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Final Fantasy SIXTEEN
Jun. 27th, 2023 02:52 pmOK, FF XVI story completed. I have a LOT of thoughts. Let's get into it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
First, you'd better love the battle system, because there's nothing in the game but battles and jogging between dialogue scenes. No exploration, no puzzles to solve, no minigames.
I don't love the battle system. It's not too bad when it's quite contained, but at times it just becomes a chaotic jumble of particles, numbers, camera-whips and noise. Sometimes, including a lot of the final boss battle, I just spammed whatever was available and hoped for the best, because meaningful tactics was nigh on impossible.
Supporting characters can't be controlled (except the dog), but are fairly useless anyway. I didn't notice any meaningful difference between when I had a large party and when I was on my own as far as damage dealt / taken went. There was a good reason for this in XV because only Noctis had supernatural powers and his three buddies were only human. There's no such excuse here, as more than a couple of the characters you fight with have extraordinary abilities.
Clive, Joshua and particularly Jill are rather insipid characters (indeed there were times when I didn't even realise Jill was in the party, she's that low-key). The problem is, to use a phrase I heard recently and rather like, "they have no hinterland". In other words, they are focussed monomaniacally on their objective and care nothing for anything else. Tidus was a loyal guardian, but he was also a professional sportsman. Noctis liked to fish and pose for photos. Even Squall played cards. The span of the narrative is 18 years and in all that time none of them even consider doing any other thing. There's also a romance between Jill and Clive but to say it's a slow burn would be putting it mildly. Between Jill's vapidity and Clive's gruff demeanour, there's little chemistry that isn't forced.
That said, the story has strengths. The various other dominants and their different takes on being a dominant works well. Benedykta is a winning early villainess and Kupka is a good, memorable hard man. Dion is suitably tortured. Ultima himself is a nice creepy design, though he does rather love the sound of his own voice. And that's the big issue with the storytelling - infodumping. There's a lot of lore, a lot of jargon, and early on a lot of interchangable stock characters. They have worked hard to make it accessible - there's a connections timeline available that is pretty neat - but it's all rather tiresome. Thankfully, supporting characters such as Byron and, particularly, Mididol, arrive to liven things up. I suspect some people will lap up the "courtly intrigue" aspect of the story, but I expect on future plays through I'll be skipping a lot of it.
As for references to other games in the series, the two that stand out are XII and Lightning Returns, which should make me happy since they are two of my favourites. There are various little nods to XII, such as the Wall of Memories resembling the Sky Pirate's Den, or the notorious mark board being staffed by a moogle (sadly the only one). But most delightful were the little spinny tortoises. I didn't realise how nostalgic I was for little spinny tortoises. As for Lightning Returns, the central theme and several aspects of the last act of the story are very similar, plus at least a couple of sidequests are basically pasted from there (the "what makes a good knife" one in particular being virtually identical to the Gordon Gourmet sidequest in LR). But LR had more distinctive regions and a better integration of exploration and story, as well as a much more useable battle system.
And that word distinctive is important. FF has always stood out from other series in weirdness, but here, location after location are generic and forgettable, and - horror of horrors - even the music is very run-of-the-mill. It's not technically bad, but it could be heard in any middle-of-the-road movie or game series, perhaps the first time ever that's been true. Design-wise I'll make an exception for the Fallen architecture, which is distinct in its cool, geometric minimalism, but that's about the only place imagination has been employed. Well, it had to happen eventually. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil et al all sold their souls for mainstream appeal; even FF couldn't hold out forever. It's sad, though. For all that it had a weak story and janky-ass gameplay, XV was the only game in the world where four bros drove around in an open-top car listening to tunes and talking about back-seat fishing. I would hold out hope for the next one - after all, they're all different from one another and XVII may yet be the weirdest, quirkiest one yet - but as I'll probably be in my mid-fifties when it comes out, I'd better not hold my breath.
Also, I don't understand the ending. Clive appears to think Ultima was always doomed to fail (gee, thanks for making me play for forty hours then), seems to think smashing the origin will remove all magic from the world (why, when aether was embedded in the world and the crystals were sapping it?), then washes up on a shore somewhere unknown, then writes a book that implies everything was a legend (so magic was not just removed, but retroactively removed????). It's probably all something to do with primogenesis, but since that was never explained it's hard to be sure. Lightning made Earth and then got off a train in France SO MAYBE DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT, CLIVE ROSFIELD.
