We've known for a while that Final Fantasy 16 would eventually launch on PC, and now we have a confirmed release date. It drops next month, on the 17th September, ending the game's spell of total PS5 exclusivity, which has been in place since the action RPG first launched on the 22nd June, 2023.
What's more, there's a demo available to download right now on Steam and the Epic Games Store, so you can see whether your rig will be able to handle all those particle effects on ultra settings. Indeed, it'll be interesting to see just how well optimised the game is on PC, because it's always had frame rate dips on PS5.
There's a chance that Final Fantasy 16's PC launch will lead to a new update on PS5, but we're not holding our breath. At this point, the PS5 Pro may be our only hope for a consistent 60 frames per second on console.
Dare we ask if you'll be playing Final Fantasy 16 on PC? Let the flames guide your hand in the comments section below.
[source x.com]
Comments 46
Deciding to launch 2 days before the PC port of GoW Ragnarok sounds like a bad decision.
Pricing is pretty good, too. $50 for the base game. $70 for Game + expansion content. I'm already seeing deals from third-party key re-seller sites.
Hopefully this means FF7 Rebirth is due mid 2025.
It'll still be a console exclusive, for the time being at least.
I would be happy with a sale on the dlc. 😅
I haven't bought it yet.
In Kuwait the steam page refuses to open I really hope it’s a bug because I’m not sure what’s preventing square from a global release of a demo.
@Ralizah So what are the best "re-key sellers"?
I have been out of the PC game for 14 years (until 2 weeks ago) and I am still hunting for the best PC deals.
I do want to slowly replace my Xbox and PlayStation libraries with PC versions, but I am not paying full price anymore!
Perhaps I will download this demo tonight to see how my rig handles it (just for kicks as I am certainly not planning to get this anytime soon since I beat it earlier this year).
@GamingFan4Lyf idk if this is helpful but I can give an opposite advice; sellers to avoid. I usually avoid kinguin. A little overpriced.
One of the worst games I ever played, and it has nothing to do with the frame rate.
@Dalamar interesting, what bothered you about it? I never played it myself but I’m willing to try the demo once square fixes the store page.
@Yousef- Any advice is helpful! I want the best deals and if that means avoiding certain places, then it's good to know.
If that means having to look at a few different places to check for pricing, I am all ears!
@GamingFan4Lyf always cdkeys for me but that is mainly for Xbox codes.
So... it's time to sell (again) PS5 and build a PC because PS5 has no games and no exclusives?
/s
The Eikon battles are amazing best part of the game.But the story and side quests are so boring fetch this bring it back repeat.
Why is it £65 on ps, but only £50 on steam?
@Yousef- The only good points of this game I can name is side characters, though combined they have less screen time than the protagonist, and FFXIX fanservice, if that's your thing. Everything else is just so bad it hurts. Visuals are all dark brown and grey, and blurry. Gameplay is non-existent, even on the highest difficulty setting available on first playthrough enemies just stand and wait while you pummel them. Story is barely there and you experienced it a hundred times before: empires bad, ancient evil awakens. Even the music sucks: it's either stock epic choir from Hollywood trailers or barely heard ambient, Socen clearly rested between Endwalker and Dawntrail.
@Dalamar I see, that’s helpful to know.
@Yousef- for what it's worth, it's just my personal opinion, plenty of people liked the game.
I tried the demo on my PC today and can run it well above 60fps, plus it's only £45 on Steam. I never played it on PS5 but have heard various things about its quests, though I will say I found the combat to be really fun in the demo. At this point I want a PS5 Pro, as games are seemingly so poorly optimised these days that they almost require silly amounts of power to run them half decently
If they get it SteamDeck Verified I'm gonna laugh. I'm good with a locked 30 if it's portable and gorgeous
If it doesnt sell 5 million on pc immediately on pc, i want the hit piece articles on how it underperformed.
Also looks like another fake xbox rumor thrown out their when more bad xbox news is about. Remember them saying it was imminent on xbox and gamepass
Had no idea this was so close & demo was out, downloading now. This couple months is going to get quite pricey if I buy everything I want: Astro Bot, GOWR, zelda echoes of wisdom, Miles Edgeworth investigates, FF16, black myth wukong. Only thing is 100% certain.. Astro Bot, rest can wait.
@Yousef- This game is more "God of War" and less "Final Fantasy" - if that helps.
I wouldn't say it's a tough game - especially if you actually do all the available side quests before moving on with the story as you'll level up from the experience gained and you'll start to get a little over leveled - but I do believe I might have died a couple times. It's very manageable.
Stoked! Can't wait to mod this up!
Final Fantasy 16 is a great game.
Now, if I can put Helldivers 2 down long enough to play Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, that would be great.
@Scarface82G1 The story is def not boring lol
@GamingFan4Lyf Check allkeyshop.com but be very careful where you buy the steam codes from.
On topic it doesn't seem that Final Fantasy 16 will be Steam Deck verified but still... PS5 is left only with 7 Rebirth as an actual exclusive. I guess we will see it in Steam in early 2025.
@LordVile It’s only £20 second hand on PS5 currently in CeX.
@Ralizah That would more or less track with Remake as that launched 20 months after the original PS4 launch.
@GamingFan4Lyf I pretty much exclusively use Humble Bundle as if you are a humble choice member you get a flat 15-20% off basically everything. Final Fantasy 16 is already £55 for the complete edition there. I think that only kicks in after a year of membership though.
