Final Fantasy XVI - Review (Spoiler-free)

this video is sponsored by Eureka ergonomic the premium destination for anyone looking to furnish their home office living room or gaming setup click the link below or stick around to learn more about their range of top quality products including their Aero standing desk which I just set up in my own home and I love it thanks Eureka all right important disclaimer to start do not worry about what I think about Final Fantasy 16. I'm just a nerd with a microphone and a YouTube account reviews are already out for this everyone loves it it's 90 on open critic 95 of critics recommend it walk into a room of 10 people and nine and a half of them are going to love Final Fantasy 16. so don't fixate on any one review especially this one since I am in the very very small minority here and you should definitely not let my take stop you from experiencing something that there's every chance you'll love okay Final Fantasy 16 it really pains me to say that I don't like this and I don't think it's particularly good it breaks my heart because I'm a massive Final Fantasy fan 8 and 10 are two of my favorite games I really loved seven remake and I really really love Final Fantasy 14. I think it is extraordinary in so many ways and I have so much admiration for the team behind it when Yoshi P took over leadership of creative business unit 3 he and that team made history by resurrecting one of the most doomed in almost ever released and since then he and his team have gone on to deliver Banger after Banger each expansion somehow better than the last except for storm blood but even that was still pretty good so that team creative business unit 3 they're the ones making Final Fantasy 16. so I went into this extremely excited because I was very keen to see this team spin on a Mainline entry and also because I got to play some of it myself back in February when I visited Square Enix in Japan allowing me to see firsthand this new vision for the franchise how is it new well Final Fantasy 16 moves the franchise away from its turn-based roots and turns it into a character action game similar to something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta I know many people were skeptical about that move but I was along for the ride because I trust the team behind it and I enjoyed what I played of it I really did so I was fully on board with this however when I interviewed Yoshi P I asked him why does this franchise need to evolve in this way and become a real-time character action game why couldn't unit remain a turn-based game or a hybrid turn-based game like in Final Fantasy 7 remake yoship essentially said that Final Fantasy is kind of like an aging franchise and that kids these days wouldn't be interested in turn-based combat they play Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto they expect instantaneous response when they press a button he just couldn't see how that generation of Gamers would ever want to play a turn-based game so it was essential that Final Fantasy evolved to become something else back then his answer did not sit right with me I think it ignores the success of the Xenoblade series which is that kind of ATB style metronomic turn-based combat I think it ignores the phenomenal success of the Persona series which is just straight up turn based and most importantly I think it ignores the success of the Final Fantasy VII remake which I think delivered an absolutely brilliant evolution of party-based turn-based combat it was just a Pitch Perfect Fusion of the old and new I really love that in my interview yoship never spoke about Final Fantasy 7 and remake when he talked about the Final Fantasy franchise it was as though it was kind of a blind spot in his view of where the franchise was at at this point and that was putting aside the fact that Final Fantasy XV was pretty much an action game by most metrics I recount all of this now because I feel like in square enix's haste to evolve this franchise to something new they've Left Behind far too much that made Final Fantasy Final Fantasy in trying to reach out to a new audience they've Left Behind the audience that has got the franchise to this point critically I feel like in trying to create something contemporary they've actually created a very middling semi-open World action game that feels dated in almost all of its aspects by its combat and presentation Final Fantasy 16 offers three things and three things only firstly it offers a sprawling Saga that is very centered on one man Clive rossfield there are some party members sort of but nothing compared to the sort of companionship that previous Final Fantasy casts have offered secondly it offers a combat system that is satisfying and accessible but it takes a long time to get going and enemy variety fails to keep combat feeling fresh and challenging and thirdly Final Fantasy 16 offers some Cutting Edge presentation showcasing the power of the PS5 as few games have been able to do but it runs pretty badly in that performance mode even after the day one patch outside of that there's really nothing there are essentially no party members either in combat or narratively there's no itemization except in the most Bare Bones and pointless sense while combat has mechanical depth it has none of the Strategic depth that might leverage things such as Elemental weaknesses or status Magics there are precious few explorable sections of the map and none of them have anything to offer in terms of surprises or Discovery side quests on offer are so dull that they'd Make A Realm Reborn side quest blush there's no humor in the writing there's no triple Triad style Mini-Game there's just not a lot going on