Final Fantasy is, without a doubt, my favourite game series of all time. Final Fantasy VII, the original PlayStation game, is one I keep coming back to. Not necessarily the best game ever made, but my favourite without question. I’ve played it through several times, the last time just a few years ago, right before trying the remake.
Final Fantasy XVI stayed under my radar for a while, even though one of my best gaming buddies recommended it to me more than once. I wasn’t very excited about it, mostly because the last few games in the series hadn’t been as good as the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 ones. Then it came to PS Plus, which gave me the push I needed. It was on my list, just not near the top, but free access made it an easy choice.
I started it right after finishing Persona 5, which had drained a lot of my energy with its length and how much it talks.1 My first impression was how cinematic the whole thing felt. The game clearly wants its fights to look as stunning as possible.
World and story
The setup didn’t grab me from the start. In this world, some people can use magic. These people, called Bearers, are marked with a brand on their face so everyone can recognise them, and they’re treated badly for it. I found this a bit odd: in a setting like this, I’d expect the people with power to end up on top, not at the bottom. Maybe it works here because Bearers are a small group, but it still struck me as a strange choice.
There are also Eikons, the game’s summons, and they’re the classic ones from the series: Ifrit, Shiva, Odin, and so on. Unlike previous games, here the Eikons choose the person they bond with, called a Dominant, and that person can both summon them and turn into them.
One thing I did like was how much politics is in the story. Several kingdoms are at war, and Eikons get used on the battlefield in a genuinely spectacular way early on. Later, though, Eikon fights mostly turn into one-on-one duels between your character and the enemy Eikon, and that got repetitive by the end.
Gameplay
Compared to earlier games in the series, this one drops most of the RPG side of things. You control a single character, and elemental magic doesn’t really matter. Bomb enemies, for example, are fire creatures, and you can still hurt them with fire without any downside. That broke my expectations for how a Final Fantasy game should work.
Upgrading your gear doesn’t add much either. Every new weapon is just a bit stronger than the last, armour barely changes anything, and there isn’t much room to build different setups. Once you find the combos you like, you end up using them over and over, and combat gets repetitive over a long playthrough.
The story itself is long but doesn’t have that much to say, and a lot of it is filler. Plenty of quests are just fetch quests: go from A to B, talk to one person, then talk to another. I found these tedious and pointless, they don’t add anything to the game.
What worked
Visually, the cutscenes are genuinely beautiful, and so are the in-game cinematics. Some character models look a bit too plasticky up close, but the Eikon designs are excellent.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable game, not a masterpiece, but enjoyable. I liked the attempt to find a new way to use Eikons, and the presentation is very cinematic throughout. Fights against Eikons use quick time events, and I actually like those, unlike most people it seems. Some areas are genuinely beautiful and reminded me of older games in the series. If the game had been half as long, without all the filler quests, I think I would have liked it a lot more.
I also liked the Hunts: optional boss fights where you know roughly where to find the target, and beating it gives you materials for the strongest weapons in the game. And I liked Cid as a character. The other characters didn’t leave much of an impression on me.
References
The game openly borrows from things it likes. There’s a direct reference to Devil May Cry, and in its flashier moments the combat feels close to that style of character action game. The opening scene is clearly a reference to the fight between the Balrog and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. One character, Goetz, is basically Hodor from Game of Thrones. The dragon’s tower reminded me of Majula, from Dark Souls 2, which I consider the best hub location in any video game: the scenery, the calm it gives off, the music, all of it works perfectly. The empire’s capital, a city carved into rock, reminded me of Minas Tirith from The Lord of the Rings.
On the mechanics side, it reminded me of the latest God of War games: walk around, fight, walk around, fight, just with more filler in between. Managing abilities and upgrading weapons works in a similar way, though God of War does it better.
By the later parts of the game, especially on Final Fantasy difficulty (the hardest setting), the loop got very repetitive. You’d run into a group of enemies, walk a bit further, run into the same group again, and beat them the same way every time. That said, some individual fights were great, especially the Behemoth fight, though the best Behemoth fight I’ve ever had in a game was still the one in the Monster Hunter World crossover.2
Final thoughts
I’m glad I finished it. Overall, it’s enjoyable, but I don’t see myself playing it again. Out of the sixteen main Final Fantasy games, I’ve played around ten, and this one wouldn’t make my top five Final Fantasy games. I’d even rank Final Fantasy XV above it.
Final Fantasy is dead. Long live Final Fantasy.