I'm practically right before the final mission but I think I'm gonna draw out the end and do all side quests and hunts before that. Some of the side quests towards the end here even have mocapped cutscenes and a bit of budget, huh.
I ran into an S rank hunt in the woods. Svarog or whatever? Kicked my butt but I got it down to 50%. Next time...
i have gotten up to the i think 7th story trophy? something about a bitter enemy, idk how to calculate it but i feel like i'm just past half way through the game.
the whole thing reminded me of something from a platinum games title with how over the top it was. it was like a bayonetta boss battle
i like how they have given the 'bad guy' eikons (garuda and titan) a kind of freaky appearance. i've seen odin and bahamut in cutscenes but not enough to know if i can add them to my creepy list
i complained about lack of lip sync for the japanese audio, but i think there might be some for the non-mocap scenes? it doesn't seem fine-tuned or polished so i am wondering if it's some kind of automated process to match the audio.
i like that a lot of the side quests are either adding story/worldbuilding or unlocking new things. even if the basis of the quests boils down to 'go here and collect this/kill this monster' it still adds to the overall whole in some way
also saw two guys kiss in a final fantasy game. makes up for forcing me to listen to all those sex noises before
i somehow managed to get an item for beating a boss without taking damage, i think? is there some benefit to having these or is it just a collectable that doesn't really do anything?
I'm practically right before the final mission but I think I'm gonna draw out the end and do all side quests and hunts before that. Some of the side quests towards the end here even have mocapped cutscenes and a bit of budget, huh.
I ran into an S rank hunt in the woods. Svarog or whatever? Kicked my butt but I got it down to 50%. Next time...
I'm also before the point of no return and I'm disappointed that
the Ultima fight didn't at least get rid of the Final Days skies. I'm sick of this lighting and thought it might at least go back to normal for the endgame/postgame stuff...
Been slightly annoyed that all the endgame stuff in the world is Clive solo with no party members but I just did a quest that unlocked Joshua to join me. Wonder if there's one more? Jill? Though she doesn't have powers anymore I guess? But then again, who else would you give me, Gav? =P
Didn't have high hopes with the sidequests when they started out with the usual errands for randos but they do a decent job in getting you acquainted with side characters and the world and gradually get better. The endgame sidequests all wrap up a bunch of stuff and have added production value with fully mocapped scenes here and there and that's neat.
I think games like Horizon FW and God of War Ragnarök still did it better with fewer sidequests but higher production values but this is still leagues beyond FFXV and catching frogs or collecting dog tags with nary a payoff in sight.
Also, I've been wondering...people have mentioned cactuars but I have yet to spot one. And it seems the bestiary is all filled out? Surely they didn't skip over Cactuars and Tonberrys...
Oh, I've been doing some of these Chronoliths too. Titan, Bahamut and Phoenix so far. Love me Titan moves so that was the easiest for me. Phoenix on the other hand, I almost ran out of time.
I have yet to kill an S rank hunt...maybe I should give Svarog another attempt.
Using Zantetsuken lvl. 5 feels so overpowered but oh so good.
Oh, I've been doing some of these Chronoliths too. Titan, Bahamut and Phoenix so far. Love me Titan moves so that was the easiest for me. Phoenix on the other hand, I almost ran out of time.
I only found and tried the Shiva one. I thought I did quite well, and then ran out of time on the final fight when he had the tiniest sliver of health left.
If I had been able to retry that fight I would have done so, but when I had to restart from the beginning I just continued on.
Did the quest that unlocked Jill for the party. Seems like she's still using ice magic even without Shiva at least.
Ran into the Behemoth King in Waloed. First S rank kill, babyyy
Looks like all the sidequests are done now? Got all the donations, all entries for Harpocrates and created the Gotterdammerung. Clive's chamber is still missing an item though. Wonder if it's for completing all hunts?
Found Odin's Chronolith. Did terribly though, ran outta time in stage 3, whoops.
