I adore this game. My first impressions were that the tone was cool but the graphics were kiddy groddy. I know not every indie game can look like Sea of Stars, but beyond the level of detail the actual style turned me off. However about 2 hours into the game I did a 180 and ended up being charmed by the art style.
The characters, writing, and story were all great imo. It takes the tropey story of a quest to kill a god and puts a unique spin on it. You are rodents and the "gods" are humans. The rodent society was interesting to learn about, you can tell the writer was interested in political philosophy. At one point I was surprised to find myself in a debate with a fascist about how egalitarianism is equally as fascist as fascism. Needless to say, this game does have some communist/liberal ideology.

If you have a problem with trans people then this is not the game for you. Many characters are gay/nonbinary/what-have-you. In that regard the moral of sexual freedom does seem pretty heavy-handed and forced. But hey, I was down with it. The dialogue is very well written, humorous, charming, etc. Some people may scoff at modern slang being used but I didn't. For example, there is an asshole dictator who is smoking an e-cig and says the word "cringe" and his lackey say "lol." However, you are not supposed to like them. So, mission accomplished.

The tone is so unique. Idk where this takes place exactly but perhaps Wales? The world map looks like a medieval map complete with crests representing places. One of the characters has a pretty thick accent (portrayed by the writing, it is not voiced), I am guessing Scottish.

The gameplay is pretty simplistic and easy. That is my only fault of the game is that a lot of the battles seem pretty trivial. I literally never died, not a single member of my party KOed or even came close to it. You don't level up by experience, you do so by completing story events and a few side quests. So, this could have easily been tuned to be a tad more challenging. I should mention that I actually don't even like difficult games but there still must be some tension in fights. The game is about 9 hours long if you do everything (which I did) and the bosses can be killed quite quickly until 7 hours in but even then it is because they are damage sponges.

I really enjoyed my time with this game. The pacing was great, the length was great, I felt fully satisfied like I had gone on an epic JRPG journey in a fraction of the time. Would highly recommend if this sounds at all interesting to you.

I find the word ‘perspective’ to be an ever fascinating one, a noun with two meanings that conjure up such strong imagery, imagination and long thought processes.

On the more clinical side, perspective is simply art representing three-dimensions in two-dimensional ways so that you can see how things relate… which is interesting.
Interesting because the deeper version of the word encompasses feelings, people’s attitudes and point of views on anything and everything, life if we want to boil it down to a single word.

Small Saga has a lot of interesting perspectives.
Visually it shows a world that we as humans live in but from the view of a few inches tall, that of rodents - mice, rats, moles and more.
This perspective is not just visual but asks the question how would these animals view the rest of the world, if they had the cognition of a human - including not only other animals and their surroundings but also humans themselves.

This is the simple and smart appeal of Small Saga. A JRPG-lite with classic fantasy archetypes, kings, warriors, knights, mages, bards and more but with mice, rats and other small creatures.
Much like some of the best JRPGs of the past, our protagonist Verm’s goal is to, in search of revenge, kill a god!
The Yellow God, here however, is a human in yellow coveralls and a mask. This yellow god filled a land, seemingly heaven, full of all the seeds and grain a mouse could want full of a terrible fog and nasty traps - as a human being playing this game however, you realise that heaven is a supermarket aisle and this Yellow God and his fog are simply - pest control.

The different perspectives Small Saga uses though are not all world building, they don’t just pose questions about “what does a mouse think a cat is?” but brings in conversations about a whole host of much more serious matters, minorities, diversities, class, gender, sexuality and how these things are perceived and looked at by different views.

It is strange, because in 2023 it is not rare for a game to “be woke” as morons may say, by including queer relationships, characters with disabilities and to make anti-fascist statements but something about how it is written and how it is woven into this world made it stick with me more personally than many of these more outright queer etc. games do.
Perhaps it’s because the game isn’t trying to be about these things, these things just are.
Perhaps because Small Saga’s world feels closer to home, the world (and it’s map) are actually London and because of that the cast has a great diverse range of character voices written with quality dialogue that includes, English, Welsh and Scottish slang, amongst more, that makes it all feel that much more real for me - an English lad, with Scottish family and friends, Welsh pals and a diverse range of people I call friends from all of the pre-mentioned groups.

Although as an aside, do Scottish people actually say “Bampot”? It’s a term I know of and heard, but only really as a joke, usually of a Scot doing an exaggerated impression of a specific kind of Scot.

Before I move to more granular and mechanical impressions, I need to stop and state that Small Saga’s world, characters and ideas within that setting are excellent and the true selling point of this game. Games are not always about what you are doing, but I appreciate that simply enjoying a story isn’t always enough for some when taking part in this medium.
Small Saga’s tale is great, it is somewhat of a simple hero's journey but it makes great points and has inventive ideas along the way. Any time the word “simple” comes to mind in terms of story, it is maybe better read as “nice and digestible” - the game never becomes bloated, it respects you but also has a few optional moments if you would like more from the world and your runtime.

JRPG is the short-hand for how I’ve explained what genre this game is. @SketchyJeremy the games developer is evidently not Japanese so turn-based, is a more accurate description but clear inspiration has been taken from the JRPG genre, Mario RPG and Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light and more.