outside of the combat and those cutscenes most crucially the pay pacing of this game is diabolically bad delivering these short euphoric highs followed by sometimes hours of inane chatter and busy work anyone who's played through Final Fantasy 14's main scenario quest lines will know exactly what I mean by this that is actually a very important touch Point Final Fantasy 16 feels like a Final Fantasy 14 expansion main scenario questline it is 75 cut scenes and that is not an exaggerated number by the way followed by a little bit of running around and some combat in 14 that worked for so many reasons but not least of all because you knew that when the msq was over there was this gigantic game waiting for you at the other side there is nothing waiting for you at the other side here in 16 except for a new game plus if you don't like this character this story and this combat system then there's just nothing else here for you to enjoy it is such a stark contrast to other Final Fantasy games which seem to offer a smorgasbord of exploration rbj systems party customization quirky side tails and so much more Final Fantasy 16 is very linear very narrow very dour and in my view not a lot of fun [Music] Final Fantasy 16 tells the story of Clive rossfield a first-born princeling who did not inherit the power that was his Birthright he was meant to be a dominant a human being able to summon a powerful Avatar known as an icon Clive's kingdom is protected by the Phoenix icon and had Clive inherited its power it would have given him the strength to guarantee the safety of his realm from the icons of other Realms while he served as king the power though skipped Clive resting instead with his younger brother Joshua rather than be crestfallen Clive accepts his lot rather gladly choosing to instead pledge himself as one of his brother's Shields one day though tragedy befalls house Roz field and Clive finds himself cast from his homeland and on a bloody path of Vengeance along the way Clive is united with Sid the dominant of lightning god ramu and together they put themselves on a collision course with not only the great houses and nations of their continent valestaya but also the legendary icons that protect them and the mother crystals that are the source of each nation's power if there's one thing I really really love about Final Fantasy 16 it's this world ballastia is such a fascinating location truly one of the best ever Final Fantasy worlds in my view it is so deeply political in its construction you have this land mass divided into kingdoms each of them ruled by a different faction with their own architecture faiths belief systems and their own unique relationship to the dominance and icons that protect them dominance are themselves fascinating they are vessels for these all-powerful deities and you might imagine that that gives them license to rule or at least affords them a revered place in society but the life of a dominant is often one of servitude either willingly or reluctantly and some cultures go as far as to enslave their dominance believing them to be unclean aberrations then there's the icons themselves each of them pulled from the Final Fantasy summons that many of us would know and love and each of them being so singularly powerful that they serve as a form of mutually assured destruction sure you could summon your icon and March it into the enemy Capital but the enemy would do the same and where would that leave you your Capital raised to the ground the very Earth beneath the torn asunder score laws of innocent lives lost icons are to vallisthia what nuclear weapons are to our world and their usage is less about their capabilities or efficiency and more about the incalculable cost of using them the fire that sets this world to boil though are the mother crystals is a massive formation some of them as large as mountains and they provide the world with The Ether needed to power the various Magics on which valistheus citizens rely lately though the mother crystals appear to be failing and as a result a blight has befallen vast ways of the land shrinking kingdoms and forcing their leaders into survival mode they look at their receding borders and know that their foes are doing the same not wanting to lose the initiative in the coming battle for resources and territory this puts tensions at an all-time high a powder keg awaiting just the right spark what a great setup huh Isn't that cool I think that's very cool but it's also quite dry in a way that I think quite a few people may not love this is a deeply political game not in a partisan sense but in its focus and themes its chapters will regularly play out in King's chords intense on the front lines of a battlefield pouring over Maps looking at troop movements and formations the cast of this Saga are kings and queens and courtesans and economic advisers the game has an entire menu system set up to regularly explain the state of Valencia's Nations the locations of their armies their political goals and their recent movements it's almost Grand strategy-esque at times and if you're down for Machiavellian machinations and statecraft and Palace Intrigue and Napoleonic style Continental Warfare then you're gonna love this part of Final Fantasy 16 but if your eyes glaze over at the mere mission of this stuff Final Fantasy 16 is going to be a very tough game to get to I can promise you that for me though I liked it it's very similar to Final Fantasy 14 another very political game that doesn't talk down to its audience and that trust that they'll find verbal jousting just as thrilling as actual jousting the Final Fantasy 14 like other Final Fantasy games isn't just its politics it's also its