Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

@LtSarge This is not meant to be anything "hostile", but you do seem to play a lot of games and not finish some of them, so that might be a big reason too. I absolutely loved Final Fantasy 7 Remake, so maybe there's a small bit of bias as to why I can't see why somebody wouldn't want to finish the game when they were already highly enjoying it. I do think you should go back to it at some point as, especially for somebody that seemed like they were highly enjoying it not that long ago, there is a great experience to be had there.

That's not to criticize your reasons why you are enjoying FF16 more. It is true that it is more streamlined in comparison with having to manage things like Materia in FF7R but not in 16, although you still have to manage your gear to an extent in 16. Nor should you not be highly enjoying FF16. It is indeed a highly enjoyable experience too. I hope that continues for both you and I of course.

The base resolution for Performance mode is 1080p, but it can drop all the way down to 720p in some instances. That and the framerate is supposed to be an extremely inconsistent 60 FPS, while the Graphics mode is 1440p with an almost rock solid 30 FPS. I haven't compared them myself as I don't want to follow the recommendation from Digital Foundry and not start getting used to 60 FPS in it and then go back to 30 FPS. There's nothing wrong with playing it however you are already enjoying it though. If the Performance mode is fine for you, that's fine. I've gotten used to the 30 FPS for the most part, so I don't want to screw that up by playing it at 60 FPS for a bit.

I've never actually done that outside of the "library" from the Hideout, but I'm assuming that's the same thing. In a way that reminds me of watching stuff on Prime video where you can pause it in the middle of a scene and it will show you who's in the scene and you can get info on each actor and such. A nice little feature for both.

I personally think any criticism of an RPG franchise which chooses to streamline its RPG elements to the point of near non existence for a more simple action focus are valid. This isn't the first franchise to do this, and it won't be the last. I feel like it sucked harder in other franchises, but maybe it is because I am not that precious over Final Fantasy.

I also love series like Yakuza choosing to become turn based, as many pillar turn based franchises are being changed for a real time focus, like we don't have enough of those already. As great as FF16's combat is, it is quite literally the best thing about it, there is no reason why this couldn't have been a more traditional Final Fantasy experience.

And for the new audiences this game captures, I am happy for you, but I do think it will be a shame if this game costs the core audience who got Final Fantasy this far, as that seems like a bad message to send.

FF16's real issue though for me is pace, every time I get dropped into a new hub area and am given a bunch of a side quests to do, I feel compelled to do them as I get OCD adjacent about this kinda stuff. But my God they are so boring, and it feels like they grind the game to a halt for hours on end, killing all momentum.

I do agree the game probably did need moments to breathe, as if its just giant Gods smashing into each other for hours on end, I think you are gonna really lose interest. But with the sheer amount of cutscenes in this, I think we already had a platform to create respites, without these sections being necessary.

Maybe this would work better if there was actually a proper RPG attached to this with loot to find, stats to crunch and characters to build, but I know every side quest is just me walking ten feet, pressing X on some exclamation mark, maybe killing some trash enemies who offer me no challenge and then head back to the quest giver for some gil I have nothing to spend on, and my 10,000 bloody hide I have no idea what I am meant to do with.

@KilloWertz Well it's not like I don't go back and wrap up games that I haven't finished. I'm definitely going to continue FF7R in the near future and I probably would've played it more this month if I hadn't bought a month of Game Pass.

Ah I see. Well my TV doesn't output 1440p so performance mode is the best option for me. I did give graphics mode a try and it felt way worse for me. So inconsistent 60 FPS seems like the better option in my case. It's too bad that it's like that, but it hasn't negatively affected my experience so far.

I don't really like spending a long time reading on lore just to get caught up with the plot. FF16 doesn't do a good job of explaining who everyone and what everything is during the cutscenes but having the option of pausing cutscenes and reading about the stuff on screen is a good idea. Not to mention that later on in the game you'll be able to read a synopsis of everything that has happened so far. There will also be explanations of the different kingdoms, the key figures, their relationships and geography. I think introducing this part much later on is a great idea. As I've mentioned before, I don't want to start a game and get served a bunch of exposition. I want a gripping narrative with fun gameplay and then if the game grabs my attention, I'll invest more time in learning about its universe. Which I actually did now! So the structure of this game matches my preference to a T. It's awesome to play a game that actually takes these things into consideration.