Humble Choice is a pretty good monthly service where you get 8 or so games that they picked out. Normally 1-2 big ones and then smaller indies. If you don’t like a specific month then it’s easy to pause the subscription for that month.
Other reason I like humble is they work with the game publishers so all the keys are legit. The other 2 I use one occasion are greenmangaming.com and fanatical.com as they similarly work only with the publishers.
Then you get into the slightly more murky resellers who are normally legit but I’m still a little bit wares of like cdkeys. I would echo what a previous poster said and avoid Kinguin I’ve heard some bad stories there. With resellers quite often you get people selling stuff they got in bundles on other sites or purchased directly from the publisher but I’ve heard of people bulk buying keys with stolen credit card info and then the publisher being left in the unenviable position of choosing whether to revoke those keys or not as they lost out on money from it (credit card fees) vs pissing off people who didn’t know fraud was involved.
Some developers have even said they would prefer you pirate a game over using a site like Kinguin.
@TripleKing333
Only problem being I own a digital model, just waiting for next time it goes on sale
Might be one of the few PC games I ever buy at near-full-price. I played a little over halfway through on PS5....maybe more. But the game's performance is horrific on PS5. Moving back toward PC now, I should probably continue the game I was half finished on PS, even if I need to start from the beginning. If I can get actual smooth 60fps with a decent res and DLSS picking up the slack, rather than choosing 30fps snail play vs sometimes-60fps blur-fest.
I like the game, more than modern GoW. Terrible, terrible, terrible "Final Fantasy" game. Pretty good "FF spinoff hack and slash" game.
@GamingFan4Lyf Green Man Gaming and Fanatical are the big ones to keep an eye on, Some crazy deals on there at times. For example, I secured a pre-purchase for Metaphor: ReFantazio for around $40 recently.
Humble Bundle intermittently has really good bundles, and Humble Choice (a monthly sub where you can keep the games once it lapses) can be super cost efficient if you nab games that are still high in price during Steam sales.
@Glassneedles @belmont @Ralizah Thanks for the tips.
As far as the PC version of this game:
Ryzen 7800X3D, 32GB RAM, Nvidia 4070 Super:
Running Ultra settings and Native 1440p/DLAA/Frame-gen Off I get anywhere from 58 - 75fps (sometimes 80fps and at one point dropped to 40s).
The game seems to do the exact same thing as the PS5 in Performance Mode where combat encounters perform higher and then drop when exploration kicks back in.
Throw in DLSS Quality Mode and it’s up into the 90s.
Cutscenes are locked to 30fps (and I had one that ran at 59fps for some reason).
I tried using Dynamic Resolution scaling, but it was trying to scale to achieve 165Hz and the image got really soft (I only had a few minutes to play around with settings).
I will experiment with it later and maybe change the framerate box to 60 instead and see if the game locks to 60 with minimal scaling since the demo runs above 60fps most times (larger draw distances drop fps down below 60fps).
Visually, I wouldn’t say there is much difference from this and the PS5 version (that I remember). I am sure Digital Foundry will be able to tell us more on that front. It just has the ability to perform better with the right settings.
Let's gooooo ff16 was amazing I'm definitely playing on my friends rig he's got a 4090 😆
Good, a chance for more people to experience it. It's not for everyone, but despite all its flaws I still have very fond memories of it. The excellent cast of core characters does a lot of heavy lifting, but that's not a bad thing.
As a long time FF fan this is easily one of the greats, a steady 4k 60fps will do it more justice on pc though.
I’m so disappointed in myself for not waiting for the PC release, big regret getting it on ps5. I’ll probably never finish it now.
Hope those that waited enjoy it. It strayed too far from what I expect from Final Fantasy but I hope its good for newcomers to the series.
Glad that it's releasing on Steam on day one as well and not exclusive to Epic.
I put a few hours into this on PS5 but never finished it, but I may give the game another chance on PC.
Phew I found that demo a bit rough personally. Big wait for sale for me
@Grumblevolcano Nah. There is probably enough Yoshida fanboys that will pick this up over God of War.
Move along... Square Enix has way better things to offer!
@Yousef- Don't listen to him. It's a great game if you have no expectations from the older games. It's an action rpg that looks great and has intense fights.
@Yousef- I wouldn't listen to that guy who claim FF XVI visuals is "all dark brown, grey, and blurry".
So just played the first 40 minutes on my PC and unsurprisingly (13900K & 4090) it ran really well. I started off at 4K with DLSS quality (so 1440p upscaled) and I got a fairly stable 140ish with some dips down to 120 at worst. I tried frame gen and it boosted it up to 200-260ish but I only have a 144hz 4K display so just turned that off but useful for when I upgrade to one of the new 4K 240hz OLED monitors.
Once I got through the opening training bit I turned off DLSS just to see how it ran in that open area and seemed to get a fluctuating 80-120. Have noticed that the hair in cutscenes has horrendous ghosting that look likes TAA artifacts and turning on and off DLSS and so on didn't seem to fix it.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see FSR 3 so hopefully the PS5 version gets patched with this at some point. Also had FSR Frame gen so maybe that gets added like Immortals of Aveum, wouldn't do much for any input latency issues but would definitely help smooth the frame rate out for performance mode.
Like @GamingFan4Lyf didn't really spot many differences between this and the PS5 version except resolution and framerate.
Oh and pleased to say it only uses 200-250w of my GPU so I'm able to play the demo without my GPU acting like a space heater and turning the room into a sauna.
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