Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

After 80 hours, I finally finished FFXVI.

Overall I liked it a lot. I enjoyed the story, characters, combat, music… just about everything. I do think the last couple chapters were a bit of a slog — at least it was a slog to do all the side quests. And the side quests in the last chapter all felt important, but were so filled with exposition and tying up character storylines, that it just dragged to have a shopping list of about 20 of them to do all at once. I would have liked to somehow have them spread out more. Some of the final character arcs needed to be at the penultimate section like for Jill, Joshua, and Dion, but some really could have happened earlier to help with the pacing.

And I think I’ve had my fill of boss fights for a while. Good grief this game’s boss fights go on forever. Some of them are like 2 hours each by the time you get through all the phases. And that’s without dying! If you die and have to start over I can’t imagine how frustrating that would be.

Speaking of, I found the difficulty to be just about right. One of the final optional hunts was the toughest fight to me and I died twice before beating it. The final boss was also very hard and actually the first time you fight Ultima it was a little harder for me, but the final fight was more like a marathon of endurance, and I can’t imagine how it would have been without obtaining the Gotterdammerung and the Oroboros items.

I played without the use of the “cheat” accessories though (except the one that makes Torgal’s attacks automated) and so that made it a little harder. But seriously, I don’t know how people thought you can get through the game by just mashing the attack button. The normal enemies maybe, but the boss fights were really intense and you had to stack your eikon attacks just right or else you were toast.

Glad to be done with it, and I’ll miss it in a way, but with Crisis Core and then Rebirth, I’ve got plenty of Final Fantasy to keep me busy when I’m back in the mood

I've already spent 30 hours playing FFXVI, but honestly, I'm really struggling to continue. I don't feel any connection with the characters, storyline, or combat. Everything just feels dull and uninteresting. Right now, I'm on a mission to find some thief kids, and that's when it hit me how incredibly boring the game is for me. Whether it's the combat, the lack of depth, or the monotonous enemies, I'm really hoping for some improvement.

I've spent way too much time with Rebirth this weekend but it's just one of those games you want to spend every free moment playing.
I think I need to look more into the synergy stuff you can execute while blocking, I'm definitely not utilising that enough.
My only minor complaint so far is that I liked Remake's character upgrade system more than the "folios"

@Qu1n0n3z I know exactly the part you’re referring to. I will say that a lot of the secondary and minor NPC storylines are sort of boring. For the most part, the main characters are interesting though, if you focus on those. Even some of the lesser characters like Quinton or Charon do end up having some cool story moments, but there’s plenty of other throwaway characters that could have been skipped, like Martha, Eloise, or Wade, just because they don’t distinguish themselves from the usual NPC tropes. There’s some side characters that actually could have benefitted from deeper context, like Tarja for example.

So there’s some unevenness to the supplemental storylines, for sure. I did 100% of the side quests and I found probably 75% of them fairly satisfying, but some of them took too much time to ramp up and the pacing was the worst part, as I mentioned above.

As for enemy variety, you’re right in the sense that the common enemies get fairly old after you’ve been to all the major areas of the map. They really focused the variety on the boss and mini-boss fights. The optional hunts were probably my favorite combat encounters. The story bosses were fantastic too, but like I also said up there, some of them were actually too bombastic and crazy with all the phases and copious attack forms and such.

It’s too bad that the game wasn’t edited down a little better. I think if they trimmed back 25% of the fat off the game and it ended up a solid 40-50 hr game then it would have been better for it.

Perhaps try and just skip all the side content for a while and see if it sticks for you, because the combat can be really great once you have a lot of eikon powers to choose from.

@Th3solution Well that was a journey! Glad to hear you saw it through to the end. Sounds like you enjoyed it. As it’s been a hot topic around here in the past, I’m curious to know how you felt about the ending?

@Jimmer-jammer The ending… well I actually liked it a lot. Not the best ending of all time or anything, but really satisfying.

Was there some controversy about the ending? I didn’t realize that.

@Th3solution From what I’ve gathered, some folks found it either infuriatingly ambiguous, frustratingly cliche or specifically an unsatisfying resolution to Clive’s arc. Personally, I felt it was the perfect ending that bolstered the presented themes.

I fully agree with you on Clive. For me, he’s the most fleshed out, relatable and fully realized protagonist the series has had. Glad you enjoyed it!

@Jimmer-jammer Ah, I see. I like a little ambiguity, if it’s well formed to not be too excessively cryptic. The inclusion of the epilogue was enough to erase doubt about the climactic outcome, and yet just vague enough about Joshua’s survival to leave some things open to ponder. I guess people just don’t like it when heroes die. I don’t mind it, especially if they die for something. Even if the death is not a huge world saving self-sacrifice, as long as the death carries emotional weight that is key to driving the narrative, I’m fine with that. This was the debate several days ago about the Suicide Squad game and I could see how the death/execution of beloved characters might fall flat in that scenario. I watched the Batman clip and it was fine, but it wasn’t the death of Batman that was the problem as much as just the overall cringe of the dialogue and other characters. In FF16 Clive’s death seemed appropriately developed and portrayed.

