Final Fantasy 16 Successfully Expanded the Series to New, Younger Players, Says Square Enix

Really a great game. I don't mind it being an action game tbh. I just wish more RPG elements were blended (status ailments, buffs/debuffs, etc.)

That aside, everyone has to start somewhere so good job to Yoshi-P and his team for introducing the game for newer audience

"Opening such a dense franchise up to newcomers is never easy"

Especially when the fanbase isn't welcoming to new players. God forbid you didn't get into the series the exact same way.

"to have players of all ages play the latest Final Fantasy game"

Except, you made an M-rated Final Fantasy game and that doesn't make room for "all ages"!

Sounds like XVI did exactly what it should've done that too on a single console and with the majority of RPG/FF gamers wanting it too fail.
The problem with FF7 Remake is it isn't really great for newcomers and caters towards those who grew up with FF7.

I liked the game a lot when it was not focused on the politics of the world (such a poor job tackling complex topics) and I loved Clive and Joshua as protagonists (that whole thrid act was amazing and the ending had me in tears as a older brother). I hope the DLC does Jill well since she was quite poorly handled.

But...BUT a bunch of specific fanbois told me diz gaaam wuz a FlOp oN tW@tTEr!!11!!????/??/

That's why it's M/18 and a poor man's game of thrones. Combat gameplay was ok, but everything else... not the direction I want the series to go generally.

Unfortunately, I'm much more negative regarding how XVI will influence future mainline titles. I'm not an FF purist by any standards, but I'd be much more on board with future entries copying the combat from the Remake trilogy instead of the "Devil May Cry but much more shallow" combat of XVI and focusing on team synergy and strategy instead of Clive soloing the vast majority of the fights. XVI has its major strengths, but I don't think gameplay depth, combat, quest design, and pacing are among them.

Ironically, playing Rebirth solidified what I strongly disliked about XVI.

Good strategy, glad they're finally happy with something!

That said, I personally didn't really fall in love with FF16. Final Fantasy used to push the definition of RPGs, this entry dropped most of RPG elements in favor of exploring the Action genre - but at the same time it's not great in this area (God of War set the bar really high for me). So we're left with a good enough game that's not special in any regard.

@GamingFan4Lyf I would agree except GTA 5 exists. Clearly age ratings dont restrict the way they used.

XVI was by far the worst game of 2023 for me, I genuinely couldn't stand it at all.

The miserable tone, insufferably easy combat with insane damage spounge enemies, every character being boring bar Cid and the worst writing I've ever seen for women in a JRPG was just a huge turn off for me.

Wasn’t convinced by the direction they went in. Game of Thrones-esque just isn’t what the kids want anyway, the age range skews similar to what Final Fantasy was already hitting. I just feel like they have to really lean into the uniqueness of what makes the series different next game. I’m not a XIII defender but you can’t deny that it had an actual art style. I think they should lean into the sci-fi next game, make it more like VIII. My problem with XVI was that a lot of the political machinations and things just pale in comparison to XII.

Final Fantasy 16 expanded the Final Fantasy fanbase with Devil May Cry fanbase

@ShadowofTwilight Considering I don’t play many games that are ‘bad’ due to a lack of time, I guess this probably was my least favourite game I played last year. It has elements that are good and I think the ending was well done but yeah, there were an awful lot of problems.

@nessisonett

I gave up on the game and just moved on to play games I actually enjoyed instead.

Keep in mind that I finished Final Fantasy XIII, XV and VII REBIRTH (I don't like REBIRTH) but XVI was just not Final Fantasy to me at all.

@3Above And then people blame the games industry for desensitized kids...when kids shouldn't be consuming the content anyways!

I hope Final Fantasy never loses its penchant for doing things differently with each entry. Each one has its unique ups and downs. At the very least, it’ll provide endless fodder for fans to argue about what Final Fantasy REALLY is. Loved XVI and can’t wait for the DLC.

The only ff game I actually enjoyed and finished. Could never get into the series before but tried the demo and really enjoyed the gameplay and story, so I bought it.

I’m glad this franchise, and particularly with XVI, has reached a younger and wider audience. It truly is a great game, and one of my favorites from last year. As an aside - I do hope future Final Fantasy titles will include a battle system akin to 7 Remake and Rebirth. That’s just a personal preference of mine, though — others might disagree.

Good to hear I liked 16 lacked a bit of variety especially in meaningful sidequests, but overall very good with some of the best boss fight presentation I've seen in modern gaming. Then I played rebirth, beat it and was like they are not going to get new players with that ending IYKYK.