The ones I found so far (Odin, Phoenix, Titan, Bahamut) all correspond to the countries of their respective Dominants. Makes me wonder where I find Shiva, Garuda and Ramuh then.
Not sure if I'll do the hunts and Chronolith first or just finish the story. I'm kind of itching to just finish the game so I can browse the internet without fear of spoilers again and consume all the spoiler podcasts etc
I'm very satisfied with this Final Fantasy. With FFXIV expansions, VII Remake and the Crisis Core remaster, I feel like I've been eating good again as an FF fan. VII Rebirth is practically guaranteed to be a blast to play. I'm being fed.
And especially having replayed FFXV just earlier this year it's apparent how much more complete and deliberate this game was. Like, there was an actual, engaging story that kept me wanting to continue versus XV's fetch questy "go here and collect a weapon, now go here collect a summon, now go here and get your car back" meandering for 70% of the game before it remembers it needs to tell an actual story and just fast-forwards through a few setpieces.
This game has been cooking.
Same with the combat system. XV often felt like I couldn't tell when an enemy was about to do something. Here, everything is readable and telegraphed. I can react accordingly and when I get knocked on my ass it feels like my fault every time instead of like "idk wtf is happening in this fight"
Idk, this game kinda ruled
Biggest negative to me is actually...the technical stuff. Graphics and performance. Like, the game doesn't look bad whatsoever. But despite being a PS5 exclusive, it's behind some cross-gen games that look better and perform at 60fps. GoW, Horizon, even Square's own FFVII Remake.
Wonder if it's because once again they kinda cobbled together their own tech/engine for this game. Would it have been easier to optimize if they used Unreal?
I'm not a dev, so who knows.
Actually, one story thing did bug me:
Clive being reunited with Torgal just after meeting Jill. A bit of an asspull but also feels weirdly unimpactful?
Clive's just like "oh yeah that's my dog from way back when btw" and Cid's just like "oh alright, he's yours then" despite Cid having spent more time with Torgal at this point than Clive did. You'd think he'd be more attached. Idk, just felt like they couldn't find an organic way to bring Torgal back and just went whatever, he's here too, enjoy your doggo
That's great news and as stated by Ampere Analysis:
“Final Fantasy 16 was launched into market conditions that were quite different compared to those of previous franchise releases like FF7R and FF15, so comparisons are problematic,” Wooldridge explained.
“For example, FF16 is a PS5 exclusive, and it launched earlier in the PS5 lifecycle than FF7R did in the PS4 lifecycle. When the PS5 active installed base is less than 40m globally, sales of three million are certainly not poor.
“This may be below Square Enix’s expectations, but the launch environment and Mature rating of the game do limit its potential somewhat. Given the success achieved by Yoshi-P in turning around Final Fantasy 14, I imagine expectations were particularly high.
“A rapid drop-off in sales in the days following the launch is also expected for an RPG - many of the initial sales will be from core players and fans of the franchise. It will be interesting to see whether it can continue to sell and remain in the charts in the coming months, and that will perhaps be a better indication of its performance.”
So sales are fine within the current market, but it didn't attract many new players either.
Still unsure about how those legs going to be since the game has low replay value outside a New Game on a higher difficulty (which in turn doesn't reward the player with anything new). Once you're done with the story, then it's done.
We'll see how the PC version, DLCs and updates will fare.
The best sidequest in all of FFXVI isn't a sidequest: One Man's Treasure
(Spoilers if you haven't gotten to The Great Southern Gate outside of the Ravenwit Walls in Waloed).
I'm not sure where you first run into this NPC, but he's as memorable as he is long-winded. He's about the only NPC who's got more than two lines of dialogue for a direct interaction and vastly exceeds that. He's always excitedly spilling his plans to you about some new scheme about how he's gonna "mint gil" by setting up some guaranteed-to-be-lucrative plan based on something he's just passed by, like the hotsprings bath house when he's outside of the south gate of Dalimil. As you encounter him, he'll tell you various things about his life like that his parents were also travelling merchants and that he's from Dravozt, and sort of keep pace trying to stay where there are good opportunities to make it big.
