Final Fantasy 16 (or XVI) is the next installment in the legendary Final Fantasy franchise, and there was quite a bit of hype behind its eventual release, especially after the success of the remake of the iconic Final Fantasy 7. Funnily enough, I was not an overall fan of the remake, as I did not enjoy the storytelling or the characters at all, and found a lot of gameplay sequences outside of fights to be tedious and annoying. The combat was excellent however, and I hoped that Final Fantasy 16 would improve on that system and hopefully tell a story that I would enjoy a lot more. Square Enix did a pretty solid move to release a 2(?)-hour demo to showcase the basic gameplay mechanics and introduce the story premise to players, and I was pretty hooked after completing it, so I ended up buying the game. After binging it basically non-stop, I will say Final Fantasy 16 did live up to the hype, as it is addictingly fun with a competent narrative to back it up, but I did not find it particularly innovative, and in some areas I feel like it has actually regressed in comparison to its predecessors.
As is tradition with the franchise, Final Fantasy 16 has no story relation to any of its predecessors, and follows the journey of an entirely new protagonist by the name of Clive Rosfield. Clive starts out in training to become a guardian, or “Shield,” for his brother Joshua, who is to inherit their father’s throne due to his powers of the Phoenix (what is known as the Eikon of Fire, basically a divine being), but tragedy strikes when a group of soldiers are revealed to be traitors and lead a coup, resulting in the deaths of many, including Joshua, and while Clive survives the ordeal he is captured by another empire and conscripted into their army. Clive dedicates the remainder of his life to avenging his brother, and in the process gets involved in a much larger plot enveloping the rest of the world.
Gameplay:
Final Fantasy 16’s gameplay is definitely one of its highlights. The combat is fluid, flashy, and very addicting; Clive is a lot of fun to control, and executing combos while transitioning between ground and aerial combat feels very smooth and responsive. Over the course of the story, he acquires abilities from other Eikons and is able to channel their powers, and each new Eikon channeled adds a whole new way to destroy enemies. One of my favorite abilities is basically Clive charging up a huge fist to smash foes with, and sending smaller enemies flying is very entertaining. The combat also seamlessly blends in cinematic moments in major story encounters, which makes those battles all the more visually impressive, which is probably one of my favorite things to experience in the game. There are also various points in the story where the player actually gets to control an Eikon, and waging battle as a huge, divine being is also very fun, as sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than watching two giant monsters try to smash each other in cinematic sequences. That being said, it is fortunate that Clive is so fun to pilot, because he is more or less the only playable character. While Clive never fights alone, and is usually accompanied by his trusty wolf Torgal and other NPC companions depending on current events, the other characters are not actually playable outside of issuing commands to Torgal, which is a pretty big disappointment. One of the things I enjoyed about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake was being able to control different party members if I ever got bored of controlling Cloud, but that option does not exist in Final Fantasy 16. It would’ve been nice to be able to play as Cid and use his flashy lightning abilities, or as Jill and utilize her control of ice, so that was definitely a missed opportunity. While the core combat system is incredible, I do wish there was slightly more enemy variety in the over-world or in side quests; a lot of the enemies fought in non-story missions often feel like re-skins and after a while it does get slightly tedious, considering the overall length of the game.
Final Fantasy 16’s combat is addicting, but it definitely does a lot of heavy lifting gameplay-wise, as the RPG side feels incredibly lacking. While the RPG elements of character customization was already slightly streamlined/simplified in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, there is almost none of that in this game. The only real character customization options lie in choice of accessories, which for the most part do nothing but provide stat boosts, or in which abilities to invest points in, which is where the most creative freedom is allowed. Weapon/armor upgrades are more or less just a linear progression, where it’s just a matter of equipping the pieces that give the highest boosts, which is incredibly disappointing. There are no new abilities unlocked by equipping different legendary weapons, so it basically just comes down to equipping the biggest stick.
Side quests are another staple of most JRPG’s, and in my opinion the side quests in Final Fantasy 16 are somewhat of a mixed bag. Gameplay-wise a lot of them suffer from the “MMO Side Quest” issue where most of them are glorified fetch quests, and only some of them actually offer substantial rewards that are worth it. It’s interesting because in the first half of the game almost none of the side quests seemed to be worth doing, but the side quest quality did go up significantly in the second half.
Overall, the core gameplay loop of Final Fantasy 16 is a ton of fun, but as someone who enjoys the RPG aspect of these sorts of games I really wish the developers didn’t dumb down that aspect of the game so much.