Unforgettable cast of characters and this is one part of Final Fantasy 16 that really really fails to deliver the party has always been a central part of the Final Fantasy experience the Fireside Chats are sidebar conversations the side quests to finish someone else's unfinished business party members were often more important than the main characters as Final Fantasy leads were often Gruff non-communicative edgy boys or literally silent in the case of Final Fantasy 14. we know that things were going to be slightly different here in 16 because Clive essentially fights alone we never control other party members in combat so already that reduces the centrality of the party what I didn't expect was that the absence of party members would carry over to the narrative side of the game as well to be clear Clive does have some people around him who might in a loose sense be called a party only one or two of them are what we might actually refer to as party members but they come and go a lot and one of them really doesn't offer much the other people around Clive are kind of just Hangers On they seem to do busy work like Scout ahead or stay in the workshop building things there was one moment in the game where it was rallying everyone for the next big push and it was meant to be this very emotional scene that creates this feeling of camaraderie between everyone and in any other Final Fantasy game that scene would be thick with like eight to ten people each of them these elaborately designed iconic party members with Rich backstories and so much more to share as you Journey force with them here this scene had one actual party member and like three Hangers On and the town vendor for real they roped the vendor in to pad this scene out because the cast of characters is just so thin for what it's worth Clive absolutely delivers he's not only the hottest protagonist the series has ever seen Squall excluded of course but I also think he's the best voiced Ben Starr gives an absolutely phenomenal performance in this role every single syllable Pitch Perfect his portrayal of Clive paints him heroic and humble ferocious yet tender and above all deeply human it is a good thing that Ben star is as talented as he is because if he had faulted then this entire game would have been doomed there's a limit to what star can do here given how little other characters in The Game Challenge Clive or eek things out of him your party members in a Final Fantasy game were often there to bring out some new aspect of the main character you'd have a different relationship with each member of your party some of them being your love interest your arch nemesis turned convenient Ally your Mentor a court jester Etc Clive does not have those strong characters around him to push and pull him into different modes and as such Clive feels as dour and as one note as the rest of the game does in the intro I talked about how much this game leaves behind the Final Fantasy Legacy and this party thing is one of the biggest deal breakers for me I could deal with Clive being the only controllable character in combat though to be honest that is pretty disappointing but for Clive to not be surrounded by Deep interesting Companions and is a massive oversight and it's one of the many things that makes this feel a lot less Final Fantasy than any Mainline entry I've played so that's the stage set a continent at War the icons each are loaded done the mother crystals pushing armies towards one another and at the center of it all Clive and his quest for vengeance how then does all of this play out or more specifically how does it play well I hope you like cut scenes [Music] Final Fantasy 16 will run you at least around 40 hours capping out at around 70 hours for completionists so what are you doing in that 40 to 70 hours well if you're focusing on the main story quest line doing the odd bit of side content here or there you should know that approximately 75 of this game is cut scenes that is not an exaggerated number at all by the way it is actually 75 of the time that you put down the controller and you just watch the show unfold for many that is going to be a deal breaker they're going to be like come on bro let me play the game and I think that's a perfectly valid response because most of us would probably rather be playing a game than you know sitting there watching drawn out cutscenes having said that it's actually not a deal breaker for me as I mentioned earlier Final Fantasy 14's msq is like 90 cut scenes and I'm okay with it for a lot of different reasons too numerous to fully recount here Metal Gear games some of my favorite games and they certainly don't shy away from lengthy cutscenes particularly for Xenoblade games particularly Xenoblade 3 that has some seriously long but seriously awesome cutscenes Final Fantasy 7 remake plenty of cutscenes there too most of them involve going on dates with Tifa not gonna lie had absolutely no problem with those the point I'm trying to make here is that heavy Reliance on cutscenes isn't inherently a bad thing it always depends on how much those cutscenes deliver and how they feel when set against the total experience that the game is offering for me personally Final Fantasy 16's use of cutscenes is laborious indulgent and extremely outdated this game has no interest in trying to maintain the illusion of playability it just surrenders itself to this lopsided seesaw where you push through these brief bursts of gameplay to be treated to an admittedly very exciting cutscene after that though you're pushed into this side quest style busy work that Delights in drawn out exchanges and labored Exposition without the charm of interesting characters or scenarios to