@Pizzamorg It is a bit weird that they're giving you so much materials as I have no idea what you're supposed to do with them. Having a lot of money is nice though so that I won't have to worry about potions but I haven't used most of the materials that I've collected. Although I have noticed that the game tends to introduce things at a slow pace, so maybe we'll get to use materials with other things later on.

I think the side quests are getting better in general the more you play. Some tell an interesting narrative, others reward you with significant additions. Even the common rewards are getting better. I'm now getting a lot of EXP and AP as well as good accessories from most side quests. Hopefully this trend will continue.

I recently did find some interesting side quests near enough next to each other, both about nobles and their pets, which painted a grim picture of this world. I appreciated the narrative dressing, it certainly helped, but it was still ultimately more of 'go three steps in this direction and press X, watch a bunch of very cheap, canned looking, animations. The end.'

And sure, if you boil every game down to its core parts you can make these sorts of statements, but this isn't me boiling down to make a facetious point, this is just how the side quests are structured, they feel like MMO tasks.

I've also played for long enough where this has really seeped into the wider game for me, too. Boss battles and Eikon fights are generally a lot of fun, and great spectacle, never particularly challenging or mechanically complex or varied, but with enough spectacular dressing that they make for a terrific ride.

However, the fights in between have grown really boring for me, to be honest. Most mission locations are a set of identical looking hallways and slightly larger rooms with pockets of enemies scattered throughout, chained together into a formless rail. Each location has basically three enemy types reskinned, and the enemy AI seems to be set to pacifist mode, because they offer zero challenge and honestly they barely even attack you.

The abilities are awesome, the combat feels great, but no one plays say... a Diablo for just the moment to moment gameplay alone. They click on demons for that loot chase, for that piece of gear that can create a new build, unlock a new playstyle or transform the way you play your class. The absence of that is felt sharply in FF16, mindlessly carving my way through enemies that barely even fight back is fun for the first couple of encounters, especially when you just unlock some new abilities, but fighting dozens and dozens of waves just seems to exist to tire and burn me out before I can even get to the next proper encounter I will actually enjoy.

@LtSarge While it is something I have noticed after seeing you talk about playing this, purchasing that, then playing this, it is what it is. I can't tell you what to do, and I was more or less just playfully talking about it. No big deal. I am glad to see that you will continue with Final Fantasy 7 Remake at some point after you are done with 16.

Yeah, it is disappointing, especially with how polished the game was supposed to be. It technically is other than in it's performance, but still, I was surprised at how poorly done the performance mode seems to be as a whole at the moment. Obviously the issues with the performance mode in Horizon Forbidden West at launch were also surprising, but as for Final Fantasy 16, at least the Graphics mode seems to be really polished. You and somebody I watch on YouTube both have played in Performance mode and have been just fine with it, so it's whatever.

I don't care for having to read a lot to learn most of the story and such either. As much as I loved Control, I didn't read a whole lot of the collectables that you pick up along the way either time I beat the game. I did appreciate the encyclopedia-like approach to things in Final Fantasy 16 even a few hours in and will probably dig deeper into it the more the game grips me. At the very least, it's a nice alternative to literally having to find a lot of the backstory.

I have a feeling I will be able to shrug off the side quests and still highly enjoy the game. Granted I've only just begun getting them in the game, they can't be worse than the side quests in Crisis Core or the original Xenoblade Chronicles. At least they seem to be connected to each area you arrive in and allow you to get to know the people a bit. Crisis Core was literally the same thing over and over again, with the difficulty in them eventually reaching a point of complete ridiculousness. I wanted to at least finish the ones with Young Yuffie, but they became so horrible I couldn't.

I spent a tiny amount of time with FF16 yesterday and came away pretty happy with it. I’m barely scratching the surface though and after some of the into tutorial I realized I needed to probably wait until I was ready to devote my full attention before I rewire my brain to a new set of controls. If the game was less twitchy and action-reaction based then I’d be okay with playing it alongside another action game, but when timing is key then I better not confuse myself with a new move set.

On that subject —The reinvention or evolution of a franchise is an interesting topic. Most would argue God of War and Zelda made good choices about that, as well as Elden Ring. Although some of those changes are not as drastic as going turn-based RPG to action combat RPG-lite.

I think the audience for turn-based combat might be dwindling. I can’t be sure because, like @Pizzamorg said, Yakuza took the opposite route and I think it’s global popularity actually has gone up since the Like A Dragon shift change. I think games like Dragon Quest and Octopath Traveler are doing fine, but not on the level of the third person character action games (at least in the West).