@Th3solution I agree completely. For me, some ambiguity is integral to telling a meaningful and engaging story. It allows the audience to engage with a story’s themes on a deeper level precisely because they don’t have all of the answers. The plot (go here, do that) moves things along but it’s not what a great story is really about. FFXVI’s ending actually brought the whole thing together for me because Clive’s death upends the trajectory of the plot but elevates the themes of the story.

I haven’t followed much on Suicide Squad outside of the fact that it appears to have not really landed very well. I’m not against killing off beloved characters if it serves the story. I’ve noticed that people tend to get quite prickly around such matters though 😂

@Jimmer-jammer Same here. My favorite game endings often leave a few things open to interpretation.

I’m a little off topic for this thread, but I think about what game stories and specifically what endings are my favorite or most impactful, they would be games like Nier Automata (highly philosophical and symbolic), Bioshock Infinite (same), The Last of Us (leaves a few questions unanswered and open to interpretation), Shadow of the Colossus (quite an ambiguous ending), etc, etc.

Favorite game endings has been something I enjoy discussing and have considered making a thread for it, but I think it would just be a huge trap of potential spoilers and so I don’t think it would work. It runs the risk of inherently spoiling things to even know that a game has a good ending. 🤔

And speaking of spoilers, I don’t know what people expected from a game called “Kill the Justice League” but it’s weird that they are upset that the game’s title is what the game’s objective is. 😅

@Th3solution I for one think that’s a pretty interesting topic for a thread. There are some games out there with some truly fantastic endings. The examples you gave there are all excellent. I can’t imagine Shadow of the Colossus having the emotional impact it did if the weight of my actions weren’t allowed to slowly wash over me without any guidance in such a lonely and desolate environment. I still think of Bioshock’s ending as one of the greatest within the medium precisely because it only works within it. As for Justice League, well, can’t say we weren’t warned.

Really enjoying FVII Rebirth so far, but the Fort Condor mini game can go die in a hole as far as I'm concerned. Managed to complete the Junon artifact quest line that required a series of matches, but hopefully I won't have to touch it again (it was by far the toughest thing in the game so far).

So, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does let you freely choose between a few different alternate costumes for your party, but for whatever inane reason this feature seems to be locked to around 1/3rd of the map area of a single region.

Once you get too far away from Costa Del Sol the game forces everyone back to their default outfits. It's not just the beachwear either. All alternate costumes can only be worn in the tropical portion of Corel, even if the story portion of the game they were introduced in isn't related to Costa Del Sol at all.

For example, Yuffie wears a fancy dress during a certain cutscene at the Gold Saucer, and although you unlock the outfit afterwards, she can't actually wear it there. You have to go back to the area around Costa Del Sol to do so (the same is true for the beachwear, as well as the Shinra military gear you obtain during the Junon chapter).

Everything is fully coded for combat & exploration, the game just arbitrarily limits the feature for whatever reason I can't fathom. It'd be better if they didn't give the option at all rather than open it up and pull it away soon after.

Just to be clear this is a small issue in an otherwise fantastic game (though once again Fort Condor can do one. Luckily it hasn't popped back up yet), it's just so frustrating because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

@RR529 I'm pretty sure the costume thing is locked for the same reason they do it in Yakuza games - there's pre-rendered FMV cut-scenes while you're playing through the story and they want to maintain continuity between cut-scenes and gameplay.

@johncalmc, yeah, I don't necessarily mind being reverted back to the default attire when entering one of the linear story scenarios (since that's when the pre-rendered cutscenes are more likely to pop up), but when you're just running around the open environments doing all the side stuff the option should be available (if they're going to have it at all).

Maybe with the option to completely open it up in NG+ or chapter selection afterwards? Maybe that's the case, I haven't cleared the game yet.

@RR529 There's more areas later on where you can switch costumes. I don't think you can wear them whenever you want but I don't remember. I deleted the game the second I finished it :')

@johncalmc why did you delete the game? was it the ending? (I haven't played it). just curious. ✌️

@CthulhuFhtagn Kinda. Yeah I was gonna go for the platinum originally so I'd like gone around everywhere doing everything. I'd done all of the sidequests and most of the minigames and everything. But it was really wearing out its welcome with me towards the end because I think most of the open world and side activities are really boring and I'd been on it for like 90 hours and then I got to the end and in my opinion the final boss and ending is like series worst stuff. Absolutely dreadful. Awful last boss, really bad finish. And that killed it for me so I decided to save myself the extra 50, 60, 70, whatever hours for the platinum and just deleted it immediately.

@johncalmc I felt the same about Remake. unnecessarily long, boring, out of focus (from time to time)... and I didn't like the ending and that trio boss fight. so it's gonna be a pretty consistent trilogy, I guess.

I'm looking for a bit of advice. I have Final Fantasy VII Remake in my backlog and have decided to get to it this year. However, I also have Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII Reuninon on my wishlist, which I understand is a prequel of sorts?
My question is, keeping in mind I have yet to play a single FF game, should I play Crisis Core or VII Remake first? I do expect I'll want to move on to Rebirth and the upcoming third (?) title as well, so it feels like Crisis Core is the place to start, but I would love some input from FF veterans