make it endurable I know that's a really damning assessment but the lopsided seesaw thing is so core to this experience and you almost start to resent the high points because you know just how low things are going to get after that the be able to fully explain that point though I think I first need to explain how Final Fantasy 16 is structured so the first part of the game is essentially the demo that you've probably played it's a flashback sequence strictly linear and frankly a very good introduction to the game since it does a fantastic job of establishing the world the main characters and Clive's motivation in his quest for vengeance after that the game opens up quite a bit and there's a base of operations called the Hideaway and it's here you'll be able to pick up side quests visit the vendor and the blacksmith and plan your next move when you've decided where you want to go you can open up the world map and a number of nodes appear some of these nodes will be for semi-open world maps where you can complete Main and side quests and the other nodes will be for your Marquee main mission locations these are strictly linear environments and feel very similar to the levels you'd find in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta essentially a set of combat Arenas connected by some corridors you push through fighting waves of enemies culminating in a boss or two at the end these Marquee main missions are the high point of the game but even then I still struggle with them they are meant to be these gripping showdowns between hero and villain they're meant to bring matters to a bloody head they're meant to serve as the precursor to the icon battles where your deities will duel to the death despite all of that these missions are always just running through some corridors killing some low-level bad guys and then waiting for the cutscenes to advance the story there's no scenario design in any of these missions no variation that makes one feel different from another swap out the architecture and Sky boxes and these missions all feel functionally the same but they do culminate in these epic epic showdowns and believe me when I tell you that you are not ready for just how epic these icon battles are they are absolutely incredible to behold incredible anyone who has played Final Fantasy 14 will know how big this team can go when it comes to spectacle this is an entirely new level for this team and when you see these battles they will absolutely blow your mind you you genuinely have not seen anything like this before as impressive as all these Showdown moments are they are also the least playable they're reliant on a simplified combat model that offers no Challenge and they also include these qtes that have these absurdly long input times to the point where you wonder why they included them at all these are really amazing battles to look at but their beauty is skin deep and it's disappointing that the biggest cinematic and emotional climaxes that Final Fantasy 16 has to offer are also its cheapest Thrills what makes it worse is that when these massive showdowns happen and these cataclysmic events unfold the Fade to Black prestiges a good two to three hours of you kind of just around doing some main story quests that feel like side quest busy work that's the other side of the Seesaw dropping you into the semi-open world to do work that is absolutely beneath the man of Clive's considerable abilities uh local pickpockets are on the prowl someone better track them down by asking lots of questions in town oh some Bandits are raiding a village better go stop them one of the working ladies from the brothel is missing could you go and ask like four people what's up with that and then report back I kid you not at one point I just felt a mighty icon in what was one of the most mind-blowing boss showdowns I've ever seen in my life and then immediately after that like literally five minutes after that I was being tasked by by the town engineer to go and collect lumps of dirt so I was woken by this riverbed collecting dirt after just having vanquished a God I know what you're thinking you're thinking come on man is this your first RPG this is how these games go it can't all be 300 miles an hour you gotta have some 60 zones and that's true I agree there is a way to do that and I promise you Final Fantasy 16 does not get it right these lows are so low and so boring that I can see scores of people just being unable to push through them these swings between high and low are so vast that it feels like you're playing two totally different video games one of them this Relentless Breakneck AAA action Blockbuster and the other an old school fetch Quest based MMORPG it speaks to a broader issue with Quest design the main missions are linear combat gauntlets and the side missions are yeah they're basically just fetch quests man they're really really bad go here and deliver these packages to these three people go and collect some scorpion Parts I need some wax for my boat so go get it from this flower the story setup is dull what you are doing is dull and the rewards are effectively non-existent since there's basically no itemization and progression in this game it's some of the worst side quest design I've seen in a long time in the absence of meaningful Rewards or interesting scenario design I'm all but certain that side quests exists primarily as a narrative Exposition tool they house these little side stories that are meant to broaden out the world and that's a perfectly Noble goal the problem is that you're already spending so much time in cutscenes in the main quest listening to Exposition and to have to sit through even more cutscenes for crappy