Before I start this review, I want to say that I'm going to use this to not only review The Rising Tide but also Echoes of the Fallen as I wasn't active on this site when the latter released and I feel like I have a lot of the same things to say. I also never review Final Fantasy XVI on here so I have to outline some of my thoughts there. So this will be a long one... Sorry...
Final Fantasy XVI was my GOTY for 2023, and while I found that there were several flaws, it hit on a lot of the elements that I personally love in games, and delivered a story that made me care a lot about the world and cast. The only major thing that I felt let down by after finishing my first playthrough was a feeling that I wanted a few more unique encounters. Both DLCs set out to address just that issue providing 2 full "stages", a new world area, several new bosses, a new Eikon fight and a new suite of abilities to play with. However, several other issues the main game had are not resolved, and the implementation of the DLC leaves something to be desired.
First I want to cover the new encounters, which are all absolutely incredible. Final Fantasy XVI truly thrives on the battlefield, fights are well paced and exciting, Clive's abilities make him incredibly satisfying to control, and both DLCs do a great job of expanding on this. Both stages contain several new enemies, but they truly shine in their boss fights. While the stages all use the same formula (pulled straight from FFXIV) of trash enemies, mini-boss, trash, mini-boss, trash, stage boss, it is fortunately a good formula which is enhanced by the variety and quality of encounters. Omega stands at the end of Echoes of the Fallen, and proves to be one of the most harrowing fights with a wildly unique moveset, and an intense DPS check. The Timekeeper is at the end of The Rising Tide's normal stage and proves to be the most interesting humanoid boss in the game, utilizing a some abilities of a specific Eikon against you. Afterwards you face off against Leviathan in the most difficult Eikon fight in the game. It has strict movement, and a tight DPS check on Final Fantasy mode. All of these encounters seem to be directly focused on addressing concerns of the base game being too easy even on Final Fantasy mode, and they thoroughly succeeded. The new abilities added to Clive, along with some balancing made to his kit have made combat even more engaging and varied. Making Clive a ranged powerhouse is now a viable way to play, and he has several new methods of crowd control. It takes some time getting used to Leviathan's playstyle, but once you do it feels incredibly satisfying. In regards to combat there is one more thing which is the rogue-lite mode "Kairos Gate". While this was a fun challenge to work through, my only real disappointment was the lack of any unique boss in there as all were reused, though they were much more interesting and difficult than their normal incarnations, and the reward for finishing these challenges is nice, though you have nothing to use it on unless you want to chase high-scores.
I've been praising this set of DLCs quite a bit but I do need to bring some more heavy criticism in. Both The Rising Tide and Echoes of the Fallen repeat the base game's issue of having unengaging questing structure. Most of these quests boil down to walking and talking, while this can be a great opportunity to unearth lore, develop characters, and immerse you into the world, it unfortunately tends to drag the pace down to a crawl. This game is fully voice acted, which means that I am just staring at very stiff models with terrible lip syncing as they talk about something that could be interesting but is taking too long to explain. I hoped that in the DLC they would find a way to break up the monotony through either some better exploration, or shortening these interactions. Unfortunately, it is largely the same outside of a universal change they made to being able to immediately return to a quest giver after finishing their objectives. While this is nice, they could have learned more from the criticism to create a more engaging set of expansions, the way it currently is makes them feel like more of the same.
A much smaller problem I wish the DLC fit more naturally into the main narrative. I get the issue the devs were having though, they wanted to make new content that felt like endgame content, but also were wanting to have it be with the main game’s characters before the ending. Echoes of the Fallen mostly works before the very end since it is shorter and feels like good background context before the final fight, but The Rising Tide would do good to be somewhere between Bahamut and Odin’s encounters as that is where the base game could use a stage and Eikon fight to spice things up.
Oh also, both DLCs continue the trend of blowing my mind at the impressive real-time graphics, and the OST absolutely was nailed by Soken and his team. Overall, I really enjoyed my return to FFXVI with this DLC. I still absolutely love the combat and characters, and spending more time with them is great. I really hope that we get to see CBU3 do another single-player FF game as I think they could absolutely make a game which is perfect in my eyes if they take the best of this game and refine it with things like what CBU1 is doing with the FFVII ReTrilogy.