The Turn-based combat system is one that is simple to grasp, heroes have hit points and action points, moves take action points to use and hit points are as always your life.
Turns start from your team, starting right and moving left until your actions are made and the enemies respond. Within this your heroes can aid each other with buffs, more AP, more HP and even extra turns and you quickly find yourself following a formula to efficiently defeat the opposing side.
The characters you gain access to include, a warrior, a pyromancer, a bard and more. These work exactly how you’d expect if you’ve ever played a game like this which is comforting but a little too frictionless.

Small Saga forgoes any potential “grinding” as there are no random encounters and levelling up happens at specific points and after particular battles.
When you do get to level you have access to a grid that does branch into different areas allowing you a choice of not just do you want attack strength or more HP but also which abilities you would like your characters to learn. The other nice thing about this grid is you can respec at any time so there is no stress if you wish you went down a different path.
Lastly on the character customisation front, each hero has a weapon, armour (just one set) and two accessories which are consumable which refill after each fight.

Overall this combat is clean and simple, which is good, the fights look great - some brilliant use of visual perspective, fonts, and even some fun additions later so not all fights are exactly the same but within this combat is one of Small Saga’s biggest issues and that is lack of challenge.

To be so frictionless makes any encounters outside of bosses quite boring, and even within some they are over so quickly you don’t get a chance to appreciate them.
Over my entire playthrough I saw the game over screen twice. Once was due to a mis click in a timed event and the second was a poor attempt at an optional boss that really was down to me running even this impressive looking encounter on auto-pilot and not engaging with it fully.
I hope in the future there is a patch for some difficulty sliders because whilst having a sub-8 hour game feel quite frictionless is nice the complete lack of challenge almost makes you question what is the point.

Outside of combat, mechanically there are a few side-objectives. Most of which are sadly just fetch quests, there is some good storytelling within but the variety is somewhat lacking, a maze and a couple of rhythm game bits and that is your lot.
It’s a shame because I don’t think Small Saga “needs” anything more, but it is hard to praise the game from this side of things when really there is nothing new or interesting to prop it up in discussion.

Really, Small Saga is about the experience in art, music and writing. The combat and any “gameplay” functions are more a way to keep you engaged outside of just walking about and reading and this is fine.
I thoroughly enjoyed Small Saga and would heartily recommend it, but I cannot rate it so high especially when even this year other small studios (maybe not as small) have released more full and interesting games in the JRPG space. It is all remarkably close and for the asking price this game should still be on your Steam Wishlist after reading this.
Just don’t expect a GOTY, mind-blowing, world altering time - expect a very nice, very enjoyable little tale about a mouse with a penknife and go from there.

Well at least Justin's not here.

Slightly less ad-libbed, as repetitious as ever in its jokes and play. Space Applebees caught you offguard last time? Well here's Cheers under an alien's ass. In case you didn't catch that the slugs are on the salt planet, I'll tell you a few more times. Guys, Amazon workers deal with horrid conditions, get it? Knifey sure is violent.

The new pinball gun is the most interesting weapon in the game, adorned with three phat ass babbling blue boys. High on Knife mostly throws basic enemies at you as a realisation that the gameplay really isn't what you're here for. The bells and whistles providing some auditory relief. Press F to pay respects kill enemies instantly and get it over with. Surfing on walls is vaguely cool if poorly realised, especially with Knifey telling you the act itself is cool.

As paltry as the gameplay is, at least it can be engaged with while the cast is yammering. On the other side of the coin, whenever dialogue occurs it is usually two characters talking at you. Or three. Sometimes even four. Three quarters of the screen are eventually squatted in by characters in dark rooms with monotone pink walls and swarms of pink enemies. To call it an assault on the eyes and ears is to undersell it. Maybe it was because thirteen people were goofing in my ears the whole time. Even before the aggravations reach a crescendo, the eye drifts across a featureless white planet, and rote gunmetal corridors. Almost everyone is a slug or a cock with tits. There is simply nothing to break things up.

At least Justin's not here. Not a stammer in sight. As one-dimensional as he is, Knifey carries(?) the whole two hours thanks to Michael Cusack's performance. Though by the end I was hoping even he would shut up. And Tim Robinson. And Gabourey Sidibe. I wish they'd all just zip it for a second if only so my friends could hear my great jokes instead.

Out of all of the rpgs with Star in the name, this is like.. 2nd place.

What happens when someone who has never played a Bethesda developed game before plays a game that everyone only compares to other Bethesda games? Well...

I mean there are a couple good things..? I mean.. the scale is impressive and some of the model density looks pretty good. I couldn't play many of the faction quests for a reason i'll bring up later, but the one I did play was pretty solid. The acting and sound design are all pretty good. And occasionally the flow of combat is pretty fun. But.. DAMN.

It's not even just the bugs. Most of the bugs I got were the funny kind and those honestly added to my enjoyment. Shit like untextured wireframe circles on certain planets, spazzing out animations, 4 conversations happening with one character at the same time, spinning ships in space those were fucking hilarious. Those are fine.

There were a couple genuine bugs that impacted my enjoyment, like one of the faction quests not starting, which was disappointing because that was the one that, from what I heard, everyone likes the most. On the technical side my biggest issue is how ugly the character models and face animation can be, which did impact my experience considering how much of this game is talking to various npcs. At times it felt like I was in a survival horror game. There were a couple frame drops here and there, and the game crashed three times, but apart from that, I think the technical state isn't the worst?