side quests to hear about how you know someone needs some new Pepper for their new recipe it's just like oh God it's exhausting it's all connected to one of the key failures of Final Fantasy 16 and one of the things that makes it feel so dated it does not know how to tell its story through gameplay in this previous console generation game makers have found a way to better blend storytelling and gameplay be it through companions or environmental storytelling or scenario design or whatever God of War Spider-Man cyberpunk Star Wars Jedi Survivor Resident Evil 4 remake these are just some recent examples of games that have cutscenes they're also able to advance their stories while the game remains playable Final Fantasy 16 does not do that when your controller is in hand the story stands still and it will only recommense when the next cut scene starts rolling the caveat to all of this is what I said at the start of this block cutscenes are not in and of themselves bad and heavy Reliance on them is not in and of itself bad this year I played and loved like a dragon ishin that comment about the story standing still when the controller is in hand I think you could say the same thing of ishin and most Yakuza games really the difference though was I was really into ishin's story and it had a brilliant cast of characters and when those cut scenes ended there was this really broad game waiting for you full of funny interesting side quests mini-games progression systems worth engaging in an incredible City to explore brimming with things to pique your curiosity Final Fantasy 16 has none of that especially when it comes to exploration and that's the last thing that I want to touch on in this block Barn of sc16 does have some semi-open World areas there are essentially two of them for the first 30 or so hours of the game there's a big green field and then many hours later there's a big desert each of these spaces are analogous to the spaces you'd find in an old school MMO like you wouldn't find spaces like this in modern day World of Warcraft for example these spaces here are big they are flat they are absent any explorable landmarks they are peppered with only a very small handful of enemies just standing out in the open waiting for you to come and kill them these spaces offer nothing in terms of exploration surprise dungeons worthy loot chance encounters with NPCs who may be able to join your party or make themselves felt in some meaningful ways throughout your journey there is just nothing out there man absolutely nothing you get chocobos in this game and it's like why you don't you don't need them their presence might make sense in the context of bigger spaces but these maps are so small they hint that you might want to spend more time in these spaces exploring them but you absolutely do not the only reason to venture out into them is to follow the side quest marker so you can kill the three fire bombs so that the water in the local baths isn't so hot anymore thank you very much for your service here's 100 Gill and zero XP again think about how much level and World design has evolved over the last console generation Final Fantasy 16 semi-open World spaces feel like you're traveling back in time like 20 years you've got this really linear game in the main missions essentially Devil May Cry style gameplay but you're just being shuttled from combat Arena to combat Arena the semi-open World areas where the opportunity for square to do something to do anything to mix things up to offer a different pattern of play that felt distinct from those main missions or perhaps recreate at least a little of some of what you felt when you flew your Airship around the Overworld map back in the day again coming back to my intro I talked about how much this new Final Fantasy X experience leaves behind in its pursuit of the new hotness Final Fantasy games haven't always got an exploration right but it's always been a core tenet of the series the world was meant to be bigger than you it was meant to be full of surprising things to discover Final Fantasy 16's World valstia it feels like you could fit it in a thimble and there isn't a square inch of it worth dismounting to see combined with the Poor Side Quests the uneven pacing of the main quest the repetitiveness of the core Mission design and the over-reliance on cutscenes Final Fantasy 16 is a real slog and as good as its combat is it's not nearly good enough to save it [Music] so by now we all know that one of capcom's best combat designers ryota Suzuki was poached by Square Enix to lead the combat design here in Final Fantasy 16 he's most known for his work on Devil May Cry but he also worked on Dragon's Dogma and even Marvel vs Capcom 2 still the greatest soundtrack in the history of video games the goal for having the likes of Suzuki on board was to deliver a cutting-edge character action experience but one that was accessible to newcomers who perhaps haven't played this type of game before I think Suzuki and his team were largely successful I think this is a good combat system but I also think it lacks the mechanical depth of dedicated character action games and I think it lacks the Strategic depth that was often the staple of more RPG based combat systems I think it's also held back by the game's overall structure and length by the time between new ability unlocks can be upwards of five to eight hours depending on how you play so mechanically and stylistically Final Fantasy 16's combat really nails that approachability angle it is masterfully designed to welcome in new players and get them feeling like badasses really fast the basic combo animations look sweet the Dodge windows are generous the which