Alright I've gotten through the first playthrough this weekend. I'm going to do a full on review now it will contain SPOILERS!!!!! So if you aren't at least mostly done with the story, then do not read the paragraph I've marked below.
So here we go. Bottom line Final Fantasy 16 is largely disappointing in almost every single aspect if I'm honest. As you guys probably are aware I've played and beaten every mainline FF game this year (except 11) and I was prepping myself for a big hype new release of the 16th mainline game, with Yoshi-P behind the wheel I was ready for an incredible game. What I got was a flashy mess on almost every level.
Let's start with the easiest thing, play this on graphical mode for a solid 30 FPS because performance cannot maintain a solid 60 outside of combat. Performance is weird because it runs between 30-45 fps while you are running around or listening to npc's and what not, but the moment you enter combat it locks to 60. It's very disorientating and I found that playing with the graphical mode locked everything to 30 and the consistency felt better to play. Bummer it can't be 60 FPS all the time in the performance mode built for it, and it also doesn't seem like something they can fix in a patch otherwise I feel like they'd have done it already. To be fair the game is a grand spectacle on a crazy scale sometimes so it's not that much of a bummer.
Next I want to talk about combat because that was the big focus behind the push for this game. The DMC guy is behind the combat and look how crazy it gets, huge boss battles WHOAAAAA!!! And to be honest. Combat is fun, but it aint that great. There is nothing mind blowing about it, and sadly there is nothing tactical about it. The enemies you fight are mostly brainless piñata's that stagger under your basic attacks, meaning you have no reason to use your abilities because they don't pose a threat to you even at the end of the game. While in big groups the enemies aren't aggressive enough to bother you while you beat their friend to death. They do try to mix it up throughout the game though by throwing in casters and healers in some enemy groups that will buff and heal the other enemies, but never themselves so you just go beat them up in two seconds first and then the fight is won. This meaninglessness makes the random grunt encounters feel like a waste of time rather than something to engage with in exciting combat.
This changes when you fight sub bosses, basically bigger enemies that have stagger bars but not big enough to be bosses (though some of them appear as bosses first before getting downgraded). These fights are better because you get to engage your abilities but you'll quickly realize that most of them melt during the first stagger and since they repeat so often you'll have the moveset memorized to the point where you are going through the motions. These enemies are really where the lack of tactics really saddens me, since there is no elemental weaknesses or special requirements for beating enemies nothing ever feels special which includes your own toolkit. Getting a new Eikon power means nothing because it doesn't have any new effects on the enemies. Why couldn't there be some special ways to stagger enemies that require skill? For example you have to execute a magic burst combo to stagger this enemy, or that enemy only staggers against a perfect dodge counter attack? You could have done things that would always be available in any loadout but still made the player have to think about what they are fighting. But it's never ever the case.
Finally the best part of combat, the Bosses....mostly. As mentioned above some of the sub bosses get a full boss billing the first time you see them but then become normal fodder later on. However the "big" bosses are a great when you're fighting the first form as Clive. These fights are the only time you'll really be tested on your skills outside of S rank Monster hunts. You'll have to dodge, parry, block, counter and effectively time your use of Eikonic abilities to bring these fuckers down. They are a lot of fun for the most part. They aren't perfect though, because as you proceed later in the game more and more of these guys start having bullshit teleports where they just teleport away from you. Sometime it's not even for another attack it's just to get away from Clive and forces you to chase them down. This is annoying and pointless, in a melee focused game it should be the player who makes space not the enemies. For example if you want to force the player to break away to let the fight breathe, have the enemy do a massive spurg swing or big aoe explosion followed by a bunch more (in fact several enemies do exactly this and it's great). The monster should never bounce out of range just "because", it feels bad and ruins player momentum.
There is another problem with the bosses later on, in that they get so crazy it's fucking impossible to see what's happening beyond the particle effects. Though this isn't an issue until your on the last 5 or so bosses really, it still becomes wild that so much shit is happening that you can't see an attack coming, you can't parry or dodge effectively because the visual clutter is so bad. But since this is only a few bosses and hunts it's not TOO big of a deal, I just wanted to mention it since I'm going balls deep on giving this game shit.
