Final Fantasy XVI

Here it is! A thread dedicated specifically to Final Fantasy XVI so people can talk about spoilers, how much they love it, how much they hate it, or speculate on how much commercial success it's having. A place to post cool screenshots and talk about your favourite characters, etc.

Just please keep spoilers in spoiler tags. It's a very narrative-heavy game, so be courteous!
Discuss!

I'm excited to play it when I purchase a PS5.

I’m not far into the game probably 2hrs (Zelda still my priority) but it’s pretty damn cool. Story is active and engaging and the combat system is WAY better then 15.

Edit: The "mature" aspects of this game are killing my ability to play. I have 4 kids 10 and under, and curse words and unnessary violence are really making this game hard to play.

It's garbage and a depressing sign for the future of Final Fantasy, even most people who say they like it don't want another one like this.

It's not a FF game, it's a interactive movie made by Netflix with button mashing scenes. The only "FF" themes in it were probably forced upon them by SE cause he said he didn't want moogles and stuff in it.

All the avatars that have been awe inspiring gods in other games are now pacific rim Kaiju and these lameass characters TrAnSfOrM into them now. Bahamut and Odin are some lame dudes now? disgusting lame nonsense. He should of just put captain america in it too and the moogle transforms into him or something like that, coz thats cool right? There is no open world to speak of, the side quests are awful, there is no team play and there is next to no replay value. It's also really obvious they put torgal in late in the project, coz dogoo sales!

They put action combat (which you can experience 20% of the game) and the rest of boring cut-scenes you stare at. It's ok to have a boring cut scene heavy game based on literally Game of Thrones (by his own admission in an interview and after it's not popular anymore, lol), but if you match that with action combat you're just making the game even more boring by the massive shift in tempo.

Pacing? what is that?

Pre-orders were terrible, initial sales were terrible (they were almost all estimated purchases from retailers and are stuck on the shelves, which means there won't be any more "sales numbers" from the official twitter account cause they haven't even sold what is out there yet) and the 2nd week sales have had massive drops in Japan and many other places.

Also for people who think $70 x whatever is good, Sony takes 30% and the retailer takes 20-30% too so they didn't get $70 and this game cost a lot of money to make. Thank god Sony was stupid enough to give them money for the exclusive. From a company that is never happy with any sales numbers, this selling worse than ff7r and ff15 is not going to make anyone happy.

The ending is utter terrible disgraceful garbage too, slap in the face for anyone that got to it.

The effects are so over the top you can barely see what's going on or react to anything, the bosses are all hp sponges, the easy play rings are stupid, the voice acting is terrible but maybe I'm biased cause I live in the UK (Cid voice actor does not match the face model btw). Elden Ring had good uk voice actors.

It's also depressing and dowdy to play, and the slavery messaging is tediously over the top. Literally every npc in the game is mean to you when you talk to them cause you're a branded, who wants to play this after work?

Most streamers stopped playing it becasue it's boring.

Gonna be the worst selling FF game in Japan the way it's going, he thinks this has legs but in reality a snake has better legs than this game.

4/10 absolute shambles

Have you every seen someone bite on the bait so hard?

I’m a little over a third of the way through and it has been quite an enjoyable ride so far.

If XII reminded people of an “offline XI” then XVI reminds me of an “offline XIV” as you can feel the design philosophy of CBU3 in the main story and side quest layouts. It feels very familiar for me.

The story has been interesting and has done a good job of segregating the normals from the Branded. The disdain that some NPCs show towards them is truly scary and I felt really unwelcome in some places. Side quests also show the brutality that they are treated with.

I’ve seen people say that gearing is mostly pointless, which seems to be true. I can’t really tell if Clive is getting stronger as my parameters increase each level, but I do notice the upgrades and masteries for the Eikon abilities when I purchase them so I guess that’s a wash. It feels so good to burn through enemies with the Eikon powers.

It’s not necessarily difficult, especially if you use the noobie rings that make the combos effortless. I took them off immediately, but if you’re just playing for the story I suppose they’ll do. Party members seem even more useless than Kingdom Hearts ones, but I can’t help but love having Torgal around. Jill on the other hand sometimes uses ice magic I guess? It’s no Zettaflare and she doesn’t find ingredients on the side of the road.

Voice acting is okay. I agree that Cid’s voice does not quite match his appearance, but I grew to like it as he kept showing up.

Music wise, Soken’s scores continue to impress. He continues to orchestrate banger after banger, especially battle themes. The man is good at his job. I’ll probably pick up the OST when it releases on iTunes.