@GamingFan4Lyf They may be referring to how most FF players are over 40 at this point.

I'm in my 20s so I guess I fit their survey funnily enough.

Yeah, I had a couple of conversations with younger passengers and went away impressed by how much they liked Ff16. It was their first FF, though.

@Splat I think those people are far and few between now though, the "unwelcoming" group, looking at the latest 3 games FF Online, ff16 and ff7 remake has split the fanbase alot,
I wouldn't let them bother you tho,

I remember not liking 12’s combat after finishing 10 (then loving it afterwards). I’m playing 16 for the first time after just finishing 10 remake. It weirdly feels like 12. I don’t hate the combat, but it’s very button-mashy. The game world is beautiful (frame rate is a bit low), but feels a bit empty. I’ve actually liked it more than I thought I would, but wow, I could do with about a 50th of the cut scenes! I’m looking forward to Rebirth soon

I am happy that FF16 has gained younger fans. The old fans have become a nuisance, always looking for something wrong and complaining about it. Just like the people posting in this comment section. They have Rebirth, and that's fine. I hope the FF mainline will always keep challenging themselves.

Surprisingly stranger of paradise ended up being the better action FF game than this shallow mess... Chaos!

A mature rated game to target a younger audience

Ok.

"We grew the fanbase to a younger market for our major RPG IP, by just not making an RPG and making a game in a more popular genre instead but putting the same brand on it!"

Imagine how much they can grow their market by making the next one a military battle royale shooter with building mechanics! It'll use gunblades, so it's totes FF.

There's a lot that's just the wrong lesson from all of this for Square, and coupled with the self inflicted sales issues of rebirth probably bodes ill for fans in general.

FF has been chasing trends for that vaunted younger market for a long time now 13 tried to imitate shooters of the era in an FF way, 15 tried to imitate MonHun in an FF way, now 16 just applies some general FF themes to a God of War/Souls kind of game with a Game of Thrones tone. Instead of making FF games as FF games and making them appeal to a new audience they're down to taking every game idea their teams have for a new popular game based in popular trends/pop culture, wrapping it in FF clothes, and declaring "It worked! We got the kids playing FF!" No you didn't, you got the kids to play a new IP that you retrofitted into the FF skin so you could claim your IP is now reaching a younger market. Which means nothing if then the entire identity of the IP is changed again a few years later.

I love FF 16, I mentioned in another thread I happen to like it more than the recent GoW games. But I like it for what it is, which is "a more interesting GoW" to me, rather than for what they say it is, which is "an FF game" which it isn't. It's a spinoff through and through. XVI has much much, much more in common with the FF: Stranger of Paradise spinoff than it does with FF mainline. It should have been included as part of that subseries, or given its own. In fact it sort of feels like the endless hallway of XIII that everyone complained about combined with SoP's overall gameplay. Calling it a mainline of an RPG series makes no sense.

"Kujiraoka clarifies, "but I do think it means that we’ve been able to bring new players on board and open new possibilities ""

Does this mean they're trying the Wii strategy? Make a hack and slash with the FF brand on it to pull the kids in, then make an RPG and hope the kids buy it because it says FF and they like FF? Someone did tell them the Wii strategy of making casual games for non-gamers to create new core gamers, the real intent of the Wii, didn't actually work, right?

There's no other brand in film or games that keeps on reinventing it's entire genre every few years in hopes of finding a different audience than the one they have. It defeats the point of a brand. And no other fandom celebrates that they can't actually state what kind of thing they're a fan of because it's just random different things all the time.

"FFXVI" is a great game. I love the game. It deserves to be celebrated. (The poor performing engine doesn't though), It deserves, frankly, it's own IP or at least subseries it can build it's own world or fraction of world around. But calling a gritty action adventure game built on parries and perfect dodges the latest entry in an RPG series takes the cake.

FFXVI is about as much "an FF game" as a game about Mario Vanetti, WWII Private 1st Class, hallucinating on his magic mushroom addiction between bloody battles against the Nazis is "a Mario game." "It's-a-me, a-hole!"

They don't know what they want to make. They just know the audience they have isn't the one they want. They just want to try making everything in hopes of finding a new audience and hitting CoD numbers on something. They act like RPGs are a dead genre, meanwhile Baldur's Gate 3 is smashing charts, P5 smashed charts, Assassin's Creed became and RPG and smashed charts. Seems like there's plenty of ways to get the kids interested in playing your RPG without just taking your brand name and making it a different genre that's more popular.

