The fact that people kept minimzing people's reasonable criticism to "not liking it because it's not turn based" is everything wrong with modern gaming discourse. Almost every complaint I read had more to do with the feel of the game as any ff fan knows that a lot of them aren't turn based.
Exactly. There have been so many "bad faith arguments" thrown at me saying "lol u just want turn based" but like...bro...I made an hour long video carefully detailing all of the issues with the games gameplay *and* story. It's like they're running around with their fingers in their ears going "nananana I can't hear you". It's frustrating for sure. Thank you for the view and comment!
The big problem is really how the game started, because that's how you set up what people/factions are going to be (or at least seem like,) and what the tone of the story is going to be. And what do we see at the start of XVI? Dirty politics, horny Dominants, expendable slave soldiers, and the Blight as the greater setting danger. But, after Titan dies, does ANY of that actually matter to the story and the gameplay? Does Clive need to start playing politics to get what he wants? Do the Dominants use their powers to change the story? Does the discrimination against Branded even really matter, since Clive has to destroy magic regardless? No, and a story shouldn't do that: you don't start with the Omaha Beach landing, and then focus on how the war tragically affected food prices in France, because people will naturally have massive issues with expecting a war movie, when they're really getting a low-key docudrama. And that's what FFXVI did: we're promised grounded war and politics alongside super powerful Dominants, but we actually get Clive's Bizarre Adventure.
Exactly. Too many of the actual interesting story elements just hold zero weight in the grand scheme of things. They're just there as distractions to make the game and story seem deeper than it is. Thank you for the view and comment!
Looking at it objectively, destroying magic and the precious reasource would not help fight against the discrimination against the branded. Magic and the crystals providing them were essentially the lifeblood and saving grace of this dark and bleak world, seeing as they over-relied on them to the point where magicless forges were unheard off before a late game quest. Now with the destruction of magic and their precious crystals, not only would this cause the world to panic, but it would likely also lead to people scapegoating and putting blame on the branded since the one actively destroying them was more a well-known and infamous bearer than a dominant. And now without magic, those branded who were enslaved even with those magical powers have just lost their only means of defense, making them easy targets for all the people's blame and anger. No new barers would be born, but I wouldn't be surprised if instead of random baby born with magical gifts being turned over into slavery, its simply any child and descended born from a barer who was already enslaved at the time of magic's end in addition to people who would inevitably get conquered and dominated in future wars and conquests. The problem in story is that this consequence is never properly addressed. They simply say "Let's destroy the crystals sucking the land dry and in the process us branded and domiants will live better lives for it". The only hint of this real outcome is at the start of the last timeskip after Cid's death were we see that branded are actually already getting blamed for it even without the magic being completely gone yet. But it was a 10 minute section only and then no more on the topic. We don't even see the spread of the blight slowing in any way (or at least get mention of it cause that was always kinda more "tell don't show" for the story), which was the whole reason we targeted the mothercrystals in the first place. If they did, then people would have a plausible reason to question their world view and see that barers were the ones who began repairing the world and not the ones who were carelessly wreaking havoc. Would have definitely gotten them the respect that would lead to far better treatment.
The politics honestly tempered the wrong expectations for this game. They really shouldn't have been emphasized as much as they did. It added very little to the story that was all about Clive. And it's not the first time a Final Fantasy has done this too - FFXII was also like this. Though it blended the politics into the story much better, it was still a story about Luke Skywalker turned supporting character.
So true. The Blight completely useless concept. Also all those side characters such as the cardinals of the empire talking about the reign: pointless. Most of what's said never matters.
😂😂😂Seven starts with you doing jobs for a terr orist org against a mega corp, ends with you saving the world from an super mutant emo. Six starts with you being saved by faith from an empire so you side with the resistance, ends with you saving the world from the Joker. I don't think you really have a problem with that the main focus changing, or you haven't played any other FF game
Spoilers: Benedikta was definitely one of those characters I was secretly hoping would have a change of heart at some point, in the same way General Beatrix did for FFIX. Then the surprise came when you gained her power and I just sat there stunned saying, "I guess that was it?"
@@Shane-gg3hl the game never explains the head in the box and of all the plot holes to fixate on, I'm picking that one. I knew what it was as soon as dude got the box because I've seen the movie seven, but later clive cops to killing her and I'm like "no, i literally watched her walk away from that battle, headless people don't generally walk anywhere" and they never tell who actually did it.
@@zachw2538couple of characters mention “head sent in a box” as a execution method in this world to show the leader you killed the person. As to who killed her, it’s left ambiguous, but it’s heavily implied to be Sleipnir or Odin as they’re manipulating Titan.
@@Bahamut998 Clive killed her, Cid didn't bother to bring her body anymore as he has Clive to take care of, the Waloed higher-ups were the ones responsible for desecrating Benedikta.
I really thought there was a lot of potential for her to have a storyline where she came to terms with losing her power. I thought it would be interesting because from what we'd seen, her powers were her entire identity so I was interested to see her try and find purpose and self-value without her powers and then maybe see the world through a new lens and perhaps join Clive...but nope, she just died and sooo early in the game, too. There were still like 50+ hours after her death.
Benedikta reeks of "we had no idea what to do with this character's potential so let's kill her off. it's out of our hands now!" And Jill, good god. I've seen takes from others saying Tifa has a similar problem to her, but I disagree; Tifa is *intensely* concerned over Cloud and his problems and she has a stake in everything. Hell, she takes over as the lead at one point and takes initiative. Jill, however, feels like a non-entity; we're *told* she matters a lot, but rarely does anything. She's a Dominant but is too sick to do any more. She's just an extension to Clive and nothing else. Even the whole bit of her not using her powers too much due to the Bearer's curse doesn't matter because one) it only comes up in very convenient moments and two) you don't even see the curse anywhere on her body (Even When She's Naked c'mon lol). While I like Clive, he was too powerful; none of the party members mattered and he kinda sucks the energy out of the room since we know he's the chosen one who has to solve every damn thing.
I definitely felt this as an extreme issue, especially since, in the end, it's about Clive learning to rely on others, but it feels like he's never actually done that. He's never been incapacitated or unable to solve a situation, so it just takes the agency away from the other characters.
What drove me crazy in the story too is that they made it a big deal that when Clive takes their power, they can't use it UNLESS they go into hyper angry fury mode and become god modes of their eikons. But of course cuz of story relevance and needing to helping Clive in what he needs and not an actual point to their own character development both Jill and Dion can use their magic and turn into their eikon self without losing their minds. It just broke me how useless these characters are, for me Tifa had pure agency of who she was and her goals. She is intermingled in such a way with Cloud that makes the biggest reveal in the game and a beautiful moment in where she truly saves Cloud, I never felt that way about Jill to Clive. Heck, Tifa even has her flaws in her approach to the mistakes she made hiding from Cloud or hiding the truth and not remembering. Riona in ff8 constantly pushes squall out of his comfort zone so he can exp. a life and love he never imagined. Jill never makes Clive into a different/better person in such a narrative way or butts with him in a way that builds their relationship to a different or complex level. She is honestly a yes man most of the time, with no interjections or flair to how she approaches or sees a situation. They focused on these characters being so mature that they forgot to make them entertaining. By all means I think Jill and Clive are a healthy couple in a real world sense, but just boring for a story about the end of life as they know it. And agree with you, Clive is a great hero for the series, but the problem is that he HAS to carry the full story of ff16. Even Cloud doesn't carry the full story of ff7 and dude is one of the favs.in the franchise. I love these games for the cast, not a singular hero no matter how awesome they are.
Damn bro you hated the game that much?! I thought it was alright. You could have used this energy that you wasted typing this essay by doing somthing productive.@@cloudy4lockharty
we're all online, nothing we do in our free time is productive lol but yeah apologies I did write too much lol and idk fast typer doesn't feel like it took long.@@amjadm7730
FF16 had so many missed opportunities. Look at ff7 remake and the amount of dialogs between characters, the bantering the flirting, the rubbing off one one another, the subtle revealing of personal info, the poking and prodding. it wasn't always about blowing up reactors and how evil shinra was. We never see Jill and Clive chat about their time living alone, after the fall of rosalith, and if they had added more dialog to improve their characters between fetch quests, they wouldn't be so boring. Remake was so self aware that even fetching cats was kinda funny just to see Cloud's frustration.
Though I have a lot of issues with FF7R, the characters are not one of the issues. They all felt like real people, and like I said about Jill the "banter" is what makes characters feel real. Not every character has to be a comedian, but they can't *just* be exposition 100% of the time. Give them some more dimensions, ya know?
Thank you for not being afraid to be critical. Being critical of something is not the same as being dismissive, and doesn't mean there aren't things about it that you enjoy.
I'm never afraid to be critical! We spend a lot of money and time on these games, and I don't think it's "lame" to take them seriously. We *should* take the content we're given seriously, and IMO we used to receive games from Square that didn't have all these issues so it's not unreasonable to expect better. Thanks for the watch and comment! Cheers
@@overnightsiren Indeed, it's only polite to take an artist's work seriously, if he takes it seriously. How can artists grow if we don't give them thoughtful feedback?
Most of my frustrations with Jill came from the first third or so of the game. For so many cut scenes leading up to and especially represented by Ultima's first appearance and imprisonment by Joshua, she just stands in the background not really helping. You'll get a cutscene of Cid lying in Clive's arms and he struggles to ward off the god and I'm just thinking, "Oh no, if only there was someone else there to help Clive, even better if they had a third dominant with them or something..."
I agree with almost all of this. My hot take-Clive isn’t that good a character. We don’t see him really struggle or exhibit flaws he needs to work through. He has his revenge plot, but that’s an inciting incident. His want to kill his brother’s murderer isn’t a flaw. Hugo kills lots of Hideaway folk, which is another inciting incident. Clive kills him justifiably. You can have a shallow/static and likable character, a la Superman, but then the story is usually about how he affects others as a living ideal. But we don’t see anyone change as a result of interacting with Clive.
To elaborate: even his revenge plot is because Ultima manipulated him. It's not like Ultima took advantage of a flaw already in Clive--jealousy of Joshua, etc--to make Clive hurt his brother. So that's completely external. There's nothing for Clive to reflect on and grow from.
Agree. Seen a lot of people say how good of a character he is, but there's so many probably in how he was handled. There's nothing interesting about him that makes him stand out from characters in other games. He's just tough guy warrior guy. The writing and voice work made him interesting enough to listen to until the second time skip, but after that they pull a Dark Knight and make his voice all gruff which completely made me stop taking any of his dialog seriously. The conflicts he went to were standard fare, but I didn't found them grounded enough due to the use (particularly towards the end) of deus ex machina-eqsque writing to try to make him feel a certain way in particular scenes. A good writer would have kept Cid alive for longer to better build their relationship and would have even considered putting Jill in actual danger or temporarily kill her even. I'm not woke or anything, but I am really tired of the white guy big sword brooding warrior trope, especially in a series that has done it a million times over.
@@trollingisasport I dunno if I agree with those latter points. Re: Cid, I don't think we could've gotten much deeper stuff out of his relationship with Clive, even if he lived longer. Cid was likable and quippy, and gave Clive a goal, sure, but I don't think there was that much more to him than that. Which is fine in Cid's case, since there didn't need to be--he fulfilled his purpose and died early on. But I don't think we could've seen him push Clive to grow in different ways. If he'd lived, probably the most interesting thing we could've seen--not that the game dwells on it at all--is Cid's reaction to people's reactions to the first Mother Crystal being destroyed. We could've seen this man that Clive has found reassurance in show doubt, and maybe the people of the Hideaway react to Cid showing doubt. Cid says that things will get worse before they get better, but knowing it will happen and actually seeing the people suffering from a decision he caused are two different things. It could put Cid in an interesting spot (and would actually be interesting for Cid's character, now that I think about it). And Clive could be in a position to offer reassurance back to Cid. But that still doesn't help Clive grow as a person. It doesn't give him a flaw. He still remains a paragon. Re: Jill, Clive already got angry at Hugo for killing people at the Hideaway, but that's still reactive. If Jill was temporarily killed or put in danger, I just see him reacting in a stronger way--but it's more or less still a reaction. For the anger to matter, we would need to see how Clive feels, and the context. Was he too weak to save Jill? Does he get worried about if he'll be able to protect other people in the future? Does he push himself to the breaking point, and alienate those that care about him? And if Jill temporarily dies, does he remember Joshua dying--and comes to believe that everyone he loves will die, and so he shouldn't make attachments (which would suck for his character and likability, so I wouldn't use it personally, but it's still some sort of development). The story just needed to give Clive flaws at the start, and construct an arc that let him come to terms with those flaws and grow past them. It just failed to do that somehow. I guess the writers were so afraid of players' reactions if Clive had flaws to work through that they didn't bother giving him any.
What is with the underdog complex A character doesnt need to "evolve" and even if the character is perfect are none of the characters in the story robust enough to make the story minimally interesting or the journey or the world itself?
It's the "if characters dont struggle like I do irl then theyre bad" mindset. Even though struggles are not the only way to write a compelling character.@@felipebisi4145
I cant stand people saying that the early game gave an FF tactics/Ivalice vibe. That is the height of media literacy ignorance for me this summer. Tactics has 10, no 100 times the depth of this game. Dialogue actually goes somewhere. To battles that feel as though they shift the tide of history. To assassinations in back alleyways. Unsteady alliances made to advance the separate agendas of different players. The world of FF tactics feels like a world that exists and moves without Ramza, which makes every decision of his feel urgent and vital. Meanwhile in 16, the entirety of Valisthea seems like it exists to make Clive look like a badass. It makes me feel as though people are only saying that because this game also has knights, and castles, and duchies and shit. Just the aesthetic is enough for them, and it makes me sick lol. Let’s not even get started on how for some reason every single one of these Eikons seem to conveniently exist only within the borders of this one nation that decides the fate of the entire world? nonsense.
Ah yes, now that I finished FFXVI, I can finally watch these critique videos and feel out what the community thought about the game! it took me three months to finish. It should not have taken me that long. But once the roller coaster of the game's intro gave way to the towns, sort-of exploration, and side quests, I really felt the sharp downgrade from the highly-crafted story stuff before - It was hard to want to sit down and play when I was in the middle of obvious filler. I'd get invested in story stuff, then suddenly I'm in the middle of this weird "Go talk to Otto. Okay now walk ten feet over here and talk to someone else. Now run over there and talk to someone else. Now go fight a pack of generic enemies." When the game is on a high, it's REALLY high, but the valleys between the peaks were a big slog, and ultimately, while I'm glad I played it and had a good time overall, it had a lot of flaws, and many times I felt that I wasn't really having fun.
The story really needed an editor. Cid says we have to destroy the mothercrystals? Why? Because he GUESSES they are the cause of the blight. So we decide to destroy the mothercrystals, destroy the whole foundation of this planet and magic, on a HUNCH . What the hell?
On a hunch, and then we destroy one crystal and see *no positive results* and in fact see *negative results* but yet still decide to follow the hunch of a dead man. Total nonsense.
@@overnightsiren But it's more than a hunch? The Mothercrystals are the Source of Crystals, which allow normal people to use magic. Normal people, who had long in the past won a war overthrowing the prior magic based hierarchy casting down the natural born magic users into slaves, whose use of magic causes them to petrify and die. Magic is stronger in the lands surrounding the Mothercrystals. So, on one hand, we're forcing people to relearn how to do things like light fires with flint and steel rather than a crystal, and on the other we're removing one of the ways oppression has been repeated over the course of history. Sure, destroying one won't end the suffering, the same way stopping one illegal arms dealer won't stop all gun crime. Or, in the case of the Blight, the literal destruction of the land itself, and the hunch that the Mothercrystals were causing it, we can say Stopping one of five Massive polluting countries from polluting won't stop climate change. And think back to *where* Cid came from. He's not from Valisthea. He's lived without magic, and only came to be empowered by Ramuh after landfall. Also that "hunch" is based off of observation of easily accessed phenomena. The Crystals allow people to use magic, even non-bearers. If Using Magic causes Bearers to turn to stone because it sucks out their aether, then where do the Crystals get the Aether to use that magic? Answer: from the Land. Crystals come from the MotherCrystals (it's in the name) And those are huge. The fear of them draining the land's aether is very real. He just doesn't know where it's going yet. Flash forward to the first shown destruction of a Mother Crystal, where Typhon emerges and is Killed, and then Ultima appears to take away Clive. At once, every question that was posed to his theory by Jill and Clive (Why would no one know the truth or who would hide it, Where does the Aether go) is answered. And unlike the last minute swerves from past final fantasies, such as Zemus/Zeromus, Necron and Yu Yevon, the Final boss is shown early, and his presence is felt throughout the story. So yea, let's follow the Hunch of a Dead man, whose goal was to try and stop the Blight and secure a safe place for the persecuted, and realize that destroying one piece of 5 (used to be 8) isn't enough to stop the downward trend. Or if that second half is too much for you to swallow, then we can say Barret's plan trying to stop the Mako Reactors by blowing them up was total nonsense, even though he realized just one won't be enough. Even with news reports showing the destruction of the Reactor killed so many innocent people being far more negative result than the zero positive result of blowing up a single reactor.
@@beatrixkaelin5120 Except it's totally a hunch. According to Ultima's powerpoint presentation, it was magic and not mothercrystals that caused the Blight. Mothercrystals were only planted on Valisthea to target pump aether into the Origin ship, but without them, Ultima's original world fell to Blight anyway. So your entire word vomit is just you bending over backwards to excuse Cid's totally a hunch "deduction". And let's not forget that in contrast to 16, where mothercrystals have stood since the dawn of time (mothercrystals and the seeds of humanity were sown at the same time and for the same purpose), 7's mako reactors were built within the last 30 years, meaning that while nobody has any reason to doubt the mothercrystals' divinity in 16 (even people from the outer continent like Barnabas, Cid and Charon flock to Valisthea precisely because the blight was also appearing on their outer continent, which is why they migrated to Valisthea since that's the place where the Blight is considered to be spreading the slowest due to "the blessing of the Mothercrystals"), there are people in living memory in 7 who has lived through (and are still living in) a world without Mako reactors. That's why there's still pocket resistance against Mako usage, not to mention the instability of the mako reactors themselves since it's a very new invention. So people in the present (esp eco warriors) have seen and experienced both the before and after of mako reactors and be like "wait, isn't Shinra killing the land wtf" and it makes more sense than 16's logic does.
@@themisheika "It was magic and not mothercrystals that caused the blight"... Wtf do you think the mothercrystals are? They're literally pure aether shit used for magic.
There are a few areas I agree with you but so many are just non issues or actual good things that you are complaining about. My biggest issue of the game is the crafting and gear. The combat is fire. The moves you are saying that are useless are in fact not useless. And being mad that you can respec whenever you want? Cmon dude.... AP does not become useless till near the end game unless you are not fully upgrading and not just unlocking the attacks. Game is a bit easy but Final Fantasy mode is real fun. Non memorable locales? WHAT!? the dungeon where you see the first crystal. Rosaria. The volcano. Game has great locales. I love the story. I wish they did more with Benedikta though. Game does have some problems for sure. but its a solid 7-8/10 and the best FF we have gotten in a LONG time.
I loved FF16 for its darker tone, the Eikon fights as well as the sibling dynamics, but after playing FF7 Remake and Rebirth I completely understood what the fandom had hoped for.
I agree with most of the video. Very disappointing game overall for me. The demo was almost a 10/10 for me, the actual game is half that. One nitpick that annoyed me: in the demo, you play as Joshua briefly and he has the cure spell. Easily implies to FF fans that spells and what not would be in this game, but they’re not. You never gain any magic beyond the triangle button to shoot an attack with a color that matches your Eikon. It’s bullshit. The cure spell was added to Joshua maliciously to invoke nostalgia, and damn it, it worked. I have to go into the next entry with a raised eyebrow, unfortunately.
One thing I think you've missed here is the major pacing and tone issues. And I don't mean the obvious ones, like the time skips that basically skip the majority of Clive's life. But the fact that, after Benedicta and Hugo die, with 2 Eikons and Crystals destroyed by Cid (2.0), the world doesn't seem to care. There is no alliance formed against Cid, no further repercussions for the branded, nobody takes extra steps to make sure the crystals are protected, nothing. And the NPC's back at the hideout, who now know that Clive is their leader, the one to take down nations and fight demi gods and literal god BY HIMSELF, those people are more than willing to waste his time with mundane stuff that anyone else can do. That isn't just a pacing problem. It speaks volume about the characters themselves and ruin them. They seem to not care about Clive's ordeals outside of mandatory cutscenes. So much wasted potential Anyway, your analysis was very good. Keep up the good work, you earned an extra subscriber with this one :D
Seems like they thought about certain points, but then spent very little time on fleshing the rest out. If there is no logical path of events, such as your pointing out in one reaction leads to another, but tries to tie it up without being too realistic and true gravity of consequences set in, I think they realized how bleak a game it would be.
@@blumiu2426 But even the ones they were supposed to think out of, due to them being main story ones, they screwed up. The example that I can't easily forget is the mission to save Mid. We are told that the city she's in is under attack, the guards won't last and we need to travel there asap after meeting Joshua's contact, yet the game unlocks like 10 side quests at the same time that you can do at your leisure. Like, come on now.
@@KGLordofhollows It seems both CBU1 and CBU3 don't know how to implement side quests. Where they used to have value in unlocking things in the past, they don't seem to know how to go about it in modern formats. Maybe they get lost in the scope of the game or bounce between trying to make them relevant and then filler, so it ends up disjointed.
Thanks a lot for the view and comment. Yeah there definitely wasn't enough reaction from the world at large when it came to the destruction of the mothercrystals. I had touched on the fact that "there were never any positive effects so why did they continue destroying them"--but as you said, we should have seen MORE of the negatives of destroying the mothercrystals. We should have seen the world grapple with losing literally 20% of its vital resources and it could have made the political angle of the story even more interesting. The only time we saw anything akin to this was with Sambreque moving its capitol to the Crystalline Dominion, but they were actually already doing that *before* we destroyed Drake's Head. I think ultimately the reason we never saw any of these repercussions play out (like nations allying to strengthen their holdings over the remaining mothercrystals) was because one of the three major political players (Waloed) was revealed to be a puppet state, void of any life being run by Ultima the entire time while another of the main superpowers of Valisthea was led by Hugo Kupka whose sole goal was to avenge Benedikta. When 2 out of 3 of the world's superpowers aren't acting like they care about the dwindling resources, it falls on the third to give us *some* interesting story in that direction, but Sambreque was just sitting there protecting their hold over the Dominion. As it stands, we really saw nothing come of destroying the mothercrystals except as they pertained to Ultima's plans, which was the least interesting storyline in the whole game. And re: the NPCs giving sidequests while they know Clive has bigger fish to fry--major FFXIV energy. That's the stuff that made me realize "okay yeah this game definitely had the same team as FFXIV" haha. Thanks a lot for the view, comment and subscription! It means a lot!
@@overnightsiren I think if we saw the suffering Clive and Sid caused from resources dwindling, people would die. Even casual examination thought this would be the direction the plot would take. If they avoided the hard reality that they would be seen as villains with blood on their hands, it would more than complicate the plot and conclusion. Those boys in the end would not be playing with a pup with sunshine and butterflies around them, they'd be burdened with work, learning labors needed to survive like how peasant life actually was. Why fictionalize reality when you removed the ease of life that would allow children to be children instead of grow up fast? It's a contradictory plot that didn't want to take itself serious and just say "crystals bad".
I really started struggling to finish the game when I'd finish a big story moment, be back at the hideout, then I'd be locked from travel temporarily because the next 20 minutes of main story was: Talk to A, Now talk to B, Talk to C, Let's see what A has to say about all that. Why could this not have been a little cutscene where they all hold counsel/discussions?
It's nice to finally hear someone with similar opinions to myself. I was starting to feel like I was in crazy town with how much praise this game gets. "It doesn't feel like Final Fantasy" is a statement that isn't meant to attack people who like this game and I'm honestly getting tired of people losing their minds over it. The FF vibe just isn't there. Iconography does not a Final Fantasy make. In the absolute nicest way possible that I could put it, as a Final Fantasy fan who doesn't hate any of the other 15 FF games and their sequels.. 16 is overwhelmingly, aggressively average.
"The vibe isn't there" is exactly what I mean too. My biggest frustration is the bad faith rebuttals that "oh because it's not turnbased"--well, no. It's not that, it's because it doesn't have charm. This isn't a world that I want to live in, which is the opposite to what I'd say about almost any other Final Fantasy world. If I woke up on Gaia from IX or Spira from X (well, after Sin lol) I'd be in heaven. If I woke up in Valisthea I'd be like "FUUUUU---"...you get the idea. lol Glad I could help you feel like you weren't alone in your frustrations of XVI, I know sometimes it can be hard to see through so much blind and *aggressive* positivity. Thanks for the view and comment! Please consider subscribing if you haven't, but either way thank you! :)
@@CazaDeYork Saying a game doesn’t feel like it’s predecessors is a totally valid comment to make. The person receiving the comment can choose to take personal offense if they’d like, but no one is forcing them to not like the game. It is what it is.