time slowdown is very slow and the activatable abilities are all very potent and they just look cool big elaborately animated moves with custom camera work that slow down and frame the action it never stops being super satisfying to execute some of the bigger Haymakers because the sights the sounds and the feedback are all totally on point those abilities are the Bedrock of combat there's no swappable weapons there's no variation to your basic melee or ranged attacks there are just these abilities you can equip up to six of them as well as three utility abilities stuff like a long Dash or a grapple or an enhanced Parry etc those six damaging abilities don't require any resource build they're just on timers and since basic attacks do so little damage combat is ultimately focused on pushing out as many of those abilities as possible cycling through the six of them as soon as they're off cooldown so I want to be clear that there's plenty of expression possible in this combat system if you work to unearth it what I mean by that is is there are lots of abilities that have very singular use cases that can add depth to combat but they're also less efficient than other ability options a good example is a move that dispels projectiles and allows you to counter after that that's really cool but there are very few enemies in the game Who fling projectiles at you and even when they do they don't do a lot of damage so you can equip that ability and stand back waiting for enemies to shoot something at you or you can just equip another ability that does more damage more regularly in a larger area and is less situational that's fine though because character action games are meant to have a range of different abilities that are just there to be used it's not about efficiency it's about expression and providing a skill ceiling that rewards time invested practice and ultimately Mastery those looking for that sky-high skill ceiling you won't find it here Final Fantasy 16's combat is so leveraged into its abilities that it foregoes things like directional inputs weapon swapping or infinite air juggle combos or whatever sensibility timers are really short about 80 10 of combat is dumping those abilities as soon as they're off cooldown and there really isn't much you can do outside of what those abilities let you do personally I found combat to be really fun and flashy but I also found it to be quite repetitive and I really longed for a combat model that gave me more agency outside of just those equipped abilities I also found it very easy there's only one difficulty option on your first playthrough there is an option to select story mode but this is actually the same difficulty as the normal mode all this does is equip some accessories that make combat easier they'll automatically do combos for you or automatically Dodge that sort of thing as such in my 50 hour playthrough I only died a handful of times and that was usually only because I got caught in an ability that did way more damage than I was expecting it to I'm not particularly good at these sorts of games by the way but I still found this very easy but I think it would have been nice if there was an option to play through on a higher difficulty on my first playthrough sadly that is locked behind New Game Plus and I'm not really up for that part of the reason that this game is so easy is enemy design 95 of the enemies you find here are basically punching bags they don't really do anything they're just pinatas kind of hanging out ready to get beat on those enemies are important Staples of character action games I get that 100 but most character action games are like 10 to 15 hours long and this one's like 50 so that really changes what it's like to continue to fight those pinata style enemies for 50 hours there are a handful of elite enemies who have significantly more HP and do have some distinct combat capabilities but there's not really that many of them and it's a bummer because they're actually really great to fight I'm told there's a lot more of those enemies in New Game Plus and again I would have liked to have seen that option playable from the start because combat is really fun and really interesting when you're fighting those guys when you're not it feels pretty mindless and pretty samey so that's what combat is but my mind is often drawn to what combat could have been the most obvious thing is the absence of a party you only control Clive here you fight alongside various a AI controlled party members at different points but you cannot control or direct them in any way you might say well this is a character action game so it kind of makes sense that you control only one character because that one character is meant to be possessed of so many capabilities that they alone should be enough but it's important to recognize that Clive himself is not possessed over anything other than a sword and a Dodge everything else he gets he gets from the icons that he equips and the abilities that flow from them therefore you could have had a situation where party members were also able to equip these icons in the same way Clive can and you would have had a party-based system that better leverage this ability Focus combat system there are over three dozen abilities on the ability map but Clive can only equip six of them at a time there's so much left on the table and had your party members been able to be kitted out the same way Clive can I really believe this would have greatly enhanced the depth breadth and replayability of combat while also reconnecting to that party-based combat thing has historically been so Central to the Final Fantasy franchise the other thing that's missing is any sort of strategic