVII or whatever else—, hammering on these issues would lead to an all-timer of a game. For now, however, what we have is a game that is pretty damn great in spite of its issues, but that will nevertheless be divisive among fans. But still, a divisive game is a good game, as it showcases the idiosyncrasy to make something interesting, and FFXVI has that in spades.
mospina
11 months ago