there is one point in this whole game where everything the game is attempting comes together - the political intrigue, as derivative as it is, is executed deftly, with excellent, focused characterisation, the melodrama is sufficiently melodic and dramatic, the combat both human and eikonic flows beautifully, the spectacle so beautiful, the visuals genuinely breathtaking - the battle against Bahamut over the skies of Twinside. the game until then is a series of peaks and valleys, intentionally so, long periods of breathing room in between the kaiju battles where millions of dollars evaporate on screen. after this point however, the valley is so deep, the character of Barnabas Tharmr genuinely sleep inducing. the final boss ascends somewhat, but fails to summit higher than the Twinside encounter, leaving this hollow feeling in the difference.
what leaves me wanting is the feeling that this game does not have any meaningful contributions to fantasy fiction or to the japanese role playing game, which i have come to expect from the final fantasy mainline series - a game that is excellent at just catching up to the shadows it wants to chase, but too afraid to cast its own lest it makes known that it cannot shine brighter than its influences.
on a funnier note it's so crazy that they portray Archduke Elwin as this perfect angel regarding the treatment of bearers in Rosaria when the first bearer you meet in the game is so scared at having dropped a single apple, and his slave owner proceeds to chastise him for not bowing to Clive. Elwin is a loveable character for being a good father to Clive and Joshua, it is not necessary to characterise him as a progressive paragon to make the player like him - clear evidence of the game's lack of confidence in its own themes at times it saddens me
what leaves me wanting is the feeling that this game does not have any meaningful contributions to fantasy fiction or to the japanese role playing game, which i have come to expect from the final fantasy mainline series - a game that is excellent at just catching up to the shadows it wants to chase, but too afraid to cast its own lest it makes known that it cannot shine brighter than its influences.
on a funnier note it's so crazy that they portray Archduke Elwin as this perfect angel regarding the treatment of bearers in Rosaria when the first bearer you meet in the game is so scared at having dropped a single apple, and his slave owner proceeds to chastise him for not bowing to Clive. Elwin is a loveable character for being a good father to Clive and Joshua, it is not necessary to characterise him as a progressive paragon to make the player like him - clear evidence of the game's lack of confidence in its own themes at times it saddens me
6 Comments
@AnnieOx can you not read the part where im referring to one single section of the whole game where i think it comes together? a section that's about an hour or two? i know the game's politics are bad, i acknowledge that within this exact review. im not referring to the game's meta-ideology/ies im talking about the movements and actions of the game's characters within the politics of the world, which is bad elsewhere but i think worked in this one section. i don't like to antagonise people but if you're going to leave such an aggro comment then i think it's fair for me to ask if you can't read. i don't need to know "the game's been under fire" by other people to see what I can see in the game, which is a poorly handled slavery narrative, but again, literally not what i was referring to, which is Dion's coup against Sanbreque. and you know what it's been a few months and i don't even think that anymore so whatever.
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You don't actually criticize it at all within this review. It's delegated to an extremely vague "on a funnier note" as an aside at the very end after you've gushed about how brilliant the story is. You start the review off with "its political intrigue is executed deftly."
There's no concrete mention of its racial problems and it's buried under a wall of praise. In your Thirsty Suitors review, you start off with the game's liberal politics immediately off the bat and make it quite concrete. Why's that absent here?
There's no concrete mention of its racial problems and it's buried under a wall of praise. In your Thirsty Suitors review, you start off with the game's liberal politics immediately off the bat and make it quite concrete. Why's that absent here?
How the hell is this review a critique of the racism if it starts off with "at some point, everything the game is attempting works beautifully"
That's you validating the godawful racism in it. You literally say "political intrigue executed deftly."
I don't care if you talk about its flaws vaguely in 2-3 sentences at the end as a "funny note," that's not criticism, that's glowing praise of everything it stands for.
That's you validating the godawful racism in it. You literally say "political intrigue executed deftly."
I don't care if you talk about its flaws vaguely in 2-3 sentences at the end as a "funny note," that's not criticism, that's glowing praise of everything it stands for.