Funnily enough, this game manages to find a way to fail both as an open world game and an rpg in completely different ways. Obviously the fact that exploration between planets is exclusively fast travel that you don't even need to get in your ship to do is kinda lame. But the main issue for me is how barren these planets are and how little to find and explore there is on there. I heard the planets are procedurally generated so maybe I was just unlucky, but with the exception of a few cool planets with different mid exploration events, it was mostly just barren empty space with visual locations that stop getting super interesting the longer I play. Ships are mostly just used for floaty, janky space ship combat that doesn't even control that well, so maybe thats why we cant fly straight between planets.

Additionally, the resource gathering in this game is REAL BAD. Not only is the encumbrance limit way too low, but transferring items between you and your partners is an exhaustive process that is way too time consuming for what's supposed to be just a simple task.

Additionally, I REALLY didn't like the story. Without getting into spoilers, most of the story is not super engaging or interesting with a bland cast of characters carried by their admittedly great voice acting. I was mildly entertained by the ending because, even if it was a predictable twist, a twist in general is still one that's entertaining to see unfold. But yeah, the writing in the one faction quest I did was actually fairly strong.

Yeah.. I just couldn't vibe with this one. Maybe at some point in the future, I'll continue to explore some of the side content in this one, but for now, I'm just kinda done and don't want to use up that much more time on a game that just isn't working for me. It has good stuff in it, but if this game is being criticized or praised for being as good as any other bethesda rpg, then maybe I should just stick with the shit Obsidian's making.

See? It's possible to criticize this game without being transphobic! It's not hard, either!

About 3 weeks before Final Fantasy XVI released, Square Enix released a demo for the game, that was basically the story’s introduction, and in my opinion this demo was genuinely awesome, and made me really excited for the game. Sadly, as it turns out, it feels like the game should have stayed a demo, because after a few hours of playing the full game, it becomes incredibly jarring that a lot of the game’s aspects should have never gotten past some kind of playtesting.

The demo really worked because it was short: everything was well paced, the combat system seemed full of promises due to only having one eikon while still managing to be fun, and the story opened up very strongly. All the full game needed to do was to just expand Clive’s toolkit as the game progressed to keep it fresh, and you’d have a really solid game. And that’s what the game failed to do correctly, which led to it being an experience that was way too long and repetitive to be enjoyable.

The pacing of this game is atrocious, and I frankly don’t know how most people don’t seem bothered by it. While getting your second eikon is something that happens pretty fast, each subsequent one takes way too long to get unlocked. Most “action games”, for lack of a better term, take between 10 and 15 hours to complete, while FF16 is around 60 hours if you do the side content (more on that later), but even without it it’s probably around 35-40 hours. And nothing in the game is there to justify its length. The entire time, you’ll follow the same structure: you do a dungeon, get back to the hub, unlock new sidequests, then go “explore” a new part of the overworld, rinse and repeat. The dungeons take up maybe 20% of the runtime (and i’m being very generous), and they’re the only part of the game that’s even remotely good.

The overworld is where you’ll spend the biggest amount of time in the game, and at no point does it manage to justify its existence. It’s just big open spaces filled with nothing. Sure, there are enemies to fight, but it gets old quickly and it’s not rewarding: just like in a certain MMO from the same series, you’ll get 10 times more exp doing quests than fighting mobs, meaning every mob that’s not mandatory to kill is just a waste of time once leveling up starts to require bigger amounts of exp. Fighting enemies is useless, but so is exploration in itself, since the loot mechanics in this game are so laughably surface level I can't stop but wonder why they’re even here in the first place.

Final Fantasy XVI decided to ditch “RPG elements” to have its gameplay focus entirely on the combat itself, which is a choice i don’t have issues with on a fundamental level. Except that for some reason, the game decided to still have loot and crafting, but their implementation is laughable. Every enemy will drop some kind of materials, and other kind of materials are scattered all around the open world, and you use those materials to craft new weapons and equipment. Except all those new equipment do is increase numbers in a linear fashion. So all you have to do is craft whatever’s the strongest equipment at any given time because there’s never any situation where equipment X has slightly more damage but Y has added bonuses that would make you consider using it instead. And you get way too many materials to craft things anyway, like i had triple or even quadruple digits numbers of most of the materials which was useless, and it’s not because i farmed those, it just happens naturally.

The combat in this game is… Clearly lacking depth. Now I’m not an expert in “action games” the title took inspiration from, I just played the first 3 DMC games, bayonetta 1 and i guess nier automata if you want to count it as an action game (i wouldn’t) so maybe, just maybe, i just lack the necessary skills to make the combat more fun, but i doubt it.


Clive’s base toolkit is very limited. If you’ve played the demo you’ve seen it all, his base moves don’t evolve. There’s only one combo, a charge attack, a lunge/downthrust, and magic that you can either charge or weave in between hits of your one and only combo. You can also order torgal to launch enemies, but everything else has you rely on eikons. Want to warp to an enemy after launching him? That’s an eikonic ability. Grab an enemy from afar to pull them towards you? Eikonic ability. Since you can only equip 3 eikons at a time, that means two of the eikon slots have to be used by phoenix and garuda if you want to do longer combos.