I do love the game, I do want it to be a success, but it shouldn't be a template to replace an RPG series with an action series because "kids."

They need to stop doing numbered releases and just make different Final Fantasy titles. When you attach a number to it you also attach past expectations. I personally thought FF16 was a pure action game with an average story. I was disappointed because it was a numbered entry and contained only the most basic Fisher Price RPG elements. If it was just it's own thing I wouldn't have minded. I guess we'll see what their approach is in the future.

@GamingFan4Lyf Right there with you. Parents dont screen what their kids watch/play and just buy whatever they ask for. Or the kids buy it themselves and the parents say nothing. Makes the whole rating system almost pointless.

I think they should split the franchise into 2 branches.
One that cater towards new modern action gameplay to appeal to mainstream gamers.

And one that aims to please long time fans who crave the classic RPG experience.

I like Final Fantasy XVI as a game and I wan't to see more stuff like that.

But at the same time I don't think it's doing a very good job at representing what Final Fantasy stands for.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was dreaming about making an RPG game and was denied time after time because the management at Square thought that RPG's couldn't be a commercial success and they just wanted to focus on action games.
But eventually after the seeing the success of Dragon Quest in Japan, they finally gave him the greenlight to make an RPG.
And that was Final Fantasy.

So to me, it seems disrespectful to turn the franchise into the very thing it tried to not be. An action game.

I believe the franchise should always have a foot in the RPG genre. And I think it would have been better if they had split the franchise into for example the mainline (classic RPG style) and the "Versus"line(action/action-RPG style).

That way they could have avoided all the disappointed players.

@DaniPooo Square. Square never changes.

@Synthatron_Prime "They need to stop doing numbered releases" um NO lol

@Strikke I mean they could easily follow in Capcom's footsteps where Monster Hunter isn't numbered and it makes sense because each Final Fantasy game is its own thing. None of them are connected in any way besides sequels.

I loved it, but can we try ATB again? Please? I really miss controlling a party of characters rather than just one.

Not a younger player (30) but this was my first FF game and yes I did buy it because it looked like a DMC game.

I thought it was a blast

@Strikke I get his point, and I partially agree.. Although I think my solution in my previous post would satisfy the players more.

When we get Final Fantasy 17 we are going to compare it to all the previous Final Fantasy games that we love.
And if it's not what we expect from the franchise then it will be a let down.

But if Square Enix wants to experiment with radically new ideas and genres without disappointing anyone they could totally do so by creating a branch of the franchise for this purpose.

This worked well in the past with both Final Fantasy Legend (which became the SaGa franchise), Final Fantasy Adventure (which became the Mana franchise), Final Fantasy Tactics, Crystal Chronicles and Dissidia to just name a few.

No one was complaining about them creating these side branches and spin-off titles existing beside the mainline franchise. Because we knew that they were going to be different and we knew that we could rely on the mainline franchise for the more classic experience (while still being the pinnacle of classic jRPG in terms of gameplay and quality)

I think we can have both Action games and RPG games, but I think they should be separated in order to not mess with the expectations of the players and to assure longtime fans that there will be something for them as well.

And if the new kids enjoy the new Final Fantasy action game, perhaps they will be curious to try out the RPG games as well.

@Synthatron_Prime agreed. Assassins’s Creed dropped the numbers ages ago and at this point you can view each entry as a stand alone if you want and be fine. Despite the fact that the whole series is an ongoing story. FF doesn’t even have that to deal with.

I think Dragon Quest does it best. The numbered entries have a familiar template even as they improve mechanics, but the spin offs have their own subtitles (even if they get numbered sequels) that let you know up front that they are doing their own thing.

Good to hear. Regardless, I loved the game.

Some will complain no matter what they make. It is a fun FF with Characters and a World I enjoyed - they did their job.

Yeah but how can you have all players play, if you exclude other platforms? It's not on pc, xbox or Nintendo. When would we even see a new final fantasy game on Nintendo?

@CutchuSlow Switch 2

@Nepp67 "None of them are connected in any way besides sequels." yeah like every numbered FF game right?

@DaniPooo "No one was complaining about them creating these side branches and spin-off titles existing beside the mainline franchise." Oho there's a LOT every time they announce something same when Stranger of Paradise was announced because it was "edgy"

@Strikke What are you not getting about they aren't connected? I don't remember seeing Lightning or Cloud in FF16. All Final Fantasies are in their own seperate universe.

@Strikke I have no idea what you are talking about..