Writing:
After coming from the train wrecks that were the stories of Final Fantasy 15 (though 15’s fault kind of had to do with development hell and a lot of important story content being gated by non-game material) and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I am pretty happy with Final Fantasy 16’s writing. Final Fantasy 16 has a much more mature and dark tone, and personally I generally prefer that style of storytelling compared to a lot of typical JRPG’s which usually tend to be a lot more light-hearted (possibly a consequence of getting older). The tone also fits the general atmosphere of the world, which is generally pretty grim and in decay with the threat of the Blight creeping closer and closer to society by the day. On that tangent, I quite enjoy the game’s world-building, and overall I am pretty fascinated with the different regions that exist in the world and their geopolitical interactions. Whether it be the Holy Empire of Sanbreque, represented by their fancy marble cities, or the Dhalmekians and their Middle Eastern-esque desert dwellings, each faction in the universe has their own distinct identity. While the central narrative focuses on Clive’s journey, various cutscenes throughout the story depict the global politics at play and how they ultimately impact Clive’s quest, and I personally enjoyed learning more about how the world at large generally functioned. Each nation more or less exists and is relevant because of their respective Ekons, whether it be Sanbreque being protected by the mighty Bahamut or Waloed’s might being represented by the terrifying Odin.
Another big part of the writing focuses on Clive’s character, and his interactions with the people close to him, and I don’t think the narrative would be as enjoyable if it didn’t handle his character arc so well. Clive starts off as a rather typical portrayal of a chivalrous knight who is dedicated to his role as a Shield, but watching him change as tragedy befalls him, and how he progresses past that and grows as a character felt very satisfying. However, due to the story’s strong focus on him, not as much attention is really given to the other supporting characters, with the exception of Cid, who I think is fantastically written. I am personally biased towards mentor figures, but I think Cid plays that role excellently, and his general light-hearted mood does a lot to prevent the story from getting too depressing at times. Unfortunately the writers did not extend that same treatment to Jill, Clive’s love interest, and she gets woefully little spotlight time in comparison. I also noticed there is very little party dialogue/small talk when wandering the world, which is a shame since these small moments between characters really do a lot to make exploration feel a lot less monotonous in a lot of these larger games. This lack of focus on characters outside of Clive also extends to a lot of the villains in the story, which I feel like was probably the biggest missed opportunity with the writing. A lot of the major enemies that Clive encounters have potential to be excellent villains, but didn’t really get enough screen-time to fully flesh them out so by the time I actually kicked their asses I didn’t particularly feel any strong emotions toward them.
I also want to give credit to the dialogue and the overall voice acting (the English dub at least), which I think are both very strong, and Clive delivers some insanely killer lines over the course of the story. Overall, the writing was very competent as far as the main narrative, world-building and the protagonist are concerned, but it did seem like it came at the cost of the most other supporting characters in the story.
*MINOR SPOILERS REGARDING THE ENDING*
There has been some online discourse regarding the somewhat controversial ending, and while I do not dislike the ending that much personally, I understand the criticisms behind it. The ambiguity of the ending which leaves things up to the interpretation of the player can feel pretty unsatisfying after such a long journey with the core characters, and the story isn’t really something where an ambiguous ending would actually make sense (unlike something like Inception where its ambiguous ending is completely in-theme). The bittersweet-ness of it too can also leave a poor taste in players’ mouths, considering a large part of the journey is already grim and depressing, so the nature of the ending can feel like a very unsatisfying pay-off. As someone who is used to those kinds of endings, I was rather indifferent, but I think the criticisms some players have is very valid.
*END SPOILERS*
Misc/Ending Thoughts:
Core gameplay and story aside, Final Fantasy 16 has some very impressive visuals, with a great soundtrack to boot. A lot of the locations in the game are very beautiful to look at, and a lot of the major story battles are overall just cinematic spectacles that are an awe to behold. I will say I am pretty disappointed in the performance of the game though; while there are very few if any bugs, the game’s frame-rate leaves lot to be desired and often stutters/frame-drops, and I am playing in the mode that prioritizes frame rate. I have never been a stickler for graphical fidelity and will always prioritize higher frame rates, and to experience semi-frequent drops even in performance mode feels quite bad. At no point does the game become unplayable, but it doesn’t exactly scream “cutting edge PS5” technology to me.
Overall, I had a great time with the game, taking about 50 hours to clear through the main story and side content. I definitely recommend it, and while I do appreciate the real-time approach to combat and would like the direction of future games to go the same way, I really hope they don’t keep the hyper-streamlined/dumbed-down RPG mechanics for future titles.
Rating: The game is great, and definitely worth the purchase.