PETE TENTATIVELY GIVES IT: A SIX OUT OF TEN.
First, you'd better love the battle system, because there's nothing in the game but battles and jogging between dialogue scenes. No exploration, no puzzles to solve, no minigames.
I don't love the battle system. It's not too bad when it's quite contained, but at times it just becomes a chaotic jumble of particles, numbers, camera-whips and noise. Sometimes, including a lot of the final boss battle, I just spammed whatever was available and hoped for the best, because meaningful tactics was nigh on impossible.
Supporting characters can't be controlled (except the dog), but are fairly useless anyway. I didn't notice any meaningful difference between when I had a large party and when I was on my own as far as damage dealt / taken went. There was a good reason for this in XV because only Noctis had supernatural powers and his three buddies were only human. There's no such excuse here, as more than a couple of the characters you fight with have extraordinary abilities.
Clive, Joshua and particularly Jill are rather insipid characters (indeed there were times when I didn't even realise Jill was in the party, she's that low-key). The problem is, to use a phrase I heard recently and rather like, "they have no hinterland". In other words, they are focussed monomaniacally on their objective and care nothing for anything else. Tidus was a loyal guardian, but he was also a professional sportsman. Noctis liked to fish and pose for photos. Even Squall played cards. The span of the narrative is 18 years and in all that time none of them even consider doing any other thing. There's also a romance between Jill and Clive but to say it's a slow burn would be putting it mildly. Between Jill's vapidity and Clive's gruff demeanour, there's little chemistry that isn't forced.
That said, the story has strengths. The various other dominants and their different takes on being a dominant works well. Benedykta is a winning early villainess and Kupka is a good, memorable hard man. Dion is suitably tortured. Ultima himself is a nice creepy design, though he does rather love the sound of his own voice. And that's the big issue with the storytelling - infodumping. There's a lot of lore, a lot of jargon, and early on a lot of interchangable stock characters. They have worked hard to make it accessible - there's a connections timeline available that is pretty neat - but it's all rather tiresome. Thankfully, supporting characters such as Byron and, particularly, Mididol, arrive to liven things up. I suspect some people will lap up the "courtly intrigue" aspect of the story, but I expect on future plays through I'll be skipping a lot of it.
As for references to other games in the series, the two that stand out are XII and Lightning Returns, which should make me happy since they are two of my favourites. There are various little nods to XII, such as the Wall of Memories resembling the Sky Pirate's Den, or the notorious mark board being staffed by a moogle (sadly the only one). But most delightful were the little spinny tortoises. I didn't realise how nostalgic I was for little spinny tortoises. As for Lightning Returns, the central theme and several aspects of the last act of the story are very similar, plus at least a couple of sidequests are basically pasted from there (the "what makes a good knife" one in particular being virtually identical to the Gordon Gourmet sidequest in LR). But LR had more distinctive regions and a better integration of exploration and story, as well as a much more useable battle system.
And that word distinctive is important. FF has always stood out from other series in weirdness, but here, location after location are generic and forgettable, and - horror of horrors - even the music is very run-of-the-mill. It's not technically bad, but it could be heard in any middle-of-the-road movie or game series, perhaps the first time ever that's been true. Design-wise I'll make an exception for the Fallen architecture, which is distinct in its cool, geometric minimalism, but that's about the only place imagination has been employed. Well, it had to happen eventually. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil et al all sold their souls for mainstream appeal; even FF couldn't hold out forever. It's sad, though. For all that it had a weak story and janky-ass gameplay, XV was the only game in the world where four bros drove around in an open-top car listening to tunes and talking about back-seat fishing. I would hold out hope for the next one - after all, they're all different from one another and XVII may yet be the weirdest, quirkiest one yet - but as I'll probably be in my mid-fifties when it comes out, I'd better not hold my breath.
Also, I don't understand the ending. Clive appears to think Ultima was always doomed to fail (gee, thanks for making me play for forty hours then), seems to think smashing the origin will remove all magic from the world (why, when aether was embedded in the world and the crystals were sapping it?), then washes up on a shore somewhere unknown, then writes a book that implies everything was a legend (so magic was not just removed, but retroactively removed????). It's probably all something to do with primogenesis, but since that was never explained it's hard to be sure. Lightning made Earth and then got off a train in France SO MAYBE DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT, CLIVE ROSFIELD.
PETE TENTATIVELY GIVES IT: A SIX OUT OF TEN.