Final Fantasy XVI was my GOTY for 2023, and while I found that there were several flaws, it hit on a lot of the elements that I personally love in games, and delivered a story that made me care a lot about the world and cast. The only major thing that I felt let down by after finishing my first playthrough was a feeling that I wanted a few more unique encounters. Both DLCs set out to address just that issue providing 2 full "stages", a new world area, several new bosses, a new Eikon fight and a new suite of abilities to play with. However, several other issues the main game had are not resolved, and the implementation of the DLC leaves something to be desired.
First I want to cover the new encounters, which are all absolutely incredible. Final Fantasy XVI truly thrives on the battlefield, fights are well paced and exciting, Clive's abilities make him incredibly satisfying to control, and both DLCs do a great job of expanding on this. Both stages contain several new enemies, but they truly shine in their boss fights. While the stages all use the same formula (pulled straight from FFXIV) of trash enemies, mini-boss, trash, mini-boss, trash, stage boss, it is fortunately a good formula which is enhanced by the variety and quality of encounters. Omega stands at the end of Echoes of the Fallen, and proves to be one of the most harrowing fights with a wildly unique moveset, and an intense DPS check. The Timekeeper is at the end of The Rising Tide's normal stage and proves to be the most interesting humanoid boss in the game, utilizing a some abilities of a specific Eikon against you. Afterwards you face off against Leviathan in the most difficult Eikon fight in the game. It has strict movement, and a tight DPS check on Final Fantasy mode. All of these encounters seem to be directly focused on addressing concerns of the base game being too easy even on Final Fantasy mode, and they thoroughly succeeded. The new abilities added to Clive, along with some balancing made to his kit have made combat even more engaging and varied. Making Clive a ranged powerhouse is now a viable way to play, and he has several new methods of crowd control. It takes some time getting used to Leviathan's playstyle, but once you do it feels incredibly satisfying. In regards to combat there is one more thing which is the rogue-lite mode "Kairos Gate". While this was a fun challenge to work through, my only real disappointment was the lack of any unique boss in there as all were reused, though they were much more interesting and difficult than their normal incarnations, and the reward for finishing these challenges is nice, though you have nothing to use it on unless you want to chase high-scores.
I've been praising this set of DLCs quite a bit but I do need to bring some more heavy criticism in. Both The Rising Tide and Echoes of the Fallen repeat the base game's issue of having unengaging questing structure. Most of these quests boil down to walking and talking, while this can be a great opportunity to unearth lore, develop characters, and immerse you into the world, it unfortunately tends to drag the pace down to a crawl. This game is fully voice acted, which means that I am just staring at very stiff models with terrible lip syncing as they talk about something that could be interesting but is taking too long to explain. I hoped that in the DLC they would find a way to break up the monotony through either some better exploration, or shortening these interactions. Unfortunately, it is largely the same outside of a universal change they made to being able to immediately return to a quest giver after finishing their objectives. While this is nice, they could have learned more from the criticism to create a more engaging set of expansions, the way it currently is makes them feel like more of the same.
A much smaller problem I wish the DLC fit more naturally into the main narrative. I get the issue the devs were having though, they wanted to make new content that felt like endgame content, but also were wanting to have it be with the main game’s characters before the ending. Echoes of the Fallen mostly works before the very end since it is shorter and feels like good background context before the final fight, but The Rising Tide would do good to be somewhere between Bahamut and Odin’s encounters as that is where the base game could use a stage and Eikon fight to spice things up.
Oh also, both DLCs continue the trend of blowing my mind at the impressive real-time graphics, and the OST absolutely was nailed by Soken and his team. Overall, I really enjoyed my return to FFXVI with this DLC. I still absolutely love the combat and characters, and spending more time with them is great. I really hope that we get to see CBU3 do another single-player FF game as I think they could absolutely make a game which is perfect in my eyes if they take the best of this game and refine it with things like what CBU1 is doing with the FFVII ReTrilogy.