thisguygil
way better than the base game. it was short, but one of my biggest problems with the base game was all the unnecessarily long and boring cutscenes. this doesn't have that, and most of it is combat.
thankfully, they actually made the bosses challenging, which is nice because the game was pretty easy before. the only challenge before was the crazy high health, but they don't have that anymore, instead they do crazy high damage.
i also like that they finally gave me accessories that aren't completely useless. 90% of the base game's accessories were just slight cooldown reductions for single abilities. at the end of the dungeon, i had swapped all my accessories for ones i found in there.
thankfully, they actually made the bosses challenging, which is nice because the game was pretty easy before. the only challenge before was the crazy high health, but they don't have that anymore, instead they do crazy high damage.
i also like that they finally gave me accessories that aren't completely useless. 90% of the base game's accessories were just slight cooldown reductions for single abilities. at the end of the dungeon, i had swapped all my accessories for ones i found in there.
2023
I would like to formally apologize in advance for the strong language used in this review, but seeing as how this game is rated M, I hope you're willing to forgive me.
after playing final fantasy vii rebirth, i was really excited to play another modern final fantasy game. unfortunately, final fantasy xvi was not what i’d hoped for.
let me start with the good parts
- it's really cinematic and beautiful at times. the level of detail put into a lot of the cgi cutscenes, animations, and more, is really incredible.
- performances by the actors are great (most of them, at least), clive especially is amazing.
- eikon battles are epic as shit.
- music goes CRAZY hard, really amazing.
- some nice quality-of-life features, like being able to undo ability unlocks to experiment around, or instantly traveling to a person when completing a quest.
- i like that your allies aren't completely useless and will actually attack the enemies. it's something i don't like about other games, when you're fighting with an ally and they just stand around or do some weak attack once a minute. here it actually feels like i'm fighting with an ally.
that's about where my enjoyment ended. here's what i didn't like.
- it feels like they put all their effort into making the game as cinematic as possible, even more so when there are literally interruptions in battle for quick time events. don't get me wrong, it's cool, but it doesn't make a game good, and sometimes with how long they are, it gets really annoying
- jesus christ the cutscenes are WAYYYYYYY too long. MOST OF THE GAME IS A FUCKING CUTSCENE!! I THOUGHT MY FRIEND WAS JOKING WHEN HE SAID THIS. i have to block out at LEAST an hour every time i want to play, because god knows when the next cutscene is going to end. I WROTE THIS WHILE WATCHING A CUTSCENE.
- they do that really annoying thing in non-cgi cutscenes where they never change the world's state on-screen. for example, if a character is to put something on a table, they reach out their empty hand AS IF to put something on the table, and then the screen fades to black and the item appears there. i hate that so much.
- the bosses are just damage sponges. they're not even hard, but when my most powerful ability takes only a tiny sliver of the boss's health, that's the ONLY thing that gives it even a microscopic tiny miniscule challenge. in the few instances a boss did go down quickly, it was just because they had a second health bar! it's crazy because i feel like a god against normal enemies, and even some stronger enemies, but then there's the crazy high health bosses taking so ridiculously long. even later when i got crazy overleveled, the bosses weren't any easier to kill, so i can only imagine what it was like for someone that wasn't overleveled.
- i will never understand why game developers don't add a sprint button if sprinting is a feature. LET ME PRESS L3 GOD DAMN IT, WHY DO I HAVE TO BE RUNNING FOR 3 BUSINESS DAYS JUST TO SPRINT???
- the combat is boring and repetitive. why did they give all the abilities these long ass arbitrary cooldowns? when i have to spam every ability just to do some damage to a boss, i’m just left waiting for the abilities to come off cooldown, because there's nothing else i can do. my normal attacks do no damage, and won't decrease any cooldown, so it's just boring.
- the limit break was utterly useless except for its healing over time. at that point, why even make it a "limit break"?
- elemental affinities just don't exist, using the ranged attack of different elements just changes the color. i wouldn't be against this if they didn't tie EVERY ability to an element, which makes it seem like elements are important, but really they do nothing.
- PLEASE GAME WHY DO YOU PAUSE WHEN I LEVEL UP I DON'T CARE THAT MY STRENGTH INCREASED BY 2
- the side quests were GOD AWFUL. when the first side quest was to deliver food to a guy standing 5 feet away, i was horrified by what the rest of the game had to offer, and it wasn't much better. everything was either a boring fetch/delivery quest, a "save this person" quest that has you fight 3 enemies, or a "talk to 3 people" quest. have the devs never heard the phrase "quality over quantity"? the few quests that actually had minor story lines took fucking forever to get through. i tortured myself trying to complete all the sidequests. fuck me for being a completionist i guess.
