This game feels like a development team from 2014 finished watching the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, developed a game, fell into hibernation, woke up in 2023, ported their game to a next-gen engine and dumped it out onto the market.
2014 called, it wants your QTEs, hallway dungeons and bad sidequests back.
On the pacing and story side, when the story is clicking along, the game is solid (and sometimes even great!). Every time it grinds to a halt so they can pad the game length with earning another annoying Boy Scout badge to prove you are Not a Bad Guy to the local town, it's awful.
On the design side, the dungeons feel like they're almost wholesale ripped from XIV in terms of layout: straight hallways to trash mobs -> miniboss -> trash mobs again -> miniboss -> repeat until you get to the end-boss. I think that design is getting pretty tired in XIV, but it works even less here in XVI since XIV at least comes with real-life human party members you can talk to.
On a writing side, there's a perfectly competent "grounded" political story to be found until about 45-50% of the ways through the game, at which point it gets thrown out for one of the worst tropes in JRPGs, weird pseudo-Jungian pontificating from mega-villains.
From a mechanics side, the Eikon battles are beyond sick, but the number of QTEs really started to kill me after the halfway mark. I literally said out loud to the game at least three times in the final third of the game, "You're taking control away from me again?"
And the biggest problem I have with the game is not that "this isn't a Final Fantasy game" or whatever variant of dweeb argument the internet is going to have about this game for the next decade. Final Fantasy games run the gamut from MMO (XI/XIV), Action RPG (Stranger of Paradise/Type-0), TRPGs (Tactics), fighting (Dissidia), rhythm (Theatrhythm) and even shooter (Dirge of Cerberus).
The problem I have is that this is being marketed (by SE themselves) as an Action RPG, and it simply is not. At most you could call this a Character Action game with RPG-lite elements. There isn't anything wrong with Character Action games (although they're not my favorite genre admittedly), but be honest about what your game is so I can have correct expectations.
Given that SE's own marketing literally calls this game "the first fully fledged Action RPG in the mainline Final Fantasy series," that's the expectation I went in with, and that is the bar by which I am going to judge it.
There is zero-roleplaying to be done here.
Here are five example elements I'd consider to be solid, basic building blocks of an ARPG:
• Visual customization: Some kind of options for changing components of your outfit. Allowing adjustments of hair/beard is a nice bonus that many modern games include.
• Playstyle customization: Options for different playstyles, e.g. allowing for someone to choose to build a two-handed weapon wielder, a sword and shield user, a ranged user or to take a stealth approach.
• Weapon customization: Something of a subset to the above point but a little different. Especially if a game can't allow for a wide range of styles from stealth to ranged to melee, then allowing for a variety of weapons with different status effects, bonuses, etc is an interesting way to allow player creativity.
• Controllable party: Controlling your party members, their leveling path and potentially therefore their job/class/skills is another way to increase player role-playing.
• Story input: Allowing for input on the final outcome of the main narrative isn't necessary (although nice), but if that can't be done, meaningful choice on sidequests is a good compromise.
Does every ARPG have all five of these? No. But having 2-4 of them is a heck of a lot better than FFXVI having literally none of them!
I can't believe I live in a world where Ubisoft is making ARPG Assassin's Creed games that are more ARPGs than Final Fantasy ARPGs.
2014 called, it wants your QTEs, hallway dungeons and bad sidequests back.
On the pacing and story side, when the story is clicking along, the game is solid (and sometimes even great!). Every time it grinds to a halt so they can pad the game length with earning another annoying Boy Scout badge to prove you are Not a Bad Guy to the local town, it's awful.
On the design side, the dungeons feel like they're almost wholesale ripped from XIV in terms of layout: straight hallways to trash mobs -> miniboss -> trash mobs again -> miniboss -> repeat until you get to the end-boss. I think that design is getting pretty tired in XIV, but it works even less here in XVI since XIV at least comes with real-life human party members you can talk to.
On a writing side, there's a perfectly competent "grounded" political story to be found until about 45-50% of the ways through the game, at which point it gets thrown out for one of the worst tropes in JRPGs, weird pseudo-Jungian pontificating from mega-villains.
From a mechanics side, the Eikon battles are beyond sick, but the number of QTEs really started to kill me after the halfway mark. I literally said out loud to the game at least three times in the final third of the game, "You're taking control away from me again?"
And the biggest problem I have with the game is not that "this isn't a Final Fantasy game" or whatever variant of dweeb argument the internet is going to have about this game for the next decade. Final Fantasy games run the gamut from MMO (XI/XIV), Action RPG (Stranger of Paradise/Type-0), TRPGs (Tactics), fighting (Dissidia), rhythm (Theatrhythm) and even shooter (Dirge of Cerberus).
The problem I have is that this is being marketed (by SE themselves) as an Action RPG, and it simply is not. At most you could call this a Character Action game with RPG-lite elements. There isn't anything wrong with Character Action games (although they're not my favorite genre admittedly), but be honest about what your game is so I can have correct expectations.
Given that SE's own marketing literally calls this game "the first fully fledged Action RPG in the mainline Final Fantasy series," that's the expectation I went in with, and that is the bar by which I am going to judge it.
There is zero-roleplaying to be done here.
Here are five example elements I'd consider to be solid, basic building blocks of an ARPG:
• Visual customization: Some kind of options for changing components of your outfit. Allowing adjustments of hair/beard is a nice bonus that many modern games include.
• Playstyle customization: Options for different playstyles, e.g. allowing for someone to choose to build a two-handed weapon wielder, a sword and shield user, a ranged user or to take a stealth approach.
• Weapon customization: Something of a subset to the above point but a little different. Especially if a game can't allow for a wide range of styles from stealth to ranged to melee, then allowing for a variety of weapons with different status effects, bonuses, etc is an interesting way to allow player creativity.
• Controllable party: Controlling your party members, their leveling path and potentially therefore their job/class/skills is another way to increase player role-playing.
• Story input: Allowing for input on the final outcome of the main narrative isn't necessary (although nice), but if that can't be done, meaningful choice on sidequests is a good compromise.
Does every ARPG have all five of these? No. But having 2-4 of them is a heck of a lot better than FFXVI having literally none of them!
I can't believe I live in a world where Ubisoft is making ARPG Assassin's Creed games that are more ARPGs than Final Fantasy ARPGs.
3 Comments
@FINALReNIX The whole point is that you need some combination of those building blocks to be an ARPG. For example, lots of games include outfit systems now and a game that only included visual customization wouldn't be an ARPG.
But sure, let's lay the rest of my list aside for a second and look at the Eikons. Do they allow for variations within the basic combat system? Absolutely. Is that what I meant in terms of playstyle customization? Nope, because it's all still based around the same fundamental combo system. FFXVI has much more in common with Character Action games like DMC and Bayonetta than it does with ARPGs.
In my view of an ARPG, playstyle customization would be seen in something like a isometric dungeon crawler where you have variations in class options like a summoner, hand-to-hand brawler, archer, swordsman etc (e.g. Diablo). Outside of that, you have games like Assassin's Creed (post-Origins) where you can vary between ranged, sword/shield/spear and stealth. And of course we also have games like Deus Ex, Mass Effect and Fallout, which allow for some combat variations, but also the ability to take diplomatic playstyles to "talk your way out" of encounters.
Would we say Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is an ARPG simply because it has five different lightsaber stances? All five have different movesets and serve fairly different purposes. Someone that plays a double-bladed saber stance with the crossguard stance is doing something different to a person that's combining dual wield with the blaster stance.
No, those are RPG-lite elements which have basically infested every action game at this point, but it's very obviously not actually an RPG, it's still an Action-Adventure game at heart. Hell, Jedi: Survivor even includes another aspect of customization by allowing you to change Cal's entire outfit, his hairstyle and beard and design his lightsaber (color and parts) and that still isn't enough to be an RPG.
But sure, let's lay the rest of my list aside for a second and look at the Eikons. Do they allow for variations within the basic combat system? Absolutely. Is that what I meant in terms of playstyle customization? Nope, because it's all still based around the same fundamental combo system. FFXVI has much more in common with Character Action games like DMC and Bayonetta than it does with ARPGs.
In my view of an ARPG, playstyle customization would be seen in something like a isometric dungeon crawler where you have variations in class options like a summoner, hand-to-hand brawler, archer, swordsman etc (e.g. Diablo). Outside of that, you have games like Assassin's Creed (post-Origins) where you can vary between ranged, sword/shield/spear and stealth. And of course we also have games like Deus Ex, Mass Effect and Fallout, which allow for some combat variations, but also the ability to take diplomatic playstyles to "talk your way out" of encounters.
Would we say Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is an ARPG simply because it has five different lightsaber stances? All five have different movesets and serve fairly different purposes. Someone that plays a double-bladed saber stance with the crossguard stance is doing something different to a person that's combining dual wield with the blaster stance.
No, those are RPG-lite elements which have basically infested every action game at this point, but it's very obviously not actually an RPG, it's still an Action-Adventure game at heart. Hell, Jedi: Survivor even includes another aspect of customization by allowing you to change Cal's entire outfit, his hairstyle and beard and design his lightsaber (color and parts) and that still isn't enough to be an RPG.
@mr_sampson I don't really care about allat. I was just correcting you in saying that there's no customization. I didn't agree with your take about playstyle customization. Whether it's an ARPG or not is not something I gaf about. Also again, your definition of playstyle customization just sounds meaningless and arbitrary. The combat in FF16 is an extension of the gameplay, so if there's anything that let's you tackle or interact with it in a new way, that's playstyle customization.
FINALReNIX
10 months ago
You only omitted this fact because of your completely arbitrary and meaningless definition of what playstyle customization is. Matter of fact, I think the playstyle customization offered by FFXVI is a whole lot more meaningful than whether or not you can hold two swords instead of one.