For me, this game had to make up for the disappointment that was XV and thus far I have no regrets in picking up and sinking hours into it. If you’re on the fence, try out the demo (if it’s still available?). I’m not sure where it’ll land in my personal rankings for the series, which is currently topped by X, XI, XII and XIV in no particular order.

Side note: I wish the eikon pins that were bundled with the collector edition were available separately as I’d totally buy them as a standalone set. Didn’t want the other junk in the CE or else I woulda picked it up.

I am playing through Final Fantasy difficulty right now. I see why they didn't unlock it from the start. The combat system really gets going when you aren't just murdering everything with one or two abilities. Sidequest fatigue gets real but the wrap-ups for each storyline pays off in the end. I find it far more enjoyable than pretty much every Final Fantasy release since 12. I'll platinum this and go back to Zelda or Fire Emblem.

Im probably gonna get it when it gets of PC, and judging by the public sales... It gonna be as soon as their exclusivity with Sony ends. I dont care how many people cope about it calling the 3M a incredible success, sadly it is not, not for Final Fantasy game and a game with this budget. Now it might not be because of the game itself but because they got greedy (SE, greedy? no....) and accept an exclusivity deal for the PS5. Most people will just wait, like me. Some of the hype that i have seen is just Yoshi-P/FFXIV fans that are hyping it to be the GOTY and the best game ever made. But honestly those users would have been slapping a 10/10 even if the product would be a mess.

Now, from I have seen from the game: I REALLY like the setting. From the reviews I have seen it might be the perfect story for me, and Im picking it mainly because of it. Gameplay wise... man... If it weren't because it is a Final Fantasy game and the story looks good, I would totally skip it or just getting when it is on sale and after I get Devil May Cry first. I really dont like this new direction, at least for the mainline Final Fantasy. Weren't the "Stranger of paradise" side titles supposed to be the ones that are action based?

Im divided, I dont want it to flop, but I also dont want to be the main way of how Final Fantasy Games are handled in the future. Im on my first play through of FF12 and realize that SE discovered the perfect way to evolve the RPG system and just never do anything with it. I swear if FF16 would have been like FF12 I would run to get the PS5. Sadly Im not the target audience anymore.

I am also looking forward to playing it, hopefully it is as good as XV was! And it sure seems that way from the little I've seen so far (avoiding as much as possible so I can enjoy it myself). I am super disappointed that they aren't releasing the XVI PS5 in the states however. Definitely racism involved in that decision

I beat it on my week off, and it was overall very good.

The sidequests are the only thing that make it drag somewhat (well, that and the slow, cinematic start), but you can speed them up by pressing X to skip through the spoken dialogue if you read faster than they speak, or don't care and just want the rewards.

Some VAs from XIV returned for it. I'm pretty sure the NPC Eloise is voiced by Lyse, and it suits her.

Cid really made the game, very charming and funny character.

Jill is fairly serious, though a bit quiet. She had her own backstory and revenge quest too, though. And I'm convinced the last sidequest revolving around her and Clive's relationship is 100% some dev's nod to Lufia and the Priphea flowers. It was also nice to see characters fully comfortable in their romantic relationship, that came into full bloom over the course of the game.

The game starts off fairly edgy and bloody, and it doesn't shy away from that as it progresses, but it mostly winds up being about hope, free will, identity, life purpose, and camaraderie.

Mid is ***' hawt. Dear God in Heaven.

Villains were kind of weak though, even though they were present in the story quite often.

The Hunts Board function basically as slayer type quests, go kill monster instantly get reward. Monster is harder to kill than most stuff, especially if engaged before it actually appears as a Notorious Mark on the hunt board (yay NMs!).

I think the saddest thing about XVI is that it had even more potential. Some of its happenings were so large in scale in very cool ways I would've loved to see more. There's a sailing sequence that I kind of wanted to go on forever heh

finished it 2nd time 3 days ago, this time paying extra attention to the plot and dialogue.