Eikons also let you equip 2 abilities to them, and those all have cooldown. So while you can implement some of those attacks in a combo, once it’s done you have to wait before being able to do that combo again. But chances are after a while you won’t even do that, because of how the combat system works and how unbalanced the game is. Normal enemies pose literally no threat 99% so you can just do your basic juggle combo on them while waiting for your cooldowns to be off,which gets very very repetitive really quick, especially with how long the game is.

(Mini)Bosses are where the game’s system is really flawed. They all have a poise bar you can deplete by attacking, and once you break their bar they’re staggered for a while, and attacks will raise a dmg multiplier up to 1.5. Which means every single boss encounter will follow the same cycle: you dodge, use regular attacks and maybe some abilities to go faster, but your goal is to have as many abilities off cooldown for when the boss will be staggered since that’s when you’ll do the most damage. Even worse yet, some abilities are extremely broken when combined and it’s not hard at all to figure out which ones they are, so you’ll likely have them constantly equipped. There is almost no player expression in this game, instead the game plays more like something like Kingdom Hearts and i like kingdom hearts gameplay! But not for a game that long. Again, nothing in this game justifies it being that long.

The kaiju fights are.. Okay? They’re definitely some good spectacle but gameplay wise they’re not much better than the rest of the game, especially considering how long some of those can be. The QTEs are also hilarious, you have a 5 seconds window to press either R1 or square, it’s really funny. I absolutely disagree with the consensus that they’re “some of the best bosses ever”, they’re just cool looking bosses but they’re really not that thrilling to fight, it’s all style over substance (just like the rest of the game)

But what about the story, Final Fantasy is all about the story right? Well i want to keep my review spoilers free so i won’t delve too much into it, but it didn’t get me. The game opens up very strongly, but the more it goes on the more it sidelines all the interesting political stuff to instead become very “anime”. None of the characters really stood out to me, except like Cid he’s cool. Clive’s alright, Jill is a bowl of soup and there’s a couple side characters that are really cool (shoutouts to Dion and Byron, i like those guys) but it feels like none of the characters bare Clive are developed enough, even if you do the sidequests they’re like all missing something to be more than just pretty stereotypical characters, some of those being almost 1:1 copies of Game of thrones character (like yeah i do like Goetz but he’s literally just Hodor from GoT lol)

And what about the music? This game’s got to have good music right? Eeeeeeeeh. Older FF titles (except 15 which has the same issue imo) have really good and memorable music, the music in this game is just there. It’s like a movie score, sure it’s fitting most of the time but is it memorable, apart from a couple key songs? Not really. Worse than that, i’m actually wondering why the fuck they got Soken for it. I do like his work on FF14, but i think everyone will agree his best tracks are either rock and/or electronic music, which are genres completely absent from this game except for like one song. Everything in the game is just either medieval sounding stuff, or orchestra for the big fights. There’s also not a lot of variety in the songs which is insane. Like in A Realm Reborn alone, each city had its major themes that all gave off different vibes, Ul’dah has a bombastic song that screams of its riches, Limsa has a song that gives you the feeling of being called by the sea, Gridania is a calm and inviting place… FF16 has no diversity in its themes like that. Every city has the same songs, none of them give off really emotive vibes, they’re just medieval_town.mp3. The combat theme is always the same, same for the miniboss themes, even every eikon battle has the same song playing for the first phase… The only places where the music stops being repetitive is the dungeons, driving even further home the fact those are the only good piece of content of the game.

All in all, Final Fantasy XVI was a very mediocre experience for me. It’s a game that wanted to be different, but half baked everything. It’s a game that wants to be a dark and mature experience, but rapidly falls into common RPG tropes. It’s a game that wants to be a “spectacle fighting” game, but that doesn’t feature any deep mechanics to make that spectacle feel fun to play. It’s a game that wants to be a full length RPG, but doesn’t ever justify why it should be that long, it feels like it’s just that long either because you expect a Final Fantasy game to be long, or because the dev team behind it is a MMO team and apparently MMO devs are unaware MMO designs do not work in single player experiences. It’s a game full of flaws, and it feels like as soon as you start noticing some of those all the other ones become apparent really quick afterwards, leaving you with a game that has potential, but got so half baked it just ends up being the same thing Cid’s daughter is: Mid.

I like to consider myself a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. I have great memories of playing all the single player games throughout the years. I like the idea that every entry is a fresh take with a new story and set of characters and for the most part I have enjoyed the vast majority of them. I think as the years go by the last few entries FF12-15 I have had rather sour experiances with but with each new entry I like to keep an open mind. However after so many mainline duds it was hard to get excited for FF16 and I told myself that this time I was going to wait and not buy into the hype and play this day 1. I had watched a few trailers the last couple of years and they really didn't do anything for me in any way. Neither a negative or positive reaction. I couldn't even tell much of what it was even about or how it would play. But like I said I've been burnt the last few years on the past entries that i decided to wait. After about a month after the release. I had an open slot to play something new and with a bunch of free time coming up. It has been awhile since playing a big RPG and despite me saying I wasn't gunna be suckered into playing this at full price, I ended up just doing that. I still have love for this franchise and I want this to be good. I know next to nothing about it but all the major outlets have been singing it's praises for the recently released demo and reviews.

