I jumped for joy at another chance to get back into my 2023 Game of the Year in Final Fantasy XVI with the surprise announcement of this DLC at The Game Awards. Imagining I was in for a brief experience, and with a three-four hour runtime I was, I'd hoped that Echoes of the Fallen with its bombastically vibrant trailer would capture the jaw-dropping magic that the main title was able to do. Generally it speaking it did, but there did exist flaws within this short DLC that I found unfortunately a little too much to ignore.
Visual Clarity is a big thing for me in games, I really like being able to see the ooh's and ahh's but not at the expense of mechanical understanding and movement within an encounter. FFXVI had a few moments in the eikon fights that I legitimately could not tell what was going on, it's something I struggle with in games and FFXVI was a prime example of where this happens. Echoes of the Fallen contains a few miniboss fights with a major boss at the end. The first miniboss was mostly alright but again just awkward enough in the amount of touhou level mechanics thrown at you that I got hit by moves I thought I normally wouldn't. Where it really got bad was in the last fight against the big bad, I almost threw my hands up in the air in a bout of intensified confusion because of all the visual clutter. I loved FFXVI, I love the scale of these fights, but there's only so much purples/reds/yellows that I can take coming at each and every angle all the time before my ability to follow what's going on is completely lost.
Outside of slight complaints, the location itself was really neat, the runtime probably perfect for a near to end-game DLC addition, but the visual overload and combo-locking bosses was unfortunately not my cup of tea. Once more, Masayoshi Soken delivers a fantastic (yet short) soundtracking experience, the ultimate boss theme being one of the cooler tracks in the entire game. I recommend this if you're playing through FFXVI, but maybe not a must-see for players thinking about getting back into it.
Visual Clarity is a big thing for me in games, I really like being able to see the ooh's and ahh's but not at the expense of mechanical understanding and movement within an encounter. FFXVI had a few moments in the eikon fights that I legitimately could not tell what was going on, it's something I struggle with in games and FFXVI was a prime example of where this happens. Echoes of the Fallen contains a few miniboss fights with a major boss at the end. The first miniboss was mostly alright but again just awkward enough in the amount of touhou level mechanics thrown at you that I got hit by moves I thought I normally wouldn't. Where it really got bad was in the last fight against the big bad, I almost threw my hands up in the air in a bout of intensified confusion because of all the visual clutter. I loved FFXVI, I love the scale of these fights, but there's only so much purples/reds/yellows that I can take coming at each and every angle all the time before my ability to follow what's going on is completely lost.
Outside of slight complaints, the location itself was really neat, the runtime probably perfect for a near to end-game DLC addition, but the visual overload and combo-locking bosses was unfortunately not my cup of tea. Once more, Masayoshi Soken delivers a fantastic (yet short) soundtracking experience, the ultimate boss theme being one of the cooler tracks in the entire game. I recommend this if you're playing through FFXVI, but maybe not a must-see for players thinking about getting back into it.