This review contains spoilers
It is finally over. 48 hours. I'm so conflicted.
As a Final Fantasy fan, when you step back and look at everything in this game you can see the Final Fantasy template being followed, but when you zoom in more closely there is something missing. There's a lot to talk about here.
Let's just start with the thing I think everyone can agree on, and is a big part of where it earns the stars. The combat. The combat is genuinely great. It's not FF7-Remake great, but it is its own thing and it totally works. Combat is fun, fast, and can be very challenging. Combat is rewarding, hitting enemies feels heavy, performing magic attacks is exciting and if you start to chain things together the screen fills with explosions and particles and it all just looks and feels fantastic.
I only wish there was more of it because for at least half of my playtime I was watching one of the worst Game of Thrones ripoffs I've ever seen. And that is where I'm conflicted.
The story. The cutscenes. The mission structure. For the longest time I avoided this game because the trailers did not give me the Final Fantasy vibes I was hoping for. Meanwhile I was busy playing the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters on Switch and so I was heavily entrenched in the nostalgia of what FF meant to me growing up. It's strange how FF16 helps recontextualize some of what I was now seeing in FF4, FF5 and FF6.
When playing back through FF4 especially, the idea of knights and dragoons and princes and kings, castles and backstabbing, and Gods and birth are all so very present, but when rendered in adorable pixel art they seem so much less... violent. FF16 embraces a lot of f-bombs and gory violence and this all happens in the first few minutes of gameplay. It feels very un-FF like and this sets the tone for the rest of the game. Where early iterations of FF were more comedic due in large part to the limitations of pixel art sprite poses, FF16 eschews any real sense of humor in favor of lengthy cutscenes of council meetings.
For the longest time FF16 felt like some version of FF I did not recognize. It took a while for me to start to see the template of FF underneath the grimy facade. And as we approached the end of the game, the story was more willing to make four or five warriors stand up against some overpowered evil dude who wants to destroy the world using some sort of other dimensional void something I was suddenly hit with all the ways FF16 is aligning to the ethos of FF as a whole.
Sadly it takes forever to get here and by the time you do you just want the game to come to an end. And come to an end it does in a seizure inducing final boss battle that is easier than most of the S-rank hunts but still very fun.
The structure of the gameplay is too easily recognizable early on, leaving no room for surprises. You can either choose to do the main story, or stop and do all of the current available side quests. Side quests in this game rarely reward you for the time spent other than giving you some experience, some gold and some crafting resources that you can otherwise just purchase. Rarely do side quests reward you with game enhancing things like maximizing how many potions you can carry or how potent they are. Doing side quests feels pointless most of the time, and they are the worst thing about the game. The quests themselves are not organic to the plot of the game, and oftentimes attempt to dive deep into the lore of the world, which is aggressively uninteresting. Looooooong conversations eventually lead to the inevitable "Clive, can you help clear the monsters out of XYZ place so I can keep on studying archeology there?"
But as it has come to an end, I'm left with a strange feeling of wanting to do more, but also never wanting to play another FF game like that again. I want to return to a more cheerful fantasy world. I want non-humanoid party members like Vivi, Cait Sith, Mog, and Umaro. I want scenes that are more heatfelt, like Cait Sith sacrificing himself in FF7, or Mog's hilarious relationship with Umaro in FF6.
Does FF16 have all of these things in it? Yes, sorta. Long lost brothers reconnect and form a relationship. Check. Call upon summons like Ifrit, Shiva, Odin, Titan, and Bahamut? Check. Bad guy is some sort of God from another plane of existence who wants to wipe out humanity? Check. The planet is being sucked dry by humans use of excess and is an allegory for the way we are destroying our own planet? Check check check. Hilariously large swords? Check. So what is this game missing? The way in which these things are handled feels off. It feels like this game is embarassed to be an FF game, where FF7-Remake feels like a celebration of every single pixel that inspired it.
As a Final Fantasy fan, when you step back and look at everything in this game you can see the Final Fantasy template being followed, but when you zoom in more closely there is something missing. There's a lot to talk about here.
Let's just start with the thing I think everyone can agree on, and is a big part of where it earns the stars. The combat. The combat is genuinely great. It's not FF7-Remake great, but it is its own thing and it totally works. Combat is fun, fast, and can be very challenging. Combat is rewarding, hitting enemies feels heavy, performing magic attacks is exciting and if you start to chain things together the screen fills with explosions and particles and it all just looks and feels fantastic.
I only wish there was more of it because for at least half of my playtime I was watching one of the worst Game of Thrones ripoffs I've ever seen. And that is where I'm conflicted.
The story. The cutscenes. The mission structure. For the longest time I avoided this game because the trailers did not give me the Final Fantasy vibes I was hoping for. Meanwhile I was busy playing the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters on Switch and so I was heavily entrenched in the nostalgia of what FF meant to me growing up. It's strange how FF16 helps recontextualize some of what I was now seeing in FF4, FF5 and FF6.
When playing back through FF4 especially, the idea of knights and dragoons and princes and kings, castles and backstabbing, and Gods and birth are all so very present, but when rendered in adorable pixel art they seem so much less... violent. FF16 embraces a lot of f-bombs and gory violence and this all happens in the first few minutes of gameplay. It feels very un-FF like and this sets the tone for the rest of the game. Where early iterations of FF were more comedic due in large part to the limitations of pixel art sprite poses, FF16 eschews any real sense of humor in favor of lengthy cutscenes of council meetings.
For the longest time FF16 felt like some version of FF I did not recognize. It took a while for me to start to see the template of FF underneath the grimy facade. And as we approached the end of the game, the story was more willing to make four or five warriors stand up against some overpowered evil dude who wants to destroy the world using some sort of other dimensional void something I was suddenly hit with all the ways FF16 is aligning to the ethos of FF as a whole.
Sadly it takes forever to get here and by the time you do you just want the game to come to an end. And come to an end it does in a seizure inducing final boss battle that is easier than most of the S-rank hunts but still very fun.
The structure of the gameplay is too easily recognizable early on, leaving no room for surprises. You can either choose to do the main story, or stop and do all of the current available side quests. Side quests in this game rarely reward you for the time spent other than giving you some experience, some gold and some crafting resources that you can otherwise just purchase. Rarely do side quests reward you with game enhancing things like maximizing how many potions you can carry or how potent they are. Doing side quests feels pointless most of the time, and they are the worst thing about the game. The quests themselves are not organic to the plot of the game, and oftentimes attempt to dive deep into the lore of the world, which is aggressively uninteresting. Looooooong conversations eventually lead to the inevitable "Clive, can you help clear the monsters out of XYZ place so I can keep on studying archeology there?"
But as it has come to an end, I'm left with a strange feeling of wanting to do more, but also never wanting to play another FF game like that again. I want to return to a more cheerful fantasy world. I want non-humanoid party members like Vivi, Cait Sith, Mog, and Umaro. I want scenes that are more heatfelt, like Cait Sith sacrificing himself in FF7, or Mog's hilarious relationship with Umaro in FF6.
Does FF16 have all of these things in it? Yes, sorta. Long lost brothers reconnect and form a relationship. Check. Call upon summons like Ifrit, Shiva, Odin, Titan, and Bahamut? Check. Bad guy is some sort of God from another plane of existence who wants to wipe out humanity? Check. The planet is being sucked dry by humans use of excess and is an allegory for the way we are destroying our own planet? Check check check. Hilariously large swords? Check. So what is this game missing? The way in which these things are handled feels off. It feels like this game is embarassed to be an FF game, where FF7-Remake feels like a celebration of every single pixel that inspired it.