Starting FF16 the setting depicts a classic FF midevel esque locale with a focus on struggling kingdoms in a magic filled world that is ruled and governed by magic giving crystals that fuel the kingdoms prosperity and ways of life. This also coupled with more realisticly designed characters (well for FF) compared to the last entries did inspire some confidence that I would like this direction. However I feared it was very similar to FF12, and I would get lost in all the names, subkingdoms and detailed lore that was so heavy with politacal intrigue. I can say FF16 was not like that and even though it wares it clear game of thrones inspirations well, it is a simple story and very easy to keep track of it's huge world and lore. One of the many things I despise about FF13 is how much story and lore is thrown in the datalogs baried in the menu. When I learned that FF16 had a active time lore feature, I feared it was going to be just like that game. Burying crucial plot details and information critical for understand whats going on and figuring out the world into packed away long text info dumps. I hated that so much. Missing context of scenes and details because I didn't pause the game to read a 15min info dump. So hearing that FF16 has a active time lore feature, I instantly groan. To my surprise however it's implementation is very well done. At anytime during a cutscene, you can pause the game and open up the active time lore and it will tell you at that moment who each character is, what faction they belong to, their relationship to you and everything that has happened to them at the current point in the story. Not only characters but locations, words and factions are displayed in detail. It's a very nice feature if you haven't played in awhile to catch you up on whats going one or who this is or if you forgoten what that word means. It doesn't lock away critical info you can only find there or explains things that happen offscreen. Catches you up in the moment. There is also a really well done family tree for all the characters and a world history map feature about how the world is reacting to the current point in the story. I think this is a fantastic implementation of a lore feature for a massive RPG such as this and worth highlighting.

As for the story and characters FF16 drew me in from the get go. I think the opening act of the phoenix gate is really well done and a great introduction to the characters and world. It's a good start for learning Clive and what his place in the world is and right away we know where his ideals and goals lie. I think for the most part I like all the characters in this game. I think there isn't a single design that I felt was awful or felt out of place. Everyone looks stylish but at the same time something a person of this world would wear. As far as personalities go almost all the characters have character and a connection to you and what's going one with the story. Which isn't always the case for these kinda games. This random ninja guy joins your party cause he's cool ect ect. My problem with FF16 is that I think the games nose dives hard after the opening chapters. Nearly every character in this game while I find to be likable to varing degrees never have any kind of arc, growth or anything interesting happen to them. The characters of FF16 are the definition of what you see is what you get. Which is a shame because I think there is a foundation here but everything is so one dimentional. I think the voice acting is good, except for CId I can not stand the preformance from that character. I know what they were going for and nothing against the actor but I can't understand so much of what he says because a lot of his dialog is mumbled and hard to hear or make out what he is saying. It's just the way he talks. I wanted subtitles on just for that character. Rant over. Like I was saying there isn't much to work with when it comes to the characters. I feel like Clive is the same person he was at the start of the game as he is at the end of the game. It's frustrating too because with so much inner connected drama that could and should happen everything fizzles out and I get nothing. Then when something does happen it's so over the top melodramtic that it's hard to take seriously, but more on that later.

The story is simple to follow and there is hardly any twists and turns. It's a simple we are doing this mission and the whole game is just that. SImple good kingdoms vs bad kingdoms controlled by evil. Look that's fine if that's what you wanna do. I'm totally cool with it but do some interesting things from point A to point B. Have some drama with the characters. Every main character is like connected but they treat each other just like their combat buddies. Everything feels so bland and one dimentional.

After the opening chapters when you meet up with Cid at the Hideway for the first time is when the game takes a real nose dive in quality. This is the point where FF16's problems become aparent to me. At this point there are long stretches of cutscenes and cutscenes of just characters talking back and forth back and forth. Some times to move the plot along but a lot of the times it's just Clive talking to every god damn person about mundane stuff and what they are doing ad nauseum. This would be fine if it was meaningful or interesting but it drags so hard. It feel it's longer and more drawn out than Metal Gear Solid 4 or some other heavy story game. Then after all that they finally introduce side missions. Yes finally, let me stab something with my sword now. Nope, they just consist of walking all the way over here and talking to this guy to go all the way over here to pick up some wooden planks and bring them back to the first guy. Okay that is some real time wasting shit mission design but fine whatever it's the first one CLEARLY they won't all be like this. HA HA nope 95% of sub missions is exactly this or go to this spot in the world map, kill this one jobber enemy group and come back. In the year of 2023 this is not acceptable mission design. Hearing 20 min of a sub mission set up for it only to devolve into that and most of the time not even be important or revelevant at all is madening . But the shit cherry on top of these terrible missions is that the reward for completing them is paltry crumbs that even a peasant wouldn't want.

So what makes them so bad? You are ever only rewarded in gold and crafting materials and a small amount of exp and ability points. Now I know what you must be thinking well that doesn't sound bad, heck that sounds quite good, well sorry to inform you but it's not. Gold for starters is so plentiful it's meaningless. What can you even buy with gold? You can restock up on potions and bottles and buy weapons and armor. What's wrong with that you say, well all the weapons and armor you can buy are always underpowered and weaker than what you can forge at the smithy so there is no reason to buy them. Well you can buy materials? Sure you can but battles earn you more materials that you can ever possibly need. There is no need to farm them or stockpile them. They are so plentiful it is counter intuitive to why they are even in the game to start with. So you can buy potions and bottles everytime you need to refill your limited inventory space. Great 4 hours into the game you probually have enough gold to buy them the rest of the game. The only other thing to buy with gold is super over priced juke box tracks you can play at your hideout. Great okay gold is meaningless. After my two playthroughs I had someting like 100,000,000
gold and nothing to spend it on. So materials and gold are useless. So doing sub missions has no point. Oh wait you do get exp and ability points for completing them. Outside big story fights the exp and ability points you get from doing sub missions is super small and is about the same as just doing a couple of battles in the wild. So again there is no point to taking on these long fetch quest missions that waste your time and pad out the story sections with "gameplay" missions. If there was some character or story to these missions like in the Yakuza games they would be worth it for that but the vast majority of them are piles of nothing. A lot of decent ones open up at the end of the game but that is no excuse for the majority being this way. Terrible.