It isn't a lame criticism. He elaborated extensively on what those of us who say "it doesn't feel like FF" mean. A lot of franchises move so far away from their identity that they completely lose themselves. Silent Hill is probably the best example of this. Silent Hill is survival horror. The last Silent Hill game released was a dungeon crawler and fans rightfully rejected it because it didn't "feel" like Silent Hill. It's the same thing with XVI. Every main line FF game is radically different but they are always RPGs. Being an RPG is one of, if not the most, vital components of FF's identity. XVI is not an RPG. That's why it doesn't feel like FF. If Final Fantasy 17 came out right now and it was a first person shooter or a platformer, would you still think it's dumb to say it doesn't feel like "Final Fantasy"? Would people still make the argument that it's still a Final Fantasy game because Square Enix said it is and it has "Final Fantasy" in its title?
I really appreciate this video. I've been a fan since 1991 (FFIV was my first when I was 7), and I too was hoping XVI would be a return to form. While there were parts I liked, the actual plot was very... mid, as the kids say. I've had to accept that the direction Final Fantasy is going (and honestly has been going for the last 10 years) isn't for me. I've found that the Xenoblade series scratches the same itch that Final Fantasy used to for me, and I highly suggest checking it out if you have a Switch.
Man...after playing 16, (i have many gripes with it, but always gives benefit of the doubt), it made me want to appreciate 15 a lot LOT more, actual believable characters, fun exploration n looting means something, Eos feels alive and atleast i can atleast imagine myself living in there. Vanisthelia on the other hand.... 💀
Honestly, the smartest thing they did was do the demo to hook people into buying it because, honestly, after completing the game, it's like I've been catfished. My favourite FF is X. I'm okay if they decide to switch things up, but the RPG elements ARE essential. Besides the story of X, it's my favourite because of the strategy you need to take bosses down; even random encounters need some strategy to get by. I was very unimpressed with the magic AND item use in this game. In fact, I didn't even use anything besides healing potions for 95% of my gameplay and no mage spells or anything. The weapons and armour are a joke. The most I did was update the stats for both, but I didn't bother playing around with different armour pieces for boosts because I flat-out didn't need them, and you're absolutely right; there is NO level grind in this game, unlike every other Final Fantasy I've ever had. You really didn't need to think at all. Before I get into the combat, this game was stunningly beautiful visually (although I didn't have HDR on my TV, so everything was extremely washed out and overly dark, which annoyed me so damn much). However, I know this is a part of the action genre, but all the animations and fast pace were too much for my ADHD brain. I did have two of the story-based rings on the evade one and one other, which I can't even remember, and maybe taking those off would have made the game harder for me personally, but only because it would have been harder to focus and thus die more which is not fun for me personally. I've seen people rave good things about the combat of this game, and I'm just like, WHY?! For one, there were limited times I felt satisfied with a kill because of the lack of strategy needed, everything mostly felt like a slasher game (which is not what I want from a ff game), the Eikon fights were nice looking but didn't add the same feeling like aeons did to FFX and honestly didn't give me that much excitement and I basically ignored the whole eikon abilities and one thing that really pissed me off is the boss fights were you slash them right to the end and then they decide to kill the enemy for you in a cinematic scene which I'm pretty sure they did more than once. THEY TOOK ANY PART OF FUN OUT, which is finally killing them after suffering for 15-60 minutes. :/ Towards the end, when there were just waves and waves of easy enemies, I was like, MY GOD, how many times do I have to kill these things? They just annoyed me. It's amusing how they focused so hard on fast travel when FFXV was so painful with the long load screens and drives. It's like they wanted to fix that issue but overcompensated for it. The lack of adventure is another aspect of why people say this doesn't feel like a FF game. Also, collecting treasure is also disappointing, and unless you need potions, useless af. The story and character were the only reason why I felt I stayed because it was ridiculously good at first. I was actually invested in the Is Joshua alive, why is he alive if he is, etc situation and wanted them to even reunite with him. Up to Cid's death was pure gold for me (CID is the best character in this game), even Dion destroying his home was riveting to me (also, what ended up happening to his lover anyway?), although I barely felt anything came of that either and even though it wasn't apparent to me at first and upon looking at other people's views, it is very disjointed, but they do a good job at distracting you from it (unlike FFXV), or maybe it was because I had a month break. I was all for Clive and Jill, but I found their love story super weird and awk too. When she was flirting with him as a kid, I was actually uncomfortable with it, and I wondered why it was him and not Joshua, tbh. Don't even get me started on that ending. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT. First off, THE VAGUENESS. Did Clive healing Joshua at the end cure the wounds so he was put to rest in his natural state, or did it heal him? Secondly, I took the ending as Clive died, so I was very upset with that. I've since read people's theories, but let's go with how I feel with my initial reaction. You get through ALL THIS DEPRESSING stuff, and there is NO conclusion. Oh, yay, the world is saved, but you don't see any of the characters really live in it?! We don't care about those two children 100 years in the future, yes, it gives us a glimpse of what they created, but there is no emotional depth than seeing Jill live without Clive or what happens next for Gav and the home, etc. Does the land fully recover? We won't know, will we? But maybe they did it intentionally in the event for future DLC and/or FFXVI-2; who knows. Well, at least Tourgal doesn't die. That's something, I guess, and there was some good to this game, of course. I brought a PS5 for this game at a time I couldn't really afford it, but I saw the demo and was so impressed and wanted it on day one. To say I should have waited is an understatement.
I agreed, I loved the game and it immediately made me want to buy the game. Now after this I'm never playing a demo again and I'm waiting a few weeks before I buy a new game. Hell, I don't even know if I'm buying remake part 2.
I still feel you were too nice. For every high this game has so many awfully deep lows... by the end I just wanted it to be over. The game is so unbelievable mediocre in most aspects. Utterly disappointing for a main FF game and fanboys/press keep praising it for no reason.
Thanks a lot for the view and comment! It's definitely disappointing to see so many other longtime fans really ardently defend the game. I'm not sure if they're just trying to delude themselves to cope with the fact that we haven't had a good mainline, non-MMO, title in years or what--but if we EVER want this series to get back on track we really need to hold Square's feet to the flame and let them know that they are releasing a subpar product under the guide of a beloved series.
I somewhat agree there. It starts off so strong from a story perspective, i initially forgave some of the game play restrictions. But, the story slowly looses steam after Cid dies. The narrative pull weakens, proceeds at a sluggish pace (even with a time skip) and the side quests are just a bore.
What this game lacks is the mystery and secrets of previous ff titles. For example secret bosses and secret final weapons which ff7 ff8 and ff10 does so well.
This game was about 20 hours too long, and got painfully boring midway through. This game was disappointing in so many aspects and you touched on most of them. Cheers.
The ultimate head scratching question I keep asking myself about the hype media surrounding this game: “Are we playing the same game???” I mean seriously it seems so LAZY, there’s no depth, there’s nothing “next gen” about it. Even the way Clive runs is so ps2 and Arcady how he just glides across the map. 15 may have its problems but at least you can see the effort. I’m not saying 16 is horrible but disappointing, bland, dull and boring are the words that come to mind
Exactly! Looks bland to me. I can't say stuff about the story and lore and stuff. But instead of looking great, it looks like an expensive PS3 game or something.
I asked it myself too. I even know someone that flames me if i point out the flaws. Lets be serious. The game not just fails as a RPG. Hence i even would have prefered if they go full action without any RPG elements. Because the few RPG elements they have left actively work against the game. If they did a more focused action game that jumps from set piece to set piece it likely would have worked better. It even loses against other newer games in the series in the action gameplay department. FF7R is also barely a RPG but the fights just feel much more fun especially as you have multiple character you can play with different fighting styles. Strangers of Paradies battle system beats FF16 in pretty much every area. This two games are both action games and no real FF fan hates them. FF 16 not being a turn based RPG really isn't the main issue.
I think Yoshi P designed a safe game that appeals to the masses (which was sort of the intention to grab new FF fans), as such what he made was good on paper and appeals to reviewers, industry veterans, and newcomers. It hits the GoT feel, has some sex, nudity, blood, and huge big kaiju bombastic set piece that fights many that the masses like. In that department I think he more or less was successful at the cost of several other aspects. It is rumored that CBU3 might be handling another FF game but with a different writer (Ishikawa of Shadowbringer and Endwalker fame) instead of Maehiro as some members of FFXIV's team were announced to be promoted, that same happened with the announcement of FFXVI. I enjoyed and liked the game, though a bit disappointed at the end, the narrative started really strong, the voice acting superb, music was solid, and the graphics the best FF has ever seen (and FFXVI IMO still beats FFVII Rebirth in the graphics department (art direction is another story)). His strengths are focus and project management (an important skill most of the other directors/producers at Square are really mediocre at), for better or worse. One big positive thing I will say is that this is probably the cleanest development cycle FF had since FFXII, which likely tells you more about Square's management. The game started pre-production, entered production, no engine was scrapped, and the game finished without little hiccups or massive consumption of funds (like FFXIV 1.0, FFXIII, or FFXV did).
I've been struggling to find anyone who shares my disappointment. It wasn't a BAD game, and I played it through to the end, which I don't do if I really get bored. But it just felt like it was always missing something. It felt like it tied up almost every little loose end (except the final scene) to the point of exhaustion. I also understand that people enjoy world building... but I feel like more effort went into world building than character or story building. As soon as Joshua reappeared, I lost heart, because it felt like all of the emotional trauma I went through in the demo had no payoff, and there was no main villain to focus on any more. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about it. But I was left feeling wanting and worse... guilty about not enjoying it because I knew it was checking off the boxes for what most people want. I just didn't feel it.
I think it did an alright job world building, but also this isn't a world I want to spend any time in because it's just so miserable and charm-less that the more it got built the more I was exhausted by it. Truly I don't know if there's an FF world I'd want to live in *less* than Valisthea haha Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
You're definately not alone. I think a lot of us went through the same thing. It's Final Fantasy, so everyone expects to experience something enthralling and mindblowing. While 16 has a few of those moments, most of it is a shallow action adventure game of which there are far better one's on the market. People who say that the experience of the cinematics and story make it worth it are saying they actually don't care about gameplay for games which I really don't want them to be the consensus of gaming standards.
I have been feeling that a lot with JRPG's lately. Tales of Arise for instance I felt was just painfully average. Not bad, but also nothing that really stood out as amazing about it either. And Shin Megami Tensei V meanwhile felt like it just came and went. And yet what baffles me is that these titles gain all this praise when they for the most part just feel like they are checking boxes.
For me this should have been a spinn-off, rather than mainline FF. Final Fantasy has always been an RPG with a party. And this game is an action game, with a single playable character. This is the equivalent of calling Command & Conquer: Renegade, just Command & Conquer 4. Or calling the first Telltale Borderlands adventure just Borderlands 3. Just a little change in name, and people wouldn't even discuss whether this is or is not a Final Fantasy game. That being said, the name is far from the only issue this game has, as you explained, but it would have helped to have people less frustrated. Because if a spinn-off fails, well we still have the mainline titles... but if the mainline disappoints, people are that much more likely to just abondon the franchise. And it's not like there was no writing on the wall about how FF fans think about action-games with a single playable character, because that did not go down well wtih Lightning Returns either.
asmongold need to see this video, i express my dissapointment and i got backlashed for being boomer who cant move on from turn based battle, i mean.. i dont mind the battle gameplay.. but the way we build our characters just make strangers of paradise are masterpiece.. game are also too easy.. and i miss tonberry and omega weapon
FINALLY. Someone else was saying things I’ve said the whole time. You elaborated so sufficiently in eloquently that there’s not much I can comment on. I REALLY don’t get why people seem to love the music. I think the final boss theme was pretty good and some(not all) the other battle themes were decent, but that’s it
The issue I had with Final Fantasy 16 was it felt like their desire to attract a new audience meant that all the charm, comradery, adventure had been sapped from the game. Along with it were gone all the "RPG" elements that made FF at times so addictive (interesting and iconic equipments with interesting effects, being able to control your party members and building out your team and stats actually mattering to some extents). Its not necessarily the fact it went action - there are many action games that have deep RPG elements and FFXVI in comparison remains remarkably shallow and using just Clive is fun at the start but as the game goes on the gameplay loop of staggering enemies and then going all out becomes dull after the 50th boss battle. The story feels like it also lost all the balance of the plots of past FF games. As an example, Final Fantasy X has a extremely depressing world caught in a cycle of destruction with Sin but the developers knew that this sort of atmosphere would be exhausting the entire game and so things like Blitzball and Luca provided a point of joy for not only the people of Spira but also a distraction for us as a player from the darker moments that preceded Luca. They also included lighter moments between party members in between the dark parts of the plot. Once Cid leaves FFXVI's storyline, the game gets so exhausting and serious to play that it just becomes a relief when it finally ends.
No team building, no cities or towns, no creativity in battle growth, no airships, no party control. If this is a Final Fantasy game, someone should be fired.
I agree 100% with everything you said, and you highlighted some things that I felt but couldn't put into words. I too feel like this game was unfinished. I can't imagine the original scope of the game was what we got. I'm guessing they planned to have a better battle system, more RPG elements, better sidequests etc but ran out of time and crammed in filler to increase the game length. There were so many obvious places to expand upon the battle system to make it more varied and interesting. E.g. elemental damage from Eikons, different enemy types being strong/weak to different elements. Different weapons or movesets for each Eikon, instead of just abilities that all work on all enemy types. Switching to Titan could have switched to a 'Monk" hand-fighting style that is slower but does more damage, breaks shields/guard/staggers enemies faster. Switching to Bahamut could have given you the spear which has a longer range, good for piercing certain enemy types. Garuda could have made you faster and more evasive. The story wasn't great, but if the gameplay was fun I probably would have still liked the game. I hated the gameplay so much that it took away from the story and I simply didn't care about it at all by the midpoint of the game. So much wasted potential.
Regarding the blight not slowing down after the crystal was destroyed, I think the writers put themselves in one of those "screwed if you don't, screwed if you do" writing setups. They couldn't have the destruction of the crystals have a visible effect on the blight, since then you'd have people--or at least Dion--get the idea to smash his crystal. Basically, the writers wanted Cid to be right, but also have it be where nobody else but Clive would act on his belief. Honestly, the crystal thing just pisses me off to no end. Ultima wanted the crystals destroyed the whole time, but didn't the writers realize that if the player becomes invested in that journey, having the bad guy say, "I wanted you to do that the whole time" right at the end is like a slap in the face? There are some games that do that well--like Bravely Default--but those at least give that moment room to breathe, and give the player and characters catharsis when they defeat the bad guy anyway. Here, that reveal happens so quickly that there's no opportunity to breathe. Like...imagine Heavensward and you go through the entire expac and throw Niddhog's eyes into the abyss, except Niddhog comes back and says: "You fool, that was my plan all along" and kills Alphinaud. And then you fight Niddhog again. Like...the guy that wrote Heavensward wrote this? I still can't believe it.
I'm not surprised at all given that information. Heavensward has so many ass pulls and contrivances so I'm not shocked in the slightest to see the same guy pull the same shit in a different game. The Eyes of Nidhogg itself is one of my biggest gripes with Heavensward in fact. It was so unbelievably obvious that throwing them off a bridge was such a stupid idea that I can't believe they expect anyone to take it seriously. They're artifacts of immeasurable power and we just threw them into a canyon. Like we're not talking about a portal into an endless abyss, there IS a bottom. The big emphasis is supposed to be "oh there's powerful winds filled with ice magic that prevent anyone from accessing the deepest parts of the canyon" but the fact that anyone thinks some powerful ice magic is enough to stop the Ascians, like have you been paying attention? At that point in the story, they have functionally infinite power merely by virtue of the fact that we have no ability to gauge their power level at that point in the game. For all we know, ice magic is specifically something they're really good at nullifying. I mean Cid built a ship that can blast through a full-strength Allegan magical barrier in like a week, so how on earth would we possibly think that some magic icy winds would be this impenetrable substance??? The MOMENT Aymeric yelled at us to throw the eyes off the bridge I KNEW they'd be coming back to hurt us because that plan was literally the last thing I would have ever thought of to do. They should have sealed them away somewhere they could actually keep watch over and run tests on them to see the limit of their power. That's what you do with powerful magic artifacts. You don't throw them off a cliff and then hope none of your enemies find a way to go and retrieve them. So yeah, no, it makes perfect sense that the same guy would write a similarly bullshit plotline.
@@Tohlemiach Oh God, I could go on about dragon eyes for days. Like...they're either nigh bottomless wells of aether, or are able to be exhausted as the plot demands. Just...keep it consistent, please? Yeah, throwing the eyes was super stupid. You already used one to destroy Igeyorm earlier in that expansion--they could've easily been Ascian destroying tools. You could've given one to the scions and kept the other at Ishgard if you're so worried about someone else grabbing both eyes again and becoming Niddhog's shade. Imo, dragon eyes are probably a result of growing pains, so to speak. I'm playing through the rest of Heavensward right now, and to me, it seems like the writers were trying to go from a soft magic system in ARR to something harder in Heavensward, with proper rules. But they didn't know how to go about it elegantly. I hope Stormblood and later expacs do a better job. I've heard good things about Shadowbringers, at least.
@@xiraho1 I hope you enjoy it more than I did, because I just recently finished 5.0 Shadowbringers, and while I think it was the best base-line expansion plot so far, I still think it's a mediocre FF story. I'd put it at the level of VIII, but I actually got so bored of VIII that I never even finished it, so I'd have to at least put Shadowbringers above it. I actually have so far most enjoyed the post-launch Stormblood story because it actually has a really interesting moral dilemma and some interesting character developments. It ends up not mattering in the grand scheme of things, but as a sort of short story I really liked the ideas it presented. To this day, I still think ARR was the most entertained I've been in FFXIV because it actually built up to a climactic fight that was properly epic and took it's time to have us fight our way all the way to the top. As annoying as it is to do that encounter in the duty roulette nowadays, doing it for the first time back in the day was magical to me. I've been really disappointed since then to find out that every expansion does the same thing where there is a final dungeon that leads up to the last boss, and then right after there is just one trial which is a single boss fight that caps off the entire expansion. They just repeat this same pattern every time and it just never gets as good as ARR for me personally. Even as tedious as the rest of ARR was, I really loved that climax. Either way, things like Nidhogg's eyes or the way they "resolved" the stuff that happened in Ul'Dah at the end of ARR are why I generally have the opinion that FFXIV's story is pretty aggressively mediocre.
@@Tohlemiach Huh. Then I guess I'll look forward to Stormblood. I heard that it wasn't great, so I was fully prepared to write it off and consider it a big pill to swallow on the way to Shadowbringers. But I might be pleasantly surprised, we'll see.
@@xiraho1 I think people are generally right about the main campaign being not all that great, I myself wasn't too crazy about it, but like I said, what I enjoyed was mainly the patch quests that came after the main launch MSQ. That might just be me since I've never heard anyone praising anything from Stormblood, but who knows.
My biggesst gripe with this game is solely the gameplay. It didnt have to be as boring as it was. All of Clive's base abilities are frontloaded, unlocked within the first 2 hours. Now, for the entire rest of the game, you only get new things to play with every 8-10 hours, and they are all 1-3 cooldown abilities. No, getting a new Eikon should have given Clive an entirely new moveset, like switching weapons/styles does in Devil May Cry. FFXVI leaves you using the same combos on the same enemies for 50 hours, and this, combined with the BORING sidequests really really hurt this game.
You are the first reviewer that I’ve seen go over every single aspect of the game, with such great detail, and actually admit that they were not done as well as we were hoping it would. I loved how honest you were, and your love for the FF franchise shines through, despite your not loving the game. I do agree with you wholeheartedly, and I’d love to see you more FF reviews or something similar in the future.
@@overnightsiren I said the game was designed to pander to a new generation of low attention span having gamers from COD and GTA (which the devs openly stated) and that was like kicking a bee hive on reddit. The praise people there give this game just boggles my mind. I dont know how they can call themselves FF fans, when a beloved series was used as a cash grab to attract the the lowest common denominator of gamer. I guess they are right for being offended by that - but sometimes the truth hurts.
@@overnightsiren Some people write reviews to reflect their own honest opinions. Some people write reviews for clicks or monetization. Some people write reviews so as to express opinions they think will garner them acceptance. Not to say most people who like the game are either of the last two options, but there is no end to things that people will claim to enjoy because other people enjoy it whose opinions they want to court--a part of being a teenager that I think most of us never realllly grow out of.
@@etzioschmetzio2168that’s the literally the most generic “criticism” you can offer, what’d you expect the reaction to be like? Praise for saying that stupid ass shit?
I really like your review, it summarizes a lot of my own opinions on the game. Though I wouldn't be as harsh on it, I was quite disappointed with the end result. I agree 100% with the lack of memorable locations, I was looking forward to visiting all these great beautiful castles and citites, but we never truly get to experience them. Most of the places we do get to visit are these medieval villages with no charm. Even if they were going for something more dry an realistic, they could've at least added some pops of color and character, something to make them more fantasy like. In a lot of these villages it just felt like I was playing Assassin's Creed or something. I was also very disappointed with most characters and relationships and I think the game fails at "show, not tell". We're supposed to believe that Jill is this super powerful eikon, but her only relevant fighting sequence is off screen. We're supposed to believe that Clive and Jill love each other, but a lot of their romantic interactions happen in letters? We're supposed to believe that the attack on the hideout was a big tragedy, but none of the named characters die. I do agree that the geopolitical story is very shallow and seems to have no influence in the plot that we experience. And besides that, I really missed having an actual cast of party members that would experience the story together and present different perspectives and opinions, as it would help us understand the world better and care about it. Either way, thank you for the review, it made me feel very validated in my experience and it was enjoyable to watch. Let us hope that the next releases will be better (:
Hey thanks so much for your reply! I'm always happy to feel validated too when I dislike something. I find a lot of times there's almost an air of "toxic positivity" surrounding popular game releases where-in you're villainized for disliking something, so glad I could give you some reassurance that you're not alone in feeling underwhelmed. I didn't even think of the fact that Jill is never shown having any prowess as a dominant on-screen after her initial battle with Titan, but you're right. She's just taking L's left and right after that haha
This game wants me to believe that in the five year time skip after Cid passes away; Clive and Jill adventured around their world and there was zero sexual tension.
If you have to force yourself to get through a game or to enjoy a game then that is not good at all,just because it is called final fantasy does not mean it is a final fantasy game. This does make me afraid that Square will ruin Dragon Quest 12, I hope not but we will see. I have never been a huge Final fantasy fan,I have played the older games when I was a kid and the last game I played in the series was Final Fantasy 10, In this day in age final fantasy is not the same game any more,it is not even an RPG anymore. Also if I want action RPGs there are much better games to actually enjoy. My point is,do not force yourself to enjoy a game or play a game you just can not get into or enjoy naturally.
Holy shit! You nailed it. You summed up how I felt about this game. As someone who has loved Final Fantasy games for a very long time, it's disappointing to see that the last few have been so bad. I remember finishing 16 and uninstalling off my ps5 that same hour, telling myself that I would most likely never play it again. Thank you for your work on the video.
This game needed some actual dungeons more than anything, with a complex level design and interactivity, some environmental puzzle solving, something outside the relentless battles, it became redundant very fast...
I already had a bad feeling when the earliest previews came out and the world and characters looked so... drab. I think it's a fine game on its own, but to me FF has always challenged western notions of what a fantasy story can even be, so to see the latest game adopt a very safe, very on-trend grimdark YA fantasy aesthetic and story was disheartening.
Yeah, FF has always been a mix of oldschool dragons, magic and whimsy mixed with technological grit and complex characters. This time they went too heavy with the grit.
I think the end of this video was so important. “ITS OKAY”. I think all the false hype surrounding ff16 is just because we’re having trouble accepting that this game was a major let down. People were looking for any shred of a reason to call this game of the year just because we were all exhausted from the disappointment that was 15 (I love 15 btw, I thought it was way better than this) All in all, 16 wasn’t Terrible, but nobody will remember this bland entry
Love your analysis and I agree! I’m a major FF fangirl and I felt bad for not enjoying FFXVI as much as I wanted to. (I even got it as a gift for my birthday as it came out the day before lol) I kept comparing it to FFIV, FFVI, FFX, FFXII and even FFX-2. The characters and world-building just felt so unfinished. Tbh, I would trade fancy visuals for proper world-building, story and characters any day. Do make more analytical videos though! Would love to hear more of your thoughts.
"I feel bad for not enjoying FFXVI as much as I wanted to" --- I feel exactly the same. I think that's why it took me so long to admit to myself that I didn't like it (until about 70% of the way through). On paper the game had everything that made me think I'd like it--a fantasy setting skewing more towards fantasy than sci-fi (but still a mix of both, in true FF style), some promising looking characters, and Yoshi P at the helm (massive XIV fan here) it just...didn't come together though. I also felt bad because the PS5 was a gift to me from my FC so to then not like the game I got the PS5 for made me feel like it was a slap in their faces. That's why I'm going to platinum all the Pixel Remasters on it! Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
@@overnightsiren I said this on Reddit- Visuals are fantastic - but if the story is not there to back them up - then they stop mattering. I dont care how epic the fight sequences are when I know im returning to bland story and characters as soon as they are over.