You can find him again at least once travelling along with the other refugees towards Boklad after Titan is defeated, although I'm not sure if there's anywhere else that you're able to encounter him directly. (This is the point in the game where it's obvious that there's a LOT of the game is sort of necessarily cobbled together based on what's ready and everything with the mainline & sidequests are sort of a bare-bones mess of disorganized scraps around what's functional). Since none of the big sequences of Kanver or the new Imperial Capital of the Crystaline Dominion involve areas with a traversable world map, I'm not sure how many times total you come across him with a new plan.
When you travel to Ash, things have gone absolutely nuts. As you make your way to the walls, if you explore the area around the Great Southern Gate, you'll run into something that never occurs outside of active sidequests. There's a tiny shining mark on the ground that you can interact with by holding X. Doing so grants you an item called "treasure map" with the following description:
"To all who would seek to mint gil, follow ye the path to Kretov."
At the note of a familiar phrase, as you look around, you'll see that the item was lying next to the bloodied body of the Dhalmekian traveller and the corpse of his Chocobo is nearby. Whatever happened, our travelling merchant friend managed to escape the disasters in Kanver & the Crystaline Dominion and make it all the way to Waloed before he got attacked and murdered by Akashic.
If you start from The Gilded Path, and travel along the left side, you'll run into a little alcove where there are Goblins hanging out, At the top of a little ledge there's a tiny encampment. I'd gone there before and saw a treasure chest covered with a blanket. With the map, and upon returning you're able to open it to receive "One Man's Treasure" which is an item that can be sold for 100,000 gil. If you go back to Waloed, the bodies of the friendly merchant and his chocobo are gone and all that's left behind are the blood stains, as I assume that the quest would have involved burying the man like most of the side quests do, but it just wasn't implemented.
Given that this quest involved an NPC I got intrigued by solely by the world design, there were no big signposts leading me by the nose each step of the way to preemptively foreshadow what I was going to stumble across, and the narrative was all left to contextual interpretation based on whether or not you'd actually taken the time to interact with everything around you... running across this in the hollow emptiness of Waloed, and not even being able to have a means of acknowledging it made it hit me harder than anything else in the game.
There are plenty of times that I've done things like follow wandering lizards in the sand who run directly to crystals and look at how the team went above and beyond with how to design a lot of phenomenal RPG elements in the game where the game design absolutely eviscerates them into bland & generic experiences that all blur together, but this is the one that stands out and I can't get out of my mind. Like, I want to do another playthrough JUST to see where and how many times I'm able to run across him throughout the game.
There are also some other cool elements that are obviously cut out completely and unused (spoilers for returning to Eastpool):
The Fallen Ruins in The Blight
When you wander up to Phoenix Gate, there's a doorway to the Fallen Ruins along the Blighted path. This is where Clive learns that he can just activate those doors with his own power. Yet that side-path and door remain completely unused, and the townsperson mentions the big spire that's been there for thousands of years in Eastside. With the later sidequest in Waloed with Mikkelburg, and when some of the things in Tomes' collection all just drop in about this indirectly, it's pretty clear that those were meant to be some sort of story detail earlier on in the game.
Additionally there's The Undying & the Gigantic Frozen Wave in Sanbreque that's got a couple tiny fragments still in-game (EndGame Sidequest Spoilers)
While the Undying are introduced they're not really implemented in a way that the game makes use of, but the elements are still present. There's a man in the Boklad marketplace who's one of them investigating the truth about Dzemekys, and the Bard in Northreach is also one of them who's the only other NPC who will comment on the frozen wave aside from two NPCs outside the city walls if you go talk to them before going to the Veil for the first time. He'll mention something about forbidden magic, which both seem to point to the Executors as another secret society and clandestine organization that are present in a single sidequest at the end of the game, but it's clear that there were planned elements around them as well baked into very early parts of the game all involving the point in time of what happened in the past.