Overall though the Clive based bosses are the peaks of this game's combat system, unfortunately these are usually brought down with the Eikon battles. After beating one of the big bosses, they'll typically get butthurt about losing and decide to bust out the nuclear weapons in the form of their Eikon. This is where Clive will become Ifrit (pronounced Ifreet apparently) and you'll have a big lumbering giant monster fight. While visually these are the craziest moments in the game, their gameplay is fucking dumb. Often you get to do a melee combo before that annoying ***** of a boss will run away forcing you to annoying close the distance while they spit shit at you. Then you get in for a combo or two and away they run. This is combined with cinematic breaks where the fight will become a quicktime event before a new phase of the fight begins or you win. Despite the grandiose visual splendor of these events, they are nearly impossible to lose and entirely uninteresting mechanically. They remind me of the beginning of the game with young Clive where he doesn't really have any powers, except you're a big fire demon. Cool but not great honestly.
I do want to point out that the game on the first playthrough is quite easy, no helping accessory required. I only died a couple of times due to trying to fight an S rank hunt underleveled, but I won after a couple of tries anyway. I'll try FF mode and see if it's harder, there is also Ultima Mode after beating FF mode to get even harder,
That's basically the combat so now let's take a shit on the other aspects of gameplay. Which I'll handle in rapid fire:
Gear - fucking pointless, every upgrade is 5ish points of improvement and doesn't have any effect on gameplay. Sometimes you'll upgrade your gear without ever having to fight anything with your previous weapon. Accessories are also pointless because you'll just equip the ones that slightly upgrade the damage of your favorite Eikon attacks or slight buff Clive himself.
Crafting - equally pointless because of the gear problem.
Side Quests - 85% of these are garbage. Bring people food, go talk to a guy about a thing, or "oh no bandits again". The other 15% are actually focused on characters and it builds the people around Clive up making these decent enough quests even though they all tend to go through the same steps.
Hunts - Actually awesome because they are all entirely boss fights where you fight as Clive. Would have been interesting to see a couple become kaiju fights, but honestly im glad they don't.
Now let's get to the other big side of this coin, the story. HERE COME THE SPOILERS!
Clive is a remarkably bad protagonist, which is a shame because he starts the game so likable from his younger years. I can't tell if this is specifically the writing or if it's a combination of that and Ben's performance which is really bad most of the time. What's crazy is that during intense scenes Ben is great, his screams, cries, rage, all the top emotional moments are great. But then you have the rest of the game where Ben felt like he had to fucking whisper every goddamn line. I already said why this sucks and I wish games would stop letting it happen.
So the other problem with Clive is that he is the most uninteresting part of the cast. Cid is awesome and much more worthy of the protagonist spot that Clive. Cid has motivations, a vision for what he wants for the world, and a plan to do it. Clive has....well he does what Cid does later because he's got nothing else to do I guess. That seems to be a big problem throughout the game in that with a few exceptions most of the big characters don't really have any direction. These nations are warring over implied resources but you visit every nation and they are mostly struggling due to neglect not lack of resources. They talk about the blight but outside of the first few hours of the game you never see the blight progress or effect any of the places you visit. Hell you're homebase is in the blight and people survive there just fine, even figure out how to grow food on blighted land so the blight becomes a nothing-level threat.
The best villain in the game is Krupka as he is the old dude with a motivated vendetta against Clive and Cid's group. Benedickta just seems like a skank who throws her lot in with whomever is more powerful at the time. She's implied to be with Krupka at the beginning of the game, but that relationship is never mentioned again and instead she's in bed with Odin for some reason, like really I don't get who or what she was trying to be other than a raging thot for no reason. Outside of that one scene at the beginning she's never shown interacting with Krupka ever again, so when he finds out she's dead by our hand it rings hollow for me because I don't fucking care about their relationship, or them. However I can at least understand Krupka's emotions and reasons for wanting revenge even though it's not all the believable.