@@Bahamut998 You shouldnt have to read lore to understand the story in an RPG series. They have literally 60 hours to fully tell their story in a game thats 80% cutscene!!!! Why does Joshua hide from clive for 20 years? Why does he dismiss his protector from the ancient order so easily, for her to become useless afterward? Why is Otto so important? Why do they keep destroying the crystals after no positive effect? it actually starts to have a negative effect, and they just continue on. Lot of holes and the game boss is the most boring monotone evil god character I've ever seen in a game.
@@etzioschmetzio2168 the crystals were placed by ultima and destroying them is good. Joshua hides from Clive to essentially monitor ultima who he has figured out was behind phoenix gate. Otto from the get go is established as cids go to man and organiser at the hideaway. Joshua keeps jote at the hideaway to protect her because duty is a prison. Man all your answers are there in the game, have you even played the game or do you have low attention span?
I’m just at a point where I don’t even get hyped for Final Fantasy games anymore. I mean they lost their identity along time ago, where they don’t even resemble Final Fantasy at all. No RPG elements, no party system, no strategy whatsoever, no challenge, no exploration etc… Final Fantasy is a shell of its former self. Hell you spend more time watching cutscenes than playing the game lol. Now If I wanted to play a challenging hack and slash, I would just play Devil May Cry.
I enjoyed this game a bit more than FF XV but overall I just had an overwhelming sense of disinterest during my playthrough. I gave my thoughts in the comment section of an NSP video before and I'll copy paste them here if anyone's curious. Final Fantasy XVI is heavily flawed and doesn't live up to my personal standards of what a Final Fantasy game should be however in every area it lacks it makes up for it in several others. + I love the emphasis on story. Telling a cohesive narrative from beginning, middle and end felt like a lost art in the past few mainline entries. XIII and XV screwed us over heavily but XVI killed it in the narrative department. The lack of an empty, useless open world helped with the narrative structure as well. + I love all of the little references to past games. + The M rating helped the game stand out as a more mature story which the series needed heavily. A M rated game should never shy away from sexual or suggestive themes. I wish the female character designs emphasized that a bit more but it's not big deal. + The story feels like a mix between Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise which isn't a bad thing. + - The characters have a lot of depth to them but not much in terms of personality. I feel like the performances for both the English and Japanese side helps flesh them out but overall I feel like Jill is a bit of an emotionless drone as well as Clive to an extent. But it makes sense for them to be the way they are given how their lives have been ruined by coup against Rosaria so I can understand but the lack of banter and small character moments really makes you miss the camaraderie and connection that the bros from XV had. The quips were overused but I prefer that to not saying anything at all after a battle. + The locations in this game are beautiful though the graphics are pretty middle of the road. + Soundtrack was excellent and reminds me of Uematsu's old work, no offense to other composers like Shimomura-san but Uematsu was made for FF games and anything that sounds like his music should be the standard for these games. Period. - The Eikonic battles felt a little overblown. Titan's in particular lasted WAY too long. - + The gameplay was simple yet a little too easy for my liking. I wish we could've chosen the hardest difficulty from the get go. - Leviathan got lost somewhere in development so they had to come up with an excuse for his lack of appearance last minute. I would've rather it not be in the game at all. - The framerate issues on launch were unacceptable. This is why I hate console gaming, they advertise the machine as the most powerful yet we are still dealing with issues we faced years ago. - I feel like going with the English script first for this game was to it's detriment thanks to the sanitizing of a few lines of dialogue, me being heavily against censorship I can't condone it even if it's "technically" not censorship since the Japanese script was done afterward I still don't like it. However that's a small complaint of mine. -I know many of NSP’s audience will disagree with me.- - The character designs are tame and boring. This is a subjective complaint because I'm a huge weeb and would've preferred more aesthetically pleasing designs. I guess this is one of those rare cases of substance over style? I guess the opposite is just as bad lmao. - Where the f*ck are Cactuar and Tonberry??? - + Clive as a character is a tragic one, he's been through hell and back and it feels like the game never lets him catch a break. This barely changes throughout the course of the game which kind of irked me. I'm all for tragic storylines but I feel like little room was given for a chance at respite for Clive and his crew. Following along that I feel as if the tone stayed consistent throughout the game to its detriment…It was a dark fantasy storyline through and through with bits of shounen styled action to re-emphasize that this is a Japanese game first and foremost which I appreciate but I feel like the game could have done with one or two comic relief characters to kind of break up the tension once in a while. Gav despite being somewhat of a hothead is VERY tame when compared to the likes of Zidane, Tidus, Kefka, Mog(FFXIII2), etc. - I was heavily disappointed with the lack of permanent party members. While Jill is with you for a majority of the time (as well as another character) the game felt more like Square Enix's answer to something like the Witcher 3. A solo adventure RPG first and foremost. If this was a spin-off I'd be fine with that but I like RPG's with a sense of camaraderie and a shared experience so it annoyed me a bit to not see any attempt at garnering a true party together (at least in combat). Mid, the uncle and Gav do join you on occasion but they were always in the background and only have a few moments to really shine. I felt that it was a huge missed opportunity to carry on that tradition of having a full party. (I guess Yoshi P wants that to be done away with in future entries?) - The Chocobo theme is gone. All we get is a leitmotif. Unforgivable. Overall the game feels more like a sendoff to the series rather than a celebration. I guess in the end Yoshi-P may be trying to tell us it's time to move on? I don't know for sure but I have to agree. Final Fantasy just isn't what it used to be and I don't want to be attached to it anymore. I'll find another RPG to play and probably skip out on 17(I dunno the roman numeral for it lol). 6.5/10 for me, at least it was slightly better than XV.
Really liked your thoughts, I also had mixed emotions, it was graphically impressive and liked the cinematic fights, but the average fights was disappointing as you mentioned after they just are rinse repeat. And definitely felt lacking in development of characters or how story connects, all the stuff at the beginning had no impact once Ultima became main plot.
Here after the rising tide released, mystery of the medicine girl continues. Honestly, I feel the same in most ways about this game. It's honestly forgettable besides the rage that it could've been better. It's a 6/10 and I hope people realise after the spectacle that this it the true worth of the game
Thanks for making this video. I have played 14, all the way through to its latest expansion, which was a disappointment after the last one. I also played 16 and I'm glad you made it. I was initially curious to see if my issues with EW (homogenisation of jobs, simplistic itemisation, very formulaic content model, SHB's more complex story being rushed out with a weak resolution in EW to move on to a beach vacation episode in 7.0...) were down to Yoshi being more constrained in what he could do with it, or not... didn't take long to get an answer on that. Talking about brushing off entire regions with a dungeon... Xelphatol in XIV was a classic in that regard. I echo your comments on the lack of memorable music. My biggest issues, though, were that the antagonists felt rushed through and of little consequence, especially the other Dominants (barring Dion, perhaps.) Ultima just felt weak, like they grafted 14's Omicrons onto the Terra/Gaia plot out of 9, and the end parts with him were just cringeworthy in my eyes, repeating some of the worst JRPG tropes (in spite of Yoshi's disingenuous nonsense over use of the term.) 7R handled its antagonists far better, by contrast. Annabella felt like her potential was squandered and was laid out to die along with the political intrigue the game had promised earlier on. The whole 'break the chains' thing was alright but it's been done better by other games, e.g. Tales of Arise, and I think more should've been made of the harmful consequences that accompanied removing the mothercrystals, given how reliant the world is on them. It's all a bit too convenient since Cid just happens to be right about it - would've been better if there was more to the whole situation. Your point on the plausibility of the characters' actions here in light of what Cid is doing is hitting the nail on the head. I also had issues with it marketing itself as the first 'true' FF action rpg, when 7R and Stranger of Paradise are both better at this. Most of the non-staggerable foes just melted, there was little cerebral function required to move past them at all, and even some of the bosses felt lackluster. Was a shame I couldn't just switch to the hard mode from the outset. I think 16 needed to pick and settle on a coherent vision - I don't think FF games need to be goofy to work, after all I really enjoyed XII, but with XII Matsuno knew how to write the political intrigue in a more nuanced manner and ensure it was present all the way throughout. Generally, his games like Tactics Ogre all exemplify this. At most I'd give it a 7/10. Highlight for me was the Bahamut fight and after that it was downhill.
I honestly felt they made the game too easy on first playthrough in their attempts to capture gamers that weren't into action RPGs. It's fine to have that available for people but why did the game's hard mode have to locked behind playing the full game first? Think many a fan of the genre would have liked to have Final Fantasy mode as an option from the start.
I think what would have somewhat saved the story is if ultima revealed Joshua was actually dead the whole time and Josh what an illusion sent by ultima to manipulate Clive into do what ultima wanted because it seemed like the whole story all I was doing was exactly what ultima wanted
That's a really interesting idea! I think that actually would have been a great change and created a really iconic moment when it was revealed. Then maybe a boss fight against "Joshua" too.
@overnightsiren yeah it would have tied into the story too: Joshua's companion and the other undying you meet are actually the lost race of the fallen The reveal would have added stakes because it would have been something to test clives will Every dominant or country leader had someone sent by ultima to manipulate them so it would make sense that Clive has someone too Also I thought seeing the king Barnabas with Hugo, his mother and benedikta was a clear Chekhovs gun that someone we knew to be dead can be used to manipulate Clive And not to mention the emotional weight behind the reveal would have been as massive as anything ff has done in years
Agree overall with all of your complaints. The lack of gameplay options was my #1 problem, which then caused other problems with exploration, quest design, crafting, and the overall length of the game. It should've either been 25 hours shorter as a pure action game to emphasize the big set piece battles, or like 40 hours longer with more playable characters, more gameplay variety, more explorable areas, better RPG systems, and any cut content restored. I've played DMCV, Dragon's Dogma, and all of FFs other dabblings into action combat and this has the least variety of any of them. I would guess Leviathan, the Joshua+Jote storyline, and most of Mid's development were cut, and the pacing and cutscene ordering left a lot to be desired, like us seeing Joshua alive before Clive's guilt-ridden internal battle, or Bahamut going crazy without the reasoning why until after. I'm also tired of omnipresent omnipotent villains who lead the protagonist along, invest power in them, even remove obstacles for them, until they decide to no longer be omnipotent and die to their creation (XVI, XV and XIII). Give the protagonist some agency please. I also rank it pretty low in the series, ahead of XV but lower than most others.
I haaate being led along by the antagonist, just feels like it removes any agency from the characters just as you said. It also starts feeling like it creates several plot holes *or* that the characters are dumb for feeding into obvious traps. Thank you for the view and comment!
A couple small gripes I have seen to be rarely discussed. 1. No minimap? Wow, apparently they said it was because people end up not looking at the actual area and focus on the map. What a stupid thing to do, why not just add it an an option so that people can turn it on or off if they want? BotW has this and it doesn't detract from the experience despite BotW having more stuff to do and find. It just becomes annoying, everytime I need to check it I have to open the menu, it does take a second, couldn't they also add a map with transparency that could appear and disappear with the toggle of a button? It's just annoying. 2.-Running. Wow, so, who decided it'd be fun to have to wait like 3 seconds for Clive to start running, why not just being able to toggle it with a button or L3 or someting? Animal instinct is useles AF, I've only used it like 10 times. If you ever stop you haaaaave to wait for the 3 seconds again to start running... and you can't even run in towns. I know you have the chocobo but you have to stop, whistle, then ride it, and if you find enemies you have to stop, get down and then fight, why no option to do a jumping attack or something? This just makes me not want to ride the chocobo at all unless I am travelling through an area with low level enemies. 3.-Why the hell does the quest marker dissappears when you're close to the objective? I see myself opening the map to check again, but game makes you go around and look inside that circle and it is just a waste of time to make you "look" for stuff in towns like this, not much but after the 20th sidequest it gets annoying, wow, what a challenge, walking behind a piece of geometry that's hiding an NPC! I'd get if some sidequests were like that but all of them do this, some end up being more bothersome than others.
No party that travels and fights with the main character was a major deal breaker for me with FF16, who thought that's a good idea!!!!!!?, the most iconic element off FF games (specially the mainline games since FF1) is having a full party of diverse and interesting characters from all kinds of different backgrounds and each with their own powers and backstories ... it's absolutely NOT a mainline FF game if you don't even have a party (heck my fav characters in many of the FF games are usually some of the party members not the main character). Also the RPG elements being reduced to rudimentary laughably shallow upgrades compared to the complexity of FF12 Job Board and Gambit System or FF7 Materia system just to give few examples, even worse is that there are no interesting mini-games or side-activities that don't involve regular combats (like the card games from FF8 and FF9 which made the world feel alive and interesting to explore). As for the combat, FF7 remake already CREATED and PERFECTED the ideal FF ATB combat system, one that marries the tactical depth of regular turn-based combat with the speed and pacing of action combat without sacrificing anything, it's pure genius and the reason I muscled my way through the FF7 Remake Hard Mode (which was brutal) .. yet they ditched it away for a mindless shallow Devil May Cry style combat system, absolutely baffling.
Everything you described in the story section is the exact formula for MMOs. That fact that people though Yoshi P was capable of creating a good story are drinking copium. I never thought this was going to be good. MMOs have nothing to do with being fun or great storytelling devices. They are purely designed to A. Make you addicted B. Make it social including aspects like showing off and expressing your identity through skins and armors C. Infinite Grinding. Ff16 was someone who makes MMOs trying to make the next Dark Souls but has no idea how to create that sort of experience. I feel sad for anyone who wasted their money or still trusts square enix for high quality rpgs. Fromsoft and Larian has taken the charge. Yoshi P and Nomura are festering wounds in Square Enix that need to retire or stay in their lane.
So much agreement. This is the worst FF game of the entire series. I just finished FF and am in the middle of a FF2 playthrough, and they are fun, whimsical, brief. Just pleasant. This entire game is like a homework assignment. In 15 years time no one is going to want to replay 16. But they will still enjoy the old titles
I played 70 hours and didnt enjoy it. Hard to put my finger on it but you clarified a lot of it. I will say its mind boggling how pointless the items and money are in this game. I had hundreds of crafting items at the end with no clue what to use them for...i had the best items in the game and was still getting useless crafting rewards from quests
As someone who got into FF recently, and wasn't old enough to play the old ones when they came out. Even I think this game was mediocre from a storytelling perspective. I don't have a Ps5 so can't play it. But even watching a playthrough, the flaws are glaring. Also Chive (thats what I call him) sucks btw so far my fav is ffx
@@overnightsiren yeah we are totally on the same page, for me to say much here would be redundant. Great work! Here's a little something I was thinking while playing **SPOILERS**: This game suffers from Game of Thrones dropoff, like you mentioned, and I wanted to bring that up here. It's good up until 50 - 60% in and then falls completely apart. The final portion of the game is setting up for the end book shot in the game, and really didn't care to flesh out the in-between. Or how that book got there (like you said). Also, for my own curiosity, how is Dion still able to use his Eikon ability after giving it to Clive? Once we get the obligatory beach love scene, Jill gives Clive her power and we never see Shiva again. I might have been sleeping during the cutscene that explains this.
Pitch perfect analysis. You address points I see no one else talking about, even those who also disliked the game. Your thoroughness is refreshing. I agree with basically every single point you raised. There are times when I was playing the game, and I had my combos flowing just right that just felt amazing. But like you, when I looked at how long I'd been playing, and then how much more was left, I despaired. If the game had been about half as long, it would have dramatically increased my enjoyment. Anyway, great stuff! Hope you have more deep critiques like this in you.
Thanks a lot for the comment! Sometimes I worry I'm too nit-picky to the point that I come across as annoying to those around me because I poke holes in almost every game/movie I watch once I start noticing the cracks, so you saying you enjoyed my critiques is refreshing! I just take media that I'm passionate about very seriously, and I've seen Final Fantasy (as a series) reach heights of escapism, storytelling and character development that I'd rank as top tier across all media--and it's been a series that has been incredibly formative *to* how critical I am of other media as a result--so to see the newer games have so many shortcomings it's hard not to be frustrated by them...aaand I'm a talker, so I have to get it all out somewhere so youtube it is haha Thanks again for the view and comment (and subscription if you did, if not no worries)!
@@overnightsiren I did subscribe! Of course. And yeah, I'd say your deep analysis was very rewarding. Like I said, you touch on points that I don't see a lot of other people talking about that I think are important. Keep up the great work.
exact same reaction from me. I looked at the homescreen, saw 60% and was like "no more. I don't want to do this anymore". So much of me playing it was like a chore, like an obligation. "This is FF. you HAVE to finish it." The game is devoid of choices, relationships, humor, (good) story. And the battles draaagggggeeed on. Go to a room, fight 5 guys, repeat x3, now throw in a miniboss with more HP, repeat this 2x, now the MAIN BOSS who's a total sponge, then a looooonnnngggg boring cutscene. Back to the hideout, after walking around talking to a bunch of boring NPCs (why couldn't this be a cutscene too, it's so padded), we're ready to do it again. And I thought, I can't do this anymore. UNINSTALL. I haven't felt this disappointed since 13.
29:45. This is literally how ff 14 works, which really shows the DNA of the team behind this game. It just doesnt work for a single player adventure/rpg/action/whatever this was game.
Man, you're saying exactly the things I thought. I actually didn't like Clive because of the one thing I don't think I have seen anyone mention. For all of Final Fantasy History up until 15 these games didn't feature royals as main character. You were orphans or soldiers or from some magic race. Royals could be in the party, but as a main character it makes it to where your main characters problems are just kind of lofty. Maybe it didn't effect this game that badly, but I think it is odd this changed for these two games. 15 had the issue where the party you get is closely associated too. I feel like my big failing with Clive connects to the story and that's the whole bearer thing. They wanted this deep saddening slavery angle, but it doesn't make sense? They wanted to make it like American chattel slavery, but what they ended up doing was undermining things about slavery that made it so horrible. Bearers are not born from other bearers, they're randomly born out of just any family. So there's no chance for generational trauma and the hatred for bearers is so overblown to almost a comical degree. At the same time Clive is so okay with the stuff happening, like in the quest with the guy feeding people to wolves for fun, Clive was just going to bury the body and let him go. Only when another character comes along do they suffer consequences. I don't like the idea of a character who sees something like that and just...walks a way to let it happen. So another thing that lost me was the mother crystal thing they went on about. It happens so quick and is just brought up at the base. They didn't go out and discover this new thing and then disagree or not believe it. Then we get that time jump and it's like nothing has changed. There's no blight receding in all of that time? But like you said they don't even reconsider it after that. Benedikta was almost as cool a character as Cid, I felt like they kind of based her look or the idea for it on a character from GOT. And just like in early GOT they killed her before she could really do much interesting. It feels like that was really what they thought would be kind of a cool surprise, but as probably the only female character with any real direction and one of the few characters I was interested in it came off bad. This game's tone is all over the place in the dark spectrum, but the ratings bump and the attempt to be very hard western fantasy and do the game of thrones thing kind of made it to where the game felt completely out of place calling itself FF. That's why I actually am one of the people saying it's not an FF game. It would be like if they made Fast and the Furious 12 and it was a gritty, realistic crime drama with no levity or goofy stunts. I am kind of shocked that the Joshua thing shocked you, the second the phoenix died I was like well of course he's going to come back. It's the phoenix. I did start to think I was wrong but only right before it happened. The ending I didn't get to it, but it feels like I was right to stop when I did. If you're open to JRPG suggestions I would strongly suggest playing Xenoblade Chronicles or Tales of Arise. The first of those two is very long and actually like three games. The second is stand alone but has a fun goofy anime tone that it does so well.
That's actually a really interesting observation about how bearers aren't born from other bearers. I wouldn't say I was shocked, per se, that Joshua came back; I was just really disappointed. Especially since they never really explained why Ifrit attacked Phoenix to begin with. It just made the entire thing feel so stakes-less. Like it could have been interesting if Joshua were alive but if he and Clive HAD to remain separated because their Eikon got some sort of bloodlust for one another if they got too close. Thank you for the view and comment! Means a lot!
Honestly. Having Joshua actually being dead would have been a more interesting take. Like the Joshua we see could have been Clive hallucinating or Ultima purposely taking his appearance (why did they dress the same in the first place?) to torture Clive so they had more personal relationship.
I love your insights onto why you were disappointed with the game. It's good to see people can still like something and see the flaws within it. I still like the game overall but yeah there were some lost opportunities in this game that could have been better. It's like the when the developers wanted to do what they wanted, they succeeded but then remembered they were developing a Final Fantasy game and had to compromise on their vision.
I couldn't finish it. i played halfway through. got cucked by the first Kupka fight. Watched a cutscene compilation then deleted it off my system. It's not bad it just felt really unsatisfying.
I don't really agree with Dion, the game manages to make his character really compelling despite his limited screen time. he's one of the best characters in the game with clive and cid for me.
I absolutely adored your analytical, methodical breakdown of the exact reasons you felt discontent with this game. It just felt so on point to what I was experiencing, expertly conveyed and communicated. I would love to see a couple of videos on your analysis on what made other Final Fantasy games work and tick, given how well you got your point across on this!
Wow thank you so much for the comment! It's very reassuring, I always think "wow I must be so annoying" when I nitpick stuff IRL so that's why I decided to channel my thoughts into a video this time. Thank you for the view as well!
Dude i watched the entire game in a stream and i fell asleep. It's BORING. 15 is the opposite of 16. A party. Fun. Open world. A MC with a personality. An actual love interest. Good dlc. Good side quests. 16 just fails.
You know, I can't say I'm surprised, given the game's director is Yoshi-P, who's been working on FF14 for over a decade now, and going from there to playing this, I can definitely see the resemblances of his ideas. The only high points of this game is it's graphics and visuals, to me at least, the music, is pretty forgettable, even though it's so bombastic and epic; but that doesn't always mean it'll be memorable like the works of Nobuo Uematsu. The game is really all just flair, but no substance, and if that's what Yoshi-P and his team was going for, they hit the nail on the head, but I feel like this game is only Final Fantasy by name and not overall feel or spirit. It's just bland, like chewing gum: sweet, tangy, full of flavor for the first few minutes, then flavorless rubber you're nonchalantly chewing just because you need something to chew on(I guess?). The game feels the same way as to why I eventually dropped FF14, because it was so bare bones and stripped of any kind of systems or mechanics; it all just felt repetitive and dull. The gameplay loop became too noticeable, and not in a fun way either. "It's just fluff with the illusion of progress", is a great way of putting the entirety how Yoshi-P designs both this game and FF14.
This, I just finished watching the video, i'll comment on it tomorrow. But your comment sums up a part of what I wanted to say about this game, and I only played FFXIV beta, then dropped it. I already knew this since then, needless to say, was pretty disappointed.
The XIV comparisons are so spot on. When XVI first came out and I was only a few hours in, I was honestly defending the game a LOT and any time people said "it's just offline XIV" I wrote it off as people just saying that because Yoshi-P made it but after a few more hours the gameplay loops really became toooo similar to XIV to ignore.
FFXII did the political plot a lot better. In that game most of the thing you do are related to Ashe's political situation and then you discover the fantastic elements that are messing with the world. PS: Benedikta was by far the most interesting character. She felt real. I really don't know why the hell they decided to kill her so soon. And I also agree with your take on Jill. Every scene she was in and added nothing to the story or character development (hers or to other character's) was painfull. What a stupid waste of a character. Again, it's like if they didn't know what to do with her.
And you’re absolutely right with the tie-in with FF9 - I thought of that similarity as soon as the truth about Ultima was revealed. I take Ultima as a blend of Garland AND Necron - a sort of otherworldly harvester of souls and or energy of the planet to restore what was lost, and some out-of-left field major antagonist who speaks in absolution and has no personality or compelling qualities. Methinks the FF14 team fumbled the bag on this one; at least in regard to the story.
Yeah, definitely a fumble. I've been a big enjoyer of FFXIV since open beta for ARR, and I was so excited to hear that Yoshi-P was at the helm of XVI but I want him to stay far away from any future mainline games. Thanks for the view and comments!
@@overnightsirenYes! I love XIV as well and was excited when Yoshi-P was involved with this one. After this nightmare of a game I want him to just stick with XIV.
It felt like they wanted to make a DMC game mixed with like…Asura’s Wrath I guess, but they kept remembering “Oh right, Final Fantasy is supposed to be an RPG” so they slapped on weak gear progression, forgettable side quests and a terrible overworld as they went along. This was a potentially good or great 25 hour game forced into a 50+ hour game. And honestly, although I 100% want Final Fantasy to remain an RPG franchise…if they want to make it a full-on action game, just make it a full-on action game; you’ll be left with a better result in the end. This is a game that constantly felt like it didn’t know what it was trying to be or what it was trying to do. It absolutely felt unfinished to me, and I’m shocked I don’t hear more people call it out. Here’s hoping FF7 Rebirth leaves us with a better result (I’m pretty sure it will).