- WHY DID THEY NEVER TELL US THAT CLIVE AND JILL AREN'T SIBLINGS??!?!? JUMP SCARE IN THE FUCKING INFIRMARY
- i can tell the development team was the one that made final fantasy xiv. there's a distinct MMO feel with things like the hideaway, hunts, renown, and more that don't fit right in a single-player story game.
- maybe i'm pretentious for wanting a complete open world, but it would've made the game feel less disconnected from itself. rebirth made a point to NEVER have a loading screen when going to a new area, and even though there were separated regions until the late-game, you could feel how they were all connected because you traveled to each one yourself.
- why were there these big open maps when there's no reason to explore any of it? the only reason i ever had to walk around an area was just to do quests or hunts.
- they tried to make game of thrones an actual game, and only got halfway there. news flash square enix, this is a VIDEO GAME! half of the cutscenes' length is just because everyone's british and being all like "oh your royal highness, ..." or "my fair and just lady, i am ever so sorry" like bro. just say what you want to say and get on with it.
- this game takes itself WAY too seriously. where's the fun?? i can count the number of jokes/fun moments on one hand. the time spent in the gold saucer and costa del sol in rebirth was AMAZING and it's because the party took the time to have fun, despite their impending doom!
- character development was basically nonexistent, because i guess we're just supposed to accept that they developed over the time skips? yea no, that's fucking lame.
- too many times, they brought in a character from someone's past with no context, and they have heartfelt moments that i just don't feel because i have no earthly idea who this person is.
maybe i wouldn't care that the cutscenes are so long if the story was actually half decent. but there's too much context left out that we're supposed to just pick up along the way that i think is just poor story telling.
- the main antagonist was completely irrelevant to the plot until the end of the game. sure, we saw him a couple times before, but if he wasn't a part of the game, nothing major would have changed except the end of the game wouldn't have existed. it feels like they added him just so that they could have a main villain.
TLDR; the developers went above and beyond in making this a graphically beautiful and cinematic game, but compromised on far too many other aspects to be worth it.
for anyone wondering "why did you keep playing if you hated it so much?" first, screw you smartass. second, i continued for 2 reasons: out of principle, and the burning desire to write this review.
thank god my friend let me use his account to play this game because it’s not worth the money. i'm going back to final fantasy x.
after playing final fantasy vii rebirth, i was really excited to play another modern final fantasy game. unfortunately, final fantasy xvi was not what i’d hoped for.
let me start with the good parts
- it's really cinematic and beautiful at times. the level of detail put into a lot of the cgi cutscenes, animations, and more, is really incredible.
- performances by the actors are great (most of them, at least), clive especially is amazing.
- eikon battles are epic as shit.
- music goes CRAZY hard, really amazing.
- some nice quality-of-life features, like being able to undo ability unlocks to experiment around, or instantly traveling to a person when completing a quest.
- i like that your allies aren't completely useless and will actually attack the enemies. it's something i don't like about other games, when you're fighting with an ally and they just stand around or do some weak attack once a minute. here it actually feels like i'm fighting with an ally.
that's about where my enjoyment ended. here's what i didn't like.
- it feels like they put all their effort into making the game as cinematic as possible, even more so when there are literally interruptions in battle for quick time events. don't get me wrong, it's cool, but it doesn't make a game good, and sometimes with how long they are, it gets really annoying
- jesus christ the cutscenes are WAYYYYYYY too long. MOST OF THE GAME IS A FUCKING CUTSCENE!! I THOUGHT MY FRIEND WAS JOKING WHEN HE SAID THIS. i have to block out at LEAST an hour every time i want to play, because god knows when the next cutscene is going to end. I WROTE THIS WHILE WATCHING A CUTSCENE.
- they do that really annoying thing in non-cgi cutscenes where they never change the world's state on-screen. for example, if a character is to put something on a table, they reach out their empty hand AS IF to put something on the table, and then the screen fades to black and the item appears there. i hate that so much.
- the bosses are just damage sponges. they're not even hard, but when my most powerful ability takes only a tiny sliver of the boss's health, that's the ONLY thing that gives it even a microscopic tiny miniscule challenge. in the few instances a boss did go down quickly, it was just because they had a second health bar! it's crazy because i feel like a god against normal enemies, and even some stronger enemies, but then there's the crazy high health bosses taking so ridiculously long. even later when i got crazy overleveled, the bosses weren't any easier to kill, so i can only imagine what it was like for someone that wasn't overleveled.