Jill and Clive's "romance" also is flat as fuck. I don't believe they love each other, because it's never really shown that they're in love prior to I guess the beach scene but even then it's like...meh. Jill loves Clive, that I believe, she's leaned into kisses like 17 times by the beach scene. But Clive is just so empty of emotions that I don't believe the relationship. There was a five year fucking time skip where they did fucking nothing but hang out together, they should have a kid by that point. Give it up to Jill for not giving up on getting some dick from Clive for like 20 years.
Then we have Joshua, surprise he isn't dead, but surprise he couldn't tell Clive that for 20 years either. Supposedly, Joshua learned about Ultima and was trying to learn and make alliances and moves to otherwise stop Ultima. But got fucking nowhere apparently because when Joshua joins up with Clive finally, Clive asks Joshua "What does Ultima want?" And Joshua goes, "No fucking idea dude." So you stayed away from your brother and let him believe you dead for two decades for....nothing? Okay cool it's not like your death ruined Clive as a person for 20 years or anything.
Speaking of Ultima, he's evil because. That's it. Because. Game needed a big bad and that's why Ultima exists and for no other reason. Also for some reason Odin is the only fucker under Ultima's influence again for no reason. Why not have Ultima be a demon responsible for the corruption of the other Dominants? Giving us a motivation to wipe each Dominant out or at least trying to purge Ultima's influence out of the person? Well the answer to that is simple, if every nation served Ultima it would make all the politics throughout the rest of the game invalid, the nations wouldn't have reason to battle if they all served the same grand master, therefore Ultima only controls Odin. So at the end of it all Ultima's motivation is just, there needed to be a biggest bad guy at the end of the game so this is what we got. There is a lot of talk of trying to ruin Clive's attachment to the world through his companions, but there is never any attempts to kill those around him. Kill Jill, Kill Torgal, Kill people in the hideaway, something to break Clive, but naw...just nonsense talk about consciousness or some shit I don't know. It's stupid.
Frankly the whole plot consists of the writer trying to go in too many directions without ways to wrap each thread up. We spend a lot of time learning about how evil and corrupt your mother is and how she's brought ruin to Rosaria your home nation, except the problem with this is she's not fucking in Rosaria she's in Sanbreque with Bahaumut's daddy. So whole controls Rosaria day to day? Don't know, it's never explained or shown or resolved. The blight is a result of Mothercrystals sucking up the Aether from the land, so we gotta break them all to save the world from the blight. Except breaking them does nothing to stop the spread. The problem here is we are never shown the spread. The Blight never takes over towns we care about except Lostwing and even then it's only the town and not the farmlands around it. The zombie armies move into towns during side quests but one visit from us solves that and then the people I guess can stop the rest of the zombies afterwards? I don't know.
The whole story is a lot of these little questions that don't really make much sense. Why are bearers not the ruling class? They can literally do magic, so just fucking burn anyone who tries to boss you around? Wouldn't it have made more sense for people without magic to be the slaves? Also the big emphasis on slavery explains the real reason why they couldn't have people of color in the game doesn't it?
This isn't to say all the meta disappointments with the plot that I have, but that goes back to the "this isn't a Final Fantasy game" thing, and at the end of the day there is enough references to say it's Final Fantasy enough, but it's a very disappointing one. I've seen some discourse online that FF16 was people's 1st FF game and they love the shit out of it. Which makes me bummed that when they go to an earlier FF game they'll probably bounce off those fantastic games pretty hard because of how drastically different they'll play compared to this one. A fact that will be further hurt by all the FF re-releases lately. 1-6 just got remasters, and now every single FF game minus 11 is playable on a modern console and computer. Meaning a new player has pretty easy access to any FF game they want to try next, since FF is my favorite series I worry that the huge difference in this game will harm new people coming to the series because of those changes and lack of the familiar elements. Going from 16 to any other game might have someone upset that the other FF games are too goofy, or not serious or mature enough, or play too slowly, or have too many items/gear/upgrades/characters to manage, things like that.
FF16 is ultimately not an RPG really. it's got a few elements but it's no more an RPG than DMC is. Both games have upgrades for abilities that your earn through some sort of currency, so they aren't too far off from each other. Which is fine, but it also asks the question "Is Final Fantasy going to be an RPG series going forward?" I worry about that.
FF16 is a good game, it is. But it's an extremely big let down from what I hope to get from Final Fantasy games.