The amount of dialogue that exists that's unique for NPCs and constantly changing as well as all of the Unrecorded dialogue options for incomplete sidequests in the game is just utterly ridiculous, and it makes me wish desperately to see what FFXVI could have looked like if it had another couple years to actually finish making the game rather than sort of rushing into finalizing what was there as best as possible, and hamstringing the second half of the game's story into the bare-bones Ultima-centric rush to the end.
Also, the fact that there's an endgame sidequest involving Shiva's dominant from the north, Jill that takes place at a field of Snow Lilies directly overlooking the point of this frozen wave makes it pretty clear that there was more planned to build up to that moment.
Also, if you want to know why the game clearly has this weirdly ultra-dark undertone to it: Like the item descriptions for Bloodied Hides being soaked in urine & chocobo brains), it's not all that it's taking from Game of Thrones, although there are some clear nods to it. (Spoilers for the whole game, and a bit of design and thematic history tl;dr from me as usual).
The fact that our main antagonist is an emotionally traumatized kid who saw his entire family burned to death, and became a murderous outlaw with fire powers who's elevated into being a necessarily polarizing figure and ends up bringing about the change to a stagnant society built in the fallen ruins of a previous civilization that's living off of exploiting the magical powers of gifted individuals... then there's a manga that you should read – only assuming that you're ok with extremely graphic material: Fire Punch.
It's by the creator of Chainsaw Man, FFXVI follows those beats a LOT and while they're still graphic, they're extremely toned down. There's a lot from that manga that's also heavily influential in how Elden Ring visually & thematically portrays a certain type of existential trauma at the oppression of a world, but in the case of Elden Ring it's a lot more difficult to discern where that path of justice truly exists. Like with the other Souls games, it layers that primarily with other themes on trauma from BERSERK, whereas FFXVI is drawing on another path to look at it, especially as it's a lot more overt in its storytelling with the type of more narrative-centric RPG it is.
It's clear that FFXVI was working on layering in those pieces of nuance and complexity by borrowing ideas like how One Piece has erased parts of history for the earlier technological civilization to control the truth, but BARELY any of those still survive into FFXVI and ALL of them are unfortunately relegated into total obscurity although they were clearly meant to be the main themes for both Vivian's storyline with the Executors as well as Mid's struggle over whether or not to bring that technology back with her Mythril Engines (similar to the Oxygen Destroyer in the original Godzilla). Those were meant to tie in with King Barnabas' mother and the Children of Dzemekys along with the Circle of Malius looking at the juxtaposition of how an apocalyptic saviour religion and a death cult are functionally the same thing (with strong emphasis on Christianity).
That's important since the primary narrative of the game takes after the common Eastern juxtaposition between Indra & Asura for its main Antagonist & Protagonist since either can contextually be a villain or a saviour depending on which side of the story you're focused on being representative of justice in overcoming the suffering that's currently taking place, even if it takes multiple generations to get to that point, and knowing the truth of history and how mutable the context of events can be in shaping something into a future paradise or a functional hellscape are deeply important to that, which Fire Punch really hammers in on over and over and over in exceptionally uncomfortable ways. Those are all really important to key aspects of Japanese adaptations of Western Fantasy that involve more complex themes.
It's why I really love the world design and things in FFXVI, but man... there's NO WAY this game was ready to be released, but they managed to strap a solid combat system into it and send it out with what they had, but you can REALLY feel it later on into the game. Having read Fire Punch is why there's a lot about what Clive has to go through and the questions he's faced with as he runs into various kingdoms and pockets of civilization in Valasthea that had me rather excited, and it's definitely a little rough seeing just how many of those critical elements are essentially barely past the drawing room phase and implemented haphazardly in a massively disorganized rush at the end.
But hey – at least a lot of those fractured bits & pieces are still in the game at all to check out even if you have to go out of your way and ignore what the game is trying to make you do to find them and see more of the big picture for how things seem to have been meant to play out, and what justified a darker and more brutal approach to how they wanted to portray fighting. That's especially apparent in how we see even Self-Priming literally shooting energy through their bodies and transforming their skin with Cid, Benedikta, & Clive, but those elements sharply drop off after Titan when the game gets into the sort of rush to the end.
