Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

@Th3solution I think the controversy is because of the real split in the FF fanbase post FF14s popularity.

Square Enix have gone with an action adventure over RPG philosophy. The single player, love the menus, controlling a squad and levelling FF gamers (of which I am one) feel let down. But the writing has been on the wall for a while. We are no longer the target demographic. Which Is fine when we have the likes of persona, chained echoes and Octopath traveller.

My 22 year old son who loathed the likes of FF10 and 12 - but plays FF14, loves FF16. On picking him up to watch the Barbie film with the family, he went on for maybe 30 minutes talking about it. In a similar way I used to chew anyone's ear off about ff7-10. So much so he wants me to borrow his ps5 and give it a go.

The split is real. Completely different demographic and expectations. FF, both MMO and Single player, will follow the 3rd person action adventure template from here on in.

I am glad I could be of service! Nothing like calibrating expectations for the best experience, that is what reviews and other criticism is there for.

Mainline Yakuza too! If you haven’t played it and love the older style of Final Fantasy games, you will love Like a Dragon, trust me on this.

@themcnoisy @Pizzamorg just in case you’re both unaware (a lot of people seem to be tbh) people hankering after that old school FF feel should definitely check out Tokyo RPG Factory’s output. A team put together in-house, deep within the bowels of Square Enix… openly rebelling against the markets lurch towards action-RPGs.

@colonelkilgore thanks CK, I'm waiting on sea of stars (on both ps premium and gamepass end of the month!) Then Starfield.

So should be OK for rpgs for a bit. Just bought SF6 and waiting on the online update. I'm pretty sure I played I am satsuna googling tokyo rpg factory and didn't play for very long. But lost sphere seems more my bag, so will pick that up!

@Pizzamorg I loved Yakuza zero and played through Kiwami 1+2. Strangely I enjoyed all 3 but played them too close together. Played Yakuza 6 earlier this year and enjoyed it a lot. Like a Dragon has been sat in my to play list for a year now rofl 🤣

I don't dislike action rpgs, infact with the right mix it can be enjoyable. And I'm sure ff16 is too. But it's not how I have associated the FF series. Also I don't like DMC or Bayonetta, I understand the allure but they are passable to say the least.

They made I am Setsuna right? I think I played that on Switch. Where you had to like time your inputs to do bonus damage kinda like FF8 right?

Like a Dragon is a typical Yakuza game, but moves away from the brawling and instead functions as a turn based JRPG where you manage parties, jobs, stats, gear, builds etc. Just wonderful stuff if you can tolerate the very slow pacing Yakuza games have, especially at the beginning.

And yeah the character action stuff is a blessing and a curse in FF16. Like I said in another thread, if you needed to chain together 100 hit combos with six different weapons and get an S rank against every boss to get the true ending, I would have hated that.

But the flip is the simplicity of FF16 that makes it so inviting never meaningfully expands or deepens. This might have been fine if the game was less than 15 hours, but at like 60 plus hour long experience the combat is too thin, like so much of FF16 is.

That is kinda my whole thing with FF16, the first three or four times you use a system, or experience some kind of mechanic it seems really great, but it is when you are using it for the dozenth time some ten hours later and it still works in exactly the same way you start to grow so tired of it all. Had the game been shorter, these issues would not have piled up.

@Pizzamorg yeah that was their first game… they then made Lost Sphere and Oninaki. I haven’t played any of them yet tbh but am keen to give them a try.

I absolutely adored Live a Live last year too, one of my games of the year. Another massive recommendation from me for like old school turn based JRPGs.

For anyone else having trouble with the ‘Such Dodge, So Mega’ trophy as I have been, mastering the ability that charges your mega flare made it easily obtainable.

@Pizzamorg “But the flip is the simplicity of FF16 that makes it so inviting never meaningfully expands or deepens.”

I respect your opinion on the game and I too have pointed out many ways it might be disappointing for series fans but this statement is simply not true. The game is a slow burn to a fault but the combat eventually flowers into a beautiful system with no shortage of variety and combinations to play with, especially once you start equipping different eikonic abilities to different Eikons. The depth is there for those willing to find it.

Maybe in the last 30 hours this becomes true (but again why make me wait so damn long?), but with the five or six sets of powers I unlocked, this simply wasn’t true. No buffs or debuffs, no status effects and other staples of the series. Attacks had unique animations and visual flairs, certainly,, but they were all just different means of damage that could be applied to all enemies universally. So sure, you can combine different damage skills to your liking, but that doesn’t make the combat actually deep.