The good:
1. Great storytelling. Not the best in an FF title, but in the top 50%.
2. Great cinematics
3. great voice acting (Garuda's fits were a bit over the top and ultima)
4. great immersion

The bad:
1. Woke politics in my FF.
2. Repetitive combat, especially in eikon mode
3. Not open world
4. The plot twists can be seen from a hundred miles
5. Depth of characters besides Clive were pretty lacking. While its good story telling, there's just way too much taken/borrowed from GoT
6. Ultima's monologues dragged on and on and on sometimes. Saying the same thing over and over again. Several failed attempts at creating cliffhangers and suspense. (This becomes exceptionally prominent when you play the game a second time)
7. A good game, but not really an FF main title. Felt more like an upgraded Dirge of Cerberus or FF spinoff.
8. Once upon a time FF games revolved around party battle mechanics. I think this new direction to be single-character-based is a loss and something that takes away from a unique niche that is still highly desired by many.

the neutral:
1. Soundtrack - at times it's exceptional. At other times it's bland
2. The graphics - visually beautiful to look at, physics, animations and movements clunky. Feels like they limited the investment in textures and lighting in 75% of the content. Eikon battles excluded. but a lot of the normal, out of battle movement was an eye sore. felt like watching wallace and gromit sometimes.
3. Cid - great voice actor, but too many inconsistencies in his character development. I guess that makes him believable to some. Maybe I'm just too old. Auron still wins

1. ??? where?

2. True, but plenty of ways to mix up most of the combat, at least mid-late game and on NG+

3. Not a bad thing. Open World != Automatically Good

4. XVI doesn't actually have any twists. It follows the storytelling route of, "Obvious to the audience, not obvious to the cast." If you felt like there was a twist in XVI, ever, then you weren't paying attention, though I suppose twists are what people expect in most all storytelling ever since M. Night popularized them.

5. Haven't seen GoT, but there's no midgets, trials by combat, blonde dragon women, or anything like that. I guess Clive and Joshua are incest babies though since their parents are cousins? I felt like most of XVI's characters were fleshed out fairly well, and they all get multiple codex/lore entries too. Like what makes Clive more fleshed out than Jill? The fact that we got to see him tell every sidequest NPC roughly the same thing, every time? Idk. I think we got as much info on Jill as we did on Clive, other than the specifics about who her parents were (other characters too, mind, just not everyone).

6. Ehh, compared to the length of some of the sidequest exposition, I never felt like Ultima overstayed his welcome on screen. His monologues were fairly boring imo, but never overly long.

7. That's not really reflective of what's in the game? That's just like, your opinion, man.

8. Controlling a whole party in real time action would more or less reduce each party member to being like the Eikon abilities anyway. Could be cool and fun, but would be rather limited in scope. Might have been cool if we'd gotten more people in our party, and if we used their Eikon abilities, it caused them to go hard on the attack rather than just attacking here or there.

https://screenrant.com/ff16-clive-jon-snow-similarities-game-thrones/

16 is straight up plagiarism of GoT at an Orville level (actually it's way worse looking at that video above), and he admitted it in an interview because he thinks aping popular things is the way to make games. He literally told his core developers to buy the box set of GoT and base the game on that and then told a journalist that in an interview cause he thought that would help him sell more copies. God knows what his next game will be "based" on, probably walking dead, fortnite or call of dut..

The biggest problem with Square Enix and Naoki Yoshida is they have had success doing something once by pandering to a western audience (14), and now think the have found some master blueprint to repeating financial success. When in reality it was lighting in a bottle and cannot be so easily repeated in the same way. He has such an inflated ego now that he obviously demanded to be allowed to make 16 cause he thinks he is some master game developer, when what he should be doing is concentrating on making 14 and his other online games as good as they can be. He stated he would not let ff16 interfere with ff14 development but it's obvious that not only did splitting his entire team between 2 massive games do that, but it also is why 16 is lacking all the main core features people expected too.

You would be hard pressed to tell many Square Enix games from games made in California in 2023 and they keep massively under-performing and they keep doing it, at least games like Dragon Quest (which is from an older part of SE it seems), Zelda, Persona and Xenogears are proud to be Japanese games and fully embrace what they are. Most of the stuff Square makes these days is western pandering garbage, and they don't even really understand the market they are desperately trying to pander to and are alienating their home market and the people in the west who like JP made products in the process.

Also if this game was made by joe blogs most people wouldn't even like it at all (and I'm sorry but if you say you really like this game, and then put it about half way down the list of ff games you like, you don't really like it that much), becasue Yoshida pooped it out it gets some kind of prestige rubbed up onto it as if jesus himself laid an egg on a plate.

I think ff16 is mid as hell, is a very weak and barely recognizable FF game (it's barely an rpg) and I think the way people defend it because of the man in charge of it is super weird (to the point reviewers and youtubers are afraid to critique it), I think it and many of the other games they have made recently are a terrible sign of the degradation of the company. I don't even think they will learn anything from their past 5-6 major titles flopping and will just keep on trucking in the same direction.