It's those things that make it easier to spot how it's not just the game design but the story that's barely half-done in the final product. The game's "Main Quest" really clings tightly to Clive's story as Ifrit's Dominant & Mythos, but Clive's role as "Cid" is just as important when he takes up that title and becomes the figurehead that everyone is looking to for salvation – which is one of the most critically important elements of the story, and why it leads to a seemingly happy normal world in the end. Those things all fall into the mess of half-finished sidequests.
After essentially completing the game (I just have to do the final main mission now), I'd say that what you're looking at in FFXVI is a difficult thing to unpack, but it involves being specific with the terms to approach what deserves praise.
There is extremely great world design all over the game, which is almost constantly being utterly undercut by atrocious game design. This is not to say anything about the mechanics of the combat system, which has satisfying gameplay (assuming you're into that type of ARPG) but the RPG elements aren't at all designed to work with that. This means that even with the Final Fantasy Mode for NG+, it's really shallow in having any genuine merit for replayability – especially if you're not into the combat. The cinematic presentation leverages the extremely immaculate world design to mostly cover up just how much of the storyline gets utterly gutted about halfway through.
What I did to finally make the combat feel enjoyable to play was using the Ring of Timely Focus, but balancing that by never using any items and only healing if there happens to be a potion on the ground that overfills my inventory. It feels like I can get an experience of the depth of the combat in a way that isn't just overly frustrating, and carries a more of a fun pace. (Note that I've also never used the ARPG shortcut controls for FFVIIR as I find that way less satisfying).
Also, since I'd already gone through the story via other means, I've also been completing every boss fight in the game without ever taking damage once, since the initial playthrough will be the easiest way to do that and that makes the fights feel like an accomplishment at least.
Essentially I really do love all of the work that they put into making FFXVI a lot, but I simultaneously dislike essentially everything about the package of the game that the narrative delivery takes place in (but the rest of that's for the other thread when I have time to collect my notes).
before i even played ff14 i'd heard accusations of him plagiarising tracks. i think the boss/notorious hunt theme might be one of my favourite ff battle themes, pls don't have stolen that one
i just got what seems like the penultimate ability set? it says i've completed all the rosaria area mob hunts, i'm getting a lot of two-parter side quests, i think i'm about to go to a new area. so that's where i am if that's any indication lol
i laughed out loud when the battle result text said 'clive bested' after the barnabas fight, idk why but that was funny to me. i narrowly failed to stop the attack so maybe there's different versions if you succeed?
altema's plan, this spell he casts to turn everyone and everything akashic where they keep talking about removing individuality and stuff about making people into one. getting some major human instrumentality project vibes here. like, this is sounding like the magical third impact
also just occurred to me right now, altema (ultima? i refuse to look up any english spellings yet) having four arms looks like eva unit 13 having four arms. it's all falling into place
also, the white ruins in the lake near clive's new hideout remember me of i think an image from end of eva? where there's some white statues and building ruins in a lake?
i am curious what they call odin's attacks in english. because the japanese version uses the same 'zantetsu-ken' (and 'zantetsu-sen') which i remember keeping the japanese names in previous english games. do they keep that here as well
also also, if they did a james cameron's avaar-style pseudo-sex scene with clive absorbing shiva's powers, does that mean clive also kind of had sex with cid too.
also again, seeing a lot of ass in this game. surprisingly ass-heavy game.
i am now looking at how much a lute costs. i am thinking about abandoning everything and live action roleplaying my ff14 bard, just me and the large dog i will get. just sitting around and singing about the stuff i see happening around me at the big tesco.
i mean more that i don't want to look stuff up in case i get spoiled.
i didn't want to look up the english name for 原初の楔, the spell ultima casts after the bahamut battle because i didn't want to happen across any later events in the story
i think this is the first time i ever wondered if they would keep a random japanese name in an ff game, i don't know why.