@Pizzamorg No, @Jimmer-jammer is correct, the combat is deep. Looking at the different eikonic abilities alone: first we have Phoenix. Being able to teleport lets you make quick work of distant enemies. The attacks themselves are fairly straight-forward damage-based attacks and Phoenix's final ability is a fantastic AOE attack. Then we have Garuda's abilities, which focus more on stagger damage. You don't really use them to deal a lot of damage but they're useful for staggering. However, they can take a long time to fully execute so you need to find ways of stunning enemies, such as using Shiva's freeze status first and then using Garuda's stagger attacks. Once staggered mid-way, you can pull larger enemies down with Garuda's claw ability. Garuda's final ability is also a great way to do a lot of stagger while focusing on performing other attacks. Moving on, Ifrit has an ability called will-o-wisp, which is pretty much a buff as it provides damage protection for a short duration. Limit break that you get along with Ifrit's abilities is also a good way of healing in a pinch. Next, Ramuh's abilities is a good combination of damage and stagger. Firing numerous bolts and then using your ranged attack to cause a chain reaction is a good way for crowd control. Its second ability does a lot of damage as well as stagger, and its final ability is incredibly powerful, especially against staggered enemies. Then we have Titan's abilities. The shield is high risk, high reward because it can be tricky to time the parry at the right time but if you do you're able to execute multiple follow-up attacks. This can then be upgraded to increase your limit break restoration, which means that if you fail sometimes to parry in time, you could regain your health more often thanks to this added effect. Titan's abilities are great for dealing a lot of damage but comes with some waiting time, which makes them fairly risky to use in situations where the enemies are frequently attacking you. So they're best used after an enemy's attack or when they're staggered. Its final ability is another great AOE attack. Next is Bahamut's abilities, which don't do a lot of damage but they stun enemies and do more stagger. Combining these abilities with Garuda's will make it easy to stagger enemies quickly. Not to mention if you use the ability that stuns enemies, you can then use Bahamut's main ability of storing up energy while avoid getting attacked. Then you can perform Mega Flare, which is a really strong AOE attack. Bahamut's final ability is absolutely devastating and can be used both for crowd control as well as stronger enemies. The catch is they need to remain stationary for best use as you need to aim the ability manually. After that is Shiva's abilities, which do a fair amount of damage and stagger. The most interesting part of this set is Shiva's dash ability, which as I mentioned earlier lets you briefly freeze enemies. This is useful in combination with other abilities that take some time to execute, such as Garuda's or Odin's abilities. Speaking of Odin, I found this one to be the coolest ability set. The attacks themselves don't do a lot of damage at all. Instead, they're used to power up a meter so that you can execute Zantetsuken, which is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. The caveat here is that Clive need some time to charge up the attacks as I mentioned earlier, which leaves him vulnerable for enemy attacks. In other words, you can't just spam these attacks. The timing needs to be right, for example if the enemies are frozen or staggered. So the best strategy here is to use other abilities first, then when the time is right, you use Odin's abilities.

On top of all these different abilities, you can equip three different sets as well as assign abilities from other sets by mastering them. There are so many combinations and lots of different ways to customise your play style.

In short, the combat can be as simple or in-depth as you want it to be.

Cool, let us agree to disagree @LtSarge there is so much I don’t agree with in your assessment, and I started putting together a response and then realised we are destined to go in circles over this until the end of time. So I’m done with this now, as bored with this circular discussion as I am with the actual FF16. Almost impressive.

@LtSarge @KilloWertz I really like the approach to spell casting in this, and how the abilities often work with and build off of each other in ways that I actually find far more interesting (and certainly less pedestrian) than the traditional turn-based system. For example, with Megaflare, rather than simply managing a mana bar and choosing a spell from a menu and then watching idly as the spell does it’s thing, you’re encouraged to execute perfect dodges in order to quickly charge the gauge, allowing you to unleash the most powerful version of the spell while then leaving you free to commence the next barrage of attacks while the spell does its thing. In a way, it successfully creates the feeling of actually casting the spell, rather than just watching it be cast.

I’ve really loved the small touches too. I guess I’m a bit weird but I’ve loved listening to all of the npc chatter as it contextually and dynamically changes frequently throughout the game, visiting Harpocrates to “study the tomes”, seeing what the former university professor, Vivian, has added to her collections. After helping a baker find his passion again by encouraging him to express himself in his work, I was thrilled to see his creations show up later at the Hideaway with some inhabitants discussing their design. The game is loaded with this type of detail (and more) for those willing to appreciate it.

The Active Time Lore system is something else I haven’t seen discussed much. It’s a frankly revelatory and innovative addition that I’d welcome in any game going going forward.