@AnnieOx
if you read this review as a wall of praise that is simply on you. It's clearly disappointed that only one part of this game works? it's easily my least favourite final fantasy. i don't think it's good.
"Why's [a critical view of the politics] absent here?"
Because I didn't think to or care enough to? This was just some really quick thoughts I jotted down immediately after finishing the game. I didn't really talk about anything too much in it, other than expressing my disappointment that only one part of the game is any good (which you seem to have completely misread). With Thirsty Suitors, I sat with the game for about a day, and thought about it. I didn't have time or energy to write a full post on my blog, so I collated something more abridged and edited to post here. I thought it was important to talk about that game because I'm the exact target audience as a South Asian queer. I don't believe in representation as a fulfilling political goal on its own but it's good to see diverse voices, but at the same time it's important to be critical of reductive and simplistic representations even if they are positive ones. It's an issue I could talk about without doing much external research, because I live it every day. I don't feel like I could do the same with the bad racial politics of FF16, because its a two-pronged mistake - first there is the slavery allegory, which is confused and poorly handled, but pretty in-line with bad genre fiction in all media. What complicates it further is the (un)presence of brown/black characters and nations within the world and story, where it's obvious that the writers were too cowardly to deal with the consequences of their setting and script and placed racist bandaids on them. There's a coalescence of bad genre fiction writing, Final Fantasy's unique place within JRPG in aspiring to "realistic" character rendering which lends itself to having "real" ethnic features for characters, the complexity of Japanese pop culture's reliance on a 無国籍 logic and other factors. I simply did not think to talk about any of this, because I was just jotting down some thoughts after playing a mediocre game!
Regarding it being a "funny note", I just think the game's attempt to salvage it's awful politics are funny! You can't police what I find funny. I'm not finding the game's politics funny, I'm finding it awkwardly stumbling around them funny. It's unreasonable for you to accuse me of "validating the game's racism" when I agree with you. You don't know me. You misread everything I've said in this review. It's a serious accusation, and I'm not appreciative of it.
if you read this review as a wall of praise that is simply on you. It's clearly disappointed that only one part of this game works? it's easily my least favourite final fantasy. i don't think it's good.
"Why's [a critical view of the politics] absent here?"
Because I didn't think to or care enough to? This was just some really quick thoughts I jotted down immediately after finishing the game. I didn't really talk about anything too much in it, other than expressing my disappointment that only one part of the game is any good (which you seem to have completely misread). With Thirsty Suitors, I sat with the game for about a day, and thought about it. I didn't have time or energy to write a full post on my blog, so I collated something more abridged and edited to post here. I thought it was important to talk about that game because I'm the exact target audience as a South Asian queer. I don't believe in representation as a fulfilling political goal on its own but it's good to see diverse voices, but at the same time it's important to be critical of reductive and simplistic representations even if they are positive ones. It's an issue I could talk about without doing much external research, because I live it every day. I don't feel like I could do the same with the bad racial politics of FF16, because its a two-pronged mistake - first there is the slavery allegory, which is confused and poorly handled, but pretty in-line with bad genre fiction in all media. What complicates it further is the (un)presence of brown/black characters and nations within the world and story, where it's obvious that the writers were too cowardly to deal with the consequences of their setting and script and placed racist bandaids on them. There's a coalescence of bad genre fiction writing, Final Fantasy's unique place within JRPG in aspiring to "realistic" character rendering which lends itself to having "real" ethnic features for characters, the complexity of Japanese pop culture's reliance on a 無国籍 logic and other factors. I simply did not think to talk about any of this, because I was just jotting down some thoughts after playing a mediocre game!
Regarding it being a "funny note", I just think the game's attempt to salvage it's awful politics are funny! You can't police what I find funny. I'm not finding the game's politics funny, I'm finding it awkwardly stumbling around them funny. It's unreasonable for you to accuse me of "validating the game's racism" when I agree with you. You don't know me. You misread everything I've said in this review. It's a serious accusation, and I'm not appreciative of it.
lol what the hell happened here
AnnieOx
5 months ago
Have you been living under a rock? This game's been under fire for its anti-Black undertones and very poorly handled slavery narrative. Its politics are nightmarishly fascist.