I don't even know if I can call it an overworld. The game has as much of an "overworld" as FFXIII, the only difference is that in XVI you can go back to old locations but otherwise the "overworld" is just as lifeless and feels just as un-alive. I think more people aren't calling it out as being unfinished because it hid its unfinished-ness so much better than XV, that or because people really want to feel like a recent FF game was actually good as some form of copium that their favorite series isn't dead. I love FF more than any other media franchise, and I don't think it's dead, but I think we fans needs to acknowledge en masse that this was NOT a good or finished game.
I know i'm late to the party. But i call FF 16 out to be crafted to trick game "journalist". We all know that game journalist not really take the time needed to test games. Mostly just playing into it 2 to 3 hours or copy what other journalist wrote. Here we have a game that starts as a interesting political story in the first hours and demo just to become worse and worse as the game continues. I bet they were aware that the story is not very great and put all the energy they had left to make the first hours good enough to get good reviews from people that never finish long games.
I agree with you mostly, but I don't feel that you've gone far enough with the controversial statements. Yoshi-P has made a hullabaloo about the term "JRPG," and when he sat down to make FFXVI, he churned out another JRPG. It's marketed as a geopolitical drama and goes to some lengths to mimic Game of Thrones, but in the end the only thing it managed to do was make another allegory for nuclear weapons (poorly) and toss aside its political intrigue to go kill some uninteresting god. It just wound up being the most JRPG thing ever with the beginnings of a kick-ass action game bolted to it. FFXVI is the most vapid Final Fantasy story I've ever seen, and it has absolutely nothing to say. At no point in a story should I be able to say, "we can just beat the villain by chilling at home." THEY COULD HAVE BEATEN ULTIMA BY CHILLING AT HOME! The sex feels like it's been tacked on so that stupid people feel like they're watching something mature, and serves ZERO purpose. We don't get any information from the sex scenes that we don't obtain from anywhere else. Clive isn't even a good character. He's just a well-acted character. Cid is the only good thing about this shit show. It's a shame he was wasted on this game.
After finishing FFXVI, the story devolved into basically every JRPG story ever. As Zero Punctuation puts it: "A group of teenagers using the power of friendship to kill God." Only this time it isn't teenagers, it's adults. SuBvErSiVe!
I agree with your points, I think when I said Clive is a good character I meant "one of the better characters" but that comes purely by nature of him being one of the only ones with any narrative focus. I also totally agree, the sex felt very tacked on in an effort to make it mature and Game of Thrones-y. It's a real shame because this game had a ton of potential to have such a unique identity had it actually tackled any of the political themes or acted like they had any weight at all but in the end none of that really mattered and we're left with an ending that's familiar to past FF games but with no charm or believability driving it.
IMHO the game started with the best world, characters, story and setting ever. Then it unravelled when the real game mechanics and gameplay loop was shown after the prologue.
The reason the game starts with such a bombastic sequence with Shiva X Titan is so that it shows you how insane the world he lives in just is. Then it goes to the flashback, when the biggest most bombastic thing Clive could do (aside from beat the Lord Commander in a sparring match) was to take down a Morbol with his squad buddies. THAT'S progression: show you how insane this world is, with literal gods just fighting political battles against other gods at the whim of mere humans, and then make things a bit more real, more tangible, by making Clive struggle against a particularly disagreeable weed.
I might be in the minority.....probably I am but I enjoyed 15 more than 16. 15 had a better OST, enemies, better quests, better hunts and better weapons. Spicy subjective take but whatever.. . I enjoyed my time with 15 and had many hours in it. 16 is such a slog and it's really a drag to finish. The boredom creeps in so fast.
15 wanted to be something really special and it shows even if they were not able to get the finished product they wanted, 16 feels like it accomplished to be exactly what it wanted to be, but that was a standard medieval fantasy as safe and bland as they come, so while 16 seems like the more well produced, 15 beats it out easily for me for it's attempt at being more, especially the times where it really shines through in the game. I'll take a flawed but interesting experience over a solid but bland experience anyday.
OST and hunt quality might be subjective, but XV's enemy and weapons pools are objectively larger and more diverse... and while XV had plenty of fetch quests, they were at least kept out of the MSQ and didn't involve eight minutes of cutscenes sandwiching a two minute chore!
I agree completely. If anything, you were too soft on your criticisms in some areas. A Final Fantasy game with no status ailments, elemental properties, unique properties of weapons/armor/accessories, controlled party members, or really strategy of any kind beyond Eikon abilities, is really kind of amazing. Beyond gameplay, the story is embarrassing at times. Jill being removed from the story after the bizarre intercourse/power transfer scene, kept on the side as simply a doting girlfriend as if that was her character arc all along, made me really turn on the story and I just couldn't care about these characters or events at all after that. You're also dead on about DLC. Most players will likely be wondering about optional super bosses like Weapons, or post-game...anything. We will have to wait and pay for it. That said, there are the Eikon trials which I admittedly do like as they actually make you think about how you play in a way that really should have been integrated into the main campaign somehow.
"Bizarre intercouse"--you're dead on with that descriptor, but for some reason it really made me laugh! Thank you for the view and comment! I think part of why I wasn't as harsh as I could have been is because I was a bit worried the video would get a lot more hate, since previously all I'd seen was overwhelming praise for XVI but luckily the video's been pretty well received! I know the devs have said that they're not planning to release any DLC but I have major doubts about that. Surely there will be DLCs that let you play as Jill, Dion, Joshua as well as Leviathan DLC, etc.
Ive never seen an FF game want you to feel the aspect of the power of friendship towards the end but make everything feel so lonely the entire time. Most boss fights you fight by yourself. You fight Benedikta by yourself. You fight Hugo by yourself. You fight Barnabas by yourself. And you fight Ultima by yourself even though Joshua and Dion go in with you to help, but by the halfway point of the fight you're back to fighting by yourself. One of FFs strong points is the power of friendship and side characters. Their character development and screen time matters. Everyone at the hideaway immedietly takes to Clive and loves him like they've been friends for years. No one at the hideaway ever questions him or wants to go about something another way. Everyone just agrees with everyone at all times. Now take FFX. Not everyone took to Tidus from the get go. Many thought his naivety would hold them back, but both Tidus and the other crew taught each other things along the way. Wakka learned to not put so much of his prejudices onto Rikku. Lulu was learning to get over the death of her boyfriend and Wakka was learning to not blame her for it. Aaron hates his younger self and feels he didn't as good of a job as a guardian in the past..having to undo those feelings. Yuna bears a good deal of weight on a mission she feels she has to do and it's only through Tidus where she sees it doesn't have to be that way. And Tidus is learning to navigate a world that he no longer knows. Losing most people he ever knew. Having to learn the ropes of a world he no longer understands. In FF16 the only moment we get that showcases any kind of teaching a lesson moment is when Joshua slaps Clive because Clive has been doing things alone. That would be fine and dandy if Joshua didn't force a piece of Ultima in his chest basically draining his own life force. Doing that so others wouldn't have to bear to full weight of Ultima. It doesn't help that even when you do have people with with you it doesn't feel like you do. The other problem is how useless so many of the characters are in regards to battle. Unless you are a dominant of an Eikon then you have no uses and can't particpate in battles which is most of the characters. Gav only wields a sword but never does much with it besides one fight. Goetz can't do anything. Blackthorn can't do anything. Charon can't do anything. Tarja can't do anything. Jill gets captured twice and then gives up all of her Eikon abilities to Clive. So all you're left with is Joshua and Dion that can't even help you for the whole end fight. Ive never seen an FF game make so many characters so useless
I hated the story, the demo stablished so many interesting conflicts and problems for Clive but everything gets resolved as soon as the first timeskip, you find Shiva girl, the dog, his brother and even his old guard are alive and he gets the power to destroy entire countries by himself. It's so sloppy.
I just finished 16 and I was honestly very disappointed and I got that same feeling of "this doesn't feel like Final fantasy". The story was predictable, I pretty much predicted he was Ifrit and Joshua was alive as well as breaking the crystals was actually helping the villian after the initial idea was suggested and when he admitted as much near the end all I could think was "of course". But my biggest gripe with the game was the awful main villian, the guy was literal AI in a high fantasy setting. He really didn't make the player hate his guts like most FF villians do, it felt like I was trying to take down Skynet and that just isn't that motivating. Also hated how they kept emphasizing him as a "god" instead of what he was a highly advance alien which would have been way more interesting. Also disappointed how they didn't delve into the fallen lore, so many fallen ruins and don't know a damn thing about them.
I actually didn't even know it was supposed to be a mystery that he was Ifrit--that's how obvious it was! The whole time (before the reveal) I was like "hey wait, I thought we already knew Clive was Ifrit??" Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
@@overnightsirenwe did know. We were waiting for Clive to realise and accept it himself. He was in denial about everything. If the home screen art doesn't give it away then....I dunno man.
So the first time you go into the mystic cave dungeon thing near phoenix gate, I started to think "Ok. This it. This is what i'm here for. A mostly medieval world setting with some seriously advanced ancient tech going on beneath it all"...........and how let down I was when you realize thats it......thats the only place like that you get to encounter. Let down after let down
The “it doesn’t feel like final fantasy” take is so damn dumb though….it’s literally like those old people saying “my cartoon changed”. There are so many final fantasy moments in this, it’s clearly an homage to the franchise.
Spoke a little too soon. Clive is not a great character, but I also got so turned off by the game in the demo that I didn't pay and watched about 20 hours worth of streams
@@rredix I think "great" might have been a strong word for me to use haha I guess what I meant was "he's the best of a cast of overall weak characters" but then again he's the only one that gets any development so that's not surprising at all. Thanks for the comment and glad you liked my analysis minus that point
I agree 100% with everything you said. The worst part about this game is that any form of criticism is immediately redirected as trolling. I firmly believe this game would’ve easily been a 10/10 if it was half as long or was a 12-15 hour game. The combat is good but not 40 hour long good. You just end up using and repeating your most efficient combos every single time because you don’t have to switch out your eikons because none provide any benefit over the other in any situation. I was replaying the game and there’s so…much…filler. You’ll have a grandiose moment like the kupka battle prefaced by 4 mmo side quests and then after the battle you have to do 4 more mmo side quests. It’s clear that this game would’ve been a perfect boss rush, Asura’s wrath style game but they realized they needed to have it be 40 hours long to be considered an RPG.
This game really needed something to do other than the story and combat, and there were SO many easy opportunities to correct for it. A main central hub? Base Management game mechanics. Such an easy, obvious choice to make coming back to your base something you're actually excited to do. What did Charon buy now? What are they growing in the planting area? I found an NPC that can do X, now they're part of the Hideaway and we can do THIS now! Mid is constantly crafting things, maybe I can give her a couple hundred of my literally thousands of crafting materials that I do absolutely nothing with and she can decorate the Hideaway with such-and-such or new mechanics for the game! So much potential. Torgal is a dog? Mini-games galore with Torgal! Play Fetch, put him in a dog-show and dress him up, have him absorb more powers of the Eikons since that's a thing in the story, have a hunting mini-game where you can hunt down creatures with Torgal to take back to the Hideaway for some Base Management thing, etc. Again, tons of potential here. Chocobos? Chocobo racing, obviously. Maybe even Choco-breeding. Maybe do some Porter missions with chocobos! Porters are a huge part of the landscape of Valisthea and "Mr. UnderHill" can have a side-job as a porter with Ambrosia leading the pack. Areas are being attacked and Clive can't be everywhere at once? Have a Tower Defense game where you play as either Sir Wade or Lubor or Martha where you actually have to strategize and move troops around to stop the Akashic from overrunning the town. Tons and tons of opportunities everywhere to bring different, fun gameplay elements into this Final Fantasy game just to get you off the Story-Combat-Story loop that kills the fun of the game.
Absolutely, it doesn't even have fishing which is the go-to addition for lazy devs. Could have maybe added gardening in the hideout or making drinks for the people there or something (just spitballing different things you could do at the hideout since clearly the game loves having you be there). There were a ton of windows to give the story some relief from the story, but instead we just got hunts which can be done in an hour, tops.
@@overnightsiren And wouldn't the hunts be a little more interesting if you had to use Torgal to "sniff them out" and bird-dog you to where they are located on the map? Small, cute little thing that would make hunts slightly more interesting than wandering the map until a cutscene plays to let you know you found them.
Not using this as an excuse but the director talked about this vaguely, he really wanted the story to be focused and adding mini games like dressing up and doing a dog show would completely ruin the characters, imagine doing a dog show when Jill is in immediate danger of execution.
Agree on everything, especially the journey point. Who the hell wants to be stuck in the same place doing the same things talking to the same people in an FF game!? People's standards have lowered horrifically. 6/10.
Started to feel sooo formulaic. In a year's time I won't be able to tell you which zones connect to which other zones either or the order in which you go to each zone for the first time because there was no journey, meanwhile I can tell you the entire pilgrimage Yuna and her crew went on step by step and it's been 20 years since X came out
Some part inside me feels like crying watching this clip. Don't know how old you are but can't believe I've accidentally stumbled upon an old-school Final Fantasy fan on YT in 2023. There are many factors contributing to the establishment of FF as a series. I don't think I can list them all, but at least to me, there are 2 biggest factors: (1) - The feeling of departing for a grand journey and (2) - The feeling of learning, on said journey, that life itself has some meaning. My all time favourite FF is IX. I think FFIX is where FF matured in terms of everything - plot, story telling, character development, gameplay, soundtrack... The game was so special to me that it felt like a light of hope I found in the darkest time of my teenage years. I also spent a lot of time playing FFX. The game was quite a revolution of its time, in terms of gameplay and graphics, even though the plot, characters and the dialogues were all cheesy at best. And though I dislike game with "dark" or "melancholic" tone (with an exception of Xenogears), I still found FFX somehow able to retain factor (1) - the whole game still felt like a grand journey. The last FF I took seriously perhaps was FFXII, and I hated it with a passion at first. It still doesn't feel like a main FF entry to me. It should have been a spin-off, a pretty good spin-off, to be honest. However, the thing that finally made me tolerate and accept to appreciate what FFXII brought to the series was the ending song "Kiss Me Goodbye". By the time FFXII came out, a lot of changes had happened to Square. They had merged with Enix (and both going downhill hand in hand since then). Both Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu had left Square. I realized FF series had come to the point where only the name "Final Fantasy" remained, everything else had become legacies of a distant past. Don't get me wrong, I understand the nature of doing business. Every commercial product must come to this end - losing most of its originality, only the brand name matters. "Kiss Me Goodbye", I wonder if there's a message behind it when Nobuo composed the song. When Square-Enix announced FFXV, I was hyped, hoping FF finally made a comeback. And I was wrong, losing all my hype since then. When they announced FFXVI with a "dark and serious tone", I knew it would turn out to be as cringy as possible. I think Square-Enix themselves don't take classic FF playstyle serious anymore. They had long showed their true intention of turning FF into a MMORPG, and they did, and nothing else matters now. I think FFXV & XVI were intended as "fillers" only - just a mean to build the hype and keep people from forgetting the series. I won't be surprised if they come up with another MMORPG FF entry in the future. I'll keep on playing VII, VIII, IX and X on emulators for as long as I can. Having such beautiful memories playing these games are the best things of my teenage years.
I totally agree. You should play ffvi too! When I played it I realized that the problem was not me getting older, just FF is never going to be the same anymore. Uematsu said that FF should had finished with Sakaguchi and now I accept he was right
Thank you for the video! I stumbled on it while looking up what other people thought of this game and it summarised a lot of things well. I do want to add a point here about the combat which was the main area of the game that confused me. Clearly Yoshi-P and team spend an enormous amount of time/money/resources to craft the battle system and then decided to completely gate it or ran out of any of the 3 things I mentioned. If you are an action game fan, there's a lot of great mechanics here and they're executed fantastically. Dashes/cancels/skill synergy/buffering/diverse move sets for each Eikon etc. it's all here and its very impressive. What I found absolutely bizarre is that they NEVER let you play with this system fully and actively try to hamper you. For so long in the game you are stuck with basically 2 and later 3 eikons before you start obtaining more. Not only that, you only have access to 2 skills and a fair number of them have a decent cooldown. I understand this for the big cinematic eikon finishers but the timing here is very thin when it comes to CD (luckily you can kind of fix it with accessories). I also don't understand why you're limited to 3 Eikons. Other action games (Sengoku Basara comes to mind) with similar controller layouts have found ways to have impressive move sets which a player can learn easily. Why oh why am I only stuck with 3 eikons and 6 skills when the game practically SCREAMS for me to use and have more at any time?! I really wanted to either have an option to have more Eikons or more skills. Maybe focus on 1 or 2 eikons but have access to everything at the same time? There are ways to do it but as is the battle system feels restricted and limited. There's a lot of potential here and I just wish the devs would let us dig into it and use Clive's abilities to their fullest. With that being said, executing a full 3 Eikon combo on a boss feels absolutely amazing. I found Shiva > Garuda > Odin to have so many cool synergies and ending with a lvl 5 Odin charge move never EVER got old. It just made me left wanting for more... obviously another thing you mentioned which is true is enemy design. Outside of big story bosses and the bigger side boss encounters nothing can come close to challenging Clive and even the ones that can will swiftly be dealt with once you get to grips with it all. It's all a shame really, so much potential yet I feel the team was scared to go all in. Maybe next time...
I agree with a lot of what you said. It sucks how the only way to get the final puzzle piece for the Götter Dämmerung is to funnel you through every single side mission and hunt. Square overcorrected a common complaint about certain story arcs and characters in prior games: the kitsch story points and campy characters and FF16 is left with a super dark and depressing narrative.
I wouldn't mind having to do all the side quest for the ultima weapon if the side stuff you had to do was at least varied, but it's the same stuff you're already doing all through the game. Never feels like a fun detour.
That game was an absolute piece of garbage and a waste of money. Which makes me so sad cuz I've always been a fan of the final fantasy series. The game looked pretty but the combat was boring. The story was horrible. The characters were horrible who was no open world. It was walk from point a to point b fight monsters. Now do it again over and over again and we'll throw a boss in every so often. I tried to do everything right up until the first big real boss , Garuda . And after that fight I couldn't play it anymore. I was just so f****** bored. Even if this game was only 10 hours it would have been a bad game. It had absolutely no soul and nothing that truly made it final fantasy. It was a bad and I do mean bad action game with a final fantasy paint job that tried to while you were visuals and nothing else
I think the target for this game wasn’t ff veterans. In watching a play through with another major gamer they loved the game ranking it as 2nd best this year. Your criticisms are spot on, and most of them stem from the game just not expanding on things. Medicine girl? Ifrit killing phoenix why? Clive headaches? What do you mean not again is this not the first time ultima spoke to you? Why was kings son not a person and ultima instead? Why did Jill and Dion just randomly have their powers back after Clive took them and why did we mention Bahamat going out of control when dion was clearly just fine Why would Clive start feeling the effects of Eikons, when none happened throughout the game Was ultimas power too great for Clive? Why would Clive feel the effects after Ultima is dead, Ultima and his thunder dome was the source of magic so is magic still here? Are eikons separate of the mother crystals in drawing power from the land? Are eikons mother crystals Aether seems to fuel them? Torgal with cid randomly but you had to sidequest to get your chocobo back? Why do i like benedickta more than Jill? Both emotionally and physically damaged. Why did gav care so much about baby momma? Where’s Dion the bland, surely a fall didn’t kill him? Why didn’t ultima come again for Clive after 2nd crystal is Joshua gonna imprison a 2nd one? When you say created, do you mean gave magic? Made a child, how many? Why can people turn into eikons? What is actually the difference between dominants, bearers, and normal people? So you rescue Joshua and Clive with the ship immediately, literally breaking through a city wall, but you just gonna let Clive die on a beach after the thunder dome explodes in the sky? They found Jill and Clive on a beach very quickly in uncharted lands checking the area around the big floating city was too hard? Yikes the list goes on and on
Thanks for the view and comment! Glad to see you enjoyed my critiques! You raised some good points that I hadn't considered myself--like why didn't Ultima appear after the second crystal and why did Ifrit try to kill Phoenix anyway?
The music doesn't hit your nostalgia bones yet because you haven't had time for it to grow yet. Each track on the OST is brilliant, in my opinion. I regularly get songs from the game stuck in my head, particularly the battle hooks. Oh man, let's talk about the Fallen boss themes, how the minor Prelude run is undercut with this dirge of choral voices that steps down to an even deeper minor fall, I thought the music was really well done especially if you're *actually* listening to it instead of just letting it be background music. Allow it to become part of the experience, hum along to it during battles or travels, and you'll change your mind I think.
The thing is that after playing the demo I was expecting TOO MUCH. Then I played the game and I was like "ok this part is kinda dead" then I went on "ok this part is kinda dead..." Before Titan I wasn't skipping a single line of dialogue, then I started skipping everything but the big cutscenes. I said so in my "review" also, felt like ARR vanilla (since Yoshi-P directed it) but action. Mediocre game with amazingly good graphics. With some chocobos and summons here and there to let you think it's a FF. I truly feel old now to remember how good they were...
I bought a PS5 in anticipation for this game and enjoyed it. I do agree with your points though. Many things could've been flushed out better both gameplay-wise and story-wise. The game started off real strong, but it kind of never reached that peak for me throughout the rest of the game. I think you clarified some of the feelings I had about the game. I like the game a lot still, but there were just some things that had not reached its potential.
I was super surprised that the base combat was essentially the same all throughout. Make the cool-down attacks utilitarian, unlockable directional/button combos and upgrades like those available in the devil may cry shop. Make the ultimate moves activated with Limit Break bars, or during Limit Break. The more bars the higher level the ultimate ability. Allow Clive to use all of the Eikons in a fight. Just cycle through them like you would with Dante's weapons in DMC. This lets you have a flexible, deep combo system while preserving weaknesses, which helps the stagger system by leaning on the player. Maybe even introduce a mana system to make the use of these moves more deliberate. This is huge scope creep, but God, you need to increase the scope in a combat system this bare-bones.
The fact that people kept minimzing people's reasonable criticism to "not liking it because it's not turn based" is everything wrong with modern gaming discourse.
Almost every complaint I read had more to do with the feel of the game as any ff fan knows that a lot of them aren't turn based.
Exactly. There have been so many "bad faith arguments" thrown at me saying "lol u just want turn based" but like...bro...I made an hour long video carefully detailing all of the issues with the games gameplay *and* story. It's like they're running around with their fingers in their ears going "nananana I can't hear you". It's frustrating for sure.
Thank you for the view and comment!
A turn based ff10 remake but in unreal engine 5 would sell amazing as well as a new final fantasy that is turn based
Then I can pull the good ol "you're not a true FF fan then" card. Cause that argument can apply to all the rest of the games save for 10. Even Type 0.
@@Wolf10media ugh, don't remind me of type 0. . . . . . I wanted to like that piece of shit SO badly. . . . .But no, I could not.
The big problem is really how the game started, because that's how you set up what people/factions are going to be (or at least seem like,) and what the tone of the story is going to be. And what do we see at the start of XVI? Dirty politics, horny Dominants, expendable slave soldiers, and the Blight as the greater setting danger.
But, after Titan dies, does ANY of that actually matter to the story and the gameplay? Does Clive need to start playing politics to get what he wants? Do the Dominants use their powers to change the story? Does the discrimination against Branded even really matter, since Clive has to destroy magic regardless?
No, and a story shouldn't do that: you don't start with the Omaha Beach landing, and then focus on how the war tragically affected food prices in France, because people will naturally have massive issues with expecting a war movie, when they're really getting a low-key docudrama. And that's what FFXVI did: we're promised grounded war and politics alongside super powerful Dominants, but we actually get Clive's Bizarre Adventure.
Exactly. Too many of the actual interesting story elements just hold zero weight in the grand scheme of things. They're just there as distractions to make the game and story seem deeper than it is.
Thank you for the view and comment!
Looking at it objectively, destroying magic and the precious reasource would not help fight against the discrimination against the branded. Magic and the crystals providing them were essentially the lifeblood and saving grace of this dark and bleak world, seeing as they over-relied on them to the point where magicless forges were unheard off before a late game quest.
Now with the destruction of magic and their precious crystals, not only would this cause the world to panic, but it would likely also lead to people scapegoating and putting blame on the branded since the one actively destroying them was more a well-known and infamous bearer than a dominant.
And now without magic, those branded who were enslaved even with those magical powers have just lost their only means of defense, making them easy targets for all the people's blame and anger. No new barers would be born, but I wouldn't be surprised if instead of random baby born with magical gifts being turned over into slavery, its simply any child and descended born from a barer who was already enslaved at the time of magic's end in addition to people who would inevitably get conquered and dominated in future wars and conquests.