Square Enix used to be a great company, every year that passes that becomes less the case and 16 is a prime example of what is wrong with the company. If you took ff16, flopspoken and babyfall and took them back 10 years nobody would believe SE made them.

:eyeroll:

I don't find anything wrong with being inspired by other content.
FF was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and the TV show that was released later based on it. But this is just theft. It's tacky, cheap and lazy.

@radicalArcana You're obviously not the target audience and unfortunately for you, you're not the majority. The majority thoroughly enjoyed it. So while you complain about this and that because it didn't fit "Your" standards. Doesn't mean they did a bad job. The fact that it's gotten such amazing reviews proves they did do something right. Especially when most people playing it would say it could even be game of the year.

If it weren't for the massive fandom for Zelda I would also agree. Well it's game of the year to me at least

My opinion would of liked to see more magic/elemental weaknesses being utilized rather than the FF14 style of Fire hurting fire etc.

Other than that the combat was hell of fun especially when you get to new game+. The story was extremely interesting especially learning the origin of their world. Ultima was my favourite Ultima from any game with his almost emotionless attitude. Graphics were amazing especially when they removed Motion Blur. The Music was stunning from Soken who is literally the next Uematsu and his music proves it.

Not going to say it's my favourite of the series but I really enjoyed how much it made me think of FF9 (which is my 2nd favourite FF game) with the medieval fantasy and with scenes like Bahamut and Alexander's fight or Odin's appearence to destroy the Cleyran's Tree or Atomos Destroying Lindblum . Just how the Summons were forces of mass destruction and sought after that not everyone could just summon.


I mean it's natural if you think of what she went through. She was taken as a child and was tortured to try to get her to fight their battles and when that wasn't enough they threatened innocent children. The next 13 years of her life she wouldn't of been very talkative afraid of the consequences. Any child that had been held captive and forced to do things against their will would be an extremely quiet person. Someone that didn't grow up in a very social setting. It really adds to her character though that even through all that she found something she was willing to fight for (Clive) and when she gets her revenge it was hugely satisfying.

Poor pre-orders, poor sales, many people are afraid to say it's bad cause they don't want to be attacked.

The inflated numbers they posted are shipped (which means sold to stores such as Amazon based on guessed sales numbers of previous FF games) and copies packaged with the Playstaion5 packs.

The numbers are terrible, first week were terrible and 2nd week are terrible, their official twitter account hasn't said anything about sales since.

If the game was popular it would be of sold as such and it's not, if a game is really good people buy the machine to play it on.

You're doing what you're accusing me of, you like it so it must be popular when what you actually mean is the bubble you live in online likes it so that must mean everyone likes it.

If it is actually popular and selling gangbusters we won't see big sales in the coming months from retailers trying to get rid of all their stock, I kind of think we will though.

I could point out that Famitsu has stated it's selling poorly, that financial analysts in Japan are saying it's a disaster, that it's way down the charts on Amazon behind the God of War ps5 pack and/or Jedi Survivor on ps5, I could point out that many FF fans don't like it or that there isn't much virality to the game.

An easier way however is to go look at the stock price of Square Enix today compared to the release date of the game.

First PLEASE EXCUSE MY ENGLAYZE
No man DND is based on Lord of the rings!,

But i do agree FF16 is a good game but not a True Final Fantasy Game, if u remove the eikons Ability and the chocolo's ul barely notice your playing a final fantasy game, it misses so much RPG elements but still it has a nice Story, and the Romance SCENES ADDS NOTHING to the story its just there to copy game of thrones, and the millennial Agenda' iv never ever seen a FF game that Forced a political Agenda as much as 16 that gay romance scene, the only romance scene that made sense is how *** up Odin is and that cid may have killed his mother who might have been leviathan, and garuda's betrayal to cid, other than that it adds nothing to the game (the Dion Romance scenes) if you delete the scene nothing changes from the story its just there to mimic GOT i agree on that for *** sure i miss the quirky FF Characters and the turn based System with character customization and choosing your party members #FF9 WILL ALWAYS BE the *** best FF all i want is a FF9 REMAKE WITH A LITTLE BIT OF MODREN GAMEPLAY BUT NOT TOO MODREN ya ya w/e am excited i like ff16 tho but it has its ups and downs do not bite me,
FF9>4>6>12>10
FF11>FF14 all *** day

I've talked about this elsewhere, but something I didn't talk about too much was the plot itself. Like people have said, it's very Game of Thronesy, which, as someone who didn't really care for GoT that much, worked against it for me. Not every story has to be sunshine and puppies but "grim just to be grim" has always been my least favorite part of the Souls games.