It will be interesting to see how the sales of the game stack up. I do think if the game was called “Clive’s Odyssey” or “The War of the Kingdoms” or even more appropriately “Clash of Thrones” then it’s sales would be a fraction of it being “Final Fantasy XVI”.

When I look back though, the series has been gradually becoming more action based since FF12. It’s a bit of a Ship of Theseus at this point. Is this the game that makes it “not a true Final Fantasy game”? I think they started to veer off the classic recipe long ago.

I think with turn based games, it is really hard to judge because of context. What I mean by this, is it seems like mainstream gaming has been trying to phase out turn based games, calling them things like "outdated" but there are people out there like me who adore turn based games. I grew up with turn based games, and as someone who is low skilled in the dexterity department, every game being a sweaty, timing based, action game is not what I want. We've seen so many long standing turn based games go for an action focus, or some kind of weird real time turn based hybrid (I personally think every system I have played like this has been ass, excluding classic real time with pause CRPGs). I think because of this, you have this dedicated group of turn based lovers, who are being generally so starved, anything turn based comes along and they'll throw their support at it even if the game sucks, just to show that people still want this. That some people don't want every turn based game to introduce real time elements. Which then warps the data somewhat.

On that note, that is probably the one weird double edged blessing for FF16 for me. While it is very much baby's first RPG, it is also very much baby's first character action game, too. This is problematic for either audiences of those respective genres, but had FF16 abandoned turned based mechanics to mean I got 20 different weapons/powers, all with their own dedicated codex of combos. Where I needed to hit 90 input combo strings to beat bosses or needed to get S ranks on every boss to get the true ending, I just wouldn't have ever played this, being honest.

The combat being so basic is what makes it grow tiresome, but it is also the only real reason I am able to play and enjoy this like I have done. As someone like me, with no talent for these sorts of games, can manage a game where its just effectively one combo you use all the time, ability dumping and occasionally needing to dodge (with an extremely generous dodge window) and that gets you through basically the whole game. Or at least it has for me so far and I feel like I am a decent way through.

And that isn't to say you can't make things more complicated for yourself if you wanted to, but there is absolutely no real benefit to doing that, which sucks for dedicated fans, but to me is a blessing.

@Th3solution you're right about action vs turn base. there are good games on both sides but sale numbers are very different.
about XVI, it's not the battle system. XV was a disappointing experience for me; dull open world, boring quests and light RPG elements and it feels like XVI followed a same way. it might work better as something like Final Fantasy Origin (or even Nioh); straightforward and linear with shiny chaotic move sets but then -as you said- the sales would be a fraction of it being FFXVI.

@Pizzamorg That’s a great point about approachability and keeping things ‘casual’ enough for those who aren’t typically fans of the genre. It’s a little confusing as to why they didn’t implement actual difficulty settings though. All S-E’s other action games that I know of have difficulty sliders like Forspoken, FF7R, etc. In fact, I can’t remember if you played FF7R but there is difficulty setting and also an option to choose a “classic” style combat, which I suspect leans heavier into the turned-based style of the original. I wonder if they have metrics from mining player data that shows few people actually using the “classic” setting and so maybe that influenced their abandonment of even having a hybrid battle system to begin with for FF16. I guess we’ll know more when FF7R-2 comes out.

But yes, to your point, I’ve played a little of DMC and I’m rubbish at that style of combat. If they hadn’t included easier difficulty settings in Nier Automata then I would have struggled with that (and certainly would have enjoyed it less).

I think S-E must have been confident in the story of FF16 to carry the experience, even if the gameplay was a little too watered down for the action-combat / Souls-DMC fans.

I don't know whether I posted this here before, but due to their closeness of releases, you can draw a lot of parallels between Diablo 4 and FF16. They both present a very glossy and polished vision of their respective franchises, which are both simultaneously somewhat gutted under the hood. Streamlining aggressively seemingly in the name of trying to appeal to a wider, more casual, audience, which goes beyond that core dedicated audience they already had (and now may risk alienating).

In a lot of ways, I honestly think this is a real shame, to be honest. I guess we'll have to see how things shake out and see how this colours future projects in gaming in general. Apparently box sales in the UK for FF16 aren't great, but then box sales for games in the UK seem bad a lot of the time, as digital I would assume is a much larger market share these days and once that data comes out, we'll have a clearer picture.