The problem in story is that this consequence is never properly addressed. They simply say "Let's destroy the crystals sucking the land dry and in the process us branded and domiants will live better lives for it". The only hint of this real outcome is at the start of the last timeskip after Cid's death were we see that branded are actually already getting blamed for it even without the magic being completely gone yet. But it was a 10 minute section only and then no more on the topic.
We don't even see the spread of the blight slowing in any way (or at least get mention of it cause that was always kinda more "tell don't show" for the story), which was the whole reason we targeted the mothercrystals in the first place. If they did, then people would have a plausible reason to question their world view and see that barers were the ones who began repairing the world and not the ones who were carelessly wreaking havoc. Would have definitely gotten them the respect that would lead to far better treatment.
The politics honestly tempered the wrong expectations for this game. They really shouldn't have been emphasized as much as they did. It added very little to the story that was all about Clive.
And it's not the first time a Final Fantasy has done this too - FFXII was also like this. Though it blended the politics into the story much better, it was still a story about Luke Skywalker turned supporting character.
So true. The Blight completely useless concept. Also all those side characters such as the cardinals of the empire talking about the reign: pointless. Most of what's said never matters.
😂😂😂Seven starts with you doing jobs for a terr orist org against a mega corp, ends with you saving the world from an super mutant emo.
Six starts with you being saved by faith from an empire so you side with the resistance, ends with you saving the world from the Joker.
I don't think you really have a problem with that the main focus changing, or you haven't played any other FF game
Spoilers:
Benedikta was definitely one of those characters I was secretly hoping would have a change of heart at some point, in the same way General Beatrix did for FFIX. Then the surprise came when you gained her power and I just sat there stunned saying, "I guess that was it?"
And then she got her Head Chopped off, put in a box and sent to Kupka to make him go into Rage mode Kupka.
@@Shane-gg3hl the game never explains the head in the box and of all the plot holes to fixate on, I'm picking that one. I knew what it was as soon as dude got the box because I've seen the movie seven, but later clive cops to killing her and I'm like "no, i literally watched her walk away from that battle, headless people don't generally walk anywhere" and they never tell who actually did it.
@@zachw2538couple of characters mention “head sent in a box” as a execution method in this world to show the leader you killed the person. As to who killed her, it’s left ambiguous, but it’s heavily implied to be Sleipnir or Odin as they’re manipulating Titan.
@@Bahamut998 Clive killed her, Cid didn't bother to bring her body anymore as he has Clive to take care of, the Waloed higher-ups were the ones responsible for desecrating Benedikta.
I really thought there was a lot of potential for her to have a storyline where she came to terms with losing her power. I thought it would be interesting because from what we'd seen, her powers were her entire identity so I was interested to see her try and find purpose and self-value without her powers and then maybe see the world through a new lens and perhaps join Clive...but nope, she just died and sooo early in the game, too. There were still like 50+ hours after her death.
Benedikta reeks of "we had no idea what to do with this character's potential so let's kill her off. it's out of our hands now!"
And Jill, good god. I've seen takes from others saying Tifa has a similar problem to her, but I disagree; Tifa is *intensely* concerned over Cloud and his problems and she has a stake in everything. Hell, she takes over as the lead at one point and takes initiative. Jill, however, feels like a non-entity; we're *told* she matters a lot, but rarely does anything. She's a Dominant but is too sick to do any more. She's just an extension to Clive and nothing else. Even the whole bit of her not using her powers too much due to the Bearer's curse doesn't matter because one) it only comes up in very convenient moments and two) you don't even see the curse anywhere on her body (Even When She's Naked c'mon lol).
While I like Clive, he was too powerful; none of the party members mattered and he kinda sucks the energy out of the room since we know he's the chosen one who has to solve every damn thing.
I definitely felt this as an extreme issue, especially since, in the end, it's about Clive learning to rely on others, but it feels like he's never actually done that. He's never been incapacitated or unable to solve a situation, so it just takes the agency away from the other characters.
holy shit its like you never played the game@@judgementcl
What drove me crazy in the story too is that they made it a big deal that when Clive takes their power, they can't use it UNLESS they go into hyper angry fury mode and become god modes of their eikons. But of course cuz of story relevance and needing to helping Clive in what he needs and not an actual point to their own character development both Jill and Dion can use their magic and turn into their eikon self without losing their minds. It just broke me how useless these characters are, for me Tifa had pure agency of who she was and her goals. She is intermingled in such a way with Cloud that makes the biggest reveal in the game and a beautiful moment in where she truly saves Cloud, I never felt that way about Jill to Clive. Heck, Tifa even has her flaws in her approach to the mistakes she made hiding from Cloud or hiding the truth and not remembering. Riona in ff8 constantly pushes squall out of his comfort zone so he can exp. a life and love he never imagined. Jill never makes Clive into a different/better person in such a narrative way or butts with him in a way that builds their relationship to a different or complex level. She is honestly a yes man most of the time, with no interjections or flair to how she approaches or sees a situation. They focused on these characters being so mature that they forgot to make them entertaining. By all means I think Jill and Clive are a healthy couple in a real world sense, but just boring for a story about the end of life as they know it.
And agree with you, Clive is a great hero for the series, but the problem is that he HAS to carry the full story of ff16. Even Cloud doesn't carry the full story of ff7 and dude is one of the favs.in the franchise. I love these games for the cast, not a singular hero no matter how awesome they are.
Damn bro you hated the game that much?! I thought it was alright. You could have used this energy that you wasted typing this essay by doing somthing productive.@@cloudy4lockharty
we're all online, nothing we do in our free time is productive lol but yeah apologies I did write too much lol and idk fast typer doesn't feel like it took long.@@amjadm7730
FF16 had so many missed opportunities. Look at ff7 remake and the amount of dialogs between characters, the bantering the flirting, the rubbing off one one another, the subtle revealing of personal info, the poking and prodding. it wasn't always about blowing up reactors and how evil shinra was. We never see Jill and Clive chat about their time living alone, after the fall of rosalith, and if they had added more dialog to improve their characters between fetch quests, they wouldn't be so boring. Remake was so self aware that even fetching cats was kinda funny just to see Cloud's frustration.
Though I have a lot of issues with FF7R, the characters are not one of the issues. They all felt like real people, and like I said about Jill the "banter" is what makes characters feel real. Not every character has to be a comedian, but they can't *just* be exposition 100% of the time. Give them some more dimensions, ya know?
youre joking right? ff7 remake was a mess hahahaha man i dont even bother with fanboys or these types of videos cuz yall are so biased its ridiculous.
@@ArchAngelKnights name one thing that's bad about remake and I'm 100% sure I can disprove you in a few sentences. Zero diff. Bring it, b*tch
Ff16 literally has everything you are complaining about
FF7 remake is inferior to the original. Ots incomplete
Thank you for not being afraid to be critical. Being critical of something is not the same as being dismissive, and doesn't mean there aren't things about it that you enjoy.
I'm never afraid to be critical! We spend a lot of money and time on these games, and I don't think it's "lame" to take them seriously. We *should* take the content we're given seriously, and IMO we used to receive games from Square that didn't have all these issues so it's not unreasonable to expect better.
Thanks for the watch and comment! Cheers
@@overnightsiren Indeed, it's only polite to take an artist's work seriously, if he takes it seriously. How can artists grow if we don't give them thoughtful feedback?
Most of my frustrations with Jill came from the first third or so of the game. For so many cut scenes leading up to and especially represented by Ultima's first appearance and imprisonment by Joshua, she just stands in the background not really helping. You'll get a cutscene of Cid lying in Clive's arms and he struggles to ward off the god and I'm just thinking, "Oh no, if only there was someone else there to help Clive, even better if they had a third dominant with them or something..."
I agree with almost all of this.
My hot take-Clive isn’t that good a character. We don’t see him really struggle or exhibit flaws he needs to work through.
He has his revenge plot, but that’s an inciting incident. His want to kill his brother’s murderer isn’t a flaw. Hugo kills lots of Hideaway folk, which is another inciting incident. Clive kills him justifiably.
You can have a shallow/static and likable character, a la Superman, but then the story is usually about how he affects others as a living ideal. But we don’t see anyone change as a result of interacting with Clive.
To elaborate: even his revenge plot is because Ultima manipulated him. It's not like Ultima took advantage of a flaw already in Clive--jealousy of Joshua, etc--to make Clive hurt his brother. So that's completely external. There's nothing for Clive to reflect on and grow from.
Agree. Seen a lot of people say how good of a character he is, but there's so many probably in how he was handled. There's nothing interesting about him that makes him stand out from characters in other games. He's just tough guy warrior guy. The writing and voice work made him interesting enough to listen to until the second time skip, but after that they pull a Dark Knight and make his voice all gruff which completely made me stop taking any of his dialog seriously. The conflicts he went to were standard fare, but I didn't found them grounded enough due to the use (particularly towards the end) of deus ex machina-eqsque writing to try to make him feel a certain way in particular scenes. A good writer would have kept Cid alive for longer to better build their relationship and would have even considered putting Jill in actual danger or temporarily kill her even. I'm not woke or anything, but I am really tired of the white guy big sword brooding warrior trope, especially in a series that has done it a million times over.
@@trollingisasport I dunno if I agree with those latter points.
Re: Cid, I don't think we could've gotten much deeper stuff out of his relationship with Clive, even if he lived longer. Cid was likable and quippy, and gave Clive a goal, sure, but I don't think there was that much more to him than that. Which is fine in Cid's case, since there didn't need to be--he fulfilled his purpose and died early on. But I don't think we could've seen him push Clive to grow in different ways.
If he'd lived, probably the most interesting thing we could've seen--not that the game dwells on it at all--is Cid's reaction to people's reactions to the first Mother Crystal being destroyed.
We could've seen this man that Clive has found reassurance in show doubt, and maybe the people of the Hideaway react to Cid showing doubt. Cid says that things will get worse before they get better, but knowing it will happen and actually seeing the people suffering from a decision he caused are two different things. It could put Cid in an interesting spot (and would actually be interesting for Cid's character, now that I think about it). And Clive could be in a position to offer reassurance back to Cid. But that still doesn't help Clive grow as a person. It doesn't give him a flaw. He still remains a paragon.
Re: Jill, Clive already got angry at Hugo for killing people at the Hideaway, but that's still reactive. If Jill was temporarily killed or put in danger, I just see him reacting in a stronger way--but it's more or less still a reaction.
For the anger to matter, we would need to see how Clive feels, and the context. Was he too weak to save Jill? Does he get worried about if he'll be able to protect other people in the future? Does he push himself to the breaking point, and alienate those that care about him? And if Jill temporarily dies, does he remember Joshua dying--and comes to believe that everyone he loves will die, and so he shouldn't make attachments (which would suck for his character and likability, so I wouldn't use it personally, but it's still some sort of development).
The story just needed to give Clive flaws at the start, and construct an arc that let him come to terms with those flaws and grow past them. It just failed to do that somehow. I guess the writers were so afraid of players' reactions if Clive had flaws to work through that they didn't bother giving him any.
What is with the underdog complex
A character doesnt need to "evolve" and even if the character is perfect are none of the characters in the story robust enough to make the story minimally interesting or the journey or the world itself?
It's the "if characters dont struggle like I do irl then theyre bad" mindset. Even though struggles are not the only way to write a compelling character.@@felipebisi4145
I cant stand people saying that the early game gave an FF tactics/Ivalice vibe. That is the height of media literacy ignorance for me this summer. Tactics has 10, no 100 times the depth of this game. Dialogue actually goes somewhere. To battles that feel as though they shift the tide of history. To assassinations in back alleyways. Unsteady alliances made to advance the separate agendas of different players. The world
of FF tactics feels like a world that exists and moves without Ramza, which makes every decision of his feel urgent and vital. Meanwhile in 16, the entirety of Valisthea seems like it exists to make Clive look like a badass. It makes me feel as though people are only saying that because this game also has knights, and castles, and duchies and shit. Just the aesthetic is enough for them, and it makes me sick lol.
Let’s not even get started on how for some reason every single one of these Eikons seem to conveniently exist only within the borders of this one nation that decides the fate of the entire world? nonsense.
Ah yes, now that I finished FFXVI, I can finally watch these critique videos and feel out what the community thought about the game!
it took me three months to finish. It should not have taken me that long. But once the roller coaster of the game's intro gave way to the towns, sort-of exploration, and side quests, I really felt the sharp downgrade from the highly-crafted story stuff before - It was hard to want to sit down and play when I was in the middle of obvious filler. I'd get invested in story stuff, then suddenly I'm in the middle of this weird "Go talk to Otto. Okay now walk ten feet over here and talk to someone else. Now run over there and talk to someone else. Now go fight a pack of generic enemies."
When the game is on a high, it's REALLY high, but the valleys between the peaks were a big slog, and ultimately, while I'm glad I played it and had a good time overall, it had a lot of flaws, and many times I felt that I wasn't really having fun.
Funny that yoship said "nobody wants to play rpgs anymore" when ffxiv put him on the goddamn map.
Even funnier was that he claimed no one wants turn based games then a few months later Baldur's Gate 3 came out and was a massive success.
The story really needed an editor. Cid says we have to destroy the mothercrystals? Why? Because he GUESSES they are the cause of the blight. So we decide to destroy the mothercrystals, destroy the whole foundation of this planet and magic, on a HUNCH . What the hell?
On a hunch, and then we destroy one crystal and see *no positive results* and in fact see *negative results* but yet still decide to follow the hunch of a dead man. Total nonsense.
RIGHT?????@@overnightsiren
@@overnightsiren But it's more than a hunch? The Mothercrystals are the Source of Crystals, which allow normal people to use magic. Normal people, who had long in the past won a war overthrowing the prior magic based hierarchy casting down the natural born magic users into slaves, whose use of magic causes them to petrify and die. Magic is stronger in the lands surrounding the Mothercrystals. So, on one hand, we're forcing people to relearn how to do things like light fires with flint and steel rather than a crystal, and on the other we're removing one of the ways oppression has been repeated over the course of history. Sure, destroying one won't end the suffering, the same way stopping one illegal arms dealer won't stop all gun crime. Or, in the case of the Blight, the literal destruction of the land itself, and the hunch that the Mothercrystals were causing it, we can say Stopping one of five Massive polluting countries from polluting won't stop climate change. And think back to *where* Cid came from. He's not from Valisthea. He's lived without magic, and only came to be empowered by Ramuh after landfall.
Also that "hunch" is based off of observation of easily accessed phenomena. The Crystals allow people to use magic, even non-bearers. If Using Magic causes Bearers to turn to stone because it sucks out their aether, then where do the Crystals get the Aether to use that magic? Answer: from the Land. Crystals come from the MotherCrystals (it's in the name) And those are huge. The fear of them draining the land's aether is very real. He just doesn't know where it's going yet. Flash forward to the first shown destruction of a Mother Crystal, where Typhon emerges and is Killed, and then Ultima appears to take away Clive. At once, every question that was posed to his theory by Jill and Clive (Why would no one know the truth or who would hide it, Where does the Aether go) is answered. And unlike the last minute swerves from past final fantasies, such as Zemus/Zeromus, Necron and Yu Yevon, the Final boss is shown early, and his presence is felt throughout the story.
So yea, let's follow the Hunch of a Dead man, whose goal was to try and stop the Blight and secure a safe place for the persecuted, and realize that destroying one piece of 5 (used to be 8) isn't enough to stop the downward trend. Or if that second half is too much for you to swallow, then we can say Barret's plan trying to stop the Mako Reactors by blowing them up was total nonsense, even though he realized just one won't be enough. Even with news reports showing the destruction of the Reactor killed so many innocent people being far more negative result than the zero positive result of blowing up a single reactor.
@@beatrixkaelin5120 Except it's totally a hunch. According to Ultima's powerpoint presentation, it was magic and not mothercrystals that caused the Blight. Mothercrystals were only planted on Valisthea to target pump aether into the Origin ship, but without them, Ultima's original world fell to Blight anyway. So your entire word vomit is just you bending over backwards to excuse Cid's totally a hunch "deduction".
And let's not forget that in contrast to 16, where mothercrystals have stood since the dawn of time (mothercrystals and the seeds of humanity were sown at the same time and for the same purpose), 7's mako reactors were built within the last 30 years, meaning that while nobody has any reason to doubt the mothercrystals' divinity in 16 (even people from the outer continent like Barnabas, Cid and Charon flock to Valisthea precisely because the blight was also appearing on their outer continent, which is why they migrated to Valisthea since that's the place where the Blight is considered to be spreading the slowest due to "the blessing of the Mothercrystals"), there are people in living memory in 7 who has lived through (and are still living in) a world without Mako reactors. That's why there's still pocket resistance against Mako usage, not to mention the instability of the mako reactors themselves since it's a very new invention. So people in the present (esp eco warriors) have seen and experienced both the before and after of mako reactors and be like "wait, isn't Shinra killing the land wtf" and it makes more sense than 16's logic does.
@@themisheika "It was magic and not mothercrystals that caused the blight"... Wtf do you think the mothercrystals are? They're literally pure aether shit used for magic.
There are a few areas I agree with you but so many are just non issues or actual good things that you are complaining about. My biggest issue of the game is the crafting and gear. The combat is fire. The moves you are saying that are useless are in fact not useless. And being mad that you can respec whenever you want? Cmon dude.... AP does not become useless till near the end game unless you are not fully upgrading and not just unlocking the attacks. Game is a bit easy but Final Fantasy mode is real fun. Non memorable locales? WHAT!? the dungeon where you see the first crystal. Rosaria. The volcano. Game has great locales. I love the story. I wish they did more with Benedikta though.
Game does have some problems for sure. but its a solid 7-8/10 and the best FF we have gotten in a LONG time.
I loved FF16 for its darker tone, the Eikon fights as well as the sibling dynamics, but after playing FF7 Remake and Rebirth I completely understood what the fandom had hoped for.
I agree with most of the video. Very disappointing game overall for me. The demo was almost a 10/10 for me, the actual game is half that.
One nitpick that annoyed me: in the demo, you play as Joshua briefly and he has the cure spell. Easily implies to FF fans that spells and what not would be in this game, but they’re not. You never gain any magic beyond the triangle button to shoot an attack with a color that matches your Eikon. It’s bullshit. The cure spell was added to Joshua maliciously to invoke nostalgia, and damn it, it worked. I have to go into the next entry with a raised eyebrow, unfortunately.
One thing I think you've missed here is the major pacing and tone issues. And I don't mean the obvious ones, like the time skips that basically skip the majority of Clive's life. But the fact that, after Benedicta and Hugo die, with 2 Eikons and Crystals destroyed by Cid (2.0), the world doesn't seem to care. There is no alliance formed against Cid, no further repercussions for the branded, nobody takes extra steps to make sure the crystals are protected, nothing. And the NPC's back at the hideout, who now know that Clive is their leader, the one to take down nations and fight demi gods and literal god BY HIMSELF, those people are more than willing to waste his time with mundane stuff that anyone else can do.
That isn't just a pacing problem. It speaks volume about the characters themselves and ruin them. They seem to not care about Clive's ordeals outside of mandatory cutscenes. So much wasted potential
Anyway, your analysis was very good. Keep up the good work, you earned an extra subscriber with this one :D
Seems like they thought about certain points, but then spent very little time on fleshing the rest out. If there is no logical path of events, such as your pointing out in one reaction leads to another, but tries to tie it up without being too realistic and true gravity of consequences set in, I think they realized how bleak a game it would be.
@@blumiu2426 But even the ones they were supposed to think out of, due to them being main story ones, they screwed up. The example that I can't easily forget is the mission to save Mid. We are told that the city she's in is under attack, the guards won't last and we need to travel there asap after meeting Joshua's contact, yet the game unlocks like 10 side quests at the same time that you can do at your leisure. Like, come on now.
@@KGLordofhollows It seems both CBU1 and CBU3 don't know how to implement side quests. Where they used to have value in unlocking things in the past, they don't seem to know how to go about it in modern formats. Maybe they get lost in the scope of the game or bounce between trying to make them relevant and then filler, so it ends up disjointed.
Thanks a lot for the view and comment. Yeah there definitely wasn't enough reaction from the world at large when it came to the destruction of the mothercrystals.
I had touched on the fact that "there were never any positive effects so why did they continue destroying them"--but as you said, we should have seen MORE of the negatives of destroying the mothercrystals. We should have seen the world grapple with losing literally 20% of its vital resources and it could have made the political angle of the story even more interesting. The only time we saw anything akin to this was with Sambreque moving its capitol to the Crystalline Dominion, but they were actually already doing that *before* we destroyed Drake's Head. I think ultimately the reason we never saw any of these repercussions play out (like nations allying to strengthen their holdings over the remaining mothercrystals) was because one of the three major political players (Waloed) was revealed to be a puppet state, void of any life being run by Ultima the entire time while another of the main superpowers of Valisthea was led by Hugo Kupka whose sole goal was to avenge Benedikta.
When 2 out of 3 of the world's superpowers aren't acting like they care about the dwindling resources, it falls on the third to give us *some* interesting story in that direction, but Sambreque was just sitting there protecting their hold over the Dominion.
As it stands, we really saw nothing come of destroying the mothercrystals except as they pertained to Ultima's plans, which was the least interesting storyline in the whole game.
And re: the NPCs giving sidequests while they know Clive has bigger fish to fry--major FFXIV energy. That's the stuff that made me realize "okay yeah this game definitely had the same team as FFXIV" haha.
Thanks a lot for the view, comment and subscription! It means a lot!
@@overnightsiren I think if we saw the suffering Clive and Sid caused from resources dwindling, people would die. Even casual examination thought this would be the direction the plot would take. If they avoided the hard reality that they would be seen as villains with blood on their hands, it would more than complicate the plot and conclusion. Those boys in the end would not be playing with a pup with sunshine and butterflies around them, they'd be burdened with work, learning labors needed to survive like how peasant life actually was.
Why fictionalize reality when you removed the ease of life that would allow children to be children instead of grow up fast? It's a contradictory plot that didn't want to take itself serious and just say "crystals bad".
I really started struggling to finish the game when I'd finish a big story moment, be back at the hideout, then I'd be locked from travel temporarily because the next 20 minutes of main story was: Talk to A, Now talk to B, Talk to C, Let's see what A has to say about all that. Why could this not have been a little cutscene where they all hold counsel/discussions?
It's nice to finally hear someone with similar opinions to myself. I was starting to feel like I was in crazy town with how much praise this game gets.
"It doesn't feel like Final Fantasy" is a statement that isn't meant to attack people who like this game and I'm honestly getting tired of people losing their minds over it. The FF vibe just isn't there. Iconography does not a Final Fantasy make.
In the absolute nicest way possible that I could put it, as a Final Fantasy fan who doesn't hate any of the other 15 FF games and their sequels.. 16 is overwhelmingly, aggressively average.
"The vibe isn't there" is exactly what I mean too. My biggest frustration is the bad faith rebuttals that "oh because it's not turnbased"--well, no. It's not that, it's because it doesn't have charm. This isn't a world that I want to live in, which is the opposite to what I'd say about almost any other Final Fantasy world. If I woke up on Gaia from IX or Spira from X (well, after Sin lol) I'd be in heaven. If I woke up in Valisthea I'd be like "FUUUUU---"...you get the idea. lol
Glad I could help you feel like you weren't alone in your frustrations of XVI, I know sometimes it can be hard to see through so much blind and *aggressive* positivity.
Thanks for the view and comment! Please consider subscribing if you haven't, but either way thank you! :)
It's just a lame criticism, that's why you get pushback. Criticize something tangible, instead.
@@CazaDeYork Saying a game doesn’t feel like it’s predecessors is a totally valid comment to make. The person receiving the comment can choose to take personal offense if they’d like, but no one is forcing them to not like the game.
It is what it is.
It isn't a lame criticism. He elaborated extensively on what those of us who say "it doesn't feel like FF" mean.
A lot of franchises move so far away from their identity that they completely lose themselves. Silent Hill is probably the best example of this. Silent Hill is survival horror. The last Silent Hill game released was a dungeon crawler and fans rightfully rejected it because it didn't "feel" like Silent Hill. It's the same thing with XVI. Every main line FF game is radically different but they are always RPGs. Being an RPG is one of, if not the most, vital components of FF's identity. XVI is not an RPG. That's why it doesn't feel like FF.
If Final Fantasy 17 came out right now and it was a first person shooter or a platformer, would you still think it's dumb to say it doesn't feel like "Final Fantasy"? Would people still make the argument that it's still a Final Fantasy game because Square Enix said it is and it has "Final Fantasy" in its title?
Funny how Yoshi-P thinks just that. Iconography makes it a FF. What a bizarre take and seems it came to bite the game in the butt.
I really appreciate this video. I've been a fan since 1991 (FFIV was my first when I was 7), and I too was hoping XVI would be a return to form. While there were parts I liked, the actual plot was very... mid, as the kids say. I've had to accept that the direction Final Fantasy is going (and honestly has been going for the last 10 years) isn't for me.
I've found that the Xenoblade series scratches the same itch that Final Fantasy used to for me, and I highly suggest checking it out if you have a Switch.
Xenoblade 3 was amazing! 2 is not too shabby either.
