It has been a long time coming and a long time waiting.
With the fame of Yoshi-P, the person who resurrected Final Fantasy XIV from the ashes like a Phoenix, Square-Enix had enlisted him to be in charge of the 16th entry of the main number franchise. Would he be able to do the same as he did with XIV?
Coincidence or by design, Final Fantasy XVI’s story focuses on two summons, or Eikons, as in the game called it – Phoenix and Ifrit. Two brothers born from the same family but eventually became the Phoenix and Ifrit of their world. When it is a not impossible to have two Eikons of the same element existing, what fate awaits these two brothers?
Main Story
I mainly play Role Playing Games (RPGs) for their stories. So naturally I am very critical about it.
In terms of story, FF XVI felt like a blend of Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIV but with a heavy dose of glorified soap. While the setting is grand, I personally felt like the motivation of most of the main and supporting cast were quite petty (except for Cid, my most liked character). Sometimes, it’s a microscopic scale of pettiness. There were many occasions that the actions of those characters did not make sense to me. Most of the decisions they made, and the actions following those decisions did not inform me that they were seasoned adventurers. I mean the story time jumped forward twice already, why did they learn nothing in those time jump period, and it felt like their maturity had not grown with time? The funny thing was, some other characters seemed to have moved on with time, but not the main cast, and not some of the main supporting cast. I don’t want to talk about those plot points in detail for this would spoil it for others, but for me the main campaign’s story felt rushed in terms of the timeline they portrayed and felt half-baked to fulfil certain requirements to move the story forward. And some of the plot holes for me were quite jarring but then I had no choice but to let go and soldier forward with the game.
There is a new game plus once you finished the game once to go through the main story again with some additional mission and items with increased level cap. But then for me, going through that story once was more than enough already.
Side Quests
As with most RPGs, FF XVI is full of side quests to help you level up, earn new abilities and acquire otherwise hard to get items. I am a completionist in terms of these side quests, so whenever they popped up, I will just do them first, as I wanted to know more about that part of the story and the lore more before moving on.
FF XVI had abandoned the requirement to read stuff mostly with almost everything voice acted. It was all good and novel, but then at some points, some of the side quests talking was dragging for so long that you just hope that you could press x and forward it. But because they are voice acted, it now felt weird to do it, so most of the time I just put down the controller, went make a cup of tea and went back, hopefully the talking would have finished. And there were occasions that because the talking was so long that my PS5 prompted a warning saying that the controller was left idle for too long, so it will soon switch off itself and the PS5.
Yes, it was that much talking – just for the side quests.
Side quests are side quests so you could only have that much of variety, but then I didn’t really mind. I just hope that some of them didn’t take that long to tell me what I should do so I could just get some of those trivial quests out of the way without listening to NPC complaining, yelling or crying for 5 minutes.
Not all of the side quests are bad. I actually enjoyed a number of them and their storylines, it just felt unbalanced at times.
Notorious Marks
Hunts are back in FF XVI!
For me that is a piece of content that I enjoyed most.
You encountered some of them during the story progression, and some during your side quests. However, for a majority of them, you will need to actively seeking them out.
Depending on your level and abilities acquired, some can post some serious danger to your party. Also, hunts are tests of your knowledge of the battle system, so you can use what you have learnt up to various point of the game to the fullest, and hopefully came out on top with satisfaction.
Some of the enemies paid homage to previous FF games, and some were unique to XVI, but for me, all were enjoyable.
Battle System
For me the battle system is what stood out in FF XVI.
Yes, turn base is no more in the FF series, but then Yoshi-P managed to put together a system that makes sense while engaging.
The stagger system is back giving you the required additional layer of just hacking away hoping to deplete the enemies’ HP by smashing one or two buttons (though you can actually do that with an accessory equipped if you chose to do so).
But the stood out was the development system.
A lot of skills are gated by the progress of the game, which means you will need to try out whatever combination of skills you have at that point of the game, and develop your own play style. And the good thing is that, there is no right or wrong ways to play the game, but only the way you want to play the game.
For example, my character ability and skill build were different from a lot of YouTubers and what they focused on. But I could still go through the story and did all the content to my hearts content, as long as I know what I was doing. And a lot of time when something struck gold, like you managed to perform a perfect dodge and counter that magnified your counter’s efficiency, the visual and sound effects certainly rewarded you with some eye candies and audio feast.
It might sound taunting when it comes you ‘you can build your perfect combinations’ as how do you know which one suits you. Don’t worry, you can reclaim the points you used if after trying a certain skill or ability you don’t think they were working for you. You don’t get punished in XVI for trying and experimenting, and I think that’s partly why this battle system worked.
Also, I don’t know whether it was just me. But as a long time XIV player on the console using controllers, I felt extremely family with the layout and purposes of each and every single button. It just felt like a toned-down version of the XIV crossbar but with more specific purpose that you can take advantage of.
I think if the battle system was not so engaging for me, I might drag to finish the game. If I have anything to ask for, is the ability to switch sets completely, as I like to use different skills to tackle mobs as compared to fighting bosses. Needing to change those abilities around just for the boss fights sometimes were inconvenient.
Summary
Overall, FF XVI is still an RPG at the core, but a pretty weak one because of the let down of the story. I might sound very critical, but if you can’t be critical about the story of an RPG, what other genres can you do so?
However, it was still an enjoyable game for me when I shut down my expectation for the story, as other aspects of the game were quite well put together. And without a doubt it was an eye-candy of a game.
I know that a number of players were asking for DLCs for the game. For me, if they are going to do DLCs for the game, I want a Torgal mode (the dog in the game) to go through the story again from his perspective, and give parallel commentary about how stupid some of the human characters are in the game.
Still, although it was quite an investment to buy a PS5 for FF XVI, I felt at least I felt a lot more satisfied for this action as compared to my PS3 for FF XIII experience.
