Final Fantasy XVI (16)

A while bunch of previews of a combat demo started showing up today. I've seen general reception quite muted on it. People either dislike the action heavy combat while others dislike the sheer amount of screen filling numbers displayed and the amount of QTE's involved. At this point I'm all in on the combat, I just wanna see what it's like outside of that, the RPG aspect to it because I get the impression it's gonna be quite linear.

Skill Up was pretty positive about it:

I’m excited to fuck shit up as Clive

tbh I do miss the turn based combat. I want to give it a go before I write it off.

I just find it less stressful, and it becomes less about reflexes and skill and more about decisions and tactics and set up. And yeah, maybe it is easier.

Doesn't help that FF15's combat was pretty pants... Not the only thing I disliked in that game (and there were things I liked too).

This does seem quite a lot better though.


Honestly though I think my favourite combat system in FF games was in 10. Purely turn based, and letting you see the turns coming up so you could really plan ahead.

I know it's absolutely par for the course but 11 hours of cut-scenes is not a number that elicits any excitement in me.

www.vg247.com/final-fantasy-16-11-hours-cinematics

Its definitely a very different sounding mainline game even for FF. Confirmation that you only ever control one character throughout and party members can't be killed (which Im ok with if I dont have control of them). No optional dungeons. On the surface this would put me off, but I've faith in Yoshi-P and the team to deliver. I love DMC anyway so getting the combat designer on board makes me really interested. Feel like some will absolutely hate the direction it's going but I suppose that's OK, there are others who would hate it if it was turn based combat as well.

I'm expecting it not to be like DMC in terms of free player expression. Can't tell until I get my hands on it, but in DMC at least you have multiple weapons, different stances, devil triggers. In 16 it seems like you don't have weapon switching (possibly, could be a surprise for later) but then have access to different eikons at the press of a button with your choice of 2 abilities each. So you won't have all the moves available to you to be truly creative and SSStylish but so long as its fast, responsive and feels satisfying then it's fine.

Read its about 30-35 hr main campaign alone, so about in line with other FF's. The feeling will prob be alleviated given that unlike DMC there will be more than just combat.

Met a Clive heroically manning the tills at Burpham Sainsburys yesterday.

If ever there was a Clive who bravely wielded a barcode scanner in his mid-life better than this Clive then that Clive is a Clive I’d love to meet.

What a guy.

Pre-ordered the Switch versions because I'm an idiot.

But yeah, really like the look of those. The earlier games in particular as I've never played pre-6.

I've been seriously considering get a playstation so I can play 16,as the pc version is a long ways out.

(Also too many pc ports in general are lazy so might actually be a good purchase.)

I had hoped to pick this up in the recent Steam sale, as it seemed perfectly Steam Deck sized. They didn't appear to have the bundle on sale though (in fact, I don't even think I could find the bundle at all, even though I have found it post-sale).

For future sale reference, if I can't get the lot for a decent bundle price, which ones are the key recommended ones?

Depends on definition of reasonable.

1 and 2 are 10 quid each, 3-6 are 15 each, or the bundle is 65.

The prices are more or less in line with other recent 2D remasters so I think it's fairly reasonable.

And they seem quite good quality Remasters too- sprites and backgrounds updated I think - still retro, and the improvements are more noticeable on the older titles, but quite nice. plus the score has been orchestrated. Few QoL / cheats in the new console versions too, able to increase xp / gold rates etc.

It's a spectacle and a half, to be sure... But oddly enough, the newer details revealed are souring me on it a little after my initial impression...

No controllable party members other than the protagonist and no optional/side dungeons (which I doubt seeing the world map, but as far as I could tell the State of Play only showed sidequests, not full-blown dungeons) is rather disappointing if true. They pulled the "only the MC is controllable" thing in Stranger of Paradise too and quickly (well, "quickly" as in a few months later) changed it in an update, maybe something similar will happen here.

The combat also looked a little too chaotic to me, and I say that as someone used to action/hack and slash games. I'd rather not have to use the "easy mode" accessories, I'm obviously very glad they're there as an accessibility option but if (big if) it gets to the point that even experienced gamers have to use them to get by that's a minus in my book. Not really a fan of how damage-spongy some enemies looked, either. I know you can stagger enemies and that should presumably give you a big damage window, but they had the stagger mechanic in the FF13 trilogy as well without having to make the enemies so tanky to compensate. Perhaps all of the above will come down to a "seeing vs actually playing" thing, though.

I did like a lot of the stuff I saw, to be fair. The hunt system coming back is very welcome, the soundtrack (as expected from the FF14 crew) is phenomenal and like I said it's a spectacle to look at. I just hope there's a demo or something else to alleviate my hangups because, while I'd like to say it's Day 1 for me, it's just barely not there yet.

I honestly didn't mind it too much in the 13s (still haven't played 7 remake so can't comment there). Well, at least in 13 and 13-2 where you had multiple party members to manage roles and you could still take out most mooks by just bashing their heads in if you wanted. It did start to get a bit annoying in Lightning Returns where they made it a wave rather than a visible bar and added things like needing to stagger an enemy multiple times for the full benefit.

Here though, from what was shown, at times it felt like even the random mooks basically needed you to stagger them to put noticeable dents in their HP. Again though, maybe it plays better than it looks just watching...