So. Final Fantasy XVI is a thing that happened this last week.
And on that note, when was the last big AAA game to release that just worked out of the box? No bugs. No glitches. No crashes. It just works? I can't remember the last time a AAA game this big launched and was not ridiculed for being an unfinished, buggy mess. Heck, even Square-Enix has released a few of those lately, including one or two THIS YEAR. I'm not sure if it was just better leadership on this game, or if they kept from making any announcements about it until they were sure the game was going to make its release date with no bugs.
I've long been waiting for this game. The last good Final Fantasy game, outside of MMOs, was Final Fantasy X 22 years ago. The series has had a very, VERY long line of mediocre or just flat out bad games after the glory days of the PS1. Even Final Fantasy X was a bit of a decline from the PS1 games. The series was once the gold standard for RPGs, telling amazing stories and innovating in gameplay, and incorporating cutting edge graphics at the time of each release. Now, it's kind of become something of a joke. After the series creator left the company, taking responsibility for the failure of the Final Fantasy movie to save the jobs of his colleagues, the series has not been the same. It's fumbled around without direction under several directors that just don't seem to know what to do or how. But, I keep holding out hope that maybe the next one will be good. Maybe things can go back to the way they were. And, I am VERY happy to say that Final Fantasy XVI is the game that FINALLY brings Final Fantasy back out of mediocrity.
The game was produced by Naoki Yoshida, or as he likes to be called Yoshi-P, the man who pretty much single-handedly saved Final Fantasy XIV. Under his guidance FFXIV went from the joke of the gaming world into a MMO titan that rivals even World of Warcraft, with more than 25 million subscribers all over the world. It's had a very successful relaunch followed by four expansions, three of which are amazing stories, and the fourth is just kind of there. So, when I found that he was going to be heading up Final Fantasy XVI and bringing with him not only the writer of two of the best FFXIV expansions, and the composer of all of the FFXIV music, I was very excited. He's well known for being a great leader, and pulling off some amazing stories with good gameplay. I think he outdid himself with Final Fantasy XVI though.
The graphics on this game are amazing. It's got this sort of photo-realistic real world look mixed with a lot of fantastical elements that give it a more otherworldly feeling. The character models and design are great. The over the top Eikon battles are enough to give even the most chill guy on earth sensory overload. It's just a very beautiful looking game. It plays very smoothly, no hitching or frame drops that I noticed. It sure did turn my PS5 into a freaking oven though. The combat and gameplay is great. The combat, especially is very fun to mess around with. There are so many different abilities to mix and match that you can pretty much tailor the battle system to any type of combat that you enjoy most. It's also got some very deep mechanics that, once you start figuring them out, there are endless possibilities for creating combos and chaining them on into infinity. I do prefer turn based RPGs but the combat system in this game was so good that I didn't really hold it against the game. The music is also really, really good. Soken really outdid himself for this game, bringing in old familiar tunes from Final Fantasies past and mixing them with truly epic original compositions. I've already bought the soundtrack.
As for the story. It's a very dark and bleak story, but at the same time, it's a story about brotherhood, love, hope, building the bonds of friendship and using those bonds to bring people together to do the impossible, and learning to forgive yourself. It has a lot of very epic hugely over the top action scenes, and very close emotional character interactions, especially toward the end of the game. It's got some very heart-wrenching scenes, and not just at the ending. I don't often say this, but every single side quest in this game is worth doing. A lot of them are go here kill that sort of quests, but every one of them has a great story that is fully voiced. There was a lot of love and care that went into the side content in this game. I normally skip side quests because I just want to get the main story done with, but in this game, the side quests are just such good little stories in themselves that really enhance the main story by adding lore or development to characters. I found myself doing every single one of them.
I only have nitpicks for this game. No real problems. First of all, my kingdom for a minimap. Holy crap is it annoying to have to open the full map so often to make sure you're on the right path. I'd have liked to be able to remap some of the buttons as well. And there being no way to turn off the motion blur is kind of annoying. The blur itself looks really fuzzy, and I can't believe no one said, hey, wait a minute, maybe some people out there won't want this on their screen while playing. And those are, literally, my only complaints with the game.
To address some of the complaints brought up by the games journalists who seem very keen on seeing this game fail at any cost to their reputations: First of all, yes, most of the main cast is white. God forbid. HOWEVER half of the world map is made up of a Middle Eastern inspired nation full of Middle Eastern looking people. One of the main villains of the early game is one of them. There is plenty of racial diversity, it's just diversity that makes sense within the context of the world, rather than diversity for the sake of diversity. It makes the world feel more real, IMO. But that's just me. There's even a gay character who plays a very large role in the story in the latter half of the game, and guess what. He has a personality, back story, and motivation independent of who he likes to bump uglies with. He's an actual character who happens to be gay, not a collection of gay stereotypes screaming look at me, see how representative I am. There was one review I saw where the girl was reading a book while just mashing one button for the combat. Well. Yeah. That's what happens when you play on easy mode with the auto-combo accessibility accessory on. It simplifies the combat so a todler could play it. Put it on normal difficulty and don't use the accessory and it's a very deep combat system with endless combo possibilities. And there were some complaining that oh no, not all of the women are perfect little Mary Sues, and the ones that are in the game don't play too much a part in the story. Okay, so, yes, women can be horrible people too. Put your stupid virtue signaling flag away. There are some very prominent female villains in this game. And yeah, it's fair to say that there's not many women playing big parts on the good guys' side. But there are some who are large parts of the story, even if they do somewhat take a back seat to the men, so that one's a valid criticism.
All in all, it was a great game. I'm happy to FINALLY say that Final Fantasy is back after a 22 year long stretch of mediocre and bad games. I highly recommend it.
For reference I did every hunt and side quest, but didn't bother leveling up all of the abilities, only the ones I kept set for my preferred play style. I didn't get all of the collectables, but most of them. I did get the best weapons and armor in the game. With all of that and the main story, the game took me 97 hours to complete.