and unrelated, but where's the water dominant/summon. what's up with that
i mean more that i don't want to look stuff up in case i get spoiled.
i didn't want to look up the english name for 原初の楔, the spell ultima casts after the bahamut battle because i didn't want to happen across any later events in the story
i think this is the first time i ever wondered if they would keep a random japanese name in an ff game, i don't know why.
and unrelated, but where's the water dominant/summon. what's up with that
Leviathan gets mentioned in passing once later on as "Leviathan the Lost" and that's the only acknowledgement of it. Even after that, it doesn't get a listing or even a mention anywhere into the Lore stuff at all. There is at least one entry in a book lying around that talks about a sea monster appearing as a moving island, as well as a massive wave frozen past the north coast of Sanbreque in the direction of Drake's Eye. Along with how the game still states that it changes the element of the spell you cast when you change Eikons but that having no impact on the gameplay whatsoever, I assume that whatever section of the game dealt with elemental weaknesses was going to be covered with Leviathan & the Water Dominant (you know, given that you're one of the two Fire Dominants), but that since it was a part of the elemental stuff that got scrapped and didn't have time to be repurposed, it just got cut out and then lampshaded with that single quote.
i mean more that i don't want to look stuff up in case i get spoiled.
i didn't want to look up the english name for 原初の楔, the spell ultima casts after the bahamut battle because i didn't want to happen across any later events in the story
i think this is the first time i ever wondered if they would keep a random japanese name in an ff game, i don't know why.
and unrelated, but where's the water dominant/summon. what's up with that
I haven't been able to play this myself due to health reasons but my boyfriend is playing it and I've watched pretty much everything. We're about 10-15 hours in and so far I'm... kinda underwhelmed.
There's a good deal of fun FF nostalgia in it, the soundtrack is AWESOME but so far I'm not really feeling not!Geralt and his story. That being said, there's a way to go so I'm hoping it'll improve.
What I do like about it besides the soundtrack is the pretty fun take on JP game dev doing medieval ish RPG. I guess the Geralt voice was deliberate sooo... jokes probably on me. But yeah I have a feeling being bilingual in English and Japanese would have added some cultural context to this that would have made it tons more enjoyable. Then again maybe not. I'll reread the spoilers when we're done.
(Also - watching instead of playing absolutely affects my opinion, no doubt. But still.)
(Also 2... I just don't like grey games. I'm a sucker for lush colour pallettes.)
I haven't been able to play this myself due to health reasons but my boyfriend is playing it and I've watched pretty much everything. We're about 10-15 hours in and so far I'm... kinda underwhelmed.
There's a good deal of fun FF nostalgia in it, the soundtrack is AWESOME but so far I'm not really feeling not!Geralt and his story. That being said, there's a way to go so I'm hoping it'll improve.
What I do like about it besides the soundtrack is the pretty fun take on JP game dev doing medieval ish RPG. I guess the Geralt voice was deliberate sooo... jokes probably on me. But yeah I have a feeling being bilingual in English and Japanese would have added some cultural context to this that would have made it tons more enjoyable. Then again maybe not. I'll reread the spoilers when we're done.
(Also - watching instead of playing absolutely affects my opinion, no doubt. But still.)
(Also 2... I just don't like grey games. I'm a sucker for lush colour pallettes.)
I'm curious what point in the story you're at as I watched through the whole game before playing it myself and it took me a WHILE to feel genuinely invested in the story enough to want to keep going through it.
I'm curious what point in the story you're at as I watched through the whole game before playing it myself and it took me a WHILE to feel genuinely invested in the story enough to want to keep going through it.
Ah, ok! I think that it still took me a bit before I really felt properly hooked into things, but I think that the next few chapters have some of the stuff that give a bit of a better hook. Also, WAY later in the game when you end up going to the continent of Ash is where I ended up hearing all of my favourite music in the game, so there's also that to look forward to.
blog.playstation.com
)