I’ve always seen Final Fantasy as a series full of ‘moments.’ Every game in the series that I’ve played have all had aspects I’ve liked, aspects I’ve put up with and aspects I’ve disliked, but they all have those amazing moments that stick with me. Those moments I wish I could replay and relive. Before XVI, VIII had always been my favourite for this reason. Even though disc 4 is essentially a throw away for me, I played the first 3 discs countless times as a teenager just to experience those moments. With that in mind, I find the stage replay via the Arete stone an astute addition that I for one appreciate greatly. Sure, it’s arguably pointless in the age of YouTube, but for and old soul like me, it’s totally welcome. Being able to play through them with current abilities is the icing on the cake.

Anyway, just wanted to celebrate some things I’ve really been enjoying about the game with some folks who seem to also have enjoyed it.

@Jimmer-jammer I actually mentioned the Active Time Lore system in my review and I agree, it's a fantastic feature! Great way to spend short amounts of time of reading up on the background of figures and locations instead of dumping too much exposition all at once.

Speaking of the level of detail in this game, I've been watching multiple people react to FFXVI and I've noticed that the attention to detail in this game is absolutely impeccable. Here are multiple examples (minor story spoilers):

@LtSarge Wow! That detail with the vegetables is something I would likely have never noticed! Very cool. Also, I’ll check out your review, thanks!

@Jimmer-jammer @LtSarge There's also the fact that people can use the spells/abilities in the game in very different ways, so the combat can be different for everybody. I'll be honest that I use them just randomly at times for the ones that don't take very long to cool down, but instead of using draining my supply of potions all the time, I will use the Limit Break and Flames of Rebirth to help with healing a lot. Sometimes combining Flame of Rebirth with Gigaflare to offensively drain their Stagger bar.

While I eventually stopped reading any updates from Vivian and just checked in on her just to have the dot go away, I do appreciate all of the little things as well. It helps that I love Western RPGs and this is very much like them, with those small touches along with a large group of characters that you interact with and get to know well throughout the course of the game. I understand not everybody will care enough to get invested, but Horizon Forbidden West is probably the last game of this scale to really accomplish the sense of getting to know various side and main characters in the game and do it so well like FFXVI. I think that does it even better, especially with some of the actual tasks and such, but I still appreciate what they've done in FFXVI.

I haven't used the Active Time Lore system much as I go to Harpocrates every time I'm at the Hideaway, but I do appreciate the fact that it's there. It mildly reminds me of the feature on Prime Video where it shows you who is in each scene and such.

I can't really comment on the whole moments part much since I unfortunately neglected most of the series. I have finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake twice, Final Fantasy XIII, Crisis Core Reunion, and obviously XVI soon enough. I played VII and X, but never finished either as I likely got stuck and then just moved on. I was a different gamer back then, and without YouTube to look things up then, I would just move on unlike what I would do now. I will try my best work through the series from VII onward at some point over time (VII after Remake's whole story is done).

I intended to follow up with a reply and forgot to but I definitely agree with the frustration of this phenomenon. Review bombing and review propping is one of the unsettling parts of user reviews. I don’t see it on here, but definitely on parts of social media and Metacritic. If someone’s upset about one singular aspect of a game, it’s automatically a 1/10, or if it’s a sequel to their favorite series it’s an automatic 10/10 even if the game is broken.

More so, this is a huge problem in politics and general social discourse. What was once radical political extremes is now just the accepted “left” or “right”. I seem to be one of the few moderates remaining; the analytical middle shrinks and people scamper to join the radical positions. I’m pretty sure this is how war begins.

Anyways, I’m way off topic and I know that your FF analysis is complete (or at least on hold) but I do think most Push Squareans are solidly nuanced and appreciate constructive criticism and evaluation. And both the disapproval I’m seeing and the praise for FF16 (yours included) has all the appropriate logic and reasoning behind it. It’s great to read everyone’s take. And of course, occasionally with art it’s just flat out difficult to explain why we like or dislike something. But I think it’s healthy to try.

Got a little session in this afternoon and really enjoyed the Typhon boss fight, as well as the cinematics that followed. I’m maybe 15 hours in or so… and I’m honestly thinking it’s the best game I’ve played this year. It has all the hallmarks of a big Sony first party blockbuster but with that extra Japanese flavour. Feels like a Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica FF game… and while I’m aware that is blasphemy to the hardcore… it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

Took me a while but I finally finished XVI - including everything that could be done in a single playthrough (so the only remaining trophies are for beating hard mode and fully upgrading all skills).

Very epic. The final blow of the final boss fight was very satisfying