- i will never understand why game developers don't add a sprint button if sprinting is a feature. LET ME PRESS L3 GOD DAMN IT, WHY DO I HAVE TO BE RUNNING FOR 3 BUSINESS DAYS JUST TO SPRINT???
- the combat is boring and repetitive. why did they give all the abilities these long ass arbitrary cooldowns? when i have to spam every ability just to do some damage to a boss, i’m just left waiting for the abilities to come off cooldown, because there's nothing else i can do. my normal attacks do no damage, and won't decrease any cooldown, so it's just boring.
- the limit break was utterly useless except for its healing over time. at that point, why even make it a "limit break"?
- elemental affinities just don't exist, using the ranged attack of different elements just changes the color. i wouldn't be against this if they didn't tie EVERY ability to an element, which makes it seem like elements are important, but really they do nothing.
- PLEASE GAME WHY DO YOU PAUSE WHEN I LEVEL UP I DON'T CARE THAT MY STRENGTH INCREASED BY 2
- the side quests were GOD AWFUL. when the first side quest was to deliver food to a guy standing 5 feet away, i was horrified by what the rest of the game had to offer, and it wasn't much better. everything was either a boring fetch/delivery quest, a "save this person" quest that has you fight 3 enemies, or a "talk to 3 people" quest. have the devs never heard the phrase "quality over quantity"? the few quests that actually had minor story lines took fucking forever to get through. i tortured myself trying to complete all the sidequests. fuck me for being a completionist i guess.
- WHY DID THEY NEVER TELL US THAT CLIVE AND JILL AREN'T SIBLINGS??!?!? JUMP SCARE IN THE FUCKING INFIRMARY
- i can tell the development team was the one that made final fantasy xiv. there's a distinct MMO feel with things like the hideaway, hunts, renown, and more that don't fit right in a single-player story game.
- maybe i'm pretentious for wanting a complete open world, but it would've made the game feel less disconnected from itself. rebirth made a point to NEVER have a loading screen when going to a new area, and even though there were separated regions until the late-game, you could feel how they were all connected because you traveled to each one yourself.
- why were there these big open maps when there's no reason to explore any of it? the only reason i ever had to walk around an area was just to do quests or hunts.
- they tried to make game of thrones an actual game, and only got halfway there. news flash square enix, this is a VIDEO GAME! half of the cutscenes' length is just because everyone's british and being all like "oh your royal highness, ..." or "my fair and just lady, i am ever so sorry" like bro. just say what you want to say and get on with it.
- this game takes itself WAY too seriously. where's the fun?? i can count the number of jokes/fun moments on one hand. the time spent in the gold saucer and costa del sol in rebirth was AMAZING and it's because the party took the time to have fun, despite their impending doom!
- character development was basically nonexistent, because i guess we're just supposed to accept that they developed over the time skips? yea no, that's fucking lame.
- too many times, they brought in a character from someone's past with no context, and they have heartfelt moments that i just don't feel because i have no earthly idea who this person is.
maybe i wouldn't care that the cutscenes are so long if the story was actually half decent. but there's too much context left out that we're supposed to just pick up along the way that i think is just poor story telling.
- the main antagonist was completely irrelevant to the plot until the end of the game. sure, we saw him a couple times before, but if he wasn't a part of the game, nothing major would have changed except the end of the game wouldn't have existed. it feels like they added him just so that they could have a main villain.
TLDR; the developers went above and beyond in making this a graphically beautiful and cinematic game, but compromised on far too many other aspects to be worth it.
for anyone wondering "why did you keep playing if you hated it so much?" first, screw you smartass. second, i continued for 2 reasons: out of principle, and the burning desire to write this review.
thank god my friend let me use his account to play this game because it’s not worth the money. i'm going back to final fantasy x.
Weighed down by a few mediocre missions, but it really picked up at the end and was great overall. Prismatic is also a great addition, but I wish there were a few more options from other subclasses. Best expansion in my opinion.
Despite the technical issues, it was great. A huge step up from the first game and definitely worth playing. I really liked how it didn't feel like they nerfed Cal at all, even if you 100%ed the first game, which is often the case with sequels. Excited to see how the next game takes it even further.