They say there's no DLC coming out for it, and I think I'm happy with that. Much like with Tales of Arise, the story is complete and doesn't need anything else. That's money they're definitely leaving on the table in service of a better consumer experience and I'm here for it.

Spoilerish thoughts:

Ehh, it's mostly superficial copying, and in the video they were definitely reaching at some points.

The copied bits are pretty clear, but it's skin deep.

They sold 3 million copies in the first week and that's considering that it's PS5 only atm which doesn't help them. FF15 had 3.5 million but PS4 had a much larger playerbase at the time. I personally knew quite a few people that would love to play it but won't get a PS5 or can't justify spending that money on it just for the one game since they have a PC and will either watch it online or play it when it comes to PC.

The only thing hurting SE sales is limiting it to PS5 for a year. Otherwise you would be seeing much higher sales. There is a lot more to it than "Sales weren't amazing" compared to the general consensus weather the game was good or not.

You've got to stop faboying so hard that you ignore they took the bribe for PS5exclusivity. They were not limited to ps5 owners, they chose to be.

Had they not done that, then you'd allowed to use PS5 owners as a metric.

They chose the bag over the sales. Their fault. Had it dropped on windows Xbox ps4 and 5 they'd have (many!) more first week sales.

(Hi Ejiin)

Handling of Jill
Agree about Cid.

I'd heard they're doing a DLC for it revolving around Leviathan? Where'd you hear they weren't?

How did I ignore it? I Actually acknowledged it in my post. FF7 Remake was in the exact same boat. They sold 3.5 million copies and then when it came to PC they sold a lot more. I understand it's their fault but my point is most thoroughly enjoyed the game through the many groups I'm on. you will always see the odd few complain about the game which gets bombarded by the majority to say how much they enjoyed it. Which usually works the other way round because people are more likely to complain about things than praise it (as Twitter proves lol) unless it's something truly worth praising.

And to clarify I'm not saying it's the best game ever. It's probably in the top 5 for me behind 6, 7 and 9 and 7remake. But it's been one of the best FF games in a long time in my oppinion.

It didn't really sell 3m to players, it shipped 3m to stores based on expectations of those stores. Most of these have not sold, as proven by the fact they didn't update it with more shipped sales numbers to replace stock. You could make an argument that sold to stores is sold, however this is not a sign of success if you do but of franchise anticipated sales of stock purchasers.

For instance if God of War says they shipped 5m copies and then a week later say they just shipped 1m more, that means they sold the 5m to customers and the stores bought more. If they give no further sales numbers it means they probably didn't sell what was already shipped and they are gathering dust on the shelves. Incoming big sales to get rid of stock.

Regardless, the entire point of 16 was to reach a wider audience and not only did they fail to do that but they shrank the appeal of the franchise in the core audience too. So ultimately it's a failure.

Even if they make back the massive spending on this game it will be a net loss, because they would of had a better RoI by just putting all that dev time into making ff14/11 better and growing the base on those who pay a sub.

If they had not started work on 16 in 2015 they could of made 1-2 more 14 expansions as well as many other features, and maybe another one for 11 too! Instead they decided to gamble on something else that some other team could of made.

The reason I'm glad it's not doing well is because things that do well encourage more, and this team should not be making single player games in the first place.

That is another thing people ignore or don't know.

First week "sales" are actually half crates to stores and aren't sales to users. They don't differentiate. That's why first week sales plummet like they do, people are buying from target or walmart or gamestop bestbuy, not square directly after week one.

3 million copies exist, somewhere, not 3 million in homes. And we're going into week three and no bragging about reups.

Yes, this is how every game does it.

If numbers shipped are "inflated numbers" then literally every game has inflated numbers lol.

SE bragged about FF15 shipped 5m copies on first day, but it is shipped copies too. All those unsold ff15 copies cost like $20 now.

I also saw dozens of brand new PS4 version Cyberpunk 2077 sold for less than $20 because nobody wants to buy them. All those are part of their 10m+ copies shipped first month but ended up not selling.

I fail to understand why people are super harsh with current sales numbers anyways. Other games have inflated numbers too but only FF16 gets attacked like this. So much emotions from SE fans....