I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 16 for the last couple of weeks and feel really let down by the hype and reviews of this game.
While I enjoy the deviation of the combat the rest of the game feels very incomplete. The vocal animations are frequently off. The travel from area to area is just an overworld map to select travel from one small area to another. There are like 2 or 3 side quests at a time and a whole vendor that will send you to side quests in different areas, but his menu is always empty.
In general, the graphics are roughly the same as FFXIV. The animations and music seem ripped right out of 14 as well. And the combat and akin to the main series Kingdom Hearts games.
Overall I’m enjoying it, but these 7-9 out of 10 reviews that are calling it some massive achievement seem really undeserved.
Ff16 is the first final fantasy game I’ve played (so I can’t compare to the others like you can) and at first I felt like this but now that I’m 17 hours in, I get it. It’s just how this game is, it’s not open world. Each area is it’s own thing that you take in.
Games are like an interactive movie and there’s a ratio of moviness to gaminess and this one leans heavier on the moviness side.
Idk just thinking out loud.
Yeah. I get it. I’m not really even thinking about it as a Final Fantasy game with a lot of this. My callbacks to FFXIV are because that’s an MMO and we expect the concessions in MMOs to repetitive animations and lower tier graphics to allow for the content churn. For a new game to just look and feel like a 10 year old MMO with graphics is kinda rough.
This game feels like they meant to have a ton more and just didn’t in the end. Not every game needs an open world but if I do compare it to other FF games, it definitely feels the least open.
I have felt some of the boss fights were really good. I guess I would have just given it a 5 or 6.
I think I’m mostly upset by how much acclaim it’s been getting.
I def get what you mean, it isn’t very fleshed out compared to other games that are in the same (apparent) league that the reviews are putting it in. I was just playing a little bit ago and did another of the side quests where you deliver food to people and it’s just so simple seeming (and repetitive since it happens more than once). But in a way I also like the simpleness of it. Maybe it’s appeasing to a certain part of the brain in people where it either clicks or it doesn’t and that is what is responsible for the reviews.
The last Final Fantasy game I played was 8, and it was exactly because of this. They stripped out almost all the “game” bits (although they did give us a really cool card game minigame) and turned it into basically a movie you could occasionally interact with. The battles were mindless (there was no reason not to use your strongest summon every round, because it was both more effective than anything else and because it was totally free to do so), the “equipment” system was entirely optional (which was good, because interacting with it required mega-grind), and overland travel was a total afterthought. It was more of a “game” than anything Tell Tale put out, but that’s a low bar, since Tell Tale only produces movies that sometimes throw in an attention check in the form of a quicktime event.
It was a real shame, because I had entirely switched system allegiance from Nintendo to Playstation just for FF7. Then the followed it up with 8, and it was obvious where they were taking the franchise. So I’m not surprised to see, all these years later, that the newest FF game is even more of that.