angle Final Fantasy games have always reveled in their Elemental Magics with enemies having certain weaknesses to some being resistant to others there was white healing magic destructive black magic harnessing the magic of enemies through Blue Magic there was Buffs and debuffs there was all sorts of stuff and Final Fantasy 16 has absolutely none of that that's not a huge deal but at the same time wouldn't it have been cool if you had to respect at the start of a boss because you knew that boss was weak to Fire magic maybe it would have encouraged you to use some of those abilities you wouldn't otherwise use push you to use those less efficient abilities because they're more efficient in the context of this boss's Elemental weaknesses it's also just kind of lame to be beating on a fire bomb with Fire magic in any other Final Fantasy game that will be healing the fire bomb but here it just makes no difference at all Final Fantasy 16's combat feels even less strategic when we look at the supporting progression and itemization systems and that doesn't take very long because there aren't any in in terms of progression you level up which gives you some raw stats you can't allocate those stats in any way you get some ability points which you can use to unlock new abilities and upgrading them further allows you to equip them even when you're not using the aligned icon so for example I can have removed abilities equipped even if I don't have remove himself equipped that's it that's really all you get in terms of progression and customization think of the sphere grid of 10 or the job system of 14 or 12 the material system of seven The Junction system of eight none of that is here itemization man this one really sucks so you have three gear slots and three accessory slots if you're using any of the story mode accessories then they actually take up those three slots so you could potentially have zero accessory slots available to you the other accessories you get are mainly to reduce the cooldown timers on your abilities or increase their damage by like 10 or whatever it's all pretty enough and I actually think reducing cooldown timers on abilities is a bad thing because because it makes your combat rotation feel even more crowded than it already is you have slots for a belt and some wrist guards they have some defense and HP on them the HP by the way it represents approximately one percent of your HP pool like I'll have 2 000 HP and I'll be wearing a belt that gives me 20 hp so you know we're dealing with items that buff our stats by one percent swords uh man what a bummer when you beat major bosses you get to craft these sick looking swords and you imagine that they might have some Elemental alignment such that if you're using the remove inspired lightning sword that your lightning attacks will deal more damage or add some awesome modifiers like chain lightning to your basic attacks there's nothing like that the new saw you get is like plus five damage versus the previous sword that is literally it I'm not exaggerating it is just that I know previous Final Fantasy games have had similarly basic itemization but they've also had a raft of other RPG customization systems that 16 doesn't have plus it just feels like Clive's choice of Swords should be more interesting than it is given this combat model you will absolutely feel the same thing when you play it for yourself this poor itemization doesn't just limit combat it also has flow on impacts for side quests and exploration side quests were already pretty dull but they're totally unrewarding since there's no gear system to funnel these reward materials into I run around collecting hundreds of sharp teeth or leather whatevers and I have no use for any of them because there's nothing to craft and even if there was all it would give me is like an additional one percent HP so we got a character action game in Final Fantasy 16 but think about what was traded away in exchange no party members no Elemental weaknesses no Buffs or debuffs no meaningful progression no itemization no RPG in a Final Fantasy game and this is a critical point to understand Final Fantasy 16 is not an RPG it is a straight up action game and you may say well yeah we always knew it would be but did we see like I knew that this would have character action combat but I never imagined for a moment that all of the supporting RPG systems would be ripped out of one of the most iconic RPG franchises of all time you're going to tell me that that's an upgrade I don't think it is I think it sucks I've spoken a lot about how much Final Fantasy 16 ignores this franchise's Legacy I could probably deal with a lot of that but taken the RPG out of a Mainline Final Fantasy game that is just too much for me [Music] [Applause] [Music] at the top I said the Final Fantasy 16 offered three things Clive combat and Cutting Edge presentation the presentation is a really big deal and I don't want to gloss over it this is a really really beautiful looking game artistically you just want to drink it all in the cityscape locations you visit the Cinematic in engine cutscenes the framing of this action it is really remarkable to behold that is something that has always been a Hallmark of Final Fantasy games Cutting Edge presentation and in this aspect Final Fantasy 16 is 100 faithful to that Legacy the load times are a real standout actually there are basically no load times when playing this game that's impressive when it involves selecting a node on the map and then you're there like two seconds later but it's more impressive in the way it supports the transition between combat and cinematics the game is constantly moving between the two so quickly and