@Pizzamorg Obviously we don't know the numbers yet, but it debuting at #1 is still a solid sign regardless.

@CthulhuFhtagn I had actually forgotten about Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which maybe was their attempt to do the actual in-depth Souls-formula of deeper action combat. I can’t find solid sales data but it appears it did pretty poorly commercially. Hard to draw firm conclusions about whether there’s an audience who wants a really deep challenging action combat system in their FF game based on that game because apparently the game was kind of a mess narratively also. Still, it might have influenced the decision to be less hardcore with the combat system in FF16

@Th3solution @Pizzamorg

For me, the focus on appealing to the lowest common denominator or teenagers is a bad move for FF. 'No one plays turnbased games anymore' we'll yeah it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to realise if no turn based games are developed then no one will play them.

FF has sometimes quirky, often convoluted, sub system mechanics. Which tied in to a variety of options to play around with in a turn based fighting system. It's not that fans of the series want a strict ATB format, 4 on screen characters in 2 ranks, like the snes games. We want a hybrid which has depth in strategy on top of action elements. The FF7 remake had this mostly sussed.

FF13 for all its issues, had a great fighting system once it opened up. Why not have Clives bayonetta esque fighting sat inside the changing stance mechanics of ff13 with a couple of hommies to compliment your arsenal?

I did something last night that I should've done at the very start of the game - switched difficultly to story focused. Not because the game is challenging but because it shaves a lot of time off fighting mini-bosses and bosses.
See, I'm at that point where I let the story just go over my head, it's taking itself way too seriously and I miss that charm which FF games are known for. Some of the better characters in the game have been killed off and Clive just reminds me of grumpy Geralt except without the wit and charisma of our famous witcher. I've just had a scene that made Jill a lot more interesting but that's only because she actually did something.

Apart from all of this, I still can't stop playing the game.

@ApostateMage Oh, I guess I misunderstood how the game describes story mode. I was under the impression that the only difference was that it automatically equipped the accessories that make battle actions more automated and easier to perform. I didn’t realize it also affected enemy health, etc. Good to know.

@themcnoisy Agreed. I think over time FF13 has become much more appreciated. I was always a fan of the game, even though it’s not my favorite of the series. But the combat was indeed fun once you got into it. And I do think FF7R struck a nice balance between old and new.

Are you playing 16 yet, boss? I just dabbled in the opening tutorial and I’m going to come back to it in a couple weeks when I clear some other games first. I think I’ll really like it, but with it being so button-mashy I wonder if I’ll grow tired of it. Fortunately I have to spread my games out over several weeks and my play sessions are by necessity shorter so I usually won’t get bored of a game as quickly as most who binge them in one week.

@Th3solution I've sold the PS5. I Couldn't stand the controller. So no rofl.

@themcnoisy Oh yeah, I remember now. 😄
Well, I’ll let you know if FF16 is worth picking up another PS5 for. Or maybe by early next year you could jump back on for FF7 Rebirth.
You’d have to tolerate the DualSense to play it though.

@Th3solution Alluding back to an older conversation within this thread. FF7 remake was a weird one.

I loved almost everything they did. Bar the memory ghost nonsense. I will never understand why story writers have to explain alternative universes or t Junction Canon. Memory ghosts is such a ridiculous concept and waters down the ff7 remake as a game in it own right. Now wherever changing the overall story in such a manner is sensible going forward? The jury will certainly be out. Otherwise it was a great experience and a ton of fun.

Yeah the decision to can the ps5 was in part due to gamepass and ms rewards. I play a lot of games and those two benefits combined has saved me a small fortune. I think I've had £150 in game vouchers so far from ms rewards and am 70% there on my next £25 voucher. I have 40 games in my to play list on gamepass (of admittedly varying quality) and a backlog of games I've bought in sales. I miss the big PS games but the money I'm saving is significant and I really look forward to redeeming vouchers and picking up slightly older games in sales. Like olli olli world, the house of the dead remake and the spyro trilogy most recently. I suppose I'm using it like the old ps instant game collection.

@Kidfried Maybe there is, but then there's something wrong with me too as I have very little to complain about in Final Fantasy VII Remake as well. My love for the game actually grew when I played the PS5 version, which was my second time through the game. While I may say I like this game or that game better for a particular console generation, the game is still very special regardless and one I probably still think about more than others. It's one of the rare games that left a really lasting impression, even if it took two tries to get there for me.