Man...after playing 16, (i have many gripes with it, but always gives benefit of the doubt), it made me want to appreciate 15 a lot LOT more, actual believable characters, fun exploration n looting means something, Eos feels alive and atleast i can atleast imagine myself living in there.
Vanisthelia on the other hand.... 💀
Honestly, the smartest thing they did was do the demo to hook people into buying it because, honestly, after completing the game, it's like I've been catfished.
My favourite FF is X. I'm okay if they decide to switch things up, but the RPG elements ARE essential. Besides the story of X, it's my favourite because of the strategy you need to take bosses down; even random encounters need some strategy to get by. I was very unimpressed with the magic AND item use in this game. In fact, I didn't even use anything besides healing potions for 95% of my gameplay and no mage spells or anything.
The weapons and armour are a joke. The most I did was update the stats for both, but I didn't bother playing around with different armour pieces for boosts because I flat-out didn't need them, and you're absolutely right; there is NO level grind in this game, unlike every other Final Fantasy I've ever had. You really didn't need to think at all.
Before I get into the combat, this game was stunningly beautiful visually (although I didn't have HDR on my TV, so everything was extremely washed out and overly dark, which annoyed me so damn much). However, I know this is a part of the action genre, but all the animations and fast pace were too much for my ADHD brain. I did have two of the story-based rings on the evade one and one other, which I can't even remember, and maybe taking those off would have made the game harder for me personally, but only because it would have been harder to focus and thus die more which is not fun for me personally.
I've seen people rave good things about the combat of this game, and I'm just like, WHY?! For one, there were limited times I felt satisfied with a kill because of the lack of strategy needed, everything mostly felt like a slasher game (which is not what I want from a ff game), the Eikon fights were nice looking but didn't add the same feeling like aeons did to FFX and honestly didn't give me that much excitement and I basically ignored the whole eikon abilities and one thing that really pissed me off is the boss fights were you slash them right to the end and then they decide to kill the enemy for you in a cinematic scene which I'm pretty sure they did more than once. THEY TOOK ANY PART OF FUN OUT, which is finally killing them after suffering for 15-60 minutes. :/ Towards the end, when there were just waves and waves of easy enemies, I was like, MY GOD, how many times do I have to kill these things? They just annoyed me.
It's amusing how they focused so hard on fast travel when FFXV was so painful with the long load screens and drives. It's like they wanted to fix that issue but overcompensated for it. The lack of adventure is another aspect of why people say this doesn't feel like a FF game. Also, collecting treasure is also disappointing, and unless you need potions, useless af.
The story and character were the only reason why I felt I stayed because it was ridiculously good at first. I was actually invested in the Is Joshua alive, why is he alive if he is, etc situation and wanted them to even reunite with him. Up to Cid's death was pure gold for me (CID is the best character in this game), even Dion destroying his home was riveting to me (also, what ended up happening to his lover anyway?), although I barely felt anything came of that either and even though it wasn't apparent to me at first and upon looking at other people's views, it is very disjointed, but they do a good job at distracting you from it (unlike FFXV), or maybe it was because I had a month break.
I was all for Clive and Jill, but I found their love story super weird and awk too. When she was flirting with him as a kid, I was actually uncomfortable with it, and I wondered why it was him and not Joshua, tbh.
Don't even get me started on that ending. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT. First off, THE VAGUENESS. Did Clive healing Joshua at the end cure the wounds so he was put to rest in his natural state, or did it heal him? Secondly, I took the ending as Clive died, so I was very upset with that. I've since read people's theories, but let's go with how I feel with my initial reaction. You get through ALL THIS DEPRESSING stuff, and there is NO conclusion. Oh, yay, the world is saved, but you don't see any of the characters really live in it?! We don't care about those two children 100 years in the future, yes, it gives us a glimpse of what they created, but there is no emotional depth than seeing Jill live without Clive or what happens next for Gav and the home, etc. Does the land fully recover? We won't know, will we? But maybe they did it intentionally in the event for future DLC and/or FFXVI-2; who knows.
Well, at least Tourgal doesn't die. That's something, I guess, and there was some good to this game, of course.
I brought a PS5 for this game at a time I couldn't really afford it, but I saw the demo and was so impressed and wanted it on day one. To say I should have waited is an understatement.
I agree 100% about the demo. It was a total bait and switch. So much intrigue and setup and then virtually none of it ends up mattering.
It's what game companies do nowadays, hire fake gamers to hype the games pre-release. Most of the critics don't know shit about Final Fantasy.
I agreed, I loved the game and it immediately made me want to buy the game.
Now after this I'm never playing a demo again and I'm waiting a few weeks before I buy a new game.
Hell, I don't even know if I'm buying remake part 2.
I 100% agree with everything.
I still feel you were too nice. For every high this game has so many awfully deep lows... by the end I just wanted it to be over. The game is so unbelievable mediocre in most aspects. Utterly disappointing for a main FF game and fanboys/press keep praising it for no reason.
Thanks a lot for the view and comment! It's definitely disappointing to see so many other longtime fans really ardently defend the game.
I'm not sure if they're just trying to delude themselves to cope with the fact that we haven't had a good mainline, non-MMO, title in years or what--but if we EVER want this series to get back on track we really need to hold Square's feet to the flame and let them know that they are releasing a subpar product under the guide of a beloved series.
I somewhat agree there. It starts off so strong from a story perspective, i initially forgave some of the game play restrictions. But, the story slowly looses steam after Cid dies. The narrative pull weakens, proceeds at a sluggish pace (even with a time skip) and the side quests are just a bore.
I played about 80% of it and never beat it. It started out cool but just got more and more routine and boring as it went on.
What this game lacks is the mystery and secrets of previous ff titles. For example secret bosses and secret final weapons which ff7 ff8 and ff10 does so well.
Nah I enjoyed ffxvi alot
This game was about 20 hours too long, and got painfully boring midway through. This game was disappointing in so many aspects and you touched on most of them. Cheers.
The ultimate head scratching question I keep asking myself about the hype media surrounding this game: “Are we playing the same game???”
I mean seriously it seems so LAZY, there’s no depth, there’s nothing “next gen” about it. Even the way Clive runs is so ps2 and Arcady how he just glides across the map. 15 may have its problems but at least you can see the effort. I’m not saying 16 is horrible but disappointing, bland, dull and boring are the words that come to mind
Exactly! Looks bland to me. I can't say stuff about the story and lore and stuff. But instead of looking great, it looks like an expensive PS3 game or something.
I asked it myself too. I even know someone that flames me if i point out the flaws.
Lets be serious. The game not just fails as a RPG. Hence i even would have prefered if they go full action without any RPG elements. Because the few RPG elements they have left actively work against the game. If they did a more focused action game that jumps from set piece to set piece it likely would have worked better.
It even loses against other newer games in the series in the action gameplay department. FF7R is also barely a RPG but the fights just feel much more fun especially as you have multiple character you can play with different fighting styles.
Strangers of Paradies battle system beats FF16 in pretty much every area.
This two games are both action games and no real FF fan hates them. FF 16 not being a turn based RPG really isn't the main issue.
I think Yoshi P designed a safe game that appeals to the masses (which was sort of the intention to grab new FF fans), as such what he made was good on paper and appeals to reviewers, industry veterans, and newcomers. It hits the GoT feel, has some sex, nudity, blood, and huge big kaiju bombastic set piece that fights many that the masses like. In that department I think he more or less was successful at the cost of several other aspects. It is rumored that CBU3 might be handling another FF game but with a different writer (Ishikawa of Shadowbringer and Endwalker fame) instead of Maehiro as some members of FFXIV's team were announced to be promoted, that same happened with the announcement of FFXVI.
I enjoyed and liked the game, though a bit disappointed at the end, the narrative started really strong, the voice acting superb, music was solid, and the graphics the best FF has ever seen (and FFXVI IMO still beats FFVII Rebirth in the graphics department (art direction is another story)). His strengths are focus and project management (an important skill most of the other directors/producers at Square are really mediocre at), for better or worse. One big positive thing I will say is that this is probably the cleanest development cycle FF had since FFXII, which likely tells you more about Square's management. The game started pre-production, entered production, no engine was scrapped, and the game finished without little hiccups or massive consumption of funds (like FFXIV 1.0, FFXIII, or FFXV did).
Holy shit thank you! I genuinely do not understand how people praise this game so highly.
@@ridleyroid9060 yeah man… like it’s not BAD but there’s nothing revolutionary about it at all. Like not even close.
I've been struggling to find anyone who shares my disappointment. It wasn't a BAD game, and I played it through to the end, which I don't do if I really get bored. But it just felt like it was always missing something. It felt like it tied up almost every little loose end (except the final scene) to the point of exhaustion. I also understand that people enjoy world building... but I feel like more effort went into world building than character or story building. As soon as Joshua reappeared, I lost heart, because it felt like all of the emotional trauma I went through in the demo had no payoff, and there was no main villain to focus on any more. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about it. But I was left feeling wanting and worse... guilty about not enjoying it because I knew it was checking off the boxes for what most people want. I just didn't feel it.
I think it did an alright job world building, but also this isn't a world I want to spend any time in because it's just so miserable and charm-less that the more it got built the more I was exhausted by it.
Truly I don't know if there's an FF world I'd want to live in *less* than Valisthea haha
Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
You're definately not alone. I think a lot of us went through the same thing. It's Final Fantasy, so everyone expects to experience something enthralling and mindblowing. While 16 has a few of those moments, most of it is a shallow action adventure game of which there are far better one's on the market. People who say that the experience of the cinematics and story make it worth it are saying they actually don't care about gameplay for games which I really don't want them to be the consensus of gaming standards.
I have been feeling that a lot with JRPG's lately. Tales of Arise for instance I felt was just painfully average. Not bad, but also nothing that really stood out as amazing about it either. And Shin Megami Tensei V meanwhile felt like it just came and went.
And yet what baffles me is that these titles gain all this praise when they for the most part just feel like they are checking boxes.
For me this should have been a spinn-off, rather than mainline FF. Final Fantasy has always been an RPG with a party. And this game is an action game, with a single playable character. This is the equivalent of calling Command & Conquer: Renegade, just Command & Conquer 4. Or calling the first Telltale Borderlands adventure just Borderlands 3. Just a little change in name, and people wouldn't even discuss whether this is or is not a Final Fantasy game.
That being said, the name is far from the only issue this game has, as you explained, but it would have helped to have people less frustrated. Because if a spinn-off fails, well we still have the mainline titles... but if the mainline disappoints, people are that much more likely to just abondon the franchise.
And it's not like there was no writing on the wall about how FF fans think about action-games with a single playable character, because that did not go down well wtih Lightning Returns either.
asmongold need to see this video, i express my dissapointment and i got backlashed for being boomer who cant move on from turn based battle, i mean.. i dont mind the battle gameplay.. but the way we build our characters just make strangers of paradise are masterpiece.. game are also too easy.. and i miss tonberry and omega weapon
Be sure to share it with him! Would love his input.
FINALLY. Someone else was saying things I’ve said the whole time. You elaborated so sufficiently in eloquently that there’s not much I can comment on. I REALLY don’t get why people seem to love the music. I think the final boss theme was pretty good and some(not all) the other battle themes were decent, but that’s it
The issue I had with Final Fantasy 16 was it felt like their desire to attract a new audience meant that all the charm, comradery, adventure had been sapped from the game. Along with it were gone all the "RPG" elements that made FF at times so addictive (interesting and iconic equipments with interesting effects, being able to control your party members and building out your team and stats actually mattering to some extents). Its not necessarily the fact it went action - there are many action games that have deep RPG elements and FFXVI in comparison remains remarkably shallow and using just Clive is fun at the start but as the game goes on the gameplay loop of staggering enemies and then going all out becomes dull after the 50th boss battle.
The story feels like it also lost all the balance of the plots of past FF games. As an example, Final Fantasy X has a extremely depressing world caught in a cycle of destruction with Sin but the developers knew that this sort of atmosphere would be exhausting the entire game and so things like Blitzball and Luca provided a point of joy for not only the people of Spira but also a distraction for us as a player from the darker moments that preceded Luca. They also included lighter moments between party members in between the dark parts of the plot. Once Cid leaves FFXVI's storyline, the game gets so exhausting and serious to play that it just becomes a relief when it finally ends.
No team building, no cities or towns, no creativity in battle growth, no airships, no party control. If this is a Final Fantasy game, someone should be fired.
I agree 100% with everything you said, and you highlighted some things that I felt but couldn't put into words.
I too feel like this game was unfinished. I can't imagine the original scope of the game was what we got. I'm guessing they planned to have a better battle system, more RPG elements, better sidequests etc but ran out of time and crammed in filler to increase the game length.
There were so many obvious places to expand upon the battle system to make it more varied and interesting. E.g. elemental damage from Eikons, different enemy types being strong/weak to different elements. Different weapons or movesets for each Eikon, instead of just abilities that all work on all enemy types. Switching to Titan could have switched to a 'Monk" hand-fighting style that is slower but does more damage, breaks shields/guard/staggers enemies faster. Switching to Bahamut could have given you the spear which has a longer range, good for piercing certain enemy types. Garuda could have made you faster and more evasive.
The story wasn't great, but if the gameplay was fun I probably would have still liked the game. I hated the gameplay so much that it took away from the story and I simply didn't care about it at all by the midpoint of the game.
So much wasted potential.
Regarding the blight not slowing down after the crystal was destroyed, I think the writers put themselves in one of those "screwed if you don't, screwed if you do" writing setups. They couldn't have the destruction of the crystals have a visible effect on the blight, since then you'd have people--or at least Dion--get the idea to smash his crystal. Basically, the writers wanted Cid to be right, but also have it be where nobody else but Clive would act on his belief.
Honestly, the crystal thing just pisses me off to no end. Ultima wanted the crystals destroyed the whole time, but didn't the writers realize that if the player becomes invested in that journey, having the bad guy say, "I wanted you to do that the whole time" right at the end is like a slap in the face? There are some games that do that well--like Bravely Default--but those at least give that moment room to breathe, and give the player and characters catharsis when they defeat the bad guy anyway. Here, that reveal happens so quickly that there's no opportunity to breathe.
Like...imagine Heavensward and you go through the entire expac and throw Niddhog's eyes into the abyss, except Niddhog comes back and says: "You fool, that was my plan all along" and kills Alphinaud. And then you fight Niddhog again. Like...the guy that wrote Heavensward wrote this? I still can't believe it.
I'm not surprised at all given that information. Heavensward has so many ass pulls and contrivances so I'm not shocked in the slightest to see the same guy pull the same shit in a different game. The Eyes of Nidhogg itself is one of my biggest gripes with Heavensward in fact. It was so unbelievably obvious that throwing them off a bridge was such a stupid idea that I can't believe they expect anyone to take it seriously. They're artifacts of immeasurable power and we just threw them into a canyon. Like we're not talking about a portal into an endless abyss, there IS a bottom. The big emphasis is supposed to be "oh there's powerful winds filled with ice magic that prevent anyone from accessing the deepest parts of the canyon" but the fact that anyone thinks some powerful ice magic is enough to stop the Ascians, like have you been paying attention? At that point in the story, they have functionally infinite power merely by virtue of the fact that we have no ability to gauge their power level at that point in the game. For all we know, ice magic is specifically something they're really good at nullifying. I mean Cid built a ship that can blast through a full-strength Allegan magical barrier in like a week, so how on earth would we possibly think that some magic icy winds would be this impenetrable substance??? The MOMENT Aymeric yelled at us to throw the eyes off the bridge I KNEW they'd be coming back to hurt us because that plan was literally the last thing I would have ever thought of to do. They should have sealed them away somewhere they could actually keep watch over and run tests on them to see the limit of their power. That's what you do with powerful magic artifacts. You don't throw them off a cliff and then hope none of your enemies find a way to go and retrieve them.
So yeah, no, it makes perfect sense that the same guy would write a similarly bullshit plotline.
@@Tohlemiach Oh God, I could go on about dragon eyes for days. Like...they're either nigh bottomless wells of aether, or are able to be exhausted as the plot demands. Just...keep it consistent, please?
Yeah, throwing the eyes was super stupid. You already used one to destroy Igeyorm earlier in that expansion--they could've easily been Ascian destroying tools. You could've given one to the scions and kept the other at Ishgard if you're so worried about someone else grabbing both eyes again and becoming Niddhog's shade.
Imo, dragon eyes are probably a result of growing pains, so to speak. I'm playing through the rest of Heavensward right now, and to me, it seems like the writers were trying to go from a soft magic system in ARR to something harder in Heavensward, with proper rules. But they didn't know how to go about it elegantly. I hope Stormblood and later expacs do a better job. I've heard good things about Shadowbringers, at least.
@@xiraho1 I hope you enjoy it more than I did, because I just recently finished 5.0 Shadowbringers, and while I think it was the best base-line expansion plot so far, I still think it's a mediocre FF story. I'd put it at the level of VIII, but I actually got so bored of VIII that I never even finished it, so I'd have to at least put Shadowbringers above it.
I actually have so far most enjoyed the post-launch Stormblood story because it actually has a really interesting moral dilemma and some interesting character developments. It ends up not mattering in the grand scheme of things, but as a sort of short story I really liked the ideas it presented.
To this day, I still think ARR was the most entertained I've been in FFXIV because it actually built up to a climactic fight that was properly epic and took it's time to have us fight our way all the way to the top. As annoying as it is to do that encounter in the duty roulette nowadays, doing it for the first time back in the day was magical to me. I've been really disappointed since then to find out that every expansion does the same thing where there is a final dungeon that leads up to the last boss, and then right after there is just one trial which is a single boss fight that caps off the entire expansion. They just repeat this same pattern every time and it just never gets as good as ARR for me personally. Even as tedious as the rest of ARR was, I really loved that climax.
Either way, things like Nidhogg's eyes or the way they "resolved" the stuff that happened in Ul'Dah at the end of ARR are why I generally have the opinion that FFXIV's story is pretty aggressively mediocre.
@@Tohlemiach Huh. Then I guess I'll look forward to Stormblood. I heard that it wasn't great, so I was fully prepared to write it off and consider it a big pill to swallow on the way to Shadowbringers. But I might be pleasantly surprised, we'll see.
@@xiraho1 I think people are generally right about the main campaign being not all that great, I myself wasn't too crazy about it, but like I said, what I enjoyed was mainly the patch quests that came after the main launch MSQ. That might just be me since I've never heard anyone praising anything from Stormblood, but who knows.
Nailed it. The itemization is one of my biggest critiques of XVI and I'm glad you mentioned it! Great video!
My biggesst gripe with this game is solely the gameplay. It didnt have to be as boring as it was.
All of Clive's base abilities are frontloaded, unlocked within the first 2 hours. Now, for the entire rest of the game, you only get new things to play with every 8-10 hours, and they are all 1-3 cooldown abilities.
No, getting a new Eikon should have given Clive an entirely new moveset, like switching weapons/styles does in Devil May Cry.
FFXVI leaves you using the same combos on the same enemies for 50 hours, and this, combined with the BORING sidequests really really hurt this game.
You are the first reviewer that I’ve seen go over every single aspect of the game, with such great detail, and actually admit that they were not done as well as we were hoping it would. I loved how honest you were, and your love for the FF franchise shines through, despite your not loving the game. I do agree with you wholeheartedly, and I’d love to see you more FF reviews or something similar in the future.
Thanks a ton for the view and comment! I'm surprised to hear that so many other reviews are making the game out to be amazing.
@@overnightsiren I said the game was designed to pander to a new generation of low attention span having gamers from COD and GTA (which the devs openly stated) and that was like kicking a bee hive on reddit. The praise people there give this game just boggles my mind. I dont know how they can call themselves FF fans, when a beloved series was used as a cash grab to attract the the lowest common denominator of gamer. I guess they are right for being offended by that - but sometimes the truth hurts.
@@overnightsiren Some people write reviews to reflect their own honest opinions. Some people write reviews for clicks or monetization. Some people write reviews so as to express opinions they think will garner them acceptance.
Not to say most people who like the game are either of the last two options, but there is no end to things that people will claim to enjoy because other people enjoy it whose opinions they want to court--a part of being a teenager that I think most of us never realllly grow out of.
@@etzioschmetzio2168that’s the literally the most generic “criticism” you can offer, what’d you expect the reaction to be like? Praise for saying that stupid ass shit?
I really like your review, it summarizes a lot of my own opinions on the game. Though I wouldn't be as harsh on it, I was quite disappointed with the end result.
I agree 100% with the lack of memorable locations, I was looking forward to visiting all these great beautiful castles and citites, but we never truly get to experience them. Most of the places we do get to visit are these medieval villages with no charm. Even if they were going for something more dry an realistic, they could've at least added some pops of color and character, something to make them more fantasy like. In a lot of these villages it just felt like I was playing Assassin's Creed or something.
I was also very disappointed with most characters and relationships and I think the game fails at "show, not tell". We're supposed to believe that Jill is this super powerful eikon, but her only relevant fighting sequence is off screen. We're supposed to believe that Clive and Jill love each other, but a lot of their romantic interactions happen in letters? We're supposed to believe that the attack on the hideout was a big tragedy, but none of the named characters die.
I do agree that the geopolitical story is very shallow and seems to have no influence in the plot that we experience. And besides that, I really missed having an actual cast of party members that would experience the story together and present different perspectives and opinions, as it would help us understand the world better and care about it.
Either way, thank you for the review, it made me feel very validated in my experience and it was enjoyable to watch. Let us hope that the next releases will be better (:
Hey thanks so much for your reply! I'm always happy to feel validated too when I dislike something. I find a lot of times there's almost an air of "toxic positivity" surrounding popular game releases where-in you're villainized for disliking something, so glad I could give you some reassurance that you're not alone in feeling underwhelmed.
I didn't even think of the fact that Jill is never shown having any prowess as a dominant on-screen after her initial battle with Titan, but you're right. She's just taking L's left and right after that haha
Kenneth dies. I remember his name!
@@overnightsiren Erm, what about Liquid Flame? She's useful there.
This game wants me to believe that in the five year time skip after Cid passes away; Clive and Jill adventured around their world and there was zero sexual tension.
If you have to force yourself to get through a game or to enjoy a game then that is not good at all,just because it is called final fantasy does not mean it is a final fantasy game.
This does make me afraid that Square will ruin Dragon Quest 12, I hope not but we will see.
I have never been a huge Final fantasy fan,I have played the older games when I was a kid and the last game I played in the series was Final Fantasy 10,
In this day in age final fantasy is not the same game any more,it is not even an RPG anymore.
Also if I want action RPGs there are much better games to actually enjoy.
My point is,do not force yourself to enjoy a game or play a game you just can not get into or enjoy naturally.
Holy shit! You nailed it. You summed up how I felt about this game. As someone who has loved Final Fantasy games for a very long time, it's disappointing to see that the last few have been so bad. I remember finishing 16 and uninstalling off my ps5 that same hour, telling myself that I would most likely never play it again. Thank you for your work on the video.
This game needed some actual dungeons more than anything, with a complex level design and interactivity, some environmental puzzle solving, something outside the relentless battles, it became redundant very fast...
I already had a bad feeling when the earliest previews came out and the world and characters looked so... drab. I think it's a fine game on its own, but to me FF has always challenged western notions of what a fantasy story can even be, so to see the latest game adopt a very safe, very on-trend grimdark YA fantasy aesthetic and story was disheartening.
Yeah, FF has always been a mix of oldschool dragons, magic and whimsy mixed with technological grit and complex characters. This time they went too heavy with the grit.
Thank you for the view and comment!
I think the end of this video was so important. “ITS OKAY”. I think all the false hype surrounding ff16 is just because we’re having trouble accepting that this game was a major let down. People were looking for any shred of a reason to call this game of the year just because we were all exhausted from the disappointment that was 15 (I love 15 btw, I thought it was way better than this) All in all, 16 wasn’t Terrible, but nobody will remember this bland entry
Love your analysis and I agree! I’m a major FF fangirl and I felt bad for not enjoying FFXVI as much as I wanted to. (I even got it as a gift for my birthday as it came out the day before lol) I kept comparing it to FFIV, FFVI, FFX, FFXII and even FFX-2. The characters and world-building just felt so unfinished. Tbh, I would trade fancy visuals for proper world-building, story and characters any day. Do make more analytical videos though! Would love to hear more of your thoughts.
"I feel bad for not enjoying FFXVI as much as I wanted to" --- I feel exactly the same. I think that's why it took me so long to admit to myself that I didn't like it (until about 70% of the way through).
On paper the game had everything that made me think I'd like it--a fantasy setting skewing more towards fantasy than sci-fi (but still a mix of both, in true FF style), some promising looking characters, and Yoshi P at the helm (massive XIV fan here) it just...didn't come together though.
I also felt bad because the PS5 was a gift to me from my FC so to then not like the game I got the PS5 for made me feel like it was a slap in their faces. That's why I'm going to platinum all the Pixel Remasters on it!
Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
@@overnightsiren I said this on Reddit- Visuals are fantastic - but if the story is not there to back them up - then they stop mattering. I dont care how epic the fight sequences are when I know im returning to bland story and characters as soon as they are over.
This is one take I don’t understand. The world building in ff16 is arguably the most complete ever. The lore page also explain everything in detail,
@@Bahamut998 You shouldnt have to read lore to understand the story in an RPG series. They have literally 60 hours to fully tell their story in a game thats 80% cutscene!!!! Why does Joshua hide from clive for 20 years? Why does he dismiss his protector from the ancient order so easily, for her to become useless afterward? Why is Otto so important? Why do they keep destroying the crystals after no positive effect? it actually starts to have a negative effect, and they just continue on.
Lot of holes and the game boss is the most boring monotone evil god character I've ever seen in a game.
@@etzioschmetzio2168 the crystals were placed by ultima and destroying them is good. Joshua hides from Clive to essentially monitor ultima who he has figured out was behind phoenix gate. Otto from the get go is established as cids go to man and organiser at the hideaway. Joshua keeps jote at the hideaway to protect her because duty is a prison. Man all your answers are there in the game, have you even played the game or do you have low attention span?
I’m just at a point where I don’t even get hyped for Final Fantasy games anymore. I mean they lost their identity along time ago, where they don’t even resemble Final Fantasy at all. No RPG elements, no party system, no strategy whatsoever, no challenge, no exploration etc… Final Fantasy is a shell of its former self. Hell you spend more time watching cutscenes than playing the game lol. Now If I wanted to play a challenging hack and slash, I would just play Devil May Cry.
I enjoyed this game a bit more than FF XV but overall I just had an overwhelming sense of disinterest during my playthrough. I gave my thoughts in the comment section of an NSP video before and I'll copy paste them here if anyone's curious.
Final Fantasy XVI is heavily flawed and doesn't live up to my personal standards of what a Final Fantasy game should be however in every area it lacks it makes up for it in several others.
+ I love the emphasis on story. Telling a cohesive narrative from beginning, middle and end felt like a lost art in the past few mainline entries. XIII and XV screwed us over heavily but XVI killed it in the narrative department. The lack of an empty, useless open world helped with the narrative structure as well.
+ I love all of the little references to past games.
+ The M rating helped the game stand out as a more mature story which the series needed heavily. A M rated game should never shy away from sexual or suggestive themes. I wish the female character designs emphasized that a bit more but it's not big deal.
+ The story feels like a mix between Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise which isn't a bad thing.
+ - The characters have a lot of depth to them but not much in terms of personality. I feel like the performances for both the English and Japanese side helps flesh them out but overall I feel like Jill is a bit of an emotionless drone as well as Clive to an extent. But it makes sense for them to be the way they are given how their lives have been ruined by coup against Rosaria so I can understand but the lack of banter and small character moments really makes you miss the camaraderie and connection that the bros from XV had. The quips were overused but I prefer that to not saying anything at all after a battle.
+ The locations in this game are beautiful though the graphics are pretty middle of the road.
+ Soundtrack was excellent and reminds me of Uematsu's old work, no offense to other composers like Shimomura-san but Uematsu was made for FF games and anything that sounds like his music should be the standard for these games. Period.
- The Eikonic battles felt a little overblown. Titan's in particular lasted WAY too long.
- + The gameplay was simple yet a little too easy for my liking. I wish we could've chosen the hardest difficulty from the get go.
- Leviathan got lost somewhere in development so they had to come up with an excuse for his lack of appearance last minute. I would've rather it not be in the game at all.
- The framerate issues on launch were unacceptable. This is why I hate console gaming, they advertise the machine as the most powerful yet we are still dealing with issues we faced years ago.
- I feel like going with the English script first for this game was to it's detriment thanks to the sanitizing of a few lines of dialogue, me being heavily against censorship I can't condone it even if it's "technically" not censorship since the Japanese script was done afterward I still don't like it. However that's a small complaint of mine. -I know many of NSP’s audience will disagree with me.-
- The character designs are tame and boring. This is a subjective complaint because I'm a huge weeb and would've preferred more aesthetically pleasing designs. I guess this is one of those rare cases of substance over style? I guess the opposite is just as bad lmao.
- Where the f*ck are Cactuar and Tonberry???
- + Clive as a character is a tragic one, he's been through hell and back and it feels like the game never lets him catch a break. This barely changes throughout the course of the game which kind of irked me. I'm all for tragic storylines but I feel like little room was given for a chance at respite for Clive and his crew. Following along that I feel as if the tone stayed consistent throughout the game to its detriment…It was a dark fantasy storyline through and through with bits of shounen styled action to re-emphasize that this is a Japanese game first and foremost which I appreciate but I feel like the game could have done with one or two comic relief characters to kind of break up the tension once in a while. Gav despite being somewhat of a hothead is VERY tame when compared to the likes of Zidane, Tidus, Kefka, Mog(FFXIII2), etc.
- I was heavily disappointed with the lack of permanent party members. While Jill is with you for a majority of the time (as well as another character) the game felt more like Square Enix's answer to something like the Witcher 3. A solo adventure RPG first and foremost. If this was a spin-off I'd be fine with that but I like RPG's with a sense of camaraderie and a shared experience so it annoyed me a bit to not see any attempt at garnering a true party together (at least in combat). Mid, the uncle and Gav do join you on occasion but they were always in the background and only have a few moments to really shine. I felt that it was a huge missed opportunity to carry on that tradition of having a full party. (I guess Yoshi P wants that to be done away with in future entries?)
- The Chocobo theme is gone. All we get is a leitmotif. Unforgivable.
Overall the game feels more like a sendoff to the series rather than a celebration. I guess in the end Yoshi-P may be trying to tell us it's time to move on? I don't know for sure but I have to agree. Final Fantasy just isn't what it used to be and I don't want to be attached to it anymore. I'll find another RPG to play and probably skip out on 17(I dunno the roman numeral for it lol).
6.5/10 for me, at least it was slightly better than XV.
Thanks a lot for the view and the fleshed out comment!
Really liked your thoughts, I also had mixed emotions, it was graphically impressive and liked the cinematic fights, but the average fights was disappointing as you mentioned after they just are rinse repeat. And definitely felt lacking in development of characters or how story connects, all the stuff at the beginning had no impact once Ultima became main plot.
Would love to see more of these analysis videos for other games. Your definitely good at this!! I really enjoyed the vid
Here after the rising tide released, mystery of the medicine girl continues. Honestly, I feel the same in most ways about this game. It's honestly forgettable besides the rage that it could've been better. It's a 6/10 and I hope people realise after the spectacle that this it the true worth of the game
Thanks for making this video. I have played 14, all the way through to its latest expansion, which was a disappointment after the last one. I also played 16 and I'm glad you made it. I was initially curious to see if my issues with EW (homogenisation of jobs, simplistic itemisation, very formulaic content model, SHB's more complex story being rushed out with a weak resolution in EW to move on to a beach vacation episode in 7.0...) were down to Yoshi being more constrained in what he could do with it, or not... didn't take long to get an answer on that. Talking about brushing off entire regions with a dungeon... Xelphatol in XIV was a classic in that regard.
I echo your comments on the lack of memorable music. My biggest issues, though, were that the antagonists felt rushed through and of little consequence, especially the other Dominants (barring Dion, perhaps.) Ultima just felt weak, like they grafted 14's Omicrons onto the Terra/Gaia plot out of 9, and the end parts with him were just cringeworthy in my eyes, repeating some of the worst JRPG tropes (in spite of Yoshi's disingenuous nonsense over use of the term.) 7R handled its antagonists far better, by contrast.
Annabella felt like her potential was squandered and was laid out to die along with the political intrigue the game had promised earlier on. The whole 'break the chains' thing was alright but it's been done better by other games, e.g. Tales of Arise, and I think more should've been made of the harmful consequences that accompanied removing the mothercrystals, given how reliant the world is on them. It's all a bit too convenient since Cid just happens to be right about it - would've been better if there was more to the whole situation. Your point on the plausibility of the characters' actions here in light of what Cid is doing is hitting the nail on the head.
I also had issues with it marketing itself as the first 'true' FF action rpg, when 7R and Stranger of Paradise are both better at this. Most of the non-staggerable foes just melted, there was little cerebral function required to move past them at all, and even some of the bosses felt lackluster. Was a shame I couldn't just switch to the hard mode from the outset.
I think 16 needed to pick and settle on a coherent vision - I don't think FF games need to be goofy to work, after all I really enjoyed XII, but with XII Matsuno knew how to write the political intrigue in a more nuanced manner and ensure it was present all the way throughout. Generally, his games like Tactics Ogre all exemplify this.
At most I'd give it a 7/10. Highlight for me was the Bahamut fight and after that it was downhill.
I honestly felt they made the game too easy on first playthrough in their attempts to capture gamers that weren't into action RPGs. It's fine to have that available for people but why did the game's hard mode have to locked behind playing the full game first? Think many a fan of the genre would have liked to have Final Fantasy mode as an option from the start.
Thanks for the view and comment! Endwalker was a massive disappointment to me too. I did a video reviewing that but it was very unorganized haha.
I think what would have somewhat saved the story is if ultima revealed Joshua was actually dead the whole time and Josh what an illusion sent by ultima to manipulate Clive into do what ultima wanted because it seemed like the whole story all I was doing was exactly what ultima wanted
That's a really interesting idea! I think that actually would have been a great change and created a really iconic moment when it was revealed. Then maybe a boss fight against "Joshua" too.
@overnightsiren yeah it would have tied into the story too:
Joshua's companion and the other undying you meet are actually the lost race of the fallen
The reveal would have added stakes because it would have been something to test clives will
Every dominant or country leader had someone sent by ultima to manipulate them so it would make sense that Clive has someone too
Also I thought seeing the king Barnabas with Hugo, his mother and benedikta was a clear Chekhovs gun that someone we knew to be dead can be used to manipulate Clive
And not to mention the emotional weight behind the reveal would have been as massive as anything ff has done in years
Agree overall with all of your complaints. The lack of gameplay options was my #1 problem, which then caused other problems with exploration, quest design, crafting, and the overall length of the game. It should've either been 25 hours shorter as a pure action game to emphasize the big set piece battles, or like 40 hours longer with more playable characters, more gameplay variety, more explorable areas, better RPG systems, and any cut content restored. I've played DMCV, Dragon's Dogma, and all of FFs other dabblings into action combat and this has the least variety of any of them. I would guess Leviathan, the Joshua+Jote storyline, and most of Mid's development were cut, and the pacing and cutscene ordering left a lot to be desired, like us seeing Joshua alive before Clive's guilt-ridden internal battle, or Bahamut going crazy without the reasoning why until after. I'm also tired of omnipresent omnipotent villains who lead the protagonist along, invest power in them, even remove obstacles for them, until they decide to no longer be omnipotent and die to their creation (XVI, XV and XIII). Give the protagonist some agency please. I also rank it pretty low in the series, ahead of XV but lower than most others.
I haaate being led along by the antagonist, just feels like it removes any agency from the characters just as you said. It also starts feeling like it creates several plot holes *or* that the characters are dumb for feeding into obvious traps. Thank you for the view and comment!
A couple small gripes I have seen to be rarely discussed.
1. No minimap? Wow, apparently they said it was because people end up not looking at the actual area and focus on the map. What a stupid thing to do, why not just add it an an option so that people can turn it on or off if they want? BotW has this and it doesn't detract from the experience despite BotW having more stuff to do and find. It just becomes annoying, everytime I need to check it I have to open the menu, it does take a second, couldn't they also add a map with transparency that could appear and disappear with the toggle of a button? It's just annoying.
2.-Running. Wow, so, who decided it'd be fun to have to wait like 3 seconds for Clive to start running, why not just being able to toggle it with a button or L3 or someting? Animal instinct is useles AF, I've only used it like 10 times. If you ever stop you haaaaave to wait for the 3 seconds again to start running... and you can't even run in towns. I know you have the chocobo but you have to stop, whistle, then ride it, and if you find enemies you have to stop, get down and then fight, why no option to do a jumping attack or something? This just makes me not want to ride the chocobo at all unless I am travelling through an area with low level enemies.
3.-Why the hell does the quest marker dissappears when you're close to the objective? I see myself opening the map to check again, but game makes you go around and look inside that circle and it is just a waste of time to make you "look" for stuff in towns like this, not much but after the 20th sidequest it gets annoying, wow, what a challenge, walking behind a piece of geometry that's hiding an NPC! I'd get if some sidequests were like that but all of them do this, some end up being more bothersome than others.
Weird. Final Fantasy 8 has a Minimap.
No party that travels and fights with the main character was a major deal breaker for me with FF16, who thought that's a good idea!!!!!!?, the most iconic element off FF games (specially the mainline games since FF1) is having a full party of diverse and interesting characters from all kinds of different backgrounds and each with their own powers and backstories ... it's absolutely NOT a mainline FF game if you don't even have a party (heck my fav characters in many of the FF games are usually some of the party members not the main character).
Also the RPG elements being reduced to rudimentary laughably shallow upgrades compared to the complexity of FF12 Job Board and Gambit System or FF7 Materia system just to give few examples, even worse is that there are no interesting mini-games or side-activities that don't involve regular combats (like the card games from FF8 and FF9 which made the world feel alive and interesting to explore).
As for the combat, FF7 remake already CREATED and PERFECTED the ideal FF ATB combat system, one that marries the tactical depth of regular turn-based combat with the speed and pacing of action combat without sacrificing anything, it's pure genius and the reason I muscled my way through the FF7 Remake Hard Mode (which was brutal) .. yet they ditched it away for a mindless shallow Devil May Cry style combat system, absolutely baffling.
Everything you described in the story section is the exact formula for MMOs. That fact that people though Yoshi P was capable of creating a good story are drinking copium. I never thought this was going to be good. MMOs have nothing to do with being fun or great storytelling devices. They are purely designed to A. Make you addicted B. Make it social including aspects like showing off and expressing your identity through skins and armors C. Infinite Grinding.
Ff16 was someone who makes MMOs trying to make the next Dark Souls but has no idea how to create that sort of experience. I feel sad for anyone who wasted their money or still trusts square enix for high quality rpgs. Fromsoft and Larian has taken the charge. Yoshi P and Nomura are festering wounds in Square Enix that need to retire or stay in their lane.
You think Gav was one-note? Really? Gav is one of the best characters in the game.
So much agreement. This is the worst FF game of the entire series. I just finished FF and am in the middle of a FF2 playthrough, and they are fun, whimsical, brief. Just pleasant. This entire game is like a homework assignment. In 15 years time no one is going to want to replay 16. But they will still enjoy the old titles
I played 70 hours and didnt enjoy it. Hard to put my finger on it but you clarified a lot of it. I will say its mind boggling how pointless the items and money are in this game. I had hundreds of crafting items at the end with no clue what to use them for...i had the best items in the game and was still getting useless crafting rewards from quests
Realizing how pointless the money was was my first clue that the game was going down a bad path. Literally nothing to spend it on except Orchestrions.
No way you played a game for 70 hours and didn’t enjoy it.
@@Ajaxx47 6/10 if I'm generous. The game bombed sales wise. Hope they take this failure to heart
@@Bahamut998 most solid performance...since the last game lmao. Cope more dude
@@Bahamut998I doubt it will sell better than FF15. That game sold 10 million copies.
As someone who got into FF recently, and wasn't old enough to play the old ones when they came out. Even I think this game was mediocre from a storytelling perspective. I don't have a Ps5 so can't play it. But even watching a playthrough, the flaws are glaring. Also Chive (thats what I call him) sucks btw so far my fav is ffx
I'll be back for your story opinions once I beat the game. So far, 100% agree with your assessment. Nicely done.
Thanks for the comment! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the finished story!
@@overnightsiren yeah we are totally on the same page, for me to say much here would be redundant. Great work!
Here's a little something I was thinking while playing **SPOILERS**:
This game suffers from Game of Thrones dropoff, like you mentioned, and I wanted to bring that up here. It's good up until 50 - 60% in and then falls completely apart. The final portion of the game is setting up for the end book shot in the game, and really didn't care to flesh out the in-between. Or how that book got there (like you said).
Also, for my own curiosity, how is Dion still able to use his Eikon ability after giving it to Clive? Once we get the obligatory beach love scene, Jill gives Clive her power and we never see Shiva again. I might have been sleeping during the cutscene that explains this.
Pitch perfect analysis. You address points I see no one else talking about, even those who also disliked the game. Your thoroughness is refreshing. I agree with basically every single point you raised. There are times when I was playing the game, and I had my combos flowing just right that just felt amazing. But like you, when I looked at how long I'd been playing, and then how much more was left, I despaired. If the game had been about half as long, it would have dramatically increased my enjoyment. Anyway, great stuff! Hope you have more deep critiques like this in you.
Thanks a lot for the comment! Sometimes I worry I'm too nit-picky to the point that I come across as annoying to those around me because I poke holes in almost every game/movie I watch once I start noticing the cracks, so you saying you enjoyed my critiques is refreshing!
I just take media that I'm passionate about very seriously, and I've seen Final Fantasy (as a series) reach heights of escapism, storytelling and character development that I'd rank as top tier across all media--and it's been a series that has been incredibly formative *to* how critical I am of other media as a result--so to see the newer games have so many shortcomings it's hard not to be frustrated by them...aaand I'm a talker, so I have to get it all out somewhere so youtube it is haha
Thanks again for the view and comment (and subscription if you did, if not no worries)!
@@overnightsiren I did subscribe! Of course. And yeah, I'd say your deep analysis was very rewarding. Like I said, you touch on points that I don't see a lot of other people talking about that I think are important. Keep up the great work.
exact same reaction from me. I looked at the homescreen, saw 60% and was like "no more. I don't want to do this anymore". So much of me playing it was like a chore, like an obligation. "This is FF. you HAVE to finish it." The game is devoid of choices, relationships, humor, (good) story. And the battles draaagggggeeed on. Go to a room, fight 5 guys, repeat x3, now throw in a miniboss with more HP, repeat this 2x, now the MAIN BOSS who's a total sponge, then a looooonnnngggg boring cutscene. Back to the hideout, after walking around talking to a bunch of boring NPCs (why couldn't this be a cutscene too, it's so padded), we're ready to do it again. And I thought, I can't do this anymore. UNINSTALL. I haven't felt this disappointed since 13.
29:45. This is literally how ff 14 works, which really shows the DNA of the team behind this game. It just doesnt work for a single player adventure/rpg/action/whatever this was game.
Man, you're saying exactly the things I thought. I actually didn't like Clive because of the one thing I don't think I have seen anyone mention. For all of Final Fantasy History up until 15 these games didn't feature royals as main character. You were orphans or soldiers or from some magic race. Royals could be in the party, but as a main character it makes it to where your main characters problems are just kind of lofty. Maybe it didn't effect this game that badly, but I think it is odd this changed for these two games. 15 had the issue where the party you get is closely associated too.
I feel like my big failing with Clive connects to the story and that's the whole bearer thing. They wanted this deep saddening slavery angle, but it doesn't make sense? They wanted to make it like American chattel slavery, but what they ended up doing was undermining things about slavery that made it so horrible. Bearers are not born from other bearers, they're randomly born out of just any family. So there's no chance for generational trauma and the hatred for bearers is so overblown to almost a comical degree. At the same time Clive is so okay with the stuff happening, like in the quest with the guy feeding people to wolves for fun, Clive was just going to bury the body and let him go. Only when another character comes along do they suffer consequences. I don't like the idea of a character who sees something like that and just...walks a way to let it happen.
So another thing that lost me was the mother crystal thing they went on about. It happens so quick and is just brought up at the base. They didn't go out and discover this new thing and then disagree or not believe it. Then we get that time jump and it's like nothing has changed. There's no blight receding in all of that time? But like you said they don't even reconsider it after that.
Benedikta was almost as cool a character as Cid, I felt like they kind of based her look or the idea for it on a character from GOT. And just like in early GOT they killed her before she could really do much interesting. It feels like that was really what they thought would be kind of a cool surprise, but as probably the only female character with any real direction and one of the few characters I was interested in it came off bad.
This game's tone is all over the place in the dark spectrum, but the ratings bump and the attempt to be very hard western fantasy and do the game of thrones thing kind of made it to where the game felt completely out of place calling itself FF. That's why I actually am one of the people saying it's not an FF game. It would be like if they made Fast and the Furious 12 and it was a gritty, realistic crime drama with no levity or goofy stunts.
I am kind of shocked that the Joshua thing shocked you, the second the phoenix died I was like well of course he's going to come back. It's the phoenix. I did start to think I was wrong but only right before it happened.
The ending I didn't get to it, but it feels like I was right to stop when I did. If you're open to JRPG suggestions I would strongly suggest playing Xenoblade Chronicles or Tales of Arise. The first of those two is very long and actually like three games. The second is stand alone but has a fun goofy anime tone that it does so well.
That's actually a really interesting observation about how bearers aren't born from other bearers. I wouldn't say I was shocked, per se, that Joshua came back; I was just really disappointed. Especially since they never really explained why Ifrit attacked Phoenix to begin with. It just made the entire thing feel so stakes-less. Like it could have been interesting if Joshua were alive but if he and Clive HAD to remain separated because their Eikon got some sort of bloodlust for one another if they got too close.
Thank you for the view and comment! Means a lot!
@@overnightsiren you're welcome, I really enjoyed the video!
Honestly. Having Joshua actually being dead would have been a more interesting take.
Like the Joshua we see could have been Clive hallucinating or Ultima purposely taking his appearance (why did they dress the same in the first place?) to torture Clive so they had more personal relationship.
I love your insights onto why you were disappointed with the game. It's good to see people can still like something and see the flaws within it. I still like the game overall but yeah there were some lost opportunities in this game that could have been better. It's like the when the developers wanted to do what they wanted, they succeeded but then remembered they were developing a Final Fantasy game and had to compromise on their vision.
Thank you for the view and comment!
I couldn't finish it. i played halfway through. got cucked by the first Kupka fight. Watched a cutscene compilation then deleted it off my system. It's not bad it just felt really unsatisfying.
I don't really agree with Dion, the game manages to make his character really compelling despite his limited screen time.
he's one of the best characters in the game with clive and cid for me.
I absolutely adored your analytical, methodical breakdown of the exact reasons you felt discontent with this game. It just felt so on point to what I was experiencing, expertly conveyed and communicated.
I would love to see a couple of videos on your analysis on what made other Final Fantasy games work and tick, given how well you got your point across on this!
Wow thank you so much for the comment! It's very reassuring, I always think "wow I must be so annoying" when I nitpick stuff IRL so that's why I decided to channel my thoughts into a video this time.
Thank you for the view as well!
Not to mention the multi-mission airship tease that never transpired.
Dude i watched the entire game in a stream and i fell asleep. It's BORING.
15 is the opposite of 16.
A party.
Fun.
Open world.
A MC with a personality.
An actual love interest.
Good dlc.
Good side quests.
16 just fails.
You know, I can't say I'm surprised, given the game's director is Yoshi-P, who's been working on FF14 for over a decade now, and going from there to playing this, I can definitely see the resemblances of his ideas. The only high points of this game is it's graphics and visuals, to me at least, the music, is pretty forgettable, even though it's so bombastic and epic; but that doesn't always mean it'll be memorable like the works of Nobuo Uematsu. The game is really all just flair, but no substance, and if that's what Yoshi-P and his team was going for, they hit the nail on the head, but I feel like this game is only Final Fantasy by name and not overall feel or spirit.
It's just bland, like chewing gum: sweet, tangy, full of flavor for the first few minutes, then flavorless rubber you're nonchalantly chewing just because you need something to chew on(I guess?). The game feels the same way as to why I eventually dropped FF14, because it was so bare bones and stripped of any kind of systems or mechanics; it all just felt repetitive and dull. The gameplay loop became too noticeable, and not in a fun way either. "It's just fluff with the illusion of progress", is a great way of putting the entirety how Yoshi-P designs both this game and FF14.
This, I just finished watching the video, i'll comment on it tomorrow.
But your comment sums up a part of what I wanted to say about this game, and I only played FFXIV beta, then dropped it. I already knew this since then, needless to say, was pretty disappointed.
The XIV comparisons are so spot on. When XVI first came out and I was only a few hours in, I was honestly defending the game a LOT and any time people said "it's just offline XIV" I wrote it off as people just saying that because Yoshi-P made it but after a few more hours the gameplay loops really became toooo similar to XIV to ignore.
They just retold Stormblood, the worst story in the lot.
This is a really well done video essay, hope to see more!
FFXII did the political plot a lot better. In that game most of the thing you do are related to Ashe's political situation and then you discover the fantastic elements that are messing with the world.
PS: Benedikta was by far the most interesting character. She felt real. I really don't know why the hell they decided to kill her so soon. And I also agree with your take on Jill. Every scene she was in and added nothing to the story or character development (hers or to other character's) was painfull. What a stupid waste of a character. Again, it's like if they didn't know what to do with her.
Based FF12 Chad. It's my favorite FF and I played them all.