the only way you can tell is that the playable sections have less graphical Fidelity than the cutscenes but not by a lot it always looks great no matter what it's doing performances another matter entire and sadly this is one area where Final Fantasy 16 does disappoint the game offers two modes 4K Fidelity at 30 FPS as well as a performance mode with scaling resolution targeting 60 FPS I've played this both pre and post the day one performance patch and I got to tell you that patch did absolutely nothing the performance mode is very Rocky particularly during exploration during combat it actually seems fine but when you're walking through the more linear main mission environments the frame rate can really chug down it's an observation that digital Foundry have documented in their coverage as well so if you want more detail on that be sure to check out their video bottom line though it is definitely not a deal breaker and walking away from Final Fantasy 16 you're more likely to remember its incredible locations and spectacle than you are its frame rate stutters foreign [Music] so you might notice that I titled this video review but this sounds like a I do not recommend so what's up with that I mean the truth is I don't really recommend this but I know that if I put out a video with the title people are gonna accuse me of clickbait or being contrarian for the sake of views all that stuff all that stuff that I'm very used to right now but I'm particularly sensitive to it here because I know how much this series means to people and I don't like making videos where I'm like hey you know that thing that you really like and you're really excited about it's actually not very good I I genuinely hate making those types of videos that is why I come back to that thing that I said at the start don't worry about what I or anyone else thinks if Final Fantasy means something to you and you're excited for this then you should buy it and play it or at least seek out a bunch of other reviews from people you trust there is every chance that you're gonna love this do not let my take rob you of that for me personally though I do not like this I really did not I found myself disappointed by almost every aspect of it individually outside of its combat I think its components are under baked or just missing think of how much more interesting the side quest design could have been the semi-open world design the cast of characters the progression and itemization systems or even just the core Mission design and pacing there's no innovation across any of those core elements and many of those elements can't even know the fundamentals when taken in aggregate I think the result is a game that feels really dated modern cinematic story driven action games have made great strides in fusing well-designed Dynamic storytelling exploration and character progression Final Fantasy 16 reflects none of that modernity combat Arenas and its cutscenes and that's it Final Fantasy games have always strived to be at The Cutting Edge of game design they haven't always been successful but they've tried Final Fantasy 16 reaches for nothing other than its new character action combat and its presentation I'm sure more than a few people are going to be like dude you're just pissed off that this franchise has evolved whereas you just want it to stay the same look Final Fantasy games have always been about Evolution think about how bold it was to build these elaborate worlds and then toss them aside in each new entry think about the total rebuilding of the combat progression itemization and RPG systems in each new game think about how fearlessly the series has moved from steampunk sci-fi to high fantasy and Back Again multiple times now help two of the mainline Final Fantasy entries are MMORPGs this Series has always evolved and I've always loved it for those Evolutions even when some of those were clumsy and didn't pay off but in each of those Mainline entries was a number of through lines that grounded the series and made them feel connected to one another even when they were vastly different and it wasn't just oh there's a character named Sid and some crystals it was more foundational elements a party of companions a big world to explore full of things to discover combat that rewarded strategic thinking and preparation and a set of RPG systems that let you shape your character Final Fantasy 16 doesn't have any of that stuff and so I don't feel like this is an evolution and I actually feel like this is a massive regression too many things that make Final Fantasy unique have been stripped out here and very little has been put in to replace them I asked myself what if this was the future of the Final Fantasy franchise well I think that would be a real shame because we will have lost one of the most iconic distinctive RPG franchises in the history of video games and in its place we got an action game with some flashy combat and some cutscenes but not much else [Music] are you working from home these days and need to 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Channel: Skill Up

Views: 615,227

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, Final Fantasy XVI, final fantasy xvi trailer, final fantasy xvi gameplay, Final Fantasy 16, final fantasy XVI reaction, final fantasy XVI impressions, final fantasy XVI review, final fantasy 16 impressions, final fantasy XVI hands on, Yoshi-P, interview, JRPG, Square Enix, Creative Business Unit 3, Final Fantasy XVI Eikons, Eikons, PS5, Final Fantasy XVI clive, final fantasy 16 gameplay, final fantasy 16 review, final fantasy 16 hands on

Id: PzfUardkloY

Length: 43min 25sec (2605 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023