People were complaining because that game actually sucked, especially at launch. Which it really did..
It sucked as a game. I heard that things have gotten better after a bunch of patches.
But still Most people think of it as a pretty "meh" game.

And that's not because it's different, it's because it just not good. I don't remember people complaining about it being "Edgy", I remember people finding it repetitive and boring with corny characters and scripts and a story that didn't impress.

The only other spin-off games that I hear people really complain about was like some Crystal Chronicles for Wii and Mystic Quest for SNES as well as some mobile titles and most of these actually did suck.

But I don't remember anyone ever complaining about a spin-off game not being an RPG or a spin-off not having the same level of quality as the main-line.

Because again, most people do expect these spin-off titles to be different.
Most people do not actually compare Dissidia, Chocobo Racing or Tactics to the mainline.

Because when I was young I didn't care for Final Fantasy? What a stupid statement from them... They've just turned FF into a generic action RPG with the drastic combat style change, just the same as all the other junk for me now

@KHLOEM actually the older fans have nothing now, Rebirth is also this same generic action crap, FF was always a great series for me due to how it was diverse from all the rest, now it's caught the generic disease of conformity

What do older fans have? Cartoon nonsense, low budget spin off games that are the only ones left that hold true to actual strategic combat over button bashing

@Cloud39472 it's akin to saying if you button mash in DMC you'll just end up dead, it's the sentiment that matters and the core aspect of the game that's been ripped out...

I've been into final fantasy forever.
I came into the franchise very early, and still went backwards to play earlier games.

16 was enjoyable, but it was too simple for a final fantasy game. As some people have already said, more debuffs, buffs, elemental weaknesses etc should have been used, as I remember it as a bit of a one button bashing, wait for super move to charge, use and repeat.

I was also happy to not have the game americanised in it's translation. It really takes you out of the immersion when Japanese characters are saying Jeez, sidewalk, go to the mall, (not exact examples but you get the point)
However, having said that, and being English, the heavy English voice acting got pretty wearing. I remember it as almost a bunch of cockneys, like EastEnders does final fantasy. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I also remember a disproportionate about if swearing, which wasn't necessary.

@DaniPooo "People were complaining because that game actually sucked, especially at launch. Which it really did..
It sucked as a game." Did you play the game? I never encountered a game breaking bug on FF16 btw, the only ones complaining from what I've seen are haters and of course the ones on that DYING gaming brand.

@Nepp67 Your topic about needing to drop the numbered entry.. are people nowadays getting WAY DUMB3R for not knowing that each numbered entry is a different story?

@Strikke I wasn't even talking about FF16. You brought in Stranger of Paradise in the discussion as an example of a spin-off that people were complaining about.

Yes some spin off titles are just plain bad games. But that's besides the point..
People do generally not complain about them not living up to the Final Fantasy brand.
They complain about these games being boring, cheap, poor quality or other things.

If it's a spin-off then the expectation is different so you do not directly compare them with mainline in the same way.

But if a game is bad, then it's bad... That has nothing to do with them fitting in with the brand.

Many Final Fantasy spin-off games are great or at least decent, but there are a few stinkers as well.

There's a lot of good Final Fantasy spin-off titles that are very different from the mainline.
And that's the way to go in my opinion.

A spin-off or a branch out from the main-line does not have to mean low quality/low budget.

Take the Persona games for example, They are all a branched line from the Megami Tensei games but it ended up being probably the most popular branch.

There's other similar examples but my point is that it would make the most sense to branch the Final Fantasy franchise into two branches, one classic branch and one spin-off action based branch. And if they wanna dump the most resources into the action branch well at least the long term fans could rest assured that they'll at least get something eventually (even if it's not the highest budget project)

The problem is that the management at Square Enix seems to believe that mainline is all about the budget put into the game. And also they are not following the same standards as anyone else. (Calling Reboots, remakes, and remakes remasters for example. Completely clueless)

Because the way they choose to name things they have people confused and disappointed.
And it could have been so easily avoided.

Had they called it Final Fantasy VII - Reboot (instead of Remake), Final Fantasy Online 1 and 2(instead of 11 and 14) as well ass Final Fantasy Versus 1 and 2 (instead of 15 and 16).

Then no one would have complained...

But now of course people would complain because some of these games are their favourite in the franchise and for them it would be a crime to change the name not to be part of the mainline. Similar to convincing the people in North America that it's Final Fantasy VI and not Final Fantasy III.

Had Square Enix named their games properly from the start and categorised their games in a logical fashion that follows any standard then one would complain or feel disappointed..