And you’re absolutely right with the tie-in with FF9 - I thought of that similarity as soon as the truth about Ultima was revealed. I take Ultima as a blend of Garland AND Necron - a sort of otherworldly harvester of souls and or energy of the planet to restore what was lost, and some out-of-left field major antagonist who speaks in absolution and has no personality or compelling qualities. Methinks the FF14 team fumbled the bag on this one; at least in regard to the story.
Yeah, definitely a fumble. I've been a big enjoyer of FFXIV since open beta for ARR, and I was so excited to hear that Yoshi-P was at the helm of XVI but I want him to stay far away from any future mainline games. Thanks for the view and comments!
@@overnightsirenYes! I love XIV as well and was excited when Yoshi-P was involved with this one. After this nightmare of a game I want him to just stick with XIV.
It felt like they wanted to make a DMC game mixed with like…Asura’s Wrath I guess, but they kept remembering “Oh right, Final Fantasy is supposed to be an RPG” so they slapped on weak gear progression, forgettable side quests and a terrible overworld as they went along. This was a potentially good or great 25 hour game forced into a 50+ hour game.
And honestly, although I 100% want Final Fantasy to remain an RPG franchise…if they want to make it a full-on action game, just make it a full-on action game; you’ll be left with a better result in the end.
This is a game that constantly felt like it didn’t know what it was trying to be or what it was trying to do. It absolutely felt unfinished to me, and I’m shocked I don’t hear more people call it out. Here’s hoping FF7 Rebirth leaves us with a better result (I’m pretty sure it will).
I don't even know if I can call it an overworld. The game has as much of an "overworld" as FFXIII, the only difference is that in XVI you can go back to old locations but otherwise the "overworld" is just as lifeless and feels just as un-alive.
I think more people aren't calling it out as being unfinished because it hid its unfinished-ness so much better than XV, that or because people really want to feel like a recent FF game was actually good as some form of copium that their favorite series isn't dead. I love FF more than any other media franchise, and I don't think it's dead, but I think we fans needs to acknowledge en masse that this was NOT a good or finished game.
I know i'm late to the party. But i call FF 16 out to be crafted to trick game "journalist". We all know that game journalist not really take the time needed to test games. Mostly just playing into it 2 to 3 hours or copy what other journalist wrote.
Here we have a game that starts as a interesting political story in the first hours and demo just to become worse and worse as the game continues. I bet they were aware that the story is not very great and put all the energy they had left to make the first hours good enough to get good reviews from people that never finish long games.
I agree with you mostly, but I don't feel that you've gone far enough with the controversial statements. Yoshi-P has made a hullabaloo about the term "JRPG," and when he sat down to make FFXVI, he churned out another JRPG. It's marketed as a geopolitical drama and goes to some lengths to mimic Game of Thrones, but in the end the only thing it managed to do was make another allegory for nuclear weapons (poorly) and toss aside its political intrigue to go kill some uninteresting god. It just wound up being the most JRPG thing ever with the beginnings of a kick-ass action game bolted to it. FFXVI is the most vapid Final Fantasy story I've ever seen, and it has absolutely nothing to say. At no point in a story should I be able to say, "we can just beat the villain by chilling at home." THEY COULD HAVE BEATEN ULTIMA BY CHILLING AT HOME! The sex feels like it's been tacked on so that stupid people feel like they're watching something mature, and serves ZERO purpose. We don't get any information from the sex scenes that we don't obtain from anywhere else.
Clive isn't even a good character. He's just a well-acted character. Cid is the only good thing about this shit show. It's a shame he was wasted on this game.
After finishing FFXVI, the story devolved into basically every JRPG story ever.
As Zero Punctuation puts it: "A group of teenagers using the power of friendship to kill God." Only this time it isn't teenagers, it's adults. SuBvErSiVe!
I agree with your points, I think when I said Clive is a good character I meant "one of the better characters" but that comes purely by nature of him being one of the only ones with any narrative focus.
I also totally agree, the sex felt very tacked on in an effort to make it mature and Game of Thrones-y. It's a real shame because this game had a ton of potential to have such a unique identity had it actually tackled any of the political themes or acted like they had any weight at all but in the end none of that really mattered and we're left with an ending that's familiar to past FF games but with no charm or believability driving it.
IMHO the game started with the best world, characters, story and setting ever.
Then it unravelled when the real game mechanics and gameplay loop was shown after the prologue.
The reason the game starts with such a bombastic sequence with Shiva X Titan is so that it shows you how insane the world he lives in just is. Then it goes to the flashback, when the biggest most bombastic thing Clive could do (aside from beat the Lord Commander in a sparring match) was to take down a Morbol with his squad buddies. THAT'S progression: show you how insane this world is, with literal gods just fighting political battles against other gods at the whim of mere humans, and then make things a bit more real, more tangible, by making Clive struggle against a particularly disagreeable weed.
I might be in the minority.....probably I am but I enjoyed 15 more than 16.
15 had a better OST, enemies, better quests, better hunts and better weapons.
Spicy subjective take but whatever.. . I enjoyed my time with 15 and had many hours in it. 16 is such a slog and it's really a drag to finish. The boredom creeps in so fast.
I actually don't think I disagree with you. I need to re-play XV to be sure though. I only played it once when it first came out.
15 wanted to be something really special and it shows even if they were not able to get the finished product they wanted, 16 feels like it accomplished to be exactly what it wanted to be, but that was a standard medieval fantasy as safe and bland as they come, so while 16 seems like the more well produced, 15 beats it out easily for me for it's attempt at being more, especially the times where it really shines through in the game. I'll take a flawed but interesting experience over a solid but bland experience anyday.
OST and hunt quality might be subjective, but XV's enemy and weapons pools are objectively larger and more diverse... and while XV had plenty of fetch quests, they were at least kept out of the MSQ and didn't involve eight minutes of cutscenes sandwiching a two minute chore!
I also enjoyed XV so much more than XVI. I think XVI is probably my least favourite FF game actually.
I absolutely love your take on The game. It has the name Final Fantasy but it sure does not feel like final fantasy.
I agree completely. If anything, you were too soft on your criticisms in some areas. A Final Fantasy game with no status ailments, elemental properties, unique properties of weapons/armor/accessories, controlled party members, or really strategy of any kind beyond Eikon abilities, is really kind of amazing. Beyond gameplay, the story is embarrassing at times. Jill being removed from the story after the bizarre intercourse/power transfer scene, kept on the side as simply a doting girlfriend as if that was her character arc all along, made me really turn on the story and I just couldn't care about these characters or events at all after that.
You're also dead on about DLC. Most players will likely be wondering about optional super bosses like Weapons, or post-game...anything. We will have to wait and pay for it. That said, there are the Eikon trials which I admittedly do like as they actually make you think about how you play in a way that really should have been integrated into the main campaign somehow.
"Bizarre intercouse"--you're dead on with that descriptor, but for some reason it really made me laugh!
Thank you for the view and comment! I think part of why I wasn't as harsh as I could have been is because I was a bit worried the video would get a lot more hate, since previously all I'd seen was overwhelming praise for XVI but luckily the video's been pretty well received!
I know the devs have said that they're not planning to release any DLC but I have major doubts about that. Surely there will be DLCs that let you play as Jill, Dion, Joshua as well as Leviathan DLC, etc.
Ive never seen an FF game want you to feel the aspect of the power of friendship towards the end but make everything feel so lonely the entire time. Most boss fights you fight by yourself. You fight Benedikta by yourself. You fight Hugo by yourself. You fight Barnabas by yourself. And you fight Ultima by yourself even though Joshua and Dion go in with you to help, but by the halfway point of the fight you're back to fighting by yourself.
One of FFs strong points is the power of friendship and side characters. Their character development and screen time matters. Everyone at the hideaway immedietly takes to Clive and loves him like they've been friends for years. No one at the hideaway ever questions him or wants to go about something another way. Everyone just agrees with everyone at all times.
Now take FFX. Not everyone took to Tidus from the get go. Many thought his naivety would hold them back, but both Tidus and the other crew taught each other things along the way. Wakka learned to not put so much of his prejudices onto Rikku. Lulu was learning to get over the death of her boyfriend and Wakka was learning to not blame her for it. Aaron hates his younger self and feels he didn't as good of a job as a guardian in the past..having to undo those feelings. Yuna bears a good deal of weight on a mission she feels she has to do and it's only through Tidus where she sees it doesn't have to be that way. And Tidus is learning to navigate a world that he no longer knows. Losing most people he ever knew. Having to learn the ropes of a world he no longer understands.
In FF16 the only moment we get that showcases any kind of teaching a lesson moment is when Joshua slaps Clive because Clive has been doing things alone. That would be fine and dandy if Joshua didn't force a piece of Ultima in his chest basically draining his own life force. Doing that so others wouldn't have to bear to full weight of Ultima. It doesn't help that even when you do have people with with you it doesn't feel like you do.
The other problem is how useless so many of the characters are in regards to battle. Unless you are a dominant of an Eikon then you have no uses and can't particpate in battles which is most of the characters. Gav only wields a sword but never does much with it besides one fight. Goetz can't do anything. Blackthorn can't do anything. Charon can't do anything. Tarja can't do anything. Jill gets captured twice and then gives up all of her Eikon abilities to Clive. So all you're left with is Joshua and Dion that can't even help you for the whole end fight. Ive never seen an FF game make so many characters so useless
Fax
I hated the story, the demo stablished so many interesting conflicts and problems for Clive but everything gets resolved as soon as the first timeskip, you find Shiva girl, the dog, his brother and even his old guard are alive and he gets the power to destroy entire countries by himself. It's so sloppy.
Dude, I would have been OVER THE MOON if my mom came home with FF IX and Tactics.
Oh in hindsight she made the right choice for sure! A very fortunate mistake
I just finished 16 and I was honestly very disappointed and I got that same feeling of "this doesn't feel like Final fantasy". The story was predictable, I pretty much predicted he was Ifrit and Joshua was alive as well as breaking the crystals was actually helping the villian after the initial idea was suggested and when he admitted as much near the end all I could think was "of course". But my biggest gripe with the game was the awful main villian, the guy was literal AI in a high fantasy setting. He really didn't make the player hate his guts like most FF villians do, it felt like I was trying to take down Skynet and that just isn't that motivating. Also hated how they kept emphasizing him as a "god" instead of what he was a highly advance alien which would have been way more interesting. Also disappointed how they didn't delve into the fallen lore, so many fallen ruins and don't know a damn thing about them.
I actually didn't even know it was supposed to be a mystery that he was Ifrit--that's how obvious it was! The whole time (before the reveal) I was like "hey wait, I thought we already knew Clive was Ifrit??"
Thanks a lot for the view and the comment!
@@overnightsirenwe did know. We were waiting for Clive to realise and accept it himself. He was in denial about everything. If the home screen art doesn't give it away then....I dunno man.
So the first time you go into the mystic cave dungeon thing near phoenix gate, I started to think "Ok. This it. This is what i'm here for. A mostly medieval world setting with some seriously advanced ancient tech going on beneath it all"...........and how let down I was when you realize thats it......thats the only place like that you get to encounter. Let down after let down
@@etzioschmetzio2168 I was really expecting there would be more to that and maybe some world building based on the ruins in general. Sad!
The “it doesn’t feel like final fantasy” take is so damn dumb though….it’s literally like those old people saying “my cartoon changed”. There are so many final fantasy moments in this, it’s clearly an homage to the franchise.
No party system, no armor slots, stripped down skill tree, no familiar spells like Firaga or Sleep… Thats why they say it isn’t a FF game…
At this point most people would say something sweet; but you're a more discerning customer.
Beautiful.
You're analysis is perfection
Spoke a little too soon. Clive is not a great character, but I also got so turned off by the game in the demo that I didn't pay and watched about 20 hours worth of streams
@@rredix I think "great" might have been a strong word for me to use haha I guess what I meant was "he's the best of a cast of overall weak characters" but then again he's the only one that gets any development so that's not surprising at all.
Thanks for the comment and glad you liked my analysis minus that point
I agree 100% with everything you said. The worst part about this game is that any form of criticism is immediately redirected as trolling. I firmly believe this game would’ve easily been a 10/10 if it was half as long or was a 12-15 hour game. The combat is good but not 40 hour long good. You just end up using and repeating your most efficient combos every single time because you don’t have to switch out your eikons because none provide any benefit over the other in any situation.
I was replaying the game and there’s so…much…filler. You’ll have a grandiose moment like the kupka battle prefaced by 4 mmo side quests and then after the battle you have to do 4 more mmo side quests.
It’s clear that this game would’ve been a perfect boss rush, Asura’s wrath style game but they realized they needed to have it be 40 hours long to be considered an RPG.
This game really needed something to do other than the story and combat, and there were SO many easy opportunities to correct for it.
A main central hub? Base Management game mechanics. Such an easy, obvious choice to make coming back to your base something you're actually excited to do. What did Charon buy now? What are they growing in the planting area? I found an NPC that can do X, now they're part of the Hideaway and we can do THIS now! Mid is constantly crafting things, maybe I can give her a couple hundred of my literally thousands of crafting materials that I do absolutely nothing with and she can decorate the Hideaway with such-and-such or new mechanics for the game! So much potential.
Torgal is a dog? Mini-games galore with Torgal! Play Fetch, put him in a dog-show and dress him up, have him absorb more powers of the Eikons since that's a thing in the story, have a hunting mini-game where you can hunt down creatures with Torgal to take back to the Hideaway for some Base Management thing, etc. Again, tons of potential here.
Chocobos? Chocobo racing, obviously. Maybe even Choco-breeding. Maybe do some Porter missions with chocobos! Porters are a huge part of the landscape of Valisthea and "Mr. UnderHill" can have a side-job as a porter with Ambrosia leading the pack.
Areas are being attacked and Clive can't be everywhere at once? Have a Tower Defense game where you play as either Sir Wade or Lubor or Martha where you actually have to strategize and move troops around to stop the Akashic from overrunning the town.
Tons and tons of opportunities everywhere to bring different, fun gameplay elements into this Final Fantasy game just to get you off the Story-Combat-Story loop that kills the fun of the game.
Absolutely, it doesn't even have fishing which is the go-to addition for lazy devs. Could have maybe added gardening in the hideout or making drinks for the people there or something (just spitballing different things you could do at the hideout since clearly the game loves having you be there).
There were a ton of windows to give the story some relief from the story, but instead we just got hunts which can be done in an hour, tops.
@@overnightsiren And wouldn't the hunts be a little more interesting if you had to use Torgal to "sniff them out" and bird-dog you to where they are located on the map? Small, cute little thing that would make hunts slightly more interesting than wandering the map until a cutscene plays to let you know you found them.
Bring back Triple Triad!! Would have fit 16’s world perfectly! Could have made enemies in hunts drop their cards too…. So many missed opportunities!
Not using this as an excuse but the director talked about this vaguely, he really wanted the story to be focused and adding mini games like dressing up and doing a dog show would completely ruin the characters, imagine doing a dog show when Jill is in immediate danger of execution.
Agree on everything, especially the journey point. Who the hell wants to be stuck in the same place doing the same things talking to the same people in an FF game!? People's standards have lowered horrifically. 6/10.
Started to feel sooo formulaic. In a year's time I won't be able to tell you which zones connect to which other zones either or the order in which you go to each zone for the first time because there was no journey, meanwhile I can tell you the entire pilgrimage Yuna and her crew went on step by step and it's been 20 years since X came out
Some part inside me feels like crying watching this clip. Don't know how old you are but can't believe I've accidentally stumbled upon an old-school Final Fantasy fan on YT in 2023.
There are many factors contributing to the establishment of FF as a series. I don't think I can list them all, but at least to me, there are 2 biggest factors: (1) - The feeling of departing for a grand journey and (2) - The feeling of learning, on said journey, that life itself has some meaning.
My all time favourite FF is IX. I think FFIX is where FF matured in terms of everything - plot, story telling, character development, gameplay, soundtrack... The game was so special to me that it felt like a light of hope I found in the darkest time of my teenage years. I also spent a lot of time playing FFX. The game was quite a revolution of its time, in terms of gameplay and graphics, even though the plot, characters and the dialogues were all cheesy at best. And though I dislike game with "dark" or "melancholic" tone (with an exception of Xenogears), I still found FFX somehow able to retain factor (1) - the whole game still felt like a grand journey.
The last FF I took seriously perhaps was FFXII, and I hated it with a passion at first. It still doesn't feel like a main FF entry to me. It should have been a spin-off, a pretty good spin-off, to be honest. However, the thing that finally made me tolerate and accept to appreciate what FFXII brought to the series was the ending song "Kiss Me Goodbye". By the time FFXII came out, a lot of changes had happened to Square. They had merged with Enix (and both going downhill hand in hand since then). Both Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu had left Square. I realized FF series had come to the point where only the name "Final Fantasy" remained, everything else had become legacies of a distant past. Don't get me wrong, I understand the nature of doing business. Every commercial product must come to this end - losing most of its originality, only the brand name matters. "Kiss Me Goodbye", I wonder if there's a message behind it when Nobuo composed the song.
When Square-Enix announced FFXV, I was hyped, hoping FF finally made a comeback. And I was wrong, losing all my hype since then. When they announced FFXVI with a "dark and serious tone", I knew it would turn out to be as cringy as possible. I think Square-Enix themselves don't take classic FF playstyle serious anymore. They had long showed their true intention of turning FF into a MMORPG, and they did, and nothing else matters now. I think FFXV & XVI were intended as "fillers" only - just a mean to build the hype and keep people from forgetting the series. I won't be surprised if they come up with another MMORPG FF entry in the future.
I'll keep on playing VII, VIII, IX and X on emulators for as long as I can. Having such beautiful memories playing these games are the best things of my teenage years.
I totally agree. You should play ffvi too! When I played it I realized that the problem was not me getting older, just FF is never going to be the same anymore. Uematsu said that FF should had finished with Sakaguchi and now I accept he was right
Thank you for the video! I stumbled on it while looking up what other people thought of this game and it summarised a lot of things well. I do want to add a point here about the combat which was the main area of the game that confused me. Clearly Yoshi-P and team spend an enormous amount of time/money/resources to craft the battle system and then decided to completely gate it or ran out of any of the 3 things I mentioned. If you are an action game fan, there's a lot of great mechanics here and they're executed fantastically. Dashes/cancels/skill synergy/buffering/diverse move sets for each Eikon etc. it's all here and its very impressive. What I found absolutely bizarre is that they NEVER let you play with this system fully and actively try to hamper you.
For so long in the game you are stuck with basically 2 and later 3 eikons before you start obtaining more. Not only that, you only have access to 2 skills and a fair number of them have a decent cooldown. I understand this for the big cinematic eikon finishers but the timing here is very thin when it comes to CD (luckily you can kind of fix it with accessories). I also don't understand why you're limited to 3 Eikons. Other action games (Sengoku Basara comes to mind) with similar controller layouts have found ways to have impressive move sets which a player can learn easily. Why oh why am I only stuck with 3 eikons and 6 skills when the game practically SCREAMS for me to use and have more at any time?!
I really wanted to either have an option to have more Eikons or more skills. Maybe focus on 1 or 2 eikons but have access to everything at the same time? There are ways to do it but as is the battle system feels restricted and limited. There's a lot of potential here and I just wish the devs would let us dig into it and use Clive's abilities to their fullest. With that being said, executing a full 3 Eikon combo on a boss feels absolutely amazing. I found Shiva > Garuda > Odin to have so many cool synergies and ending with a lvl 5 Odin charge move never EVER got old. It just made me left wanting for more...
obviously another thing you mentioned which is true is enemy design. Outside of big story bosses and the bigger side boss encounters nothing can come close to challenging Clive and even the ones that can will swiftly be dealt with once you get to grips with it all. It's all a shame really, so much potential yet I feel the team was scared to go all in. Maybe next time...
I agree with a lot of what you said. It sucks how the only way to get the final puzzle piece for the Götter Dämmerung is to funnel you through every single side mission and hunt.
Square overcorrected a common complaint about certain story arcs and characters in prior games: the kitsch story points and campy characters and FF16 is left with a super dark and depressing narrative.
Not super dark and depressing, just a realistic narrative set in medieval Europe style world.
Calling it an over correction is your point of view.
I wouldn't mind having to do all the side quest for the ultima weapon if the side stuff you had to do was at least varied, but it's the same stuff you're already doing all through the game. Never feels like a fun detour.
@@overnightsiren For the ultima weapon, isn't all you have to do the blacksmith quest plus a bunch of hunts?
That game was an absolute piece of garbage and a waste of money. Which makes me so sad cuz I've always been a fan of the final fantasy series. The game looked pretty but the combat was boring. The story was horrible. The characters were horrible who was no open world. It was walk from point a to point b fight monsters. Now do it again over and over again and we'll throw a boss in every so often. I tried to do everything right up until the first big real boss , Garuda . And after that fight I couldn't play it anymore. I was just so f****** bored. Even if this game was only 10 hours it would have been a bad game. It had absolutely no soul and nothing that truly made it final fantasy. It was a bad and I do mean bad action game with a final fantasy paint job that tried to while you were visuals and nothing else
I think the target for this game wasn’t ff veterans. In watching a play through with another major gamer they loved the game ranking it as 2nd best this year. Your criticisms are spot on, and most of them stem from the game just not expanding on things.
Medicine girl?
Ifrit killing phoenix why?
Clive headaches? What do you mean not again is this not the first time ultima spoke to you?
Why was kings son not a person and ultima instead?
Why did Jill and Dion just randomly have their powers back after Clive took them and why did we mention Bahamat going out of control when dion was clearly just fine
Why would Clive start feeling the effects of Eikons, when none happened throughout the game
Was ultimas power too great for Clive?
Why would Clive feel the effects after Ultima is dead, Ultima and his thunder dome was the source of magic so is magic still here? Are eikons separate of the mother crystals in drawing power from the land? Are eikons mother crystals Aether seems to fuel them?
Torgal with cid randomly but you had to sidequest to get your chocobo back?
Why do i like benedickta more than Jill? Both emotionally and physically damaged.
Why did gav care so much about baby momma?
Where’s Dion the bland, surely a fall didn’t kill him?
Why didn’t ultima come again for Clive after 2nd crystal is Joshua gonna imprison a 2nd one?
When you say created, do you mean gave magic? Made a child, how many?
Why can people turn into eikons? What is actually the difference between dominants, bearers, and normal people?
So you rescue Joshua and Clive with the ship immediately, literally breaking through a city wall, but you just gonna let Clive die on a beach after the thunder dome explodes in the sky?
They found Jill and Clive on a beach very quickly in uncharted lands checking the area around the big floating city was too hard?
Yikes the list goes on and on
Thanks for the view and comment! Glad to see you enjoyed my critiques!
You raised some good points that I hadn't considered myself--like why didn't Ultima appear after the second crystal and why did Ifrit try to kill Phoenix anyway?
Well Final Fantasy shills buy any slop thrown at them so they get shit.
The music doesn't hit your nostalgia bones yet because you haven't had time for it to grow yet. Each track on the OST is brilliant, in my opinion. I regularly get songs from the game stuck in my head, particularly the battle hooks. Oh man, let's talk about the Fallen boss themes, how the minor Prelude run is undercut with this dirge of choral voices that steps down to an even deeper minor fall, I thought the music was really well done especially if you're *actually* listening to it instead of just letting it be background music. Allow it to become part of the experience, hum along to it during battles or travels, and you'll change your mind I think.
The thing is that after playing the demo I was expecting TOO MUCH. Then I played the game and I was like "ok this part is kinda dead" then I went on "ok this part is kinda dead..."
Before Titan I wasn't skipping a single line of dialogue, then I started skipping everything but the big cutscenes.
I said so in my "review" also, felt like ARR vanilla (since Yoshi-P directed it) but action. Mediocre game with amazingly good graphics. With some chocobos and summons here and there to let you think it's a FF. I truly feel old now to remember how good they were...
I bought a PS5 in anticipation for this game and enjoyed it. I do agree with your points though. Many things could've been flushed out better both gameplay-wise and story-wise. The game started off real strong, but it kind of never reached that peak for me throughout the rest of the game. I think you clarified some of the feelings I had about the game. I like the game a lot still, but there were just some things that had not reached its potential.
Thanks for the view and comment! Glad you agreed with some of my points!
I was super surprised that the base combat was essentially the same all throughout.
Make the cool-down attacks utilitarian, unlockable directional/button combos and upgrades like those available in the devil may cry shop. Make the ultimate moves activated with Limit Break bars, or during Limit Break. The more bars the higher level the ultimate ability.
Allow Clive to use all of the Eikons in a fight. Just cycle through them like you would with Dante's weapons in DMC. This lets you have a flexible, deep combo system while preserving weaknesses, which helps the stagger system by leaning on the player. Maybe even introduce a mana system to make the use of these moves more deliberate.
This is huge scope creep, but God, you need to increase the scope in a combat system this bare-bones.
I understand how you feel in a lot of ways this game felt like a death of the series rather then the continuation of a popular series