Let's talk about the gameplay now. This is where a lot of people live or die by this game. Let me say this first. I am not a fan of the action direction the series has taken in the last few main line entries. However, I look at Final Fantasy games as individual experiances as fresh and open takes so I am not opposed to different directions. I do not have a problem if this game wants to be an action game and not a RPG. I don't want it to or prefer it to go that way but I don't hold it against it. I do however will hold it against having shallow boring meaningless action gameplay. The game play in FF16 is so bad it makes my head hurt. It's bad as an RPG it's bad as the action game it wants to be. It's like the goal was to create a combat system that literally any player at any level could complete and feel like they are doing relevant stuff and seeing it on the screen. This isn't a bad philosophy and I welcome the idea of inclusion for types of players but this is NOT the way to do it. FF16 feels like a combat engine that has all the accessiblity features of an action game turned on at the same time. So how does combat work, lets break it down. You have four buttons that each do a different action. Square is your meele attack button, Triangle is you long range magic attack button and Circle is a movement ability (we will call it that) and the X button is a jump. R1 is also a dodge button. That's your basics. So meele is a simple five or so hit combo and what you will be doing the majority of the time. Magic attacks are so weak and redundant there is reason to spam the rapid fire button presses to hurl weak element attacks. It's main function is if you hold the attack it is a bit more powerful and it launces the enemy up in the air so If you want you can jump up and strike with your sword and do a little air combo.

At several points throughout the game you get what are called eikon abilities which are essentially summon moves that do a special attack. You can equip two eikon abilities at one time and by the end of the game you can equip 3 different eikons at once giving you 6 special attacks. These can range from lightning bolts, magic missiles and fire attacks and so forth. These attacks do more damage than regualr attacks for sure but their main utility is they cause much more stagger damage.

So every enemy in the game has a stagger bar. This is a feature that has been in the last few FF games and I am not a fan of it at all. Essentially you do regular attacks and special to weaken an enemies stagger bar and when it's completly depleted they are stunned and in a down position and slowly recover their stagger before the bar fills back up. While they are in this state all attacks do 1.5x damage. And that is the basics of combat. That's it. Simplistic as it gets. Now im not daft to realize that past FF games and turn paced RPG's in general are simple as well. So why do I not like the combat in this game?

The one word that describes my entire feelings about FF16, it drags. Combat is so slow and slimplistic that it becomes a complete chore and I want it to be over the second it starts. What I like about the old FF games despite being slow and simple is that I feel like my actions having meaning and purpose a real strategy to them. Here every encounter operates the exact same way. Immeaditly use your eikon abilites in a rotating fasion and simply mash square until the enemy becomes staggered. Then use those whatever eikon abilities you have left and then just mash square until they get back up. Here's the thing i didn't mention earlier about the eikons abilities, they are all on a cool down timer. These aren't combat enhancing abilities or mechanics to give you extra strategy or change your approach. The majority of them are one hitting move that does more damage than your regular attack and then go on cooldown before you can use again. The cool down timer is obviously longer the stronger the attack so by the later half everything has long timers. It feels so restrictive and rudementry. Combat is the same everytime. Doesn't matter what the boss or enemy is the strat is the same. Use abilites and mash attack, use abilities and mash attack > stagger > repeat. It's so dull and unsatisfying it's maddening. Even i wanted to do something cool like do a ground combo, pop up a magic attack to launch the enemy and jump up to do an air attack and come crashing down to finish with a fire burst. Thats sounds so cool huh. Well guess what that is counter intutive to how the game wants you to play it. It says it's an action game but it's more of a masher that wants to you spam the same chained attacks to get the best levels of dagame per second so you can get the stagger faster and end the fight faster. Why would I wanna do that? Well beause fighters last forever in this game. There are two types of enemies in this game. Lights and heavies. Light enemies can be launched in the air and generally how lower amount of health. If every enemy in the game was like this than maybe combat wouldn't feel like such a slog but no. If there are light enemies on the field to counter act thier lightness the games throws dozens of enemies at one time at you. That's not the worst of it though.

Heavy enemies and bosses suck the big one. Heavy enemies are any non human or small creature. They don't react to your hit strikes and have a ton of health. I mean a ton of health. This is why this game feels like such a chore to play. They don't react to hardly anything and you are just constantly mashing attack, useing a cool down ability and mashing away again. It feels brainless. No thought. My finger cramp from mashing so much in such repition and I have to do it because I want this long fight to end faster. Evertime I see a group of enemies and two heavy enemies I just audibly groan becuase I know, know this is going to be a test of will power.

So offensive gameplay sucks. What about that dodge button? Is it useful. Well yes actually. The dodge is very good. It's quick and has a huge invinciblity window. It feels an eqaual amount of skill and precsion balanced with a healthy amount of leanency. Plus if you dodge and strike at the same time you get this cool animation of a precision strike. It feels good. Okay a positive to the combat. Where can we mess it up here. Well for one that cool dodge strike, yea well it does slightly more damage than a regular strike. Like if a regular attack does 100 damage then this does 130 damage. It's so small in the grand scheme of the fight it might as well not exist. Another problem i have in combat is that your walk speed is so slow. So imagine this scenario an attack sends me flying back and I wanna run up to the enemy to continue my assult. It's taking too long you know whats faster. Dodging. Let's spam dodge towards the boss to get up there quicker before he jumps away or teleports to the other side of the arena. Opps a projectile hit me because I dodged right into it. Well thats my fault. Guess I'll just walk to him. Meh screw this is way too slow. Continue to spam dodge as a movement.

There is also a limit burst mechanic as well. So in past Final Fantasy games a limit burst would normally be a characters special move or ultimate attack that is special and unique to them. Well FF16 only has one playable character. So the limit burst here is more like a devil trigger or power up state. Taking damage or dealing damage will fill the gauge up over time. Pretty standard stuff. Then at anytime when it's full you can activate it and cancel out of any animation to go into a powered up state. From what I can tell you don't get a significant defense boost and the damage boost is minimal at best. It does make your attacks faster and your attacks aren't interupted and your health slowly regens at a very small rate but that is essentially all there is to it. I think Clive looks cool during it but mechaniclly i don't see the point of this at all. It never made a significant difference in a fight. It's like they just wanted a frenzy attack mode to look cool but didn't give it anything to make you wanna use it. Strange.

The last thing I wanna say about the combat is dedicated to one eikon in piticular, the last one you get Odin. Odin is massively broken and overpowered system that it has to be talked about. The last 3/4 of the game is when you get this eikon but it's such a game changer it needs to be mentioned. It's mechanic is this, you replace your sword with another sword that does little to no damage but instead builds up a seperate meter called zanzetusken (FF thing) when this meter is maxed out you can unleash a screen filling single attack that will instantly kill all normal enemies and heavily damage big enemies. At this point this completly changes the way the game is played to an extenet because this is such a powerful tool that there is no reason NOT to use it. So then the game starts unloading 20+ enemies at a time because it knows you have this tool now. My problem with this is that this mechanic forces your play to be even more restrictive than what it already was before and it was very restritive to start with. Now it's all about landing this odin eikon ability named dancing sword. This slow starting attack when landed does a huge attack that lasts for 30 seconds that fills the meter up big time. Then you wail with your weak sword to fiill up the rest and repeat. So get used to seeing this long overly winded attack animation because you will start to see it every battle as it's the easies and quickest way to dispatch the massive fodder enemies the game now puts on you. But don't worry if you thought you thumb would get a break it doesn't cauase heavies and bosses can't be insta killed like this and most times it does like 10% damgage to them. So back to the mashing. I think this makes the last fourth a even bigger slog as the dungeons and boss guantlents are get more and more elaborate as the games go on. The pacing is down right terrible here.

Let's move on and talk about the highlight of the game as most would say. The story boss fights. The whole marketing of this game since the start was always highlighting the epic battles and struggles of those who can summon or turn into huge epic eikon monsters and the massive battles. Anyone who plays FF16 will tell you these are the best part of the game. These battles are built like giant godzilla vs king kong epics. Where the fight constantly shifts from Clive and turning into the beast Ifrit and taking on massive foes in epic fashion. To say the set pieces don't have any effort or thought put into them would be flat out wrong. Clearly a large amount of the budget went towards these multi-stage fights, with several pieces of music and over the top effects and graphic fidelty to show a very momumental moment in the game and leave a lasting impression. This is obvious. This is what fans of FF16 love. I get it. If you like it it's fine. I, however hated these segments so much.

Let me explain why these segments did nothing for me. Overall it's just way way too over the top. I get that why some like it but it's too much for me. Yes even in a Final Fantasy game some magic bullshit is just too much. It's such a drastic difference from the regualar battles and world the game has built up and then we take it to Dragon Ball Z levels of super beams and space schenangins. You can't have a game of thrones style epic and design and then throw in fast and furious feats then go back to being grounded again. It doesn't work for me at all. There has to be a level or wall were I can see or understand what the limit is. These set peices go on for so long and are already at a super high power level and nonsense on the first one. Each one gets longer and more dramatic as well. The best way to describe it is if a child had two monster toys and it's hand and he just constantly bashed them togather to make explosions. That's what it feels like to me. Constant stuff happening. Just particle effects everywhere. It looks stunning and you can tell they had fun making it but to me it's a visual throw up of stuff. There's just no end to it. Start as clive fight the boss > he morphs into a big monster > you morph in to a monster > you fight > he kicks your ass dramaticly > fight again as clive > slowly turn back into monster and get the edge > fight some more > Kill boss in epic fashion. The eikon fights play very simialr to how combat is as a human just with different visuals so same issues apply here . The big difference is that a lot of these fights are heavily scripted. So while the boss may have a huge health bar and visiably is taking damgage. It's scripted to the points to when the fights shifts to the next part. I feel like the small damage im doing doesn't even matter becuase im just waiting for the scripted part to end so I can do the real fight part. The complete over the top nature and contrast to the rest of the game just doesn't work for me. I love over the top stuff I do but It has to be grounded and I have to know how the rules work and where the ceiling is. One part Ifrit gets his arm cut off and so I would think oh man this is the dramatic part where he might lose here and this will effect the rest of the fight but 30 seconds later he just magically regrows it. There's no rules here. So when the fights finally do finish and you get that epic FF victory cheer I feel like it's unwaranted as I didn't feel like "I" did anything and just thinking oh I guess it's over now, kinda hard to tell until I here that jingle.

So what about the rest of the game? I can't go over everything and boy I could talk about my experiance more but I'll try to wrap it up a bit. Inbetween the eikon fights, the long dungeon crawls of repat enemies and tedious sub missions. We simply just skip from new town to new town on our quest to destroy the crystals. Oh that's right I didn't even get into the main quest. So in this world there are several mother crystals that grant a kingdom a eikon to defend it and magic bearers to spread magic to the kingdom. Thos who are born as a eikon to summon the big monsters are treated like royalty and those who are born with the innate ability of magic are called bearers. Everything in this world is sustained through magic. Drinking water, fire for light and cooking, wind for turnbines and aire ect ect. Its a fantasy world and magic is what makes their day to day life go round. However the people who can cast magic are not super powerful wizards or anything but can summon simple elements for use. This causes regular people to relay upon them and they treat them as slaves. As they think they are put on this earth to serves and make their lives easier. As god and the people intended. This is how it is in the story but I feel like it's kinda backwards like i get there are more regular people in this world and magics bearers are more limited. Why not rise up against your masters kinda thing you have magic and they don't. I dunno. Well so our heroes decided that if they destroy all the crystals and erase magic from the wolrd everybody would be free and the world more pure and less chaos fighting over things and so forth. That's the main crutch the the story. We just go from land to land doing just that and at the end we fight the big bad. Like I said at the start simple story. Just remember though this is spread through like an 80 hour campaign so I would have liked a lot more depth than what we got. The Dion character was built up so well but I feel like it ultimately lead to know where and a very unsatisfying end. Jill was mishandeled the entire game, giving nothing to do and be a complete poor romantic partner for Clive. She had so many oppurtunities for some cool moments and nada. Clive and Joshua are the highlights but I would have loved to see some more drama or disagreements from them and how they would react to each other but everything deloves into "he's my brother" "I"m his sheild" "we can do anything" "power of family" type stuff. That's what's frustrating to me there is such good foundation to these characters and designs but nothing meaningful happens to them. They are all one note. They don't grow or have memorable scenes outside the epic fights. It's not enough. That couple with the terrible combat. I just cant'. I fell asleep more times than I can count on this game. In the middle of fights even. Look I know I'm getting older and long working days and take a toll on you but games stimulate me and keep me engaged. This game did not. Not in combat, not in the long walk for fetch quests or the visual barf of the eikon battles. Even after completing the game and seeing I had just a few trophies left I even contemplated if I should play it again. And well....I did. I'm such a trophy whore.

On playthrough 2 I was just gonna play on the hard difficulty. Which isn't really harder it's just that enemies have more health. Great like they needed any more. The level cap is increased and new gear can be unlocked as the game goes on. You can upgrade your old great and items as well. Thats actually a really cool idea for a new game plus so I do give the game some regard there. I just wish I wanted to play it again. I reluctantly moved on. I was thinking if I skip all the cutscenes and just play the main story path surely it won't be too long of a play and then I feel I will get my completionist mental check and feel like I got my 70 bucks worth out of the game. Skipping cutscense really shows you just how much there are in this game. Just five min of pausing game, skipping scene, pausing game skipping scene ect. So for this play through I decided I was gonna use the cheat rings. Cheat rings you say? Well yes another feature of this game is that you start with a few cheat items to help players who can't play action games well. Like an auto dodge ring or a auto heal or auto combo ect. So your telling me that this dumbed down combat system was created not for accesibility but for regular players. Oh my god. Why the hell couldn't we have more freedom or depth in the combat from the start if we had these items for accessiblity or as an easy mode from the start. The game is already brain dead easy on the first play and not we can make it easier. I don't care anymore I put on the auto dodge ring. I just fights to end faster. Im speed running this playthrough and that was the mentality I had for my second run. The second go around just reinforce everything I felt about my first playthrough. How tedious the combat is and how much of a drag it was to play. Why am I even playing this again. Is this even worth it. Well im not playing anything else and I only have a few days before the next game I want comes out. Can't start a new game this soon so I was determined to finish. Watching that trophy title Final, Fantasy pop up was so releaving. Finally Fantasty 16 is done.

FF16 has a lot of problems so scoring it was a little hard because technically there is a lot of effort on show here especially the eikon fights. In the end though the drag of the submissions and terrible combat really kept my enjoyment down. I did like aspects of it though. I do like the characters and parts of the story. The big bad was hella stupid though. There was a strong foundation in the world. So thinking about it would I rather play this over the average action game? RPG? Or any other game? and the answer is no. So that's why I feel like a 4/10 is waranted. Still like this one more than FF13 and maybe more than FF15 though but those are low bars as well.

Platinum #184