I was kind of disappointed every time the story mission was just going back to a previous planet to do something else, because for a lot of the game it felt like it was just back and forth from Koboh to Jedha. Even though those two were massive planets, it still would've been nice to get more variety.
Also please for the love of god let me save anywhere, I don't want to have to go looking for a meditation point when I want to take a break. It ruins it a little bit because when i have limited time to play, it makes me not want to stray too far from the meditation point, but I can't make any meaningful progress unless I do.
I was kind of disappointed every time the story mission was just going back to a previous planet to do something else, because for a lot of the game it felt like it was just back and forth from Koboh to Jedha. Even though those two were massive planets, it still would've been nice to get more variety.
Also please for the love of god let me save anywhere, I don't want to have to go looking for a meditation point when I want to take a break. It ruins it a little bit because when i have limited time to play, it makes me not want to stray too far from the meditation point, but I can't make any meaningful progress unless I do.
An absolute masterpiece. Left me speechless too many times to count. There was always so much to do it was kind of overwhelming. Even though it was so much, I never found myself getting burnt out though because I could always go do something else with all the variety in minigames and quests. Definitely excited for the last game in the trilogy.
2024
Everything a remake should be. Just wish they included FeMC and The Answer...
This expansion was really good, basically just a roguelike version of Octo Expansion. The color chips making every run different and sometimes making you really OP was great, but I wish there was more variation in the floors rather than color chips. I was also kind of disappointed when I heard there was no secret boss like Inner Agent 3 (Inner Agent 4 was right there, Nintendo).
If you're just looking to clear it once it'll be really short. You start with dualies, probably the best PvE weapon for Splatoon, though I can expect it'll take a pretty long time to clear it with every weapon if you want to open all the lockers (I have no idea how tf I'm gonna clear it with a charger).
If you're just looking to clear it once it'll be really short. You start with dualies, probably the best PvE weapon for Splatoon, though I can expect it'll take a pretty long time to clear it with every weapon if you want to open all the lockers (I have no idea how tf I'm gonna clear it with a charger).
2024
Great game. The stratagems and stuff make the combat a lot more engaging and fun than the average PvE shooter. Seeing the progress on the map and making it feel like an actual global effort is really satisfying. After they fix the bugs and server issues I can definitely see myself playing this for a while.
The only real complaint I have is the premium battle pass and shop's existence... sure, we can get super credits in game, 750 in the free battle pass, but it takes a hell of a long time other than that, getting at most 10 or 20 per round. I don't feel like a premium currency should be a thing in a paid game.
The only real complaint I have is the premium battle pass and shop's existence... sure, we can get super credits in game, 750 in the free battle pass, but it takes a hell of a long time other than that, getting at most 10 or 20 per round. I don't feel like a premium currency should be a thing in a paid game.
Great game, but too short for $60. Even when I 100%ed it I had only spent 20 hours (I assume it was close to 20, my switch only tells me 15 or more) playing and it left me thinking "that's it?".
Also, the multiplayer was pretty annoying. I don't have any problems with the online multiplayer with random people, but with friends, local co-op is horrible when the camera is locked on the friend that sucks, and online co-op is horrible cause all your friends are ghosts and not really there with you. Feels like something they just added last minute so they could say "hey there's a multiplayer mode in this game too."
However I did really enjoy the game, it was super fun for what there was so yea.
Also, the multiplayer was pretty annoying. I don't have any problems with the online multiplayer with random people, but with friends, local co-op is horrible when the camera is locked on the friend that sucks, and online co-op is horrible cause all your friends are ghosts and not really there with you. Feels like something they just added last minute so they could say "hey there's a multiplayer mode in this game too."
However I did really enjoy the game, it was super fun for what there was so yea.
Insomniac really blew it out of the water with this game, it was absolutely incredible. They took the best parts of the first 2 (already great) games and pushed them to the max, while still adding so much more to make it easily the best by far. The story was also just so well done. Definitely a game of the year contender, and I have no idea what that IGN reviewer was thinking. Can't wait for new game plus later this year, I'll definitely be replaying it.
Quite possibly one of the best games, if not the best game I've ever played. Breath of the Wild was already one of my favorite games ever, and this game blows it way out of the water. Everyone that calls this game $70 DLC, or that they just repackaged the same game has not played it. The game is absolutely massive, with Hyrule's surface in BOTW already being huge, they've essentially more than doubled it. The Depths are literally the size of the surface map, in addition to the sky islands, the map is huge. The new zonai devices, new abilities, and everything make for so much more freedom than